kgwilson

The price of petrol is expensive in NZ but it costs just $80.00 a year to register a car and that includes CTP which is the ACC levy. (ACC is a government system to cover workers compensation & accidents etc. The right to sue has been removed by law.) Here the registration & CTP cost is $ 700.00 and up to several thousand depending on your age and the vehicle. You can buy a lot of fuel for the extra 65 cents a litre so for majority the overall cost is actually less to run a car in NZ than in Australia.

Phasing out nuclear, coal and gas is an ambitious undertaking for a heavily industrialised country such as Germany. The government has set a deadline to shutter all the country's nuclear plants by 2022 and stop burning coal for electricity by 2038. At the Reuter power plant in Berlin, which supplies 600,000 households in the capital with heat, the solution now includes calcium oxide, also known as quicklime. Vattenfall and Swedish start-up SaltX have been taking advantage of a simple chemical reaction that occurs when quicklime becomes wet: the salt-like grains soak up the water, becoming calcium hydroxide and releasing large amounts of heat in the process. By removing the water again - a process not dissimilar to baking - the substance turns back into calcium oxide. The process essentially mirrors how batteries work, except that instead of electricity, the system stores heat. SaltX says it has also patented a way of covering the quicklime with tiny particles - known as a nano-coating - to prevent it from lumping together after several heating and cooling cycles. "Germany currently has enough installed renewable energy capacity to produce twice as much as it needs, it's just not constant," says Hendrik Roeglin, who oversees the salt storage project for Vattenfall. Rival utility E.ON recently calculated that solar and wind power generated up to 52 gigawatt hours of electricity during peak daylight hours on Easter Monday. Germany's energy consumption at the time was just 49.5 gigawatt hours. And here we have far better conditions to produce renewable energy & the idiocy of conservative thinking is more coal. Unbelievable but true.

Yep it has taken 20,000 years to get to the level it was 10 years ago. It is not the fact that it is rising, it has been all that time, it is the accelerated rate of rise in just a few years that is cause for concern.

I see today that the UK has for the first time since 1882 gone a whole week without burning any coal to generate electricity. The country has already gone for more than 1,000 hours in total without needing coal in 2019 - and this year is likely to beat all previous records. They have the largest offshore wind farms in the world and actually export some of that generation. Nuclear and gas generation make up most of the balance. They are serious about climate change and actually have bi-partisan support for emissions reduction even though they can't resolve Brexit. Here we have the LNP wanting to build more coal fired power stations, the PUP saying they are going to & there is no climate change policy at all. Yet climate change is listed as more important to most voters than the economy. With a bit of luck those Dinosaurs will be by-passed in a couple of weeks. If the sea level isn't rising how come Kiribati is going under & numerous other pacific Islands are being regularly flooded. I'll bet some expert will come up with a documented story showing that he islands are sinking.

I don't think we have reached the tipping point or are that close to it yet but I believe it may happen in my lifetime. I don't think I am as optimistic as Octave but I am hopeful that the slow destruction of our ability to maintain our presence here can be arrested. Businesses and corporations are flat out moving towards environmental responsibility however it is the political will that is still not there even after the climate accords of Kyoto, Copenhagen and Paris with the biggest polluter of all pulling away. The difference today is that man made climate change (though the man made bit is left out) is becoming front and centre of discussions and debate that only a couple of years ago was ignored by large portions of the worlds population. Last election only the Greens were talking about it, now it is the most important issue identified by the majority of voters that are not die hard LNP supporters. That's why I am still hopeful.

And global population at almost 8 billion. While the rate has slowed, wars and pandemics have had no effect so the demand for dwindling resources may outstrip supply. It does though have some hope in that with all the extra people there is a bigger pool of educated people to make the decisions. All well and good but none of them are politicians.

On the 24 hour evolutionary clock human beings have been around since 1 second to midnight & we have managed to almost completely stuff things up in that time. If things finally go pear shaped and we become extinct I reckon it will only take another second or less for the planet to recover without us. It is also interesting to note that when the bulletin of Atomic Scientists started the doomsday clock in 1947 it was all about nuclear annihilation and the clock was at 7 minutes to midnight. It got down to 2 minutes at various times like the Cuban missile crisis & up to 17 minutes in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union & end of the cold war. Now it is back to 2 minutes to midnight but the threat is now equally climate change with emerging technologies and global risk (hacking and political change, rise of the right and errosion of democracy). The signs are there and have been for all of that time but we still seem to have a head in the sand approach.

If 911 happened now & the US blamed somewhere like Vietnam, would they invade on the false pretence (WMD) like they did in Iraq and all the consequences leading to the IS caliphate? China is right next door & even though historically China & Vietnam have not been the best mates there is no way the US would even consider it. China is too strong and Trump has lost most of his mates.

These will all become redundant as the super charging stations come on line and the cars have an on board DC converter. In the meantime someone will produce adaptors just like you have when travelling overseas to run your electrical stuff with an Aus/NZ plug.

It is the evolution of electricity distribution from huge fossil fueled remote stations sent by massive power lines to massive sub stations & then to the consumer, to renewable energy produced everywhere, stored locally and used locally. The large wind and solar farms are a continuance of the centralised energy philosophy albeit with storage attached but distributed systems will supplement this massively. In my community about half the houses have solar panels and most of what is generated goes into the grid. I have a 2kW system installed 5 years ago. We use as much as possible when the sun shines (aircon, dishwasher, vacuum, washing machine, dryer etc) & still half of my power goes into the grid. My peak and shoulder usage is less than half of my off peak usage (TV, lights, fridge, freezer etc). 2kW is tiny nowadays but if the extra generation was stored & used later I would only need the grid for 4kWh per day. My average daily production is 12 kWh in Summer & 9 kWh in Winter. So if I add another 2 kW capacity to my solar system I could be self sufficient and still have excess capacity about half of the time. Most installations these days are 5-6 kW and many people are installing their own batteries. A local community battery would be charged up during the day & used at night by all of those connected. There are plenty of these systems being implemented around the world but they scare the crap out of power companies which is unsurprising. Just a few years ago it was illegal to install a stand alone system if grid power was available. The change is evolutionary and it continues with an ever quickening pace.

66% of our population reside in the metropolitan areas of our 8 capital cities and 89% live in urban areas of only a handful of cities so EVs will suit a very high percentage of the population. China has now set a new standard for fast charging stations at 900 kW. Currently here we are just starting to talk about level 3 (240 kW DC) and the fastest now is a Tesla dual charge at 22kW so development is rapid. At 900 kW a 5 minute charge will add about 500km to your cars range. The technology exists now but is new and not yet installed anywhere but in 2 years time I would suggest this will be become common. New EVs will have the DC converter on board.

The problem with the deniers is that they have the support of some of the wealthy who rely on fossil industries. As I said before the jury is no longer out. We are 100% on the steady slide into a failed earth. Support for action has been slow to get going and at an international level with the Kyoto, Copenhagen and Paris agreements being undermined by individual governments is not advancing as fast as it deserves to be. The real change though is from the people of this planet despite their leaders failures. This includes numerous businesses involved in renewable energy, the exponential growth in electric cars, battery technologies etc, the list is endless. School children know without a doubt that their future is being destroyed by current governments with their "Growth and Jobs" attitude that has only one long term disastrous result. The polls here even show that the issue that worries the majority is no longer the economy but the environment. I think we are nearly at the point of "Critical Mass" & if we can get there soon there is still hope for humanity.

Zinc Bromine has been around for 100 years. Until Prof Maschmeyer and his team at Sydney University developed a gel as the substrate, zinc bromine batteries only worked as a flow battery with liquid bromine and were large and not mobile. The gel allows them to become non flow and scalable depending upon the thickness of the gel. The theory is that they can be small enough to use in mobile phones and large enough to run buildings including being able to form part of the building structure. The good things are that the materials are cheap, they will not burn and there is very little degradation over time.

The jury is no longer out. The problem is deniers will never accept the facts and love to cherry pick specifics and when a little scrutiny is applied to their arguments those melt into oblivion as do their poorly researched "facts that are really just opinions".

Where does it hook up at the back or is there a plug? What if you are a right dresser?

That Rivian is up there with supercar performance at 0 to 100 in 3 seconds. So many innovative concepts in storage practicality. The front end styling is reminiscent of the Ford Edsel in the 60s hailed as the greatest American family car ever. Everyone hated it due to the horrible vertical grille & it bombed. It might be a signature feature of the Rivian but they may rue that decision. The development of EVs is exponential now and will only increase further. A year ago I thought I'd never get a chance (financially) to own one in my lifetime. Not so now. Charging stations are getting bigger also at an exponential rate (latest are 200kW) so if your charge is getting low you will be able to get a 5 minute top up to get home. NZ has a nationwide network of charging stations already. I find it incredulous that Australia lags so far behind when we have so much potential in renewable energy production. SCOMOs mob head in the sand attitude just seem hell bent on their own demise.

A complete clown with the intellect of a retarded amoeba but the rust belt still think he is their saviour despite failing to entice any industries that moved offshore to return or reduce the jobless rate in these states. A friend & LAME who is in IOWA working reckons they still think the sun shines out of his arce. He is of course a self proclaimed genius as we have all been told..

Clinton was ultimately acquitted. The political judiciary closed ranks. Nixon was also impeached but resigned before anything happened. Trump is so slippery nothing may ever be done even though his corrupt conduct is now legendary. The latest is that he always cheats at Golf. His caddy always gets his ball out of the woods so it mysteriously appears in the middle of the fairway and is the only one who ever checks hit tweets but that is only during the day. His lies & false or misleading statements are fast approaching 10,000 since taking office.

A great initiative. It bears some resemblance to the Mini front on. EVs other than Tesla seem to have uninspiring grilles, which of course they don't even need.

Sydney university has developed a gel version of the zinc bromine battery & now has a venture capital partner now to develop it. The company is Gelion. The technology is 100 years old and always needed a liquid reservoir to pump the liquid around as it only worked as a flow battery. The good thing about this gel technology is it is stable, non flow, is scaleable from mobile phones to huge building size, that there is hardly any deterioration over time and cost is low. See Gelion Technologies I'm glad they didn't ask the government for help. That would have been a sure fire way to bury it.

May be true but the hydrogen burnt really well. If it had been helium the result would have been much different.

Sweden used to drive on the left but decided to change to fit in with the rest of Europe. It was called Högertrafikomläggningen meaning Right-Hand Traffic Diversion and happened on the 3rd of September 1967.There was relatively little chaos & the accident rate actually decreased due to the publicity and discipline of Swedes plus the fact that half the cars were already left hand drive.. Canada changed in the 1920s. Most ex British colonies drive on the left. China drives on the right but Macau & Hong Kong now part of China drive on the left. Maybe we should all drive in the middle of the road & solve the global population explosion.

Whoever they get, it doesn't really matter the place is fotally tucked anyway.

I have been to a number of Marae & have stayed there overnight & lived 12km from the Turangawaewae Marae in Ngaruawahia the seat of the Maori King movement, for more than 25 years. I was always treated with respect and respected their culture and customs. In pre European times some were cannibals and the Maori I knew acknowledged that without any denial. An old friend and neighbour Bob Tipene died just before I left for Australia & I attended his Tangi (funeral). I was treated like family. It was a humbling experience and I felt honoured to be there among his people and to be treated as one of them. Like every culture there are the ratbags and those with an axe to grind but the Elders generally keep them in line. Too many white Kiwis have never had this experience and take their views from hearsay and their own internal white prejudices which have descended through the generations of white superiority. There are a number of Maori based gangs in NZ & they are pretty intimidating. They too have their structure and culture. One of the most fearsome is the Mongrel Mob. After the shooting in Christchurch the Mongrel Mob approached the local Muslim community and provided free security for their Mosques not just in Christchurch but around the country. Jacinda Adern is an inspirational leader who espouses kindness, empathy, love and compassion. She has held NZ together at a most difficult time. There is no-one here that comes close. At the UN she spoke of these things while holding her new baby. She got a standing ovation. Trump got up & stated that he rejects Globalism and embraces patriotism. Deadly silence. If the rest of the world follows her advice I do not fear the future.

It really doesn't matter how much factual information you have and can prove. Some people refuse to hear or be swayed from their point of view by the truth. Trump has made an entire career out of lies and misleading information and he does it both ways depending on what he wants. An example is to get loans he exaggerated his wealth by multiple millions and then reduced it by multiple millions when being asked to provide information for the US IRS. There are now well over 9000 lies or false statements he has made since taking office. All are well documented and fully referenced. Of course when it came to the government workers not being paid, it was Trump who refused to sign the order. He of course blamed Congress & the democrats (after saying on TV he would not blame them) for not giving him 2.5 billion to build a wall that he originally said Mexico would pay for. Trump supporters can't see this as wrong. The US economy was going well largely due to the policies put in place by the Obama administration but of course Trump took the credit. His promise to bring back industry to the mid west "Rust Belt" has not materialised and some manufacturers have moved more production out of the US. Now the economy is faltering with the rate of growth declining since 2017 with a sharp fall from 4% in late November to 1.96% now.