kgwilson

That seems a pretty dumb place to store our crude given the geographical distance. We probably have no means to refines it here anyway but the yanks always do whatever they like irrespective of agreements and/or water tight contracts.

I travelled through Iran to Afghanistan in 1975 before the Shah was deposed. I found most locals polite but border officials etc were not. I even hitch hiked from the Turkish border to a small town & then took a bus to Tehran. The main roads were good having been built by the US but the rest was quite poor then. I was only there for a week & saw some amazing architecture & ancient sites. If the place wasn't run by Islamist fanatics it would be great. The Shah was very wealthy but most people were poor. One of the reasons for the original takeover. Back to the sinking of the Iranian warship. US military sources stated it was the first sinking of a an enemy ship by a submarine launched torpedo since WW2. Well No. There have been 4 since and of course that included the British nuclear submarine HMS Conqueror sinking the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano in 1982 during the Falklands war. The Yanks don't get much right especially history that they continually re-write to suit their narrative. As for fuel prices it doesn't bother me as they have yet to figure out how to tax the sun.

The new cars are smaller, lighter & are hybrids with a 50/50 split between internal combustion & electric power & use 100% sustainable fuels. The drivers have to manage the power split now. I've watched the Formula E cars a couple of times & they have incredible acceleration but races are shorter due to battery constraints but now the Gen 3 versions are 4WD & allow for fast charging pit stops of 600kW

Most of the beef we export to the USA is lean beef mixed with fattier US beef for hamburgers, you know Trumps favoutite big Mac. The US cattle herd has been in decline for decades reaching a low of 86.2 million down from over 90 million a decade ago. It has been in decline for over 75 years.

The WLTP range for the MG Excite 51 is 350km not 405km. The WLTP range for my MG Essence 64 is 435km with the lower spec Excite 64 it is 450km. None of the models has a quoted 405km range. This is the old out dated NEDC range which was very inaccurate & was created in laboratory tests in the 1980s based on urban driving. It was last updated in 1997. A friend of mine has an Excite 51 & gets over 300km. In mine the range is about 380 to 400km based on 110km highway driving & some 50 - 80 km driving. Driving around in an urban environment at 50 - 60 kmh gives me much higher range. The range estimator (also known as the guess-O-meter) has given me 505km from a full charge & that would have been close if I hadn't gone over 50kmh. It has a level of intelligence that works out the range based on your driving style & it is surprisingly accurate. It is 182km from my house to Gold Coast Airport & a few weeks ago I left with 100% charge & arrived with 52%. Most of this was at 110kmh on the Pacific Highway. I could have got home without getting a charge but just like with my old petrol car I would never let the fuel get that low. I spent 15 minutes at the BP in Ballina for a comfort stop & coffee & added some charge. Cost me $9.04 but there was plenty left when I got home. Other than long trips it costs nothing to run my EV as I charge from solar, supplemented by my home battery and 3 hours of free power every day. I'll never have to worry about the price of petrol going up because of wars or other reasons for shortage. In any vehicle, electric or internal combustion it all depends on how you drive, the terrain, weather, the total weight of the vehicle and use of accessories like air conditioning etc.

I wouldn't own a hybrid for reasons of complexity with 2 power plants, a small battery and a complex drive train, maintenance and a reliance on fossil fuels. Studies have shown most hybrid owners do not get anywhere near the claimed economy. There are a number of reasons but with plug in hybrids many owners do not plug them in so their fuel consumption from the relatively small ICE engine can be very high. For most of my EV driving the energy is free as I charge at home off my rooftop solar panels supported by my home battery plus getting free power for 3 hours a day. On a recent trip to NZ I left the car at Gold Coast airport after leaving home with 100% battery. I still had just over 50% when I got to the airport. Most of the trip was at 110kMh. I stopped at Ballina BP on the way home & put it on the fast charger for 15 minutes while I went for a comfort break & coffee. It was pouring with rain at the time & I wanted a buffer to make sure I'd get home. Cost me $9.04 for a bit over 15 kWh of charge so had plenty left when I got home.

I stand corrected. Toyota lost ground considerably in China, its second largest market after the US for 3 years but had a slight 0.2% increase in 2025. Hybrids are less popular in China mainly due to government incentives for BEVs.

Pretty much all of the legacy auto manufacturers are declining. Stellantis is a basket case. Toyota has had its head in the sand for years thinking electric vehicles will disappear. They still have good sales in the West but are down worldwide considerably. Why is this happening? Unless you have been underground for the past few years it is obvious. Electric vehicles are taking over. Tesla made them mainstream but not for the average car buyer due to cost and the fossil fuel industry promoting misinformation. The rise of Chinese car manufacture is the main reason. The world wide forecast increase in EV sales in 2025 was 21%, the same was in 2024.. The year ended with sales passing 25%. The December numbers in Australia were 38% up on the previous year surpassing expectations. EV sales now make up over 13% of car sales in Australia. China has now passed Japan as the largest supplier of cars to Australia. We are though one of the slowest EV converts in the Western world. Other reasons include range increases, very little maintenance, long warranties and most of all lower cost as basic small Chinese made EVs have reached price parity with ICE equivalents. EV market share in the UK reached 23% by the end of 2025 with the rest of Europe 19.3%. The Nordic countries are way ahead with Noway (97%) & Denmark (70%) Sweden a bit lower at over 40% but 60% including hybrids. Trump land has gone the other way as you might expect with a 1% decline overall other than in California, Washington & Colorado. Trump won't allow Chinese EVs in & GM, Ford & the US part of Stellantis are losing ground and bleeding capital by producing mediocre EVs. If it wasn't for Tesla the US market would be stuffed. Musk has done a good job of helping this occur.

I've never been able to figure out how someone believes there is an all creator god and there is a heaven & hell but also believes in evolution. There is a blind eye in there somewhere or a bob each way..

That was a paper written 8 years ago. Latest scientific research shows the sea level has indeed risen. Physical evidence confirms this. There are numerous reports also. This is googles AI perspective. Tuvalu faces an existential threat from climate change, with rising sea levels expected to submerge much of its low-lying land (average elevation <2 meters) by 2050 and render 95% of the nation uninhabitable by 2100. The sea around Tuvalu is rising at roughly 4-5mm per year, significantly faster than the global average. Saltwater intrusion is contaminating groundwater and crops, forcing the nation to consider adapting through land reclamation or potential digital migration.

Tell the people of Tuvalu that the sea level is not rising or for that matter Kiribati, the Marshall Islands and the Maldives. The highest point on Tuvalu is only 4.5 metres above sea level and the sea is already invading their lower areas making their gardens die from salination. It is forecast that Tuvalu will be completely uninhabitable by 2100.

I haven't been there for at least 15 years but I've driven past it 2 or 3 times a year for the past 15 years when I am heading for Noosa. I did go there a couple of weeks ago but the only reason was to leave it for NZ via the airport. Populated by the very wealthy with all their flash toys who could not care less for the environment. Very pompous & lacking of any good taste in architectural design. A slum for the wealthy. It was named for the high cost of real estate & rapid development in the late 50s. Used to be the South Coast with Southport, Coolangatta & Burleigh Heads the main centres. It was probably quite nice back then.

If it ever gets built Trump will probably be dead before it is finished

This what the SMH has to say about it, from Stuff NZ that isn't behind a paywall. 91 floors so fewer than Australia 108. Trumps personal insecurity and ego could not allow him not to propose the tallest though. https://www.stuff.co.nz/world-news/360942643/new-trump-tower-be-australias-tallest-building-private-beach-club-promised

The problem with sending that video to your uncle who doesn't believe in climate change is that his pea brain is so entrenched he won't believe it and has no understanding of or care for science. Trump is a great example of one of these Uncles.

Changes to the climate have occurred for over 3 billion years. It took this amount of time for the suns energy to enable life forms to create the fossil fuels we use today. We have used at least half of all the known reserves and most of the easily extractable fossil fuel in the last 150 years. So that is about 150 billion years of stored energy gone with all the waste going in to the atmosphere and oceans in only 150 years. Anyone who thinks that has not affected our climate must have rocks in their head.. Also climate variations from ice ages to Antarctica being green to a world too hot for land mammals to survive took thousands of years, some times millions of years. The last 40 years has seen the largest average temperature increase in recorded history and that is not very long. Mini ice ages and heat waves have occurred during human occupation of the planet but that is a measly 1 million years at best. At least 21 human species have existed but we are the only one that has survived for the past 40,000 years, the others wiped out for a number of reasons including the climate. We have to reduce our emissions or risk extinction which if we continue to increase them at the current rate will only be a few hundred years or less. Once we have used all of the fossil fuels available the planet will settle down to do its thing with changes occurring over the next few million years till the sun burns out.

Trumps complete lunacy know no bounds. He has announced that a Hospital ship is on its way to Greenland to care of many people who are sick & not being cared for. Greenlands PM has declined to accept it. What happened was a Danish sailor got sick & was transported 7NM to Nuuck by Seahawk helicopter for treatment. Apart from that nothing. Greenland has a free healthcare system & you have to pay for everything in the US. Also social media posts say that both of the American hospital ships are at a shipyard in Mobile Alabama. When asked for comment the navy referred callers to the White House. https://www.stuff.co.nz/world-news/360942171/greenland-says-no-thanks-trumps-curious-us-hospital-boat-plan

Sodium Ion batteries have started to appear in a number of Chinese EVs. Battery cost is around 60-65% less but energy density is considerably lower at this stage of development though those using Sodium Vanadium phosphate have a much improved energy density but higher cost. CATL the worlds largest battery manufacturer is producing them under the Naxtra brand. Their big advantage is high output under harsh conditions from -40 to +70 degrees celsius

My EV has 4 levels or regenerative braking. 1 is a bit like a normal ICE car, 3 is like applying brakes moderately & OPD (one pedal driving) is adaptive based on how you take your foot off the accelerator. Take it of suddenly and it brakes very quickly & slower if you take your foot off slower. I use the brakes occasionally to stop the discs from rusting and becoming pitted. I know of a Tesla that had done nearly 700,000 km & went in for new tyres & they checked the disc pads & found them less that 30% worn.

Modern reverse cycle air conditioners, more correctly called heat pumps are very efficient and most are inverters so they can reduce the power consumption once they get the temperature down (or up in the Winter). I installed a Mitsubishi Electric split system in my last house that cooled most of the house. It produced 7.2 kW of cooling and 8 kW of heat with a maximum current draw on 2.2kW. Once the house was down to about 25 degrees it drew only about 800 watts to maintain the temperature. Our new property came with a similar sized Daikin split system which is a bit older and not as efficient as the Mitsubishi but still only draws about 1 kW once it gets the house down to temperature. It is academic now though as all the power comes from solar during the day and stored solar in my home battery at night.

We will need fossil fuels for quite some time but the planet desperately needs to reduce its reliance on these if we are going to survive long term. Trump will be gone in 3 years and hopefully the pragmatists in the US will see that renewables and nuclear energy (though the waste is an issue) are the ONLY way forward. The problem is that it is dis-United with so many MAGA nutters and an education system that does not consider facts that are not American or anything that happens outside of America. Hollywood has distorted facts and American war movies always show how Americans won everything. Most believe WW2 started with Pearl Harbour. The fact that if the battle of Britain had not been won there would have been no place to create an invasion force. The Battle of the Bulge was only successful due to Montgomery sending 30 Corps South to stop the German Armour from crossing the Muse & taking Antwerp. US generals were scathing of British meticulous planning, engineering expertise and total concern at reducing casualties through innovation etc and Bletchley park with cracking the Enigma code has never really been acknowledged as most Americans believe they did it. The Poms just sucked it all up as by 1945 they were bankrupt & needed the US so did not complain. Now Trump has changed everything with his team of ignorant rampant neo colonialists and world dominance through absolute power. Things are changing though with the UK & Europe finally beginning the re-arm & get rid of the US dependence. Putin plays Trump like a chap violin & Xi just watches it all while seeing his dominance continue to expand. China out produces everyone especially in new technology with EVs, robots, machinery, solar and wind power and everything else. It is the worlds new high tech factory and no-one can get close now. Those of us in our 70s & more have seen the best of times. We will all be gone in a few years so hopefully human resourcefulness and decency will eventually prevail.

US debt is around US$38 trillion & most of it is owned internally. About US$8 trillion is owned by foreign countries. Japan, China & UK are the biggest external owners of US debt. When the value of the US$ drops so does the value of the debt. Investors are slowly moving away from the US as a safe investment & this is being reflected to a degree in the loss of value of the US$ as well. Trumps dumb and erratic policies will probably see interest rates rise to try to stem the outflow of investment in the US. He's only been there a year & the rot is setting in already.

Clinton & Obama have weighed in on this describing it as "a moment that will shape history" urging Trump to "reconsider his approach saying “Over the course of a lifetime, we face only a few moments where the decisions we make and the actions we take will shape our history for years to come. This is one of them. If we give our freedoms away after 250 years, we might never get them back.” Prominent republicans & some of the original MAGA influencers, the most prominent Being Joe Rogan, have also been critical of Trump, Noem & ICE. Some commentators are likening ICE to the Gestapo in WW2. This has caused Trump to refuse to defend the ICE agent when asked & now say that the administration is "reviewing everything" about the incident. There will be no apology, ICE will get away with a review & a few sackings & the murderers will get off lightly. Trump will blame those he sacks as always though.

Kristy Noem has jumped in to blame the victims in both ICE murders with no evidence and in fact with photographic, video and personal reports from witnesses to the contrary completely ignored. Hopefully this will be a wake up call for Trump & his appointed sycophants that continually lying will eventually catch up on them

This is old news. It was reported over a year ago though it is still relevant. ICE agents appear to be recruited on the basis of Trump loyalty, Nazi philosophy, 100% MAGA deviancy, and thuggery. They are 21st century brown shirts & most won't show their face. If anything is a catalyst for a civil war this mob are at the top of the list.