The Tire Gauge

A 3% drop in US gasoline consumpition, right now,  with no federal or state spending.  Awesome? 
www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/maintain.shtml

“Rather than join the call for this sensible step, the Republicans decided to launch a campaign to mock an idea which has support from everyone from AAA and NASCAR to President Bush’s own Department of Energy.” http://act.truemajorityaction.org/p/7002/tirepressure?petition_KEY=76

Check out this short video, it’s good stuff:

 

I bought my teen-driver a tire gauge earlier this week (yes, really) and yesterday we went out and measured the pressure: All 4 tires were low, and not by a little. 

BTW: a clogged air filter can result in a 10% increase in gasoline needs.

Iran, Saudi – enough oil to buy the USA

How much would it take to buy the US? At today’s prices, the net worth of the USA is roughly equal to 400 billion barrels.

Cheney’s Mid-East Visit

March 2008: Dick Cheney went to the Middle East to meet with OPEC and its de facto leader King Abdullah (Saudi Arabia) to curb oil prices.  Cheney would also meet with leaders from Turkey and Oman (non-Opec).  As of March 2008, oil prices have jumped up more than 70 percent in the past year to $108.  Let’s check his progress. 

That’s a lot of oil

     More than a quarter of bottled water is just processed tap water, including Pepsi’s Aquafina and Coca-Cola’s Dasani. 
     Bottled water rules allow higher levels of many contaminants, with more lenient requirements for filtration, testing and reporting (than the Federal regulations). See NRDC’s bottled water report for details of contaminants by brand.
     The Earth isn’t healthier for it, either. According to the Pacific Institute’s fact sheet [PDF], manufacturing the 30+ billion plastic water bottles we bought in 2006:

• Required the equivalent of more than 17 million barrels of oil – enough to fuel more than one million vehicles for a year. (Note: This was erroneously reported by the New York Times as 1.5 million, and the error is repeated in many places.)
• Produced more than 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide.
• Used three times the amount of water in the bottle.

http://green.msn.com/Articles/article.aspx?aid=368>1=45002

Importing Oil to Iraq

The USA spends $929 million per week importing oil into Iraq