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Fresh and Exciting

Don't Believe the Hype

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

The only good thing about this movie is that it draws attention to our energy crisis. While watching the movie I was enraged by the claims the film made about big oil companies hiding the fact that we could get hundreds of miles per gallon of gas. After it was over I did a little research on these claims. It is easy to find out that they are all untrue.Ogle debunked: I did not write the following but it wont let me post the link. "Is it really possible to get 100 miles per gallon? Absolutely; it just depends on what case you're evaluating. Did Tom Ogle achieve this on a 351 cubic inch Ford? How can it be proved, other than by skeptical claims that do not have concrete explanations? Considering we live on earth, the basic laws of physics are all we need to analyze and prove (or disprove) such a claim. These laws are essentially models of what occurs on our planet. For example, Force = Mass * Acceleration. This equation can be used to model how much force is required to accelerate a given mass. So, what are the laws concerning Ogle's scenario? Force = Mass * Acceleration is one of them - we're trying to accelerate a car to a certain speed for a certain time. Over the course of that time, friction is one of the resistive forces that impedes motion of the car. Gravity also impedes motion of the car. Without resistive forces, one could simply get the car up to a desired speed and it would continue at that speed until a resistive force acted on it. But as we all know, that doesn't happen on earth because there are numerous resistive forces. So we know there has to be a maximum mile per gallon amount that is achievable, since these resistive forces exist. Is 100 miles per gallon a plausible claim for a heavy Ford? To determine this, we need to know a few things: what kind of resistive forces is the vehicle trying to overcome while making its trip (the trip in which we are measuring its gas mileage), what kind of energy must the car exert to overcome these resistive forces, and how much gasoline is required to create that energy? For the first two parts of our analysis, the resistive forces the vehicle must overcome and the energy the car must exert should not be altered from any other vehicle. In other words, for our model to make sense in real world driving, the forces that resist Ogle's Ford and the energy that the Ford must exert to drive in regular road conditions are exactly the same for a Ford that does not have the Ogle system attached to it. Now, the energy part of the analysis is where Ogle made his supposed achievement. The energy equation is quite simple. Energy is composed of 3 parts (in simplified physics - that is, no nuclear power): Kinetic Energy, Potential Energy, and Internal Energy. Kinetic Energy is energy that results from a moving mass. Kinetic and potential energy are unimportant in this analysis and can be assumed to be zero. Internal energy is what is important in our analysis because it describes the amount of energy that a chemical reaction can produce (in our case, the reaction of burning gasoline). Gasoline has a specific amount of internal energy that is released when it is burned. There is a maximum achievable energy. For Olge's system to work, it must get more energy out of the gasoline than a normal car does. His system must come closer to the maximum achievable energy that exists in a specific amount of gasoline. The problem is that the maximum amount of energy in gasoline is not much higher than what an average car already achieves. Simply put, there is not enough 'extra' energy in the gasoline to be gained by burning it more completely, and there isn't enough unburned gasoline that goes through a car's engine to create a significant amount of extra energy. All modern car systems already have exhaust gas recirculation systems that recycle most of the exhaust fumes that still have small amounts of gasoline in them, and this is mainly for emissions reasons. Little gas mileage gains are seen in a properly maintained vehicle. To sum it up, Ogle did not design a device that made a Ford get excellent gas mileage while keeping the driving conditions the same. He would have either had to find ways to reduce the resistive forces (such as lowering the weight of the car) or he simply had an alternate fuel source hidden on his vehicle. Gasoline only has so much energy to give. Our cars already capture almost all of it. There aren't any significant gains to be made, regardless of how 'optimized' the system is. Significant losses don't occur from improper burning of gasoline, but rather from the resistive forces that exist in an engine and throughout a vehicle."

I am both fascinated and infuriated by the subject matter and I appreciate any effort to draw attention to the issue and expose the greedy Big Oil executives, but I thought this was just poorly done. Very amateurish. It felt like they spliced together a bunch of the same clips and used lame old cartoons to make jokes and get their points across. It almost reminded me, quality-wise, of a video I made in college using Windows Movie Maker in which I pretty much just mashed up a bunch of different YouTube videos. It did not feel very tightly focused, and it was very repetitive. Still need to check out Gasland, which I'm sure is better.

If we start with a complete lie about 100 mpg, this movie started as an epic failure. The fact is that the US economy is completely dependent on oil and there's nothing, absolutely no way out. As expensive as it is, it's the cheapest energy source and will be for 50 years (until it is gone).The United States government can continue to support dictatorships which keep the price of oil a little bit lower, but the motivation for such action is pure greed. The United States pulled out of the Libyan war very quickly and not for any noble reason. The republicans pulled a paper tiger out of their butt saying that Obama started an illegal war. When they first arrest Dubya, then I'll start listening. Otherwise, talk to the hand. Republicans whine about some illegal war because it's 'bad for business' (drives up the price of oil).

If your automobile uses fuel, which by all means does unless you are already using an electric vehicle, then you should watch a series of movies(1. What is an Electric car, 2. FUEL... ) to help you understand the technology evolution for meeting the energy demand of automobiles. A common concern of all these movies is the oil prices history with focus on next generation automobiles and fuels. The movie just targets one or few oil companies with in America holding them responsible for the rise and fall of oil prices, a similar fate is applicable to the oil companies in the rest of the world. Also it should have focused more on the emissions by the gasoline powered automobiles. The technology invention, by the engineers of these oil companies, which could multiply the mileage of early automobiles many folds, is doubtable. If at all the oil companies could invent higher mileage automobiles, then there entry in to auto industry would have created history and Shell Motors(if incorporated) would have today been World's No.1 auto maker beating GM, Ford, Toyota and other auto companies. If at all the oil companies could invent higher mileage automobiles, what was the motor industry doing all these days, they should have invented motors that can give mileage of 1000mpg or simply run on water. But since no such invention was/is really possible and before we run out of fossil fuel we need to disinvest from the non-renewable oil market and begin investing in renewable electric energy market. The addition is after towards motor vehicles not oil. The oil-industry still has the chance to create history by disinvesting from fossil-fuel markets and investing in electric vehicles, bio-fuels and renewable energy. Though the movie does not speak much about electric cars, the usage of electric powered automobiles would eventually make us free from all kinds of fuels and bring the emissions to zero. Addiction to Electric Vehicles will kill oil !!!!!!!