Gas Prices Rising Fast

[Harold in CR]

Some economist just proclaimed that the USA can handle $4.00 /gallon gasoline with little affect on the economy.

Must be one of them 1% ers. We all see what happens with no labor work force to speak of, because of no jobs in manufacturing in the USA.

I keep reading about more and more companies returning to the USA because the cost of labor around the world is going up.

[dogman]

Well, the economist is dead on right. Two years ago the lower middle class was paying 2 bucks and change and had zero discretionary income. Now with 4 buck gas the lower middle class will have zero discretionary income.

See? No difference. The house payment or rent and gas ( on the charge card) for the car take all their money. No new car no new TV, just make the minimum payments you can and buy food. No difference to the economy whatsoever.


The French have Nuclear power all figured out all right. They ship their nuke waste to siberia for " reprocessing" A very large percentage of the waste remains in siberia. The plants themselves are relatively safe, at least compared to the Cherynobyl design.

Want to scare the shit out of yourself? Read the book about how the meltdown in Chernyobly happened. Very scary the kind of people they turned loose to build a nuke plant. Kind of like having a guy who knows how to fix a car design one.

[veloman]

Every household I've been in wastes at least half of the energy it consumes.
2 ton autos are still the norm for transportation.

I can say for sure that at the personal level, there is a ton of efficiency to be gained For the average american. Wind and solar would work a lot better if people conserved. In fact, business sometimes waste many multiple times more energy than people. When you are big, no one is really accountable.

[DAND214]

Dogman is right here

Well, the economist is dead on right. Two years ago the lower middle class was paying 2 bucks and change and had zero discretionary income. Now with 4 buck gas the lower middle class will have zero discretionary income.

See? No difference. The house payment or rent and gas ( on the charge card) for the car take all their money. No new car no new TV, just make the minimum payments you can and buy food. No difference to the economy whatsoever.

See no change for the rest of us 99% are still broke and getting worse by the gallon.

$4.29 local BP station out of Chicago. $5.00 is coming way too soon. Went up .11 from that morning!

Reason? It's still GREED. we don't need oil from over seas, we have plenty here, just go get it now. Not when it dry elseware so we can (not me) be rich(er).

I wish they would build some highways that get the EPA rated milage.

Sorry guys, the way it's going we might see the BUSH problem all over again. Or was it Clinton or?

I hate this stuff, said enough.

Dan

[mat h physics]

@veloman, maybe you should find out what Jevons' paradox is before spouting off nonsense.
It has been proven time and again, only resulting in creating more of a monster than a solution. "You can deny reality, but you can not deny the consequences of denying reality"- Ayn Rand

HERE IS THE REALITY- Support for Israel's, out of wack, government policies and the RELIGIONS backing them is the REAL PROBLEM. The LSM continues to blame Iran and any other scapegoat they can find due to the zionist control of the US media.

The American public will not prosper until they can see the truth, which will continue to be hidden by LIES generated by RELIGION and the media.

Authorities LIE, it's how the keep and obtain more power, through BRAINWASHING of the public.
Take this into consideration: http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stor ... ial-media/

[miro13car]

I live in North America and veloman is absolute right about inefficiency and wasteage of NAmerican households.
Namely energy wastage everyware you look in NAmerica
In general learn how to conserve energy you have NOW not for new sources of energy in form of oil, natural gas.
Landmark example is famous cloth dryer known only in New World - NAmerica, Australia, why European do not use it?
There are millions of them. Speaking about electrical power grid in NAmerica.
Only when you start comparing with lifestyles/habits around the globe, the truth comes out ugly - NAmerica uses a lot of energy, lot of is wasted, veloman is right
Lean times call for lean mesures.
I am sure that energy in general used by 3-member Canadian family in their hudge house is close to twice the usage of average 3-member Swiden family or Norwagen family.
Stupid and shortsighted Alberta goverment wants to buld another power line and at the same time DID NOT increased incentives for people who buy new appliances in popular goverment programs. Not only that programs like that going to run out of money soon-what a shame.
Obama is the first USA president I think who finally pointed that USA is using too much, way to much energy for household.

[Kinni420]

Here in Colorado, gas prices arent nearly as bad as other places around the country at $3.30 a gallon.

talked to a friend last night who lives in the SF bay area. Hes paying $4.40+ a gallon these days and the stupid thing is that the freeways are still jammed. Ive probably put a little over 300 miles on my car this year, most of it when I needed to get to Breckenridge to go skiing. Otherwise I ride everywhere on my bike.

lets look at the costs I figured Ive been saving.

my ride to denver in my subaru. 10.3 miles. about a gallon on cold mornings. $4.00 multiply that x2 for each day 8 bux. parking (if im lucky and get a spot in the cheaper parking area) $3.00 insurance around 4 bux a day.
total for a year of driving about $3850

total cost to ride my e-bike $0 (i charge it at work )

[dnmun]

USA=18.49 tons CO2/person/yr

chinese=8 tons CO2

europe=6.3 tons CO2

world avg=4.49 tons CO2

i live in world of recycling, reuse, and conservation to the max. i am about 5.5 right now i estimate, outside of woodstove for heat, which is 100% of my heating.

[MattyCiii]

Rising gas prices are what they are, but let's face the fact that in the USA, gas prices are highly subsidized with dollars and blood (see below). What really sucks about this fact is that during the economic downturn, the USA became a net exporter of oil. We brought crude oil into the USA, refined it, then sold it overseas, and some of what went offshore (to China and India, etc.) came from American wells.

What's wrong with that? Plenty. Oil companies sold petrol to China, India etc that US taxpayers subsidized!

Oil supplies lines from the middle east are protected by the US military. I'm not talking Iraq/Afghan wars, I mean standing presence in the Persian Gulf. This is very expensive - but US taxes (income tax mostly) pays. Giant tax breaks on enormous oil company profits also subsidize cheap fuel. Nice if you drive a gas guzzler a lot - a raw deal if you get around mostly by train, bike, or economy car.

Worst, the American motorist is oblivious. They think just because they pay some small amount in gas tax, they own the road. The truth is that well over half the cost of roads are paid by sales tax, income tax and property tax. So if you don't drive, you are paying someone else an incentive to stay in their car (and probably one day run your bike off the road).

Take away all funding for mass transit, bike lanes, sidewalks, etc., is the prevailing political cry from the "Conservatives". Why? So that low to middle income masses will have no choice but to drive, no matter how high the price of fuel.

The price will continue to rise because we've reached peak oil. The smart thing for modern humans to do would be to build complete streets, so that when petrol is too expensive for all but the 1%, the rest of us can still at least walk or bike to the store and buy a loaf of bread.

[veloman]

USA=18.49 tons CO2/person/yr

chinese=8 tons CO2

europe=6.3 tons CO2

world avg=4.49 tons CO2

i live in world of recycling, reuse, and conservation to the max. i am about 5.5 right now i estimate, outside of woodstove for heat, which is 100% of my heating.

One thing I don't like about wood fuel - it's incredibly polluting to burn. I would have to look it up, but the smoke from wood fires is far worse than other normal people's 'exhausts'.

[dogman]

Yeah, wood heat is pretty bad for air quality. But I must confess, I burn about a half a cord a year. It was two cords a year before I spend $200 insulating my attic better. One nice thing about wood heat, at least the carbon came out of the atmosphere in your lifetime. So it somewhat breaks even compared to fossil carbon.

The wood is bad, but I figure I earned the rest of my life using a half a cord a year by making my house so much more energy efficient. Basicly, I only light the fireplace on the second sunless day in a row, and generally burn 90% of my firewood during one week when we actually have real winter weather here. The rest of the winter, the house nearly heats itself on the passive solar heating stuff I added to the south side.

Could be worse, 40 miles away in Juarez, they burn anything. Tires are made into sandals, then the tire scrap fires tile kilns. PCB's in the air all winter in El Paso as a result. Anything flamable in the dump heats a shack, like plastic bottles or whatever. Everybody in El Paso just prays for north wind.

Back to wood heat, a lot depends on how your fireplace is set up. A proper woodstove with secondary combustion is legal to use on no burn days. The crappy instant fireplace unit typical in houses should be illegal at all times. Mine was absolutely horrible. Swear to god using it made the house colder. Several modifications to it helped a lot. Metal door, then strategicly placed vents in the door, plus a combustion air vent next to the hearth made a huge difference. Now it heats great and puts out very little visible smoke. Like the bike, gotta do a few mods to get any performance out of it.

[dnmun]

i actually like the smell of wood smoke. i had about 5-8 cords from my 85 year old chesnut and collected another 3 cords from various construction sites within a block of my house. still have about 2 cords of the chesnut tree that are too hard to split. the chesnut has it's own flavor, fir and the hemlock and larch is sweet too, but apple is really sweet, ash and oak i like.

the trick to burning wood is dry, dry, dry. then use a small hot fire with lotsa air. i have a cawley lemay inside the house and it has a special air jet door, but my little shed out here has a small chinese knockoff of the little jotul stove. it has to be small for my shed, i burn little pieces too, so i can keep the fire hot. i don't know why people worry about wood stoves in the south since there is so little heating needed, and for so short a period of time. i go from halloween to easter because the spring here is so long and cold.

i got over being self righteous about pollution from wood stoves until we run outa crude oil. the sooner the better, imo. and the wood doesn't end up in landfills.

global warming is gonna change everything. wood smoke is not gonna change anything.

[kfong]

I've been reading up on rocket mass heaters. Very efficient and simple design. Much more effective than traditional wood stoves where a good percentage of the heat goes out the chimney.

[motorino magnet]

i actually like the smell of wood smoke. i had about 5-8 cords from my 85 year old chesnut and collected another 3 cords from various construction sites within a block of my house. still have about 2 cords of the chesnut tree that are too hard to split. the chesnut has it's own flavor, fir and the hemlock and larch is sweet too, but apple is really sweet, ash and oak i like.

the trick to burning wood is dry, dry, dry. then use a small hot fire with lotsa air. i have a cawley lemay inside the house and it has a special air jet door, but my little shed out here has a small chinese knockoff of the little jotul stove. it has to be small for my shed, i burn little pieces too, so i can keep the fire hot. i don't know why people worry about wood stoves in the south since there is so little heating needed, and for so short a period of time. i go from halloween to easter because the spring here is so long and cold.

i got over being self righteous about pollution from wood stoves until we run outa crude oil. the sooner the better, imo. and the wood doesn't end up in landfills.

global warming is gonna change everything. wood smoke is not gonna change anything.

your a conasierur of fine wood-like some fine wine...same to be enjoyed like a fine old women

[motorino magnet]

being living up here in Canada trying to stay away form Georgie and hies fool friend Cheyenne,and there new comer with his hag Hillery...or is it lechery...


Canada is beautiful and almost free since that new crime minister STOL the quote with the robot-subverters..

cbc...http://presscore.ca/2011/?p=1980

and...http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/pol ... le2365355/


thankfully we got grapes up here kicking some ass...http://www.torontosun.com/2012/03/10/ch ... ter-hornby


but this oil-sands that are killing the fish and the people....that Harper(tm) govt...

should be shot,eh?


this one will kill ya since were bickerers...


http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/wit ... 78324.html


i know generalize...


they will give you the second side of the story if ya want to listen...


yep ,Canadian rednecks are the truth slayer,,,Indians eh?

[gogo]

Anyone remember gas at U$3.17 back in 1981? I do because I was in High School and had a stretch van and a 55cc Yamaha. I knew the per mile cost of driving the van, and passengers had to chip in. Girls rode for free on the "passenger seat" of the Yamaha.
An inflation calculator:
http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

gas2.jpg (29.63 KiB) Viewed 164 times

With all of our technology, and of late, drilling technology, its a marvel we aren't exploiting that ancient and pollution-free nuclear reactor at the center of the planet.

[EDIT] I did the inflation calculator backwards originally, its fixed now. It seems I wasn't suffering as much as I thought back in 1981.

[miro13car]

right on motorino magnet,
I am in Alberta and what they do here is wrong.
How much longer ,how much more distruction North of Edmonton.
If they could put that tar sand profit taxes into sort of clean energy fund to finance solar projects.
Lot of sunny days in Alberta = lot of energy to harness
With solar panels efficiency improving and price slowely dropping year after year SOLAR is the future no doubt.
Every house has a roof which can be solar, right?

[boppinbob]

The problem with solar and wind energy is simple. The sun doesn't shine all the time and it isn't windy all the time and there is no efficient way to store excess renewable energy. Hydroelectric, wave action generators, and thermal energy generation is much more reliable. Solar and wind energy can be added to the grid but it will be a long time before they are anything but a taxpayer money pit.

[Dauntless]

I drive a big, powerful, EFFICIENT truck.

2001 Chevrolet Silverado 2500HD Duramax Turbo Diesel, 20/29mpg on 375hp.

[gogo]

I drive a big, powerful, EFFICIENT truck.

2001 Chevrolet Silverado 2500HD Duramax Turbo Diesel, 20/29mpg on 375hp.

Wow, 29 MPG while the engine is making 375 HP is efficient. Regular diesel or biodiesel?

[dogman]

Yeah, I agree. The buying power of your buck in 81 was really bad. But current, similar depression fighting monetary policy has us headed right back to similar buying power as we had in 81 anyway.

FWIW, last time, in 08 I saw some evidence that the high gas price caused some behaviour changes. You started to see F350's driving slow etc. Not this time. They are still driving 80 in the 65 zone in the gas hogs so far. Nobody asking me much about biking. Looks like we pretty much adjusted to it, and having no money for anything but food and gas.

Seriously though, everybody else like europe gets a belly laugh when we whine about 4 buck gas, or high taxes.

I wouldn't bother burning any wood this far south, but I prune about 100 trees every winter. It's fireplace or dumpster, so everybody on the crew that has a fireplace takes some home. If I was reallllly eco I'd sequester all the carbon in the landfill. I pretty much do all my burning during just few weeks of bad weather. Really came in handy in feb 2011, when the big gas turbine electric generators shut off for a week because all the water lines on them froze. Some backup was great to have that time. Rest of the winter, if we get a high of 50F, the solar does the job. Opening the damper on the flue would do more harm than good.

[mvly]

WOW I just filled up my car and eek! it's $4.59 here in Sunny San Diego! The last time I filled up was like $4.09 and that wasn't even that long ago (~2 months ago). Luckily I have my ebike to take me everywhere. It wild be used more often now. Driving is no longer sustainable. If one does it occasionally, then that is fine. But doing it everyday is probably not going to work.

[pyrogaz]

The price today in the slightly more populated eastern end of Scotland's north coast was £1.46/litre for petrol and £1.54/litre for diesel, in Durness over at the other end of the coast which is somewhat more remote it was £1.59/litre and £1.71/litre; that's just plain scary!

I usually post on this forum about Greenpower racing, we've estimated that to race two cars at five events this year will cost us £1900 just for the fuel required to transport the cars and teams.

[veloman]

When you get a whole neighborhood burning wood due to high oil prices, then you start seeing people get lung problems. My old town had some talk about not allowing wood furnaces under certain circumstances.

If you are out in sparsely populated areas, sure, burn wood all you want. But I do not at all support wood fuel in areas where you have house after house next to each other.


It's like pissing in a swimming pool. A couple people can do it with no significant harmful effects, but when you get a lot of people pissing (driving an ICE, burning wood/oil/coal) in the same pool (neighborhood/city) then you start getting problems.

I wear my pollution mask when I go out on the bike during rush hours. Even the normally lower volume roads can get pretty smelly, depending on wind.


The end result of driving an ICE near living things is nothing different that say, walking up to someone in public and pissing on them. But the means justify the end because *we need to pollute to live*. Yeah, I still pollute, but it's a hell of a lot less than most people. I think I deserve some clean air to breath.

Every ICE car/truck that drives past ought to be paying my medical insurance premiums as far as I'm concerned. There ain't no equity in this world though.

[dogman]

Man, that increase must really be busting your chops Mlvy. Damn, gotta fill up 6 times a year.

I'm bumming myself, still too sick to bike commute, or even think about it. I'll be running at least 10 gallons a week for sure, just to get to what little I work nowdays. Costs me 15 bucks a day to go make 30, but that total cost, not just gas.