O/T: Welcome to $4/gal gasoline

[Leon]

Supply may increase a bit but gasoline does have a shelf life and if kept stored too long will deteriorate.

[Leon]

You have not caught on to that yet??? The media sensationalizes everything, then the gullible audience buys into that and,,, the oil industry benefits from that, unless they are spilling oil.

[Dave In Texas]

Agreed, the "media" sensationalizes a lot of the news but I can't buy that argument where the price of oil is concerned. If the media were the cause then what's the effect? Panic buying by the gullible public that drives the price of fuels up? Panic hoarding? I don't think the gullible audience has any say-so what-so-ever. What I think happens is that commodity brokers use any excuse to bid the price of a barrel up and up and up. What I think is that the higher the price of a gallon of regular goes the more ways the gullible audience looks to save a little here and there.

Dave in Houston.

[Lew Hodgett]

------------------------------------- Meanwhile serious alternate energy development languishes.

How high does the price of oil have to go before we say "ENOUGH"?

Lew

[Dave In Texas]

As a country? I wish there was an easy answer to that. As a country we're spread out unlike most of Europe. Myself, I regularly drive between my home in NW Houston and another house we have SE of San Antonio and often back and forth between there and a ranch another 30 miles SE. If I hunt both morning and evening on a given day I'm liable to return the 30 miles back to the house to take care of some pressing issue and then back to the ranch for the afternoon sit. That's 120 miles for two round trips. My soon-to-be 10 year-old F250 7.3 Power Stroke (230k miles) gets 17 mpg on a good day (keep it at 70, flat terrain with a tailwind). I would gladly drive a Tacoma-sized P/U if Toyota would only give us a 3.5 or 4 liter diesel - make it a diesel hybrid. I'd love to get 26 or 28 mpg. But, in the meantime, how would you propose I/we wean myself/ourselves from fossil fuels? I'm willing to alter my lifestyle to a certain extent but I still have the need to move materials or tow a tandem axle trailer and tractor or sacks of feed or fencing material or dead deer(!). Just like health care, some on the lower end of the economic scale, a growing demographic, may well get priced out of the market.

Dave in Houston

[Lew Hodgett]

------------------------------------- "Dave > As a country? I wish there was an easy answer to that. As a

-------------------------------------- IMHO, you do not represent "low hanging fruit".

There are much easier opportunities with greater ROI.

For example, in NYC there are a lot of buildings with flat black roofs.

I forget the details, but a simple coat of white paint would increase the reflectivity so that summer air conditioning load is dramatically reduced at minimal cost thus reducing electrical consumption.

It's a little thing but it has a measurable impact and there are a lot of flat black roofs in this country.

Start a program to upgrade the insulation of our buildings including replacing windows.

A program like that could get the construction industry healthy in a hurry and be paid for with power savings..

Here in Los Angeles, the entire public bus system has been converted to natural gas. It took 18 years, but it got done.

It's a 2-fr, reduced pollution and lower energy costs.

Start converting the 18 wheeler fleet from #2 diesel to natural gas including a network of refueling stations.

Might take 20 years, but so what?

Here in California we are blessed to have all the following forms of alternate energy generation.

Geo Thermal electrical generation. Direct solar photo voltaic electrical generation. Solar-thermal-turbine electrical generation. Hydro-electric electrical generation. Bio-mass electrical generation. Wind mill power generation. This does not include the little box eBay is using for a big piece of their power requirements.

None of these methods are free standing, but they all reduce the fossil fuel load which reduces our balance of payments issue.

They also give us some time to develop better personal transportation methods which is where your F250 comes in..

There are ways out of this problem.

Bitching about the cost of gas while filling up isn't one of them.

Lew

[Leon]

We are think close to the same lines here, I believe the media inadvertently conditions its audience to expect high prices for "what ever non valid reason" and the oil companies jump on the opportunity to oblige. Imagine the outrage if "ALL" gas stations went up 15 cents per gallon with out notice from the media. We are not quite as outraged if we are not blind sided. The media creates the opportunity for the oil companies and or brokers take advantage of a sensationalized story.

[Leon]

I recall all this alternative energy stuff going out of controll when gasoline prices/ oil prices went up in the mid 70's. If the government is behind the alternative fuel BS you know that is not worth the time invested. Remember gasihol, a total wash at best. Untill we actually run out of oil there will be no serious drive for another source of energy.

[HeyBub]

But NONE of them reduce oil imports, since virtually all oil imports are used in transportation.

Since much of the natural gas used for electric generation in California comes from western Canada, you can't say much about the balance of payments either.

About 12% of California's electric needs come from renewable resources: Whale oil, timber, hamster wheels, etc.

This is not an insignificant amount.

[Lew Hodgett]

------------------------------ And then gas prices dropped and everything was forgotten.

------------------------------

------------------------------ Interesting obversation.

-------------------------------

----------------------------- Wonder how ethanol mgot developed?

-------------------------------------

--------------------------------- Might be a good idea to have alternates developed, don't you think?

Lew

-

[HeyBub]

When the government pours billions into anything like this under the guise of "saving us all," one is quickly reminded of the soybean fiasco in "Atlas Shrugged."

[Dave In Texas]

All our questions [about how gullible audiences get gouged] answered! Sensational, too.

you make this stuff up? How timely.

Dave in Houston

[Leon]

Absolutely but oil and gasoline is still much too cheap to make much of any thing else attractive.

[Robatoy]

Although, ultimately, a finite product, there's a lot of still to be had. You might have to bump off a regime or two to get it, but there's lots out there.

[Lew Hodgett]

------------------------------------

"Le>

----------------------------------- Sorry but there are already alternate sources of energy available that are cost effective vs fossil fuels at less than $4/gal.

The cost of gasoline today does not reflect the total cost of gasoline, but that is an accounting problem.

As a nation, we just have to get up off our dead and dying and get started solving our energy independance opportunity.

Lew

[Puckdropper]

"Lew Hodgett" wrote in news:4d669a60$0$29569 $c3e8da3$ [e-mail]:

You know... if we could capture excess heat from various sources (houses, cars, bigger electronics like computers) and turn it in to useful energy, we'd be able to offset some of our energy needs.

I know... This is step 1 in the process:

1. Some idea
2. ???
3. Profit!

Puckdropper

[Lew Hodgett]

--------------------------- It is a very productive idea.

From a previous post:

------------------------- Start a program to upgrade the insulation of our buildings including replacing windows.

A program like that could get the construction industry healthy in a hurry and be paid for with power savings..

-----------------------

SFWIW, I made a pretty decent living selling replacement indoor lighting systems for industrial manufacturing buildings in the 1970s.

Back in those days, power cost was about $.02/KWH and you had two years to recoup the investment.

It was a good investment under those conditions.

Can you imagine how much better an investment it is today?

Lew

[Larry Jaques]

You snooze, you lose. The gov't, in its infinite wisdom, has pretty much phased out energy retrofit grants as of this year.

Now if we can just get those LED makers to reduce the prices of the new LED fixtures...

-- "Human nature itself is evermore an advocate for liberty. There is also in human nature a resentment of injury, and indignation against wrong. A love of truth and a veneration of virtue. These amiable passions, are the latent spark. If the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling the differences between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice, to what better principle can the friends of mankind apply than to the sense of this difference?" --John Adams

[dhall987]

Everybody who wants to post their comparitive gasoline pricing needs to adjust for their state/country taxes. I am fairly sure that gas is not really that variable in price, just that some countries/states want to tax it more than others either for revenue purposes or to try to influence the actions of their citizens. I would bet that OZ has a damned high tax rate compared to Wyoming... as does California (to a lesser degree of course).

[krw]

There is a big difference in formulations, as well. The difference in taxes between CA and AL, for instance, is *not* $1/gallon.