I got a Ford Focus right now ~30mpg. I landed a job really close to home in January. I now drive 2 miles one way to work. With all my driving, I fill up once a month. The current gas prices hardly phase me.
Wow. That's awesome!
I had a friend in Dallas, TX who said that before all of this gas hike happened, he was paying something crazy like $.19/gal. He said that one day, the local gas station gave out free gas. Don't know how accurate that is...
I can't wait to get bush out of office. I would be money that the main reason gas prices haven't gone down or we haven't found other fuel sources is because he has his hands in the oil stocks.
Then again, i could just be being ignorant.
Bush and his cronies certainly are not environmentally conscious and have done a pretty good job of playing ostrich in those regards, but this problem was there well before they got into office.
Alternative materials for crude oil have been around since WWII, the Germans developed a synthetic oil due to the shortage that was hindering them.
One of the best alternatives that I can see is the use of the hydrogen fuel cell. They are developing techniques to produce hydrogen without using fossil fuels, once they can do this we will have a real winner.
Someone mentioned ethanol as an alternative fuel source up in another post.
Again, this is a misconception. While ethanol can be used as a fuel additive instead of gasoline, ethanol is not energy efficient. It takes more energy put in through processing then it produces. In nearly every case, this energy put in comes from fossil fuels.
True alternative sources are an extract from sugarcane (which the U.S. isn't currently looking at because of the problems with Chávez in Brazil (where most sugarcane is grown)). Solar power and wind energy are also good alternatives.
What our country needs as a whole is a grassroots rebellion geared on energy change.
Edit: Hydrogen cells are also an excellent alternative.
FFS. All we need is a grassroots rebellion based on government nonintervention in the energy market. The reason fuel is so expensive (haha, it's actually absurdly cheap) is that demand is up and supply is down. And demand will continue to rise dramatically, and supply will continue to be unpredictable. If you want economically efficient fuels, vote for some free market person. Heck, even vote for a free market person that believes in welfare, just somebody that doesn't believe in protectionism and subsidies.
Then you'll get energy as cheap as it can get. And you'll find out which is most economically efficient. Without having to think about it!
If you want to get really excited, add taxes on top of that to account for damage to the environment. You can never calculate those precisely (and they'll probably be calculated very imprecisely).
And solar and wind energy suck. Or you'd be seeing more of it, nyes?
I got a Ford Focus right now ~30mpg. I landed a job really close to home in January. I now drive 2 miles one way to work. With all my driving, I fill up once a month. The current gas prices hardly phase me.
While the mileage is nice, I find it odd that people are still impressed by these numbers (myself included). My first car was an '86 Toyota Tercel station wagon, definitely past broken in, and I got about 25-30 in it. All my cars so far have gotten about 25-30 (well... I'm not sure on the new one, I've only put gas in it once so I don't know the mileage yet...). You'd think that if we had such mileage 20+ years ago that we'd have more efficient cars, like hybrids or diesel engines (which I hear also get great mileage), everywhere by now.
>You can hardly say that Americans dont have it easy as far as many things are concerned.
True, but I can say that you're generalizing and stereotyping based on your own misunderstood assumptions about "Americans".
Just as the rest of the world makes assumptions about my country based on accent alone.
>Just as the rest of the world makes assumptions about my country based on accent alone.
So maybe you should temper your opinions rather than propagate the very cultural bias that (it sounds like) you disapprove of. :)
is this just for the USA or worldwide cause i live in canada so im not sure if this affects us as well`
By the way...anyone want to buy a bridge????
Depends. What's the selling price, what's the location, and does it come with its own troll or do I have to provide that?
>Just as the rest of the world makes assumptions about my country based on accent alone.
So maybe you should temper your opinions rather than propagate the very cultural bias that (it sounds like) you disapprove of. :)
Why? The internet is a free space after all. And I don't disapprove of it, you would be amazed how often saying "balaclava" can get you a seat on the train, so it comes in handy. My point was that you may say I am making a generalisation, but everyone does exactly the same, its a fact of life.
Depends. What's the selling price, what's the location, and does it come with its own troll or do I have to provide that?
If you are this gullible er hurumph I mean interested well...the asking price is 2.6 million US dollars, the location in in the Bronx and can shipped anywhere in the continental USA via UPS ground. The trolls have unionized their piece of the action and may cause a little annoyance with what would first appear to be a bad work ethic, but this is simply their union rules prohibiting working any more than twenty consecutive minutes. You could try to provide your own trolls, but I can't guarantee that there won't be union repercussions toward scab workers.
*Only serious buyers please*
you are just kidding yourself if you think that will do any good. Its been tried before and nothing at all happened to gas prices. Big oil companies could care less what we the consumer think -- they can charge anything they want and we are stupid enough to pay it. $3.00 per gallon is nothing compared to european prices. Last time I heard it was over $10.00/gallon in UK.
Not just that, but they have precious little control over the price...
The vast majority is made up of taxes and fixed cost (purchase price, recovering investment in refineries, transport cost, salaries of workers, etc.)
Out of the $7.50 equivalent that gas costs in Europe (per gallon) only about $0.50 is theoretically profit, and that's taxable as well at 45%. So the company makes a grand total of $0.25 per gallon, which is shared between the oil company and the gas station.
It might hurt the government if it went on a long time (weeks or months) and people used non-taxed alternative transport (so not trains and busses, which wouldn't survive the overload anyway), but that would drive the small franchise holders who run most gasstations out of business who need to survive on a few cents per gallon times a few thousand a day (at most) but especially on all the other stuff the drivers purchase in their shops (drinks, newspapers, candy, cigarettes, etc.).
The oil companies themselves would hurt as well, but their main source of income is other products anyway (industrial lubricants, aircraft and heavy fuels, industrial chemicals, etc. etc.).
So as usual with these ill-thought-out leftist plans it hurts only the little guy, the guy they claim to want to help.
Someone mentioned ethanol as an alternative fuel source up in another post.
Again, this is a misconception. While ethanol can be used as a fuel additive instead of gasoline, ethanol is not energy efficient. It takes more energy put in through processing then it produces. In nearly every case, this energy put in comes from fossil fuels.
True alternative sources are an extract from sugarcane (which the U.S. isn't currently looking at because of the problems with Chávez in Brazil (where most sugarcane is grown)). Solar power and wind energy are also good alternatives.
What our country needs as a whole is a grassroots rebellion geared on energy change.
Edit: Hydrogen cells are also an excellent alternative.
Yes, that was me that mentioned ethanol. If it's not energy efficient then why is it included in the Energy Policy Act of 1992?
Yes, that was me that mentioned ethanol. If it's not energy efficient then why is it included in the Energy Policy Act of 1992?
I'll straight out admint that I'm not very knowledgable about it, but I think ethanol emissions are cleaner than fossil fuels.
Yes, that was me that mentioned ethanol. If it's not energy efficient then why is it included in the Energy Policy Act of 1992?
The following is an excerpt from this article.
What is EPAct? The Energy Policy Act (EPAct) was passed in 1992 to accelerate the use of alternative fuels in the transportation sector. The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) primary goals are to decrease the nation's dependence on foreign oil and increase energy security through the use of domestically produced alternative fuels. DOE's mission is to replace 10% of petroleum based motor fuels by the year 2000, and 30% by 2010.
You will notice that there is no reference to the fuels being efficient.
Yes, that was me that mentioned ethanol. If it's not energy efficient then why is it included in the Energy Policy Act of 1992?
One reason it's mentioned is because it's a home-grown product. In other words, it's derived from corn (grown in the US), and processed in the US.
Also, since when have politicians accurately passed laws that made sense? :icon_wink:
One reason it's mentioned is because it's a home-grown product. In other words, it's derived from corn (grown in the US), and processed in the US.
Also, since when have politicians accurately passed laws that made sense? :icon_wink:
Well, there was some big hoo-hah a while back about a set of ten special laws to prevent the government from utterly taking over every aspect of life, but these days it doesn't seem like more than one or two of those are actually acknowledged any more...
We in Illinois have been using 10% ethanol for quite a few years now (20 years that I know of) and it has not helped lower the price of gas one penny. I heard it might actually increase the price at the pumps because it costs more to process ethanol then normal gas.
We in Illinois have been using 10% ethanol for quite a few years now (20 years that I know of) and it has not helped lower the price of gas one penny. I heard it might actually increase the price at the pumps because it costs more to process ethanol then normal gas.
That makes sense...
Okay, I'll get back on topic then. What other ways are there to possibly lower gas prices? Any ideas?
simple supply and demand dictates that if supply goes up and/or demand goes down the price goes down.
That doesn't take into account government action to keep prices artificially high.
So there are 3 possible solutions:
1) greatly reduce demand by greatly reducing the number of vehicles burning gas. This would have to be voluntary, which is highly unlikely to happen (forced reduction wouldn't work as it would be accompanied by measures to ensure government income by increasing fuel taxes).
2) greatly increase the availability of gas. This would mean increased production which isn't possible due to the construction of refineries being blocked at every opportunity by government agencies and environmentalists, and by the oil cartel refusing to deliver more crude.
3) get rid of the government.
All three are highly unlikely to happen.
Isn't there some kind of new alternative called Ethanol? It's supposed to be included in the Energy Policy Act of 1992 along with biodiesel, electricity, hydrogen, natural gas, and propane.
there are major problems with ethanol and biodiesel (as with all "alternative fuels".
Ethanol and biodiesel are created from plant material, which means that large areas of land need to be set aside for growing those plants.
That means either reducing the agricultural land and turning it to growing plants for fuel (resulting in less food, thus famine) or turning pristine nature into farmland.
Both are currently happening (though the famine is at the moment prevented by increasing agricultural land by chopping down forests and increasing its output by more artificial fertiliser).
But that's only part of the problem. A study a few years ago discovered that it took more than a gallon of gasoline to produce and ship to the pump a gallon of ethanol or biodiesel. In other words, the system is at the moment counterproductive, nothing but a feelgood measure.
This is due to the vehicles and systems used to run the factories and farms (and the fueltrucks) all running on gas themselves, and those facilities usually being far from the places where the product is consumed due to the high cost of land near cities and the large amounts of land required for the production of "biofuels".
So instead of a 10 acre refinery on the outskirts of town you have a 500 acre production facility a hundred miles away that produces a tenth or so of the fuel.
Again, this is a misconception. While ethanol can be used as a fuel additive instead of gasoline, ethanol is not energy efficient. It takes more energy put in through processing then it produces. In nearly every case, this energy put in comes from fossil fuels.
True alternative sources are an extract from sugarcane (which the U.S. isn't currently looking at because of the problems with Chávez in Brazil (where most sugarcane is grown)). Solar power and wind energy are also good alternatives.
What our country needs as a whole is a grassroots rebellion geared on energy change.
Edit: Hydrogen cells are also an excellent alternative.
Chavez is in Venezuela, not Brazil.
Sugarcane doesn't come from Venezuela though (oil does), it comes from Cuba (another country not very popular and for good reasons).
Ethanol btw can be used to drive an engine, but it would need to be a different engine and would have to be far more massive to produce a similar power output than does a gasoline powered engine due to the lower energy content of the product.
I've already addressed the production problems of the stuff, and the reasons why wind, solar, tidal, and hydrogen aren't viable alternatives due to their environmental impact.
And that's not even taking into account the massive areas of land that'd need to be relegated to the wind and solar farms to cover energy needs.
It's been estimated that if we covered Europe with wind turbines at their most efficient spacing and covered the ground between them with solar cells we'd meet at most about 30% of our energy needs, and that would be on a good day with plenty of wind AND sun, days which are quite rare as usually there's either sun OR wind.
Yes, that was me that mentioned ethanol. If it's not energy efficient then why is it included in the Energy Policy Act of 1992?
several reasons. At the time it was thought to be a potentially viable alternative to gasoline in the long run (which turned out not to be the case).
It was also a political statement towards oil producing countries in the middle east that the US wasn't going to be strangled by them, that they were working on ways to reduce their dependency on foreign sources for energy.
And it was required to please the environmentalist lobby into supporting the bill, which bought some required votes in congress.
Chavez is in Venezuela, not Brazil.
Sugarcane doesn't come from Venezuela though (oil does), it comes from Cuba (another country not very popular and for good reasons).Ethanol btw can be used to drive an engine, but it would need to be a different engine and would have to be far more massive to produce a similar power output than does a gasoline powered engine due to the lower energy content of the product.
I've already addressed the production problems of the stuff, and the reasons why wind, solar, tidal, and hydrogen aren't viable alternatives due to their environmental impact.
And that's not even taking into account the massive areas of land that'd need to be relegated to the wind and solar farms to cover energy needs.
It's been estimated that if we covered Europe with wind turbines at their most efficient spacing and covered the ground between them with solar cells we'd meet at most about 30% of our energy needs, and that would be on a good day with plenty of wind AND sun, days which are quite rare as usually there's either sun OR wind.
*align fingers away from palm, slap face* I feel dumb. :icon_wink:
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