It happened again - Gas prices way up

[theblackbox]

How can anyone complain about gas prices in the 2 dollar range. Look at the europeans and their gas prices. I hope gas prices edge 3 or 4 dollars and change the way Americans drive and change what they drive.

I have a 1 hour comute (53 miles) to my job and i sure wouldn't mind the prices going up. Clear up some of he congestion on our highways, and maybe people will learn how to drive to be more efficent.

This coming from a non-partisan I don't blame anybody but ourselves kind of guy.

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: 0marTheZealot
The real cost of gas should be 5-7 dollars a gallon. It's pretty obvious that we as Americans can't limit our consumption until someone forcibly does it for us.

5-7 dollar gas would probably end up HELPING us more than hurting in the long term. For one, all those giant gas guzzlers would probably go out of style.

Thank you. That is exactly where Gas prices are supposed to be based on $55 a barrel.

It's all a scam, nothing to with Supply & Demand, NOTHING. It's 110% Political only.

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: theblackbox
How can anyone complain about gas prices in the 2 dollar range. Look at the europeans and their gas prices. I hope gas prices edge 3 or 4 dollars and change the way Americans drive and change what they drive.

I have a 1 hour comute (53 miles) to my job and i sure wouldn't mind the prices going up. Clear up some of he congestion on our highways, and maybe people will learn how to drive to be more efficent.

This coming from a non-partisan I don't blame anybody but ourselves kind of guy.

Sigh... Europeans prices aren't $5-$6/gal. because of the price of oil, but because they are royally gouged on taxes. Personally, I don't want my gas taxes going to pay for welfare programs, that's unfair taxation. Gas taxes should go to road construction/maintenance and driver services. Government should not use taxation as a way to influence the markets, that has rarely worked throughout history and has only ended up hurting the little guy.

Your "other guy mentality" doesn't make any sense. The other guy isn't going to get off the highway or learn to drive more efficiently any more than you are. Are you going to quit your job or get a shorter commute if gas prices go up? It doesn't sound like it. So why do you think the other guy will?

And Dave is (partially) right, the current oil prices have nothing to do with supply and demand. It has to do with the sinking dollar. Oil is traded internationally on the dollar, and the value of the dollar is slipping. So naturally it takes more dollars to buy a barrel. Make sense? There is no shortage of oil (at least not yet).

I know that it is almost universally accepted to hate oil, and I do wish there were viable alternative fuels. But right now, our entire modernized culture depends exclusively on oil, and there are no viable alternative fuels. A steep run-up in oil prices does more than get some "elitist neocon" out of his SUV. It also puts millions of poor people out of work and triggers inflation that will harm many peoples' lives, taking food off families' tables.

 

[Train]

Originally posted by: dmcowen674

Originally posted by: Zebo
My point is GAS is not a nessesity to live, and definity not an entilement for everyone to have.

Of course not to the Neocons that have no problem paying whatever Gas prices go up to.

We know Neocons would like nothing better than having open roads all to themselves while sucking down the Gas they are the only ones that could afford it.

The rest will just have to slave to the Neocons getting around on bicycles.

Dave, wipe the foam off your mouth for a moment and calm down. Give me an honest, intelligent answer as to why you think high gas prices is all the "neocons" fault. And how we coul seriously bring the price of gas down by some sort of government intervention.

 

[cKGunslinger]

I've never paid more than $2.00/gal for gas in my 11 years of driving. I guess I've just been lucky. I was complaining just yesterday that it took $21 to fill up my little car.

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: Train

Originally posted by: dmcowen674

Originally posted by: Zebo
My point is GAS is not a nessesity to live, and definity not an entilement for everyone to have.

Of course not to the Neocons that have no problem paying whatever Gas prices go up to.

We know Neocons would like nothing better than having open roads all to themselves while sucking down the Gas they are the only ones that could afford it.

The rest will just have to slave to the Neocons getting around on bicycles.

Dave, wipe the foam off your mouth for a moment and calm down. Give me an honest, intelligent answer as to why you think high gas prices is all the "neocons" fault. And how we coul seriously bring the price of gas down by some sort of government intervention.

One word will do it:

Haliburton or Cheney

Take your pick

or how bout Enron or any other of the Oil Thug Companies of which all run by Neocons.

That makes the rest of the Neocon Nation including those on here guilty by association especially since those on here are happy about the Oil & Gas situation while those Non-Neocons are not.

It's pretty Black & White, just ask Hannity and CAD.

 

[Mill]

Originally posted by: Ultima
Gas is $2.75 where I live.

Drive a more efficient car.. live closer in to the city.. do things to reduce gas usage.

Driving a more efficient car -- well that's a good idea, and my car is pretty efficient. Any more efficient and I'd have to sacrifice luxury and/or buy a hybrid which equal more $$$. Your argument about living closer to the city is insane and illogical. Housing prices and rent are HIGHER the closer you get to the city, unless you want to live in the freaking ghetto. Living closer to the city is not going to pad anyone's wallet; housing in good parts of the city near the center are outrageous. Regardless, there is a lot we could do to reduce consumption, but moving closer to the city would be one of the more asinine.

 

[0marTheZealot]

As a society and for the economy, in the long term, higher gas prices would be better than low gas prices. It'll reduce consumption, thus reducing our need for imports for oil. There really is no reason why someone should drive >1 mile for anything. For fvcks sake, you have two legs, use them.

Matthew Simmons, head of the largest energy investment bank in the world, has publicly stated that OIL should be priced at $182 per barrel until we figure out exactly how much oil we have. Most of the ME countries haven't changed their reserves data in 30 years, even though they have pumped billions upon billions of barrels. For instance, Saudi Arabia still states they have 260 billion barrels of oil, despite having pumped nearly 75-90 billion barrels (depending on whos numbers you use). This year alone, they will probably pump 3 - 3.5 billion barrels of oil. And yet in 30 years, their reserves have gone up instead of down. We are practically walking blind into a cliff (or wall).

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: 0marTheZealot
Matthew Simmons, head of the largest energy investment bank in the world, has publicly stated that OIL should be priced at $182 per barrel until we figure out exactly how much oil we have.

Cool, that should be $20 gallon Gas :thumbsup:

 

[Ziptar]

Originally posted by: andy2812
When will it ever end. Please let's give someone else a chance to fix this. Bush obviously can't do it. Heck, he might not even realize that gas prices keep rising since he never has to take his limo to get filled up.

Why wait for "someone else" to fix it... Do something about it yourself... I did!

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: Ziptar

Originally posted by: andy2812
When will it ever end. Please let's give someone else a chance to fix this. Bush obviously can't do it. Heck, he might not even realize that gas prices keep rising since he never has to take his limo to get filled up.

Why wait for "someone else" to fix it... Do something about it yourself... I did!

I heard about this. Congratulations. AT has such a diverse community, amazing.

Would be something for Restaurants to have a small pumping station to re-fill Bio Cars.

 

[0marTheZealot]

Then we run into the same problem with gasoline. As demand goes up, and supply can't keep up, prices go up. You'd just be substituting gas for cooking oil. And cooking oil needs a few refinements before it can be acceptable as a combustion fuel. You are trading pennies for dollars right now, but if it goes mainstream you'll be trading dollars for pennies.

And cooking oil is still partly influenced by petroleum, especially petrolchemicals. Cooking oil is usually dervied from plant oils, which are grown, maintained, harvested, preserved and brought to market by oil or oil-based products. Industrial civilization is vastly dependant on petroleum.

 

[Train]

Originally posted by: dmcowen674

Originally posted by: Train

Originally posted by: dmcowen674

Originally posted by: Zebo
My point is GAS is not a nessesity to live, and definity not an entilement for everyone to have.

Of course not to the Neocons that have no problem paying whatever Gas prices go up to.

We know Neocons would like nothing better than having open roads all to themselves while sucking down the Gas they are the only ones that could afford it.

The rest will just have to slave to the Neocons getting around on bicycles.

Dave, wipe the foam off your mouth for a moment and calm down. Give me an honest, intelligent answer as to why you think high gas prices is all the "neocons" fault. And how we coul seriously bring the price of gas down by some sort of government intervention.

One word will do it:

Haliburton or Cheney

Take your pick

or how bout Enron or any other of the Oil Thug Companies of which all run by Neocons.

That makes the rest of the Neocon Nation including those on here guilty by association especially since those on here are happy about the Oil & Gas situation while those Non-Neocons are not.

It's pretty Black & White, just ask Hannity and CAD.

sorry dave, your answer doesnt pass the "global test" for an intelligent response, its a hate & blame filled bowl of puke. please, some facts or figures next time?

 

[Zebo]

Originally posted by: Mill

Originally posted by: Ultima
Gas is $2.75 where I live.

Drive a more efficient car.. live closer in to the city.. do things to reduce gas usage.

Driving a more efficient car -- well that's a good idea, and my car is pretty efficient. Any more efficient and I'd have to sacrifice luxury and/or buy a hybrid which equal more $$$. Your argument about living closer to the city is insane and illogical. Housing prices and rent are HIGHER the closer you get to the city, unless you want to live in the freaking ghetto. Living closer to the city is not going to pad anyone's wallet; housing in good parts of the city near the center are outrageous. Regardless, there is a lot we could do to reduce consumption, but moving closer to the city would be one of the more asinine.

That's one thing that would change, ghettos. They would be virtually eliminated inside cities if gas prices were say $6 a gallon. A compton "fixer" would go for $350K and then be revitalized...the whole area. Similar thing happend in portland or when they artifically restriced biuilding in the burbs.

 

[Ziptar]

Originally posted by: dmcowen674
I heard about this. Congratulations. AT has such a diverse community, amazing.
Would be something for Restaurants to have a small pumping station to re-fill Bio Cars.

It would take more than that to make useable on a wide scale... The but of the joke is however that the diesel engine was origianlly designed to run on Peanut Oil and in the early part of the 20th century, Petroleum Diesel replaced it bcause it was cheaper... Who knows what things would be like if that had not happened.

According to the DOE, domestic consumption in 2003 of petroleum distilate fuel oil (note: this is only fuel oil,) will be close to 60 billion gallons of which diesel makes up about 35 billion gallons. Yes, that is billion (1,000,000,000) and not million. Somebody please check these numbers.

According to the United Soybean Board, the annual soybean oil production in the USA is about 2.4 billion gallons (7% of diesel fuel), of which not all gets turned into WVO.

The only reason that renderers care about their waste veg oil is because it is very valuable for them but NOT for biodiesel or Straight Vegetable oil Fuel but rather as a raw ingredient in cosmetics and comercial degreases. There is a huge amount that can be done with lipids (grease) other than burning it.

Yellow grease (what renderers call WVO) has a market price between $0.10 and $0.20 per pound while soy oil goes for about $0.20 to $0.30 per pound. This means that the market price per gallon of yellow grease is between $0.735 and $1.47 where as the market price for a gallon of soy oil is between $1.47 and $2.20.

So in order to make a dent you would need a ALLOT of Farmers to just supply the Diesel need, and a cultural shift over many years to make the transition. On a postive note President Bush did just sign a bill that contained a tax incentive for Biodiesel. The result of the bill will be that Biodiesel (Soy Methyl Esther) which is Vegetable oil that has been "cut" using a Methanol and Lye solution, will now be more competetive cost wise with petrodiesel. This will widen it's use and demand and that go will go some distance increasing it's production which will hopefully further lower the cost.

Gasoline is an entirely different problem, E85 is a good start though, again would need more farmers and more auto manuacturers to support it but, it is a renewable fuel that could be homegrown and those dollars would stay in the U.S.


But, in my own little world where I commute 1000 miles a week, I am making a huge difference :thumbsup:

 

[theblackbox]

every time the gas goes up, the cost of my car is more justified as i put 24,000 miles a year on my car. since i opted for a civic hybrid which cost me a little more then an ex, when gas costs go up, my cost ratio goes down. So i use 2 gallons of gas each day to get to work, 53 miles each way, and it just gives me goosebumps to drive by gas stations when the price goes up. If americans gavea damn and put their money where their mouth was, and we improved our fuel efficency 8-10mpg, we wouldn't be dependent on foreign oil.
I do my part to make us a real independent america.

 

[Darkhawk28]

Originally posted by: theblackbox
every time the gas goes up, the cost of my car is more justified as i put 24,000 miles a year on my car. since i opted for a civic hybrid which cost me a little more then an ex, when gas costs go up, my cost ratio goes down. So i use 2 gallons of gas each day to get to work, 53 miles each way, and it just gives me goosebumps to drive by gas stations when the price goes up. If americans gavea damn and put their money where their mouth was, and we improved our fuel efficency 8-10mpg, we wouldn't be dependent on foreign oil.
I do my part to make us a real independent america.

Right now, I drive a Ford Escape, but I'm considering trading it in for a hybrid vehicle, especially if these gas prices get any higher.

 

[0marTheZealot]

All these fixes people have proposed are untenable to an American lifestyle. They would require hundreds of millions of acres of agriculture devoted solely to fuel and energy (and we don't have hundreds of millions of acres available), or thousands of square miles of solar panels devoted to electricity, or hundreds of new nuclear fission reactors. Simply put, our lifestyle is going the way of the dinosaur, with the great realization this century (hell these next decades) that our lifestyle of consume-waste cycles can not continue. And a lot of people are going to be unhappy with that.

To simply provide 10% of all ethanol for cars in 2020 would require Illinois, Indiana and Ohio devoted solely to making corn and processing it into ethanol. That's probably 1/6th - 1/7th (if population estimates are right) of our food production.

146 Lee Raymond, ?Facing Some Hard Truths About Energy,? Petroleum
World, (June 12, 2004). Archived at
http://www.energybulletin.net/newswire.php?id=624


The American Lifestyle? is simply unsustainable. As 3% of the worlds total population, we consume 25% of the world's resources. In contrast, the UK, which is only <1% of the world's population consumes 2-3% of the world's resources. And I think we can all agree that the UK aren't backward savages right?

 

[Ziptar]

Originally posted by: Darkhawk28
Right now, I drive a Ford Escape, but I'm considering trading it in for a hybrid vehicle, especially if these gas prices get any higher.

Get yourself an Escape Hybrid

 

[0marTheZealot]

Originally posted by: Ziptar

Originally posted by: Darkhawk28
Right now, I drive a Ford Escape, but I'm considering trading it in for a hybrid vehicle, especially if these gas prices get any higher.

Get yourself an Escape Hybrid

Jumbo shrimp is still shrimp.

 

[Ziptar]

Originally posted by: 0marTheZealot
All these fixes people have proposed are untenable to an American lifestyle. They would require hundreds of millions of acres of agriculture devoted solely to fuel and energy (and we don't have hundreds of millions of acres available), or thousands of square miles of solar panels devoted to electricity, or hundreds of new nuclear fission reactors. Simply put, our lifestyle is going the way of the dinosaur, with the great realization this century (hell these next decades) that our lifestyle of consume-waste cycles can not continue. And a lot of people are going to be unhappy with that.

To simply provide 10% of all ethanol for cars in 2020 would require Illinois, Indiana and Ohio devoted solely to making corn and processing it into ethanol. That's probably 1/6th - 1/7th (if population estimates are right) of our food production.

146 Lee Raymond, ?Facing Some Hard Truths About Energy,? Petroleum
World, (June 12, 2004). Archived at
http://www.energybulletin.net/newswire.php?id=624


The American Lifestyle? is simply unsustainable. As 3% of the worlds total population, we consume 25% of the world's resources. In contrast, the UK, which is only <1% of the world's population consumes 2-3% of the world's resources. And I think we can all agree that the UK aren't backward savages right?

Have to agree with that.... Maybe if we all were more vested in providing on our own the things we need each day as it was in this country until 60-ish years ago, things would be different.. In this ready made, disposable, heat and eat culture we live in now all we can do is consume mass quantites. Lets face it, If someone had to go out and grow, harvest, and make their meals each day. In otherwords be Self Sufficent, they would be more thoughtful of their consumption.

 

[Gravity]

Originally posted by: dmcowen674

Originally posted by: Zebo
My point is GAS is not a nessesity to live, and definity not an entilement for everyone to have.

Of course not to the Neocons that have no problem paying whatever Gas prices go up to.

We know Neocons would like nothing better than having open roads all to themselves while sucking down the Gas they are the only ones that could afford it.

The rest will just have to slave to the Neocons getting around on bicycles.

That's actually a fantasy I've had for a while! Open roads!!!

I drive a state car and use state gas so this issue is on my radar screen from an employer perspective. If my peeple can't afford to get to work, then I'm in some real trouble.

Let's see how the free market responds to this issue.

 

[0marTheZealot]

Adam Smith's hand is about to b!tchslap us back into the stone age.

 

[Mathlete]

Originally posted by: Ultima
Gas is $2.75 where I live.

Drive a more efficient car.. live closer in to the city.. do things to reduce gas usage.

I did until my job was given to some dude in India for half of the money.

(the previous statement is false but that's a valid point)

Now that I think anout it.......this is a nice little scheme

Step 1: Move jobs from small towns overseas
Step 2: Jack up gas prices(tax it more too), increasing the burden on small families
Step 3: Since there is all this extra $ we can now give more to our friends through tax cuts.
Step 4: Learn how to pronounce nuclear while snortin an 8-ball of coke

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: Train

Originally posted by: dmcowen674

Originally posted by: Train

Originally posted by: dmcowen674

Originally posted by: Zebo
My point is GAS is not a nessesity to live, and definity not an entilement for everyone to have.

Of course not to the Neocons that have no problem paying whatever Gas prices go up to.

We know Neocons would like nothing better than having open roads all to themselves while sucking down the Gas they are the only ones that could afford it.

The rest will just have to slave to the Neocons getting around on bicycles.

Dave, wipe the foam off your mouth for a moment and calm down. Give me an honest, intelligent answer as to why you think high gas prices is all the "neocons" fault. And how we coul seriously bring the price of gas down by some sort of government intervention.

One word will do it:

Haliburton or Cheney

Take your pick

or how bout Enron or any other of the Oil Thug Companies of which all run by Neocons.

That makes the rest of the Neocon Nation including those on here guilty by association especially since those on here are happy about the Oil &amp; Gas situation while those Non-Neocons are not.

It's pretty Black &amp; White, just ask Hannity and CAD.

sorry dave, your answer doesnt pass the "global test" for an intelligent response, its a hate &amp; blame filled bowl of puke. please, some facts or figures next time?

Ahhh, knew you'd say that, simply read the nearly 700 post thread on Oil filled with facts and figures.

The numbers speak for themselves, the Neocons deserve all the hate &amp; blame bowls of puke coming at them.