Are Gasoline Prices Too High, and Do you Want to Do Something About Them?
« on: 2007-05-27 01:32:46 »
Well, basically Gas prices have tripled in the US over the past 7 years, severly damaging the Economy and putting people at the mercy of Gasoline companies.
They reportedly had a quarterally profit well over $1 billion dollers, and it's all untaxable as it's a necessity.
A few days ago, a senitor came on CNN and said, "High Gas prices are a good thing." I'm wondering who's lining his pockets to say that?
For me, I think it's getting far out of hand and the power of the US and maybe the world has shifted from the people to big corporations. When you make billions of dollers each year, who's going to question you, No one that's who, except those not seeking money, but a better world for the rest.
The reason that gas prices seem to be rising is because of oil companies wanting to make a profit. They aren't a bunch environmentalists trying to save the world. They are using wars and other factors as an excuse to line their pockets with more gold. The oil companies aren't trying to make people more gas efficient.
It is really hurting a lot of other areas. Here in the 'burbs, people aren't driving to the malls or over the causeway to the beaches and such. Hurts local economy.
These are all reasons why I am selling my Maxima for a Vespa scooter. 76 mpg, for real.
Re:Are Gasoline Prices Too High, and Do you Want to Do Something About Them?
« Reply #1 on: 2007-05-27 13:13:31 »
This is a crisis in the making that seems to be slowly picking up momentum in the media. I'm not just reffering to the rise in crude oil prices, I'm also reffering to the depletion of existing Oil fields and the apparent lack of new well discovery.
Thanks to Idleworm.com which provided myself with most of the links following. He's been following the trend for many months, so it forms a reasonably clear picture if you start with the archives section and read on (lots of sifting through unrelated blogs).
I've not even posted any links connecting the political strife and wars to crude resource locations. I think the internet probably has enough information concerning this, all you have to do is look.
(p.s.) As always, I have to keep repeating this mantra before reading (or hearing or watching) anything wether the item is true or not, "Engage brain before accepting everything as the whole truth"
Re:Are Gasoline Prices Too High, and Do you Want to Do Something About Them?
« Reply #2 on: 2007-05-28 11:58:17 »
Let me start by saying that I am an optimist compared to most of the people in this field, but that my optimism is not the hope for a brighter future for our offspring, but for any future at all. Unfortunately, compared to me, most people aware of what is coming are prophets of doom. Even more unfortunately, I think it is already too late (the window is 2 to 3 years before we will no longer be able to build and receive power from space based solar systems while we still have the fossil fuels we will need to build them) for there not to be a massive crash and TEOCAWKITM (The End of Civilization As We Know It).
The last puts the idea that bio-fuels are a solution - or even part of a solution to bed (My own numbers suggest that under 1 Acre of that land is arable). I had reached this conclusion from the other end, knowing that every year that elapses we use more energy than could be obtained if we were able to convert 300 years worth of increase in biomass (plants, animals, humans) directly into fossil fuels.
Iran, France and Japan are definitely onto something, but even Uranium is not anticipated to outlast this century by much - and it can't entirely replace fossil fuel anyway.
Failing space-based solar MHD collectors, there are things we might do to lessen the impact of the end of the cheap energy (most of which we have squandered on utterly unsustainable projects and growth) age, some of which I have been working on with a fair measure of success (projected savings of at least 20% to 40% of US fossil fuel use, with the potential for more, an affordable cost and a 3 to 11 year payback period depending on assumptions. Anyone wanting to give me 2 million dollars to take the research further, or 25 million to build the first capacity would be very welcome. We have made our first $4 million sale, but it will only happen in 2 years time. Between then and now we need to get everything permited and certified and build the company to deliver it. And despite the EPA and DNR both liking the solution (as does every engineer who has seen it), they don't apparently have budgets to engage in development - and I want to try to avoid being tied up in red tape for the next millenia by trying to obtain an SBA loan given that they are oriented to funding existing businesses.). Which ties into why I suspect the USA will be among the last to act, and probably too late too be particularly effective. Which of course threatens not only her own population, but the entire stability of the planet, as the death struggles of giants tend to be extremely destructive. The death struggle of a nation which has the unleashing of the eschatological forces of destruction as its national security policy may well make the Earth uninhabitable by humans. Even before then there will be widespread unhappiness.
Worth understanding that a combination of climate change, eutrophication, pollution and aquifer depletion is already making potable water resources scarce for farming on a global basis. And of course, without abundant water, farming becomes tenuous at best. Also worth understanding that almost all fertilizer is today made from Natural Gas (we have used up the Guano deposits, mined almost all of the worlds nitrate and phosphate deposits), and after the NG crises in 2003, the US fertilizer producers off-shored production to Canada, Southern Asia and Central America. This may be part of the reason why we are burning Canada's fuels at a rate 6 times higher than the highest burn rates predicted by the DOE prior to 2003. Without being able to import fertilizer, American and Canadian production of corn, wheat and beans will be massively impacted, and the effects of the resulting food shortages will be experienced globally.
As for cities, well, consider that it took only 3 days for New Orleans to become untenable when the services stopped, even after most of its population had evacuated. Now consider where you will get your groceries and water, never mind heat for your poorly insulated house when we can no longer afford to buy fuel. Given that the most optimistic estimates put the end of cheap fuel at just 30 years away (and then supposedly a hand-waving miracle occurs and growth continues), this isn't just a problem for the future but for more than half of the people alive today.
Unfortunately the people running things, being older, are expecting to be dead (or for Jesus to bail them out) before the bill for our profligacy has to be paid.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
Thank you for the link Hermit. A very organised and neat site with excellent flow. Much better to use to introduce people to the issue than the mish mash of links I usually throw at them.
Re:Are Gasoline Prices Too High, and Do you Want to Do Something About Them?
« Reply #4 on: 2007-10-22 07:35:01 »
[Blunderov] "Yesterday, a spokesman for the Department of Business and Enterprise said: "Over the next few years global oil production and refining capacity is expected to increase faster than demand."
So why hasn't it done so already, I wonder? The law of supply and demand, the invisible hand : what happened to them? Hmm.
Steep decline in oil production brings risk of war and unrest, says new study
· Output peaked in 2006 and will fall 7% a year · Decline in gas, coal and uranium also predicted
Ashley Seager Monday October 22, 2007 The Guardian
World oil production has already peaked and will fall by half as soon as 2030, according to a report which also warns that extreme shortages of fossil fuels will lead to wars and social breakdown. The German-based Energy Watch Group will release its study in London today saying that global oil production peaked in 2006 - much earlier than most experts had expected. The report, which predicts that production will now fall by 7% a year, comes after oil prices set new records almost every day last week, on Friday hitting more than $90 (£44) a barrel.
"The world soon will not be able to produce all the oil it needs as demand is rising while supply is falling. This is a huge problem for the world economy," said Hans-Josef Fell, EWG's founder and the German MP behind the country's successful support system for renewable energy. The report's author, Joerg Schindler, said its most alarming finding was the steep decline in oil production after its peak, which he says is now behind us.
The results are in contrast to projections from the International Energy Agency, which says there is little reason to worry about oil supplies at the moment.
However, the EWG study relies more on actual oil production data which, it says, are more reliable than estimates of reserves still in the ground. The group says official industry estimates put global reserves at about 1.255 gigabarrels - equivalent to 42 years' supply at current consumption rates. But it thinks the figure is only about two thirds of that.
Global oil production is currently about 81m barrels a day - EWG expects that to fall to 39m by 2030. It also predicts significant falls in gas, coal and uranium production as those energy sources are used up.
Britain's oil production peaked in 1999 and has already dropped by half to about 1.6 million barrels a day.
The report presents a bleak view of the future unless a radically different approach is adopted. It quotes the British energy economist David Fleming as saying: "Anticipated supply shortages could lead easily to disturbing scenes of mass unrest as witnessed in Burma this month. For government, industry and the wider public, just muddling through is not an option any more as this situation could spin out of control and turn into a complete meltdown of society."
Mr Schindler comes to a similar conclusion. "The world is at the beginning of a structural change of its economic system. This change will be triggered by declining fossil fuel supplies and will influence almost all aspects of our daily life."
Jeremy Leggett, one of Britain's leading environmentalists and the author of Half Gone, a book about "peak oil" - defined as the moment when maximum production is reached, said that both the UK government and the energy industry were in "institutionalised denial" and that action should have been taken sooner.
"When I was an adviser to government, I proposed that we set up a taskforce to look at how fast the UK could mobilise alternative energy technologies in extremis, come the peak," he said. "Other industry advisers supported that. But the government prefers to sleep on without even doing a contingency study. For those of us who know that premature peak oil is a clear and present danger, it is impossible to understand such complacency."
Mr Fell said that the world had to move quickly towards the massive deployment of renewable energy and to a dramatic increase in energy efficiency, both as a way to combat climate change and to ensure that the lights stayed on. "If we did all this we may not have an energy crisis."
He accused the British government of hypocrisy. "Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have talked a lot about climate change but have not brought in proper policies to drive up the use of renewables," he said. "This is why they are left talking about nuclear and carbon capture and storage. "
Yesterday, a spokesman for the Department of Business and Enterprise said: "Over the next few years global oil production and refining capacity is expected to increase faster than demand. The world's oil resources are sufficient to sustain economic growth for the foreseeable future. The challenge will be to bring these resources to market in a way that ensures sustainable, timely, reliable and affordable supplies of energy."
The German policy, which guarantees above-market payments to producers of renewable power, is being adopted in many countries - but not Britain, where renewables generate about 4% of the country's electricity and 2% of its overall energy needs.
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