I think clean coal is a bit of a paradox. To be sure, there are measures that can be taken to reduce pollution, but reduction is the key word.

Politicians have no idea whatsoever about how to both run a successful economy and provide cleaner, better--and effecient--energy sources. Like that comic illustrates, they believe that ethanol fuel is a positive transition when all it does is destroy crops needed for food (for people and livestock), and ethanol engines routinely fail emissions standards that gas-powered cars pass.

This new bill (which Bush says he will flatly veto), is just more misguided belief from our politicians to do better things for the environment--which in the long run, holds more potential for harm than help--especially for the people and economy. And if gas prices are artificially raised, people will be too broke to give a shit about living cleaner. The primary focus then will be just to get by.

It's certainly not a solution that will cover all cases. Nothing does. In your case you probably get to work very quickly unless there's rush hour traffic which I would assume there would be.

However, in the cases where biking isn't a reasonable solution, there are alternatives to gas-powered vehicles. Or even a fuel-economic vehicle that still runs on gasoline. I don't know what the situation is with propane in the US, but at least in Toronto (and surrounding area) there is a reasonable number of gas stations that provides propane.

Another alternative is running a vehicle on dual-fuel. When I was in high school I drove a van that ran on both propane and gasoline. You could change the fuel literally at the flick of a switch. I'd drive it primarily on propane, and when I ran out I'd flip the switch to change to gasoline, and it would be literally seamless.

Not every solution will work for everyone. I'm just saying there are viable alternatives.

OK, this is an interesting thread. Maybe I'll throw my cynical 2 cents (european cents, mind you, that's more than 3 US cents with the current exchange rate).

Resident_Hazard looks at the problem from the perspective of Joe Sixpack, and I completely understand his anxiety in the matter. I spend more than 200 euros a month on gas, and I know for a fact that no matter what, the price will not ever come down on a permanent basis. Sure, there may be some temporary fluctuations in the prices, but whenever such a phenomenon occurs, keep in mind that it's only temporary.

I pay roughly 1,5 €/liter for gas. That's about 6,7 €/gallon, which is almost 11 US$/gallon. I'd say life with higher fuel prices is completely possible, and 8 $/gallon is not really that much.

Looking at the situation in the USA is an interesting study. You see, I think several mistakes have been made in the relatively recent past, and the price will be high in the relatively near future. The mistakes have a lot to do with tradition (i.e. the kind of automobiles in use, the heavily mechanized agriculture etc.) combined with the two boogeymen called housing bubble and peak oil. Let me explain.

Just as R_H mentioned, it seems that the infrastructure in the USA has been built in a way that does not support using public transportation or bicycles at all; everything, including commuting to work, getting the groceries, etc. has been designed so that the only way to do it is to use a car. That means that being hit by peak oil will definitely force a lot of unpleasant changes upon the people there. The suburbs will become expensive to live in, because there is really no other options for most people other than continue using their cars. The whole concept of a distant mall will become outdated, and jobs centered in distant parts of cities will be less tempting. Unfortunately, if I'm not completely mistaken, the very structure of the post-60s urban areas there cannot support such a transition.

Add the so-called housing bubble into the equation, and you have an interesting situation in your hands. A lot of the bubble has been caused by recent developments that have been built using the same doomed concept of detached sprawl, based on cheap driving and medium-distance commuting. The houses already have over-inflated price tags, and the unavoidable fact of rising oil prices means that in addition to costing massively more than they are worth, living in such houses will get more expensive in the long run. The extensive new developments do not support any form of public transportation, and I'd say buying a house in such a place at this time would be insanity.

Now, the peak oil will cause a massive inflation in prices (massive being a subjective term, of course), because oil is being used in every phase of the life of virtually every product. I once read that a leaf of lettuce produced in the USA will contain, on the average, 78 energy units of fossil fuels for every unit of actual nutritional energy it provides to the person eating it. That's due to farm machinery, fertilizers, transportation, heating greenhouses, cooling the stores and so forth. The ratio is better in more concentrated items on the menu, of course, lettuce is a bad example, but you get the idea: hauling stuff around and using machinery and fossil fuels for the chain of production is not a viable solution in the long run, if the price of the fuel skyrockets; and still, people will need to eat. The oil shortage will simply hurt every part of the equation.

If the housing bubble will cause banks to go bankrupt and lead to millions of foreclosures and personal bankrupties, the additional effect of soaring prices due to oil prices will have a scary cumulative effect on things. The economy is going to be rougher than you'd think. The structure of things in several parts of the USA is not built for the necessary changes in lifestyle, but the changes are most likely inevitable.

The reasons behind the rising fuel prices are simple: there is more demand than there is supply. There may be some foul play in OPEC and Big Oil, but the fact remains that the years of cheap oil are gone. The demand keeps rising, and the oil production in many places, including the North Sea, the whole USA, possibly Russia and Kuwait, and perhaps even Saudi Arabia has peaked, and there is no going back. All the time, the Chinese are building cars faster and faster, and India is becoming motorized. If the supply is diminishing and the demand is growing at an enormous rate, the laws of supply and demand dictate that the price will go up. It really is that simple, and unless you implement a new communistic world order, that's the way it will go. And even that new world order will not be able to provide new oil at the old prices. That fact cannot be fought, it's a part of the physical reality we live in, the oil that is easy and cheap to pump is getting scarce.

Now, I've written that that's the situation in the USA. What about Europe and other places? Will we have it easier? Well, it depends.

First of all, the towns and cities in Europe have a little bit different structures than the recently built suburbs in the USA. The older, in some cases centuries older, cities have a more centralized shape, and the shops, markets, jobs and housing are often much more intermingled, scattered in a uniform mess. That also serves the purposes of public transportation and moving around with muscle power much better. It's completely possible and even rather easy to live without a car in Helsinki, for example, and Helsinki isn't an old town on the european scale. We've also avoided a housing bubble, even if the prices are ridiculously high at the moment, depending on the location.

The already high gasoline prices are also a blessing in disguise, I believe. It is said that 75% of the local fuel prices here are different taxes. That means, of course, that while the fuel in the USA doubles from 4$/gallon to 8$/gallon, it is basically possible to lower the taxes and buffer the impact. It also means that the rising price of crude has a lesser effect on my wallet when I'm by the pump. If 75% of the price is taxes that are not dependent on the price of crude, then doubling of the price on crude will only add 25% to my fuel bill. That's not exactly how it goes in reality, of course, but you get the idea. On the other hand, in the USA fuel has been cheap due to very low taxation on gas, and that means that any price increases on crude have a more direct effect on the actual gas prices.

What's more, having had high prices on fuel for decades already (compared to the USA) means that people and the economy have been adjusted to the environment, so to speak; our cars are more fuel efficient, and I have less than merry memories of the moments when I fueled my two Chevy Astro vans back in the day. Never again, fuel cost almost 50% less back then. Also, the companies that work here have their core businesses built so that the high prices are included in the calculations. Maybe it's easier to weather the coming storm this way, we'll see.

Personally I've already taken some steps to avoid problems myself, the biggest one being the removal of the oil heating system from my house and adding an electric and wood-burning central heating system. The future of oil was an equally important issue with my environmental concerns. I want to avoid fossil fuels because of my beliefs in global climate problems, and I want to avoid being caught with my pants down when a barrel of crude costs 300 $. The kind of central heating I installed allows me to switch the source of heat more easily, and even add new components such as heat pumps (ground or air), solar cells (either electric or more crude ones with simple liquid circulation) or a friggin' windmill if I feel like it. It's not a bad idea to be prepared, people, especially since with the prices soaring in all kinds of energy, any free energy is always a good thing for your own wallet, too, not just for the environment.

But there's worse to come for the USA, I'm afraid. So far, the US dollar has been an important currency, because it's been the only currency in the international oil trade. Well, once that comes to an end, the dollar will plummet. If Iran, for example, succeeds in opening a real oil exchange that runs on the euro or yen, the dollar will no longer enjoy the privilege of the main oil currency, and it will lose more of its value. That means that a lot of money in the vaults of different countries' central banks will need to be dumped, and the value of the dollar will spiral down. The main reason for hoarding the dollar has been the connection to oil trade. I think the Chinese are trying to get rid of something like a trillion dollars as we speak, and the Saudis, always informed on things, have used a lot of their dollars buying real estate around the world. It's sensible to invest the money in something tangible rather than hold onto money that's probably going to lose a good portion of its value. It also means that in the future, getting foreign loaned money might be more expensive for the USA, and paying back the loans already there (more than 79 000 dollars for each US tax payer, BWT) will turn even closer to impossible than it already is.

A lot of people believe, not without merit I believe, that one of the real reasons behind the Iraq invasion was that Saddam and Iraq intended to open an oil exchange open for other currencies. That is the most logical reason for the war I've heard so far, and it actually has some devious credibility.

But back to the main subject: whatever the politicians do and whatever laws they pass, the price of fuel will not come down any more for any longer periods of time. Never. It may cause a lot of people a lot of grief, but in the final analysis, even the US government can do very, very little about it. 8$/gallon is still cheap, and I'm willing to bet a bottle of Scotch single malt once again that we'll see much higher fuel prices than 8$ a gallon in the USA before 2020, adjusted for inflation. People must get used to it, because that's the real world. There's nothing the Congress and the White House can do about it, the only way is to adjust and to lower the consumption until it's low enough to be sustainable.

Please note that I do not rant about climate change here. That thing is going to add its own flavour into the stew, too. Big things are in the air, people.

Ok, this post might not be worthy (and sure not as lengthy) of an average Symposium post but I think you were using the dry gallon (4,4 L) as opposed to the liquid gallon (3,8 L) which is I think the one used in the US for petrol volumetry. I'm not 100% sure of this though.

Hmm... silly me, I didn't check the facts. I just assumed that they use the same gallon as for whiskey, but the Famous Grouse I used as a reference is, of course, Scotch. You are right, except that I wasn't using the dry gallon, but the Imperial one. You may reduce the $/gallon number by 15,5 %.

Attention, United States! Please switch to metric, effective immediately! 9 mm Parabellum isn't the only metric thing, honestly.

I did the math, and with what Im making right now at work, and the distance I drive to get there (Since I live in the MIDDLE OF FUCKING NOWHERE) I will begin loosing money when gas hits $5.50. At that point I will quit going to work and live off my land. Im just lucky because my whole family lives out here on our 900 acres, we all grow lots of crops, we have 140 head of cattle, and we have a river running right throught the middle of our land. Also Ive been steadily buying solar panels for the last 7 years, and we power about 2 thirds of our own utilities.

But what about the people who arent so lucky?

If shit truly gets as bad as you say, I predict a mass exodus to the cities, where jobs are within walking distance.

The main problem that I'm having with this--and that would become a major problem for the bulk of Americans--is that for us, $8/gallon is not cheap. We're paying (nationwide average now) $3.97 per gallon. The changes the politicians are trying to provoke would nearly double that in a painfully short time. We just skyrocketed up to $3.97 from about $2.85 in less than a month and that's a pretty hard punch to the pocketbook.


The American mindset has always been to "build out, not up" in which case, we expand our cities ever wider rather than building ever taller. At one time, racing to the sky was the norm, but since the rise and popularity of the suburbs, the opposite has happened. As such, many cities are simply too expansive for public transportation to be really feasible. If public transportation, such as bus lines, light rails, subways, etc, were more commonplace and better implemented, the rising gas prices wouldn't be such a headache. Only in the largest and most crowded cities, such as New York or Los Angeles or perhaps inner city Chicago, do public transportation or simply biking really work for people.


I think one of the biggest problems with America (and of most politicians)is that the representatives of the people--those politicians--do not accurately represent us. They are rich snobs too far removed from society to understand how their choices affect everyone else. Politicians should be forced to work for minimum wage and no more than that. They see $8/gallon for gas as no harm to them and a great way to eventually do some good for the environment--in theory. They have the money to pay for all the gas they want if, in fact, they aren't just wasting tax payer money on their own fuel needs.


I know I freaked out a bit with my initial post, but dammit, after I heard about this, I was fucking pissed. It just boggles my mind how these people can be so fucking blind and stupid. Hell, Minnesota's local yokels added a much higher gas tax to us recently. That has nothing to do with regular rising oil prices--it all has to do with politician greed. I doubt any one of them even bothered to think about the record high number of home foreclosures and the record bad housing market--worst it's been in 20-25 years, and the decline is continuing.

So, basically, we agree, R_H. And that's what I was explaining, in a long-winded way: your society is built on cheap fuel, even more so than the wasteful european one. The cheap fuel is running out, and there will be a huge price to pay, you perhaps being a prime example, if your description of your daily commuting is accurate. I just want to add my own opinion: in the long run, there is nothing the politicians can do. Maybe they make some decisions that have an effect on a short timescale, and I think adjusting already before the shit has irrevocably been splattered on the walls by a mighty fan is actually not a bad idea. The downfall hurts less if you're already on a lower branch. But the fact is, it's out of polticians' hands, and the price of oil will rise, no matter what. The cheap oil is running out, and that cannot be helped.

I try to drive a car that is as fuel efficient as possible. I have no use for a truck, jeep, or SUV. A medium sized sedan gets the job done for me, and i get about 25 city 30 highway. I would like to have a car that gets even better mileage, such as a hybrid, and I also see great potential in hydrogen fuel cell powered cars. Hell, if I could ride a motorcycle worth a shit I would drive that.

Also, I have noticed the resale value on trucks and SUVs has dropped sharply in the past 5 months or so, mainly due to the increase in fuel prices.

Great, great post, Napero.



No, definitely not. My hometown Vienna has about 1.7 million inhabitants (the 1. District - city centre - only has like 17 000) and the public transportation system works great. Of course, you can't really compare an American to an European city, but the most important thing is to simply offer other possibilities than the car, where possible.

I live relatively far away from the city centre (across the Danube), but within ten minutes on foot I can reach half a dozen different lines to different destinations. During peak hours it takes me about fourty minutes to reach central downtown, by bike it's a little less. In the morning and afternoon voluntarily choosing the car as the way to go is complete bollocks, not even considering the fact the the nine inner districts are a single short-term parking zone all the time.

Cars will remain as the most important way of transportation for a couple of more years, but for the sake of decreasing total consumption of oil, how about taxing SUVs and other pointlessly powerful and big cars extremely high and at the same time offer tax benefits for car manufacturers who push the development of more efficient engines?

The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air.

Yeah, indeed. Who would've thought three years ago that today US-Americans really think about public transportation at all.

I wholeheartedly agree. In this respect, the US is completely ass-backwards. The imperial system is laughably outdated and difficult to use. Luckily, though, metric is seeing more use, and I myself am trying to replace imperial with metric in my own lexicon.

As for your other post, I do agree, but the problem is that people don't want to go without buying as much non-essential items as they do currently (televisions, sports, video games for a few examples), and wages in America are not adjusted for inflation at all. The currently high inflation rates are choking the middle class off quite nicely.

by the way don't believe people who tell you it's the price of the barrel that's setting the pump price. Or tell them we were getting royally screwed only a few years ago because the pump price wasn't adjusted:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_of_p ... ce_history

QUOTE:

A recent low point was reached in January 1999 ($8 per barrel), after increased oil production from Iraq coincided with the Asian financial crisis, which reduced demand. The prices then rapidly increased, more than tripling by September 2000 (35 dollars per barrel), then fell until the end of 2001 before steadily increasing, reaching US $40 to US $50 per barrel by September 2004

I want to respond to the bolded part first: Raising taxes and making things harder is the wrong thing to do, in my view. That's like punishing citizens. What I've personally said should be done (when talking with my wife on this) is to, essentially, cut taxes in half for small and hybrid cars, and drop taxes by 2/3--or remove them completely--for zero emission cars--such as electric cars. Governments spend too much time punishing and taxing, when rewarding the opposite is a much more feasible solution. You place higher taxes on SUV's, and you'll just piss people off. But you lower taxes on cleaner, smaller, more effecient cars and people will be happy. Because then it looks like the government is doing you a favor. (Also, most SUV's aren't as bad as it's commonly believed, unless you're only looking at the largest ones like the Ford Excursion or Hummer. My Blazer gets mileage comparable to many full-size, and some mid-size cars.)

I've also concocted a plan of taxing foods on a 5-point bracket. Healthy foods are not taxed at all, but extremely unhealthy foods will have the highest taxes placed on them (and then varying degrees of taxes depending on the "healthiness" of said food). This would work toward solving the obesity problem in the US as, all too often, health food is just so damn expensive compared to damn junk food. That's an unrelated matter, though. Just felt like injecting it as a show of "reward vs punishment." Currently, where I live, it's only broken down two ways: Regular food and junk food. Regular food--no taxes, junk food--standard state sales tax.


And you're right about one thing--you can't exactly compare American and European cities. From my understanding, European cities are more crowded than American cities. I know Germany has about 80 million people in it, and it's size is comparable to our state of Montana (which is beautiful by the way), and Montana only has something like 2 million people total--if that. Montana, and many of the states between the West coast region and the East Coast aren't populous or "crowded" enough for public transportation. Certainly not in the several states making up the Midwest.

The largest city in my state, Minneapolis, is only around 390,000, and St.Paul, where I work is about 270,000 people. Altogether, the Twin Cities* metro area, including suburbs, barely has a million people and it's spread over a very large area. I believe, when I measured it, it was something like 40 miles across. We only have, maybe 10-20 total city blocks in this entire area made up of high-rise skyscrapers--and they all pale in comparison to the largest cities, like New York or Chicago.



*For reference for some of you non-US folks, the Twin Cities is so nick-named because the largest city (Minneapolis) and the capitol city (St. Paul) are literally only seperated by the Mississippi River, hence, they are "twins." The remainder of the suburbs, including the 4th largest city in the state, Bloomington, are simply crammed in a circle around the area.

The punishment is a necessary part, because rich people can afford to buy whatever they want and continue to push up the gas. In places like florida I would triple the tax for hummers and double it for SUV's and sports cars. Those with cars that get good mileage get 25% tax decrease, hybrids 33%, and gas free cars get no tax.

That way the government doesn't have to raise taxes somewhere else.

To say people who can afford SUVs should be punished by higher taxes for such vehicles is a bit polemic, but essentially it's true. Either they can easily pay the additional costs (and may be pissed off, but who cares), or they hardly can and get motivated to get a smaller, more efficient car (or one in the first place), which should be the general aim.

I know that the 'average' SUV is quite economical and has above average emission values. The parents of one of my friends have a BMV X5 and the average fuel consumption is at most 10 ltr./100 km when driving rather economically and that's not that bad. My point still stands, though. By the way, I saw this SUV a few days ago. I mean, 500 PS? What the hell?



Interesting idea, I think I'd support it if you excluded pizza from junk food.

There is a lot of confusion regarding biofuels, and the media has a lot to due with the confusion. Most people automatically think of corn, which is going the way of 8-track tapes....it is old technology. Since this is my field of work, I know a bit on the subject.

Biofuels come from dead plants. Anything containing carbon can be converted into ethanol with the right know how, and this includes material like sewage waste. Anyone thinking biofuels cant make a difference hasnt looked at Brazil, which has the worlds first sustainable biofuels economy.

Ethanol has a positive energy balance –The studies that claim a negative energy balance for ethanol fail to take into account the energy contained in the co-products. Current research by Argonne National Laboratory (a US Department of Energy Laboratory), indicates a 38% gain in the overall energy input/output equation for the corn-to-ethanol process. That is, if 100 BTUs of energy is used to plant corn, harvest the crop, transport it, etc., 138 BTUs of energy is available in the fuel ethanol. Again, these numbers are with corn, which has one of the lowest energy returns of current biomass contenders.

Ethanol isn’t a solution for our petroleum addiction. It will take a combination of improved fuel economy, massive reinvestment in public transportation, new technology, and other factors to move us into transportations future.

First, there is no shortage of gasoline or oil. There is plenty. There is actually a market surplus. As long as oil companies are allowed to trade "futures", gas prices will continue to increase.

In the meantime:


Try to carpool, or take public transportation. Duh.

Fill up in the coolest part of the day. Gasoline is denser when it's cooler, but the pumps do not adjust for this (in the U.S. at least). You literally get more for your money.

Fill the tank at the slower setting. This creates less air bubbles, and keeps the fuel denser.

Check your tire's air pressure. It takes a lot more energy to move a car with under inflated tires.

Don't bother with plus grade or premium gas. Unless you have a high performance engine, regular unleaded is fine. Higher octanes simply keep the engine from knocking, so run the lowest you can. (I've heard this from multiple places, including very experience mechanics, and I've tried it myself.)

Remove anything from the trunk/back seat that you don't need. Save weight.

Use cruise control. It is more efficient than your foot, and it can keep you from getting an expensive speeding ticket (I've had plenty of those!)

Drive less aggressively. Hard accelerations consume lots of gas (trust me, my Monte Carlo with a V8 4-barrel carburator definitely does!). It's fun, but resists it.

Coast to a stop if you can. Simply take you foot off the gas pedal, and let the car slow itself down. Braking from high speeds wastes lots of go-go juice.

Plan trips, and try to do as much as possible in one run, instead of making multiple trips.

The faster you go, the more air resistance the engine has to overcome, and the more fuel it burns.

Get a locking gas cap. Thieves will not hesitate to steal your ga (aAlthough, they might simply drill your tank, which sucks).

If you know you’re going to be waiting at the traffic signal, or at the railroad crossing for more than a minute, shut the engine off. The old idea that the car uses more gas to start than it would to let it idle is absolutely false.

At highway speeds, it's actually better to keep the windows up, and use A/C. Having the windows down creates more air drag.


Now this (do it at your own risk)...

If you have a diesel vehicle, you can run Number 2 heating oil in it. It's significantly cheaper, but it's the same thing. Farmers use it in tractors all the time.

The reason why it's cheaper is because it is not taxed for road usage. It is also dyed red, and may lack some additives that keep the engine clean.

However, if you get caught, (they may do a dip-stick test) you can go to jail for tax evasion. Seriously.


Sorry if anyone has already posted this, but these things do work.


Another thing: My company has us on a 4 day (10 hour days) work week. We get Fridays off (Three-day weekends!), and one less day to drive to/from work, which is why they do it. Your place of employment might consider this, or altering work shifts to get the same effect. It never hurts to ask.

Sources please? Everything I have read states the opposite.

Futures trading:

Have enough courtesy not to stretch the screen, please.

Suplus:

Link.

There was a big article about the surplus on MSNBC, but strangly, it's no longer available.

Edit: This isn't the one I was looking for, but it pretty much say the same thing. Anyone remember Enron?

Link.

Congress certainly could do something, except that every time they do they fuck it up.

Used to be that trading single-stock futures was not allowed in US markets, though it was common enough in other countries. The Commodities Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission couldn't work out who would be responsible for regulating SSFs. Since they're futures contracts, CFTC should have a say, but since they involve stocks, SEC should have a say.

Rather than unleash a new, unregulated, security on US markets, they wisely decided to not allow them to be traded.

Along comes a neat littel piece of legislation called the "Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000". When signed into law, this bill settled the regulatory juristiction question - CFTC and SEC would have joint regulatory power.

Enter Enron. Remember them? A more evil, amoral, greedy group of fatcats did not exist. They had a new product they were ready to roll out call "EnronOnline". This was a web-based application that allowed over-the-counter trading in commodities (but only with Enron).

What a great idea! Except that regulatory reporting would have been difficult, as Enron would have been responsible for reporting activity to CFTC and SEC, and possibly would have had to enforce trading limits if trading volume was too high.

So Enron, never being one for the rules, sent it's lobbyists to Senator Phil Gramm and tacked a teensy little amendment to the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. It exempted over-the-counter trades, and trades on energy commodity markets, from regulation.

This had nothing at all to do with the original intent of the bill. Enron just didn't want the EnronOnline thing regulated.

Neither the commodities regulators nor the securities regulators have juristiction over energy markets now. Energy trades still take place in a largely unregulated arena, with no government agency having any idea what traders are up to.

That's the current problem with oil prices. Traders in oil futures are monkeying with the price, the same way that they manipulated natural gas several years ago, which led to the collapse of Enron, criminal charges for a number of executives, and a dozen or so energy companies having to pay about $180MM in fines.

Congress is aware of this, and they're looking for a way to fix it. Chances are though, they'll fuck it up again. That's what you get when you let lobbyists affect legislation.

By the way, Phil Gramm is John McCain's "energy advisor". God help us.

It occurred to me yesterday that another way to "goad" citizens into buying smaller cars would be to change the parking status in cities. Make more and more parking garages less and less able to handle larger vehicles and allow the owners of said garages to charge more for having to park a larger vehicle there. I mean, this makes some sense when you think about it. Repaint all the parking spaces in a parking garage so that it accomodates 50% compact cars, 35% midsize vehicles, and 15% large vehicles, and charge more depending on size with the cheapest being compact cars. Damn, I wish I had property onm which to stick a parking garage. I'd be fucking rich.

On a personal note, I have always been disgusted by seeing some asshole with too much money driving the biggest SUV on the planet through downtown in a city. They obviously bought the damn thing as a status symbol but totally lack the need for a vehicle that large, and all too often, the skill to actually handle it. They should classify those as a seperate kind of vehicle that you need a special driver's license to own. No one who drives a Ford Focus normally should be equally qualified to drive a Ford Excursion or Cadillac Escalade. It's folly to assume that the average person can just make that leap without serious error taking place.



About my "junk food tax," I honestly believe pizza would fall in the middle since it often does contain healthy foods, such as tomato sauce, veggies (well, not mine, meat eater that I am), bread, meats, dairy, and the like. It's when they're packed an inch thick with toppings is when they run the gamut of being unhealthy.

Ahhh, but then, that's when pizza is really the best, amiright? Hey, pizza is my favorite food and if it fell prey to my "taxation of junk foods" law, so be it. That idea would be for the greater good--I'll take one for the team. I could stand to cut back anyway.

Thank God! Dems yank global warming bill. For now, anyway. They'll just bring it up again next year under president Obama, though.

Okay, so now apply that paragraph to gas.

Junk food is not a necessity. Gas is. And even with increased taxes on junk food, I'd still be paying substantially less to rot my teeth than run my car.





Fucking sweet. Kind of pathetic how it appears that they only crafted this bill to drum up attention. At least the total bankruptcy of the lower and middle classes in America is put off for about another year. It would be nice if politicians listened to, you know, scientists rather than other politicians or "popular opinion" when confronting issues like global warming.

Who do they think is gonna buy the fuel if only the wealthy can afford it?

The rich and their buddies in Congress are gonna end up screwing themselves over. Not to mention that if/when gas hits $8 a gallon, people are gonna start taking to the streets and/or rioting, if not before. A lot of people in the US are already on the edge of losing it, and this could very well be the proverbial straw that busted the camel's back.

Thankfully this otherwise damaging "going green" push that would've raised gas to around and perhaps well above $8/gallon was killed off. ....until they push it again under the next President.


The problem I have with this is that it seems overly based on the "fact" that man is causing Global Warming and that America has a lot of the blame, when natural cycles are explaining an awful lot of GW. After all, doesn't it make sense that whatever is reducing ice caps on Mars is also affecting the Earth?


Essentially, it'd be extremely expensive legislation that trys to prevent the unpreventable, rather than to prepare for the inevitable.


I've said it before and I'll say it again: Politicians don't understand science. The country (and world) would run beautifully if it were run by scientists, but scientists are typically too smart (and have too many ethics) for politics.

I've rcently begun to think that perhaps there are larger pieces at play than we think. It seems reasonable to me that someone somewhere is pulling strings on various puppets: those supplying us with oil (the countries/people actually in control of it), the oil companies, the politicians, the distributors, researchers looking for new fuel sources.... It seems that there is something larger at play. What that is, I have some idea... but very little at that.

Some dealers are no longer allowing people to trade in their SUV's for cash or credit on their next car purchase.

Increased prices change behavior and in many respects that is a good thing in the long term. Increased prices spur conservation, innovation and changes in behavior; it seems to be exceedingly difficult to get people to change their behavior without hitting them in the wallet repeatedly.

Part of the issue I have with a large section of the peak oil advocate is its apocalyptic bent. Life will most certainly change and consumption will have to decline, but aside from some of the more turbulent implications I think that a lot of the change it will force may well be positive. Whether it manifests itself as an increased focus on community, declined consumption or any other number of changes I feel the overall effect may well be a positive one.

I am curious to see if or to what extent world powers will use their military forces to secure remaining energy reserves as well.

We do, however, have significant options with which to supplement declining supply while also reducing demand and consumption, whether it be through coal liquefaction, oil/kerogen shale use, solar, wind, tide, cellulosic ethanol, algae bio fuels and any number of other energy technologies that are either beginning to come online or will be (and will likely become increasingly feasible in the face of rising prices).

Things will be different, maybe for the better, maybe for the worse. Times change and life goes on.

Here are three easy ways to scam the oil futures market:

1) The "Self-Fulfilling Prophecy" approach. Publicly claim that you project the price of oil reaching $150 per barrel (as Morgan Staley did) or $200 per barrel (as Goldman Sachs did). Because you're a big investment bank, your words carry weight, and this leads to a run-up in oil prices.

What the public doesn't know, because nobody told them, is that both Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs have HUGE stakes in oil futures, so making pie-in-the-sky claims is entirely self-serving. They make a killing, we get screwed. This is incredibly illegal in a regulated market.

2) The "You Scratch My Back..." approach. Let's say you are a music distributor who is sitting on a bunch of copies of a popular but not particularly rare metal CD. Let's also say you have a pals in the business who are willing to participate in a little market manipulation. You call your pal and say "Hey, can I unload 200 of these things on you at double the usual asking price?" You pal says ok. Then he does the same thing with another guy, who does it to another, who eventually sells them back to you. No CDs actually moved anywhere, and nobody actually made any money. But if everyone is also involved in delivery market reports, they can say that they're been selling hundreds of copies at double the price, which drives up the price for anyone not involved in the scam. Think that doesn't happen with oil futures? Think again.

3) The "Pure Unfettered Greed" approach. As a large investment bank, like Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs, you have tremendous borrowing power. You can, for example, borrow a billion dollars in an overnight loan without batting an eye. You take your billion dollars and buy as many oil futures as you can get. The mere fact that you've bought so much all at once introduces volatility to the market, which drives up prices. Once prices go up, you sell and make a killing. You pay back your loan and pocket some tens of millions of dollars in profit. Of course the rest of the market just got screwed out of those tens of millions, but what do you care?

All of the above, and more, have been responsible for the run-up in gas prices. Notice that none of it has to do with refineries, or supply, or "big oil".

that's for gazoline cars, with a diesel motor you have to drive up to about 110 Km/H to get the best mileage/fuel consumption ratio. a VW diesel on the highway gets a lot more mileage than in the city

The only problem, as I see it, is that a large percentage of cars in the US are gasoline and not diesel. Yes, we have the trucking (shipping and distribution) and construction industries using diesel fuel, but the average American is using a gasoline powered car. This is all leading up to the fact that the average American does not like to drive slow to save gas. They are still in a hurry to get everywhere and drive bumper to bumper at 85 miles per hour (anybody been on I-95 near Washington or Baltimore or I-81 near Harrisburg?).

Don't get me started. I don't even take I-95 for that very reason, as it just gets insane. Even then, I take US-40 and US-1 to work each day and it can still be a madhouse of crazy drivers riding your bumper, etc.

Yeah, it's pretty wild. It's actually kind of fun, but rather dangerous.


Update on my previous post:

I have changed my driving habits considerably (my wife you say drastically) and I can already tell that it works. By simply accelerating gently, coasting to stops, and using cruise control as much as possible, I have been able to make a tank of gas last longer. I'm still not going to get amazing MPG; after all, I drive an 86 Monte Carlo with a 5.0l V8 and a 4 barrel carburetor, but it's not bad. I pretty much never drive it on the weekends, and basically only go to and from work.

I'm going to make a cool air kit, and replace my air filter with a K&N filter. That should help a little.

Once again, I really feel the need to "plug" this:
http://discovermagazine.com/2006/apr/anything-oil

This is real. It works. It can potentially solve 3 major problems of society: Fuel availability, what to do with garbage, and what to do with sewage.

The K&N air filter definitely helped my highway mileage a good bit. Added about 1.5 to 2 miles per gallon. I haven't noticed that big of a difference in the city though, aside from a little more power.

How long will it really take before someone really cracks? Remember the days preceding 9/11, how much the gas prices spiked? This situation is too fucking far out of hand. After the prices get after a certain price, perhaps people will begin to protest, perhaps even boycott personal transportation in support of public transportation in order to give the greater economy the ordinary citizens' view on gasoline prices.

Gasoline vehicles are also more effecient on the highway than on city streets. This has a lot less to do with air resistance or anything really scientific. It has to deal with the start-stop-start-stop-drive-sit-drive-wait-wait-drive-sit-wait-start-stop nature of driving in a city. On a highway, you're constantly moving at a constant speed (or rather, more likely to be doing it) than in a city plagued with stoplights, traffic, intersections, and other things that force you to speed up, stop, and wait all with your car still running. Constantly accelerating and stopping and then accelerating again burn a lot more fuel than just driving at a constant speed.


I just drove about 200+ miles over the weekend all on highways and my Blazer got excellent mileage the whole time because it was out there on an open highway and a generally constant speed. It could've probably been better if my AC worked and I didn't have to drive with the windows down.

That's a good question, and will be extremely interesting when it starts happening. Eventually fuel prices will reach a point where the bottom end of society literally cannot afford to travel, which includes work; it will actually cost them more to drive to work then make money. People will be forced to quit their jobs or find an alternative form of transportation.


That applies to any fuel, and it has everything to do with science. It takes less energy to keep something moving than it does start it moving.

That was essentially my point.