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Topic:
The Price Of Gas Around the World-We are getting ripped off !
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Jabbadabbado
Title: Senate Floor Moderator
Registered:
Mar '99
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Date Posted:
5/29 11:35am
Subject:
RE: The Price Of Gas Around the World-We are getting ripped off !
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I agree with that. There will continue to be a need for liquid fuel for large scale rail and sea transport. What you'll find I think is that petroleum will end up being subsidized for a few key industries: petrochemicals, agriculture, large-scale transport, defense, etc., and be unavailable for everyone else.
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Master_SweetPea
Registered:
Nov '02
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Date Posted:
5/29 9:55pm
Subject:
RE: The Price Of Gas Around the World-We are getting ripped off !
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I think we will have a better transition in 50 years.
We are starting to see the impact in boats, like this inflatable solar powered dingy
or this solar powered speed boat, that can easily go 30 knots.
Now we have this Bolt-On kit that can turn any car into a plug in Hybrid,
It's only a matter of time before this idea will work.
WE just have to keep trying!
Eventually we will have a huge Solar, Wind, GeoThermal, and Hydro network set up.
We are going to have to Re-think everything.
Smaller Refrigerators & Freezers
Better ways to cook (parabolic solar cooker anyone?)
Tankless Water Heaters, and Solar Water heaters.
If we want change, it has to be across the board not just in our cars. But our entire lives.
 But for now we just have to wait for the Bird Flu to come in and take out half of our population, to prevent the
cannibals from ever existing.
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I don't like the donkeys and I don't like the Elephants http://www.lp.org "Some people never have anything except ideas Go Do it! Lucky Numbers 3, 11, 21, 31, 41, 43"
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Jabbadabbado
Title: Senate Floor Moderator
Registered:
Mar '99
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Date Posted:
5/30 4:55am
Subject:
RE: The Price Of Gas Around the World-We are getting ripped off !
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If we want change, it has to be across the board not just in our cars. But our entire lives.
Change will come, whether we want it or not. We will be forced into a lower-energy lifestyle. There was an article yesterday in the NYT about the failure to date of our LNG investments. LNG is key to our national energy non strategy as deployed by the Bush administration. North American natural gas has basically peaked, and will eventually crash.
If you think oil prices are high, you haven't seen anything yet. Wait until you find out how much it's going to cost to heat your home during the next hard winter (if you live somewhere where that's an issue) or the one after that. The struggling U.S. economy and it's failing currency can't afford to bid for oil imports and bid for LNG imports at a time when the price of both are skyrocketing.
Natural gas is such a beautifully efficient way to heat homes. But it could have been done more efficiently, and a lot of a precious finite resource was squandered. This is also one of the reason fertilizer prices have launched into the stratosphere and why farmers are having a hard time increasing their profit margins even with record high grain prices.
It will be hard to achieve that smooth transition to electric and solar while energy price inflation is shattering the economy. As natural gas prices rise, you may also see crop yields start to decline in the U.S and elsewhere.
At that point, the bird flu will not be needed.
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malkieD2
Title: EuroMod™-JCC - FFUK-RSA Emeritus
Registered:
Jun '02
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Date Posted:
5/30 6:41am
Subject:
RE: The Price Of Gas Around the World-We are getting ripped off !
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I'm no expert, but apparently geo-thermal heating is the way forward for your home. Coupled with solar-power to heat water.
The French have built a production car powered by compressed air (ok, uses electricity to fill the air tank, but a fraction of the energy use of traditional engines.
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HBOF  There are only 10 types of people in this world; those who understand binary jokes, and those who don't. If you don't already know, you'll never understand. If you already know, no explanation is needed - KW
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KnightWriter
Title:
Administrator Emeritus
Registered:
Nov '01
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Date Posted:
5/30 7:45am
Subject:
RE: The Price Of Gas Around the World-We are getting ripped off !
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Jabbadabbado, this may seem more than a bit alarmist, but looking about 10-20 years down the road, would it be a good idea to choose wisely where to settle for the long-term, and if so, where would some places be?
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Blue_Jedi33
Registered:
Aug '03
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Date Posted:
5/30 7:46am
Subject:
RE: The Price Of Gas Around the World-We are getting ripped off !
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An interesting AP article.
"WASHINGTON — Federal regulators are six months into a wide-ranging investigation of U.S. oil markets, with a focus on possible price manipulation.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission says it started the probe in December and is taking the unusual step of publicizing it "because of today's unprecedented market conditions."
Crude prices have risen more than 42 percent since early December, when they hovered below $90 a barrel. Gasoline prices are nearing a national average of $4 a gallon, up from about $3.20 a year ago.
The agency said details of the investigation remain confidential."
Too this I say good, I hope they find something and punish the big oil companies, their profits are outrageous and on the backs of the working class.
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HawkNC
Title: FanForce RSA
Oceania
Registered:
Oct '01
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Date Posted:
5/30 8:46am
Subject:
RE: The Price Of Gas Around the World-We are getting ripped off !
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malkieD2 posted:
I'm no expert, but apparently geo-thermal heating is the way forward for your home. Coupled with solar-power to heat water.
The French have built a production car powered by compressed air (ok, uses electricity to fill the air tank, but a fraction of the energy use of traditional engines.
A large part of those energy savings is from the vehicle structure itself, which is much lighter than most standard cars thanks to a wider application of composite plastics. The engine block is also considerably lighter because it doesn't need to withstand thousands of miniature explosions each minute. MDI claims a 70% efficient engine, but my understanding is that is simply for the conversion of the energy in compressed air into work. The efficiency of compressing the air in the first place would be much, much lower. Still, I'm looking forward to it - if it's even half as good as they claim, it will be an impressive feat. It's much like a hydrogen vehicle, but without the expense of hydrogen.
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Ultima_1
Registered:
May '01
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Date Posted:
5/30 9:39am
Subject:
RE: The Price Of Gas Around the World-We are getting ripped off !
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Blue_Jedi33 posted:
Too this I say good, I hope they find something and punish the big oil companies, their profits are outrageous and on the backs of the working class.
Not that I disagree with you, but I heard an argument from someone representing the oil companies that if you compare their profit as a percent of their revenue, it's not out of line with most other companies.
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Jabbadabbado
Title: Senate Floor Moderator
Registered:
Mar '99
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Date Posted:
5/30 10:46am
Subject:
RE: The Price Of Gas Around the World-We are getting ripped off !
- Date Edited:
5/30 11:07am (7 edits total)
Edited By:
Jabbadabbado
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I used to work for the CFTC's division of enforcement here in Chicago. The investigation is the result of irate calls from ignorant Congressman. Sure, there may be scattered wrongdoing as there undoubtedly is in every other industry. But my money is on the price of oil being 90% the result of fundamental shifts in supply and demand.
Knightwriter, you'd be hard pressed to be more alarmist than I am.
Peak oil alarmists and Malthusian doomsday quacks take varied approaches toward the future. One group is the survivalist/permaculture group (they are not identical but there is broad overlap). They believe in getting off the grid. Rural living, gardening. Installing solar power. Stockpiling essentials.
Another group believes that we'll need large societal participation to make the transition to a low energy future. This is more the dizfactor stance. We need careful urban planning. We need to de-suburbanize housing nationwide, live closer together, make sure we can walk almost everywhere. Telecommute where possible.
Personally, I think the survivalist/ruralists/permaculturalists are smoking crack. If there is widespread breakdown in society, then the survivalists are sitting ducks, no matter how well armed they are.
Living around the great lakes is not a bad idea. The great lakes are the "Saudi Arabia of fresh water." Drinking water is going to be a bigger and bigger deal around the world every year you're alive from this day forward. No matter how disgustingly polluted the water is, you'll still drink it. I drink Lake Michigan water every day, like it or not. I can almost taste the petrochemical discharge from our nearby BP refinery. Mr44 briefly touched on the Great Lakes Protection Compact in another thread. This is a harbinger of serious political strife in the future.
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KnightWriter
Title:
Administrator Emeritus
Registered:
Nov '01
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Date Posted:
5/30 11:20am
Subject:
RE: The Price Of Gas Around the World-We are getting ripped off !
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What's your opinion of the Phoenix area in regards to energy demands of the future (including water)? We're in a desert, but we at least have the Colorado River. Of course, there's already a long history of legal conflict over that source of water, and it's not hard to foresee a future where the conflict becomes armed in some way.
I'd like to move somewhere else, to be sure, and I'm just not sure where. It may well be out of the country, but again, I don't know where to. I'm still young overall, at 26, so there's time (I hope) to choose wisely.
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Jabbadabbado
Title: Senate Floor Moderator
Registered:
Mar '99
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Date Posted:
5/30 2:19pm
Subject:
RE: The Price Of Gas Around the World-We are getting ripped off !
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Phoenix can't sustain the level of growth it's had over the past decade, although that era may be over. Alberta is in the middle of an amazing economic boom. There's no place in the U.S. like that now.
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Master_SweetPea
Registered:
Nov '02
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Date Posted:
6/3 5:33am
Subject:
RE: The Price Of Gas Around the World-We are getting ripped off !
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Jabbadabbado posted:
Another group believes that we'll need large societal participation to make the transition to a low energy future. This is more the dizfactor stance. We need careful urban planning. We need to de-suburbanize housing nationwide, live closer together, make sure we can walk almost everywhere. Telecommute where possible.
Personally, I think the survivalist/ruralists/permaculturalists are smoking crack. If there is widespread breakdown in society, then the survivalists are sitting ducks, no matter how well armed they are.
And if there IS a widespread breakdown in society, being in a master planned community would be better how?
I'm not really taking any side, but the idea that we can dismiss a large portion of the nation like that is just foolish.
Change obviously won't come overnight, but we can't expect one silver bullet, and one style of living for everyone.
...and luck favors the prepared.
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I don't like the donkeys and I don't like the Elephants http://www.lp.org "Some people never have anything except ideas Go Do it! Lucky Numbers 3, 11, 21, 31, 41, 43"
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Princess_Tina
Registered:
May '01
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Date Posted:
6/3 8:08am
Subject:
RE: The Price Of Gas Around the World-We are getting ripped off !
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Interesting story about GM closing four truck plants and looking to sell the Hummer brand. I think it's pretty clear at this point that GM expects high gas prices are here to stay.
GM to Close Four Plants, May Unload Hummer Line
WILMINGTON, Delaware (Reuters) - General Motors Corp <GM.N> on Tuesday said it was closing four North American truck plants and could sell its Hummer brand to cut slow-selling trucks and SUVs from its lineup in response to higher gasoline prices the automaker now sees as a permanent threat to its business.
Chief Executive Rick Wagoner, speaking after a revised restructuring plan was approved by the automaker's board, said GM would close the four truck plants and add shifts at two other plants making more popular car models.
In addition, Wagoner said GM was reviewing the Hummer brand and could sell the military-derived SUV line, which has become synonymous with gas-guzzling excess.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-gm.html
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Jabbadabbado
Title: Senate Floor Moderator
Registered:
Mar '99
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Date Posted:
6/3 9:51am
Subject:
RE: The Price Of Gas Around the World-We are getting ripped off !
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There's been a lot of talk about China and India being to blame for high oil prices. But there's a potential explanation that's so straightforward and logical that it may even be true.
The North Sea oil fields were, along with Alaska's north slope, the two last and biggest megafields ever discovered. How important were they?
1980. Europe imports more than 90% of its oil. Oil prices peak. The high prices finally make the full exploitation of the North Sea commercially viable.
1980 - 1999. The EU goes from importing more than 90% of its oil to being nearly 50% independent. Britain and Norway become prominent oil exporters, and oil prices fall to less than $10 barrel. The Economist ponders a permanent future of $5 oil.
1998-1999. North Sea oil peaks.
2000-2001. Noticeable declines in North Sea oil production. Oil prices begin rising. The EU begins importing more oil.
2008. The EU imports nearly 75% of its oil. Britain is again an oil importer. Oil prices hit a new record, passing the 1980 peak in inflation-adjusted dollars.
China, the EU and the U.S. are now competing head-to-head for a declining worldwide oil export market.
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Mr44
Registered:
May '02
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Date Posted:
6/3 12:53pm
Subject:
RE: The Price Of Gas Around the World-We are getting ripped off !
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From what I remember- mostly through this thread- the US's import percent has actually been fairly constant, and not that large, right? The US's uses a lot of oil, but only has to import a relatively low amount.
How do you see the various situations in relation to switching to alternative sources?
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