Filled up for $1.78/gallon

[Perfectlap]

^ disturbing sig

anyhoo...doesn't matter you'll be paying $3+ a gallon by this time next year.
$4-5 a gallon in two years.

The cost of a gallon of gas is rising quicker than the cost of living and rising quicker than the average worker gets in wage increases.

[MNBoxster]

Hi,

Well, everything is relative. It's just that Gasoline prices impact the psyche more than many other things because it represents a loss of freedom - the freedom to go where and when one wants.

Many other everyday items cost waay more than gasoline, some ridiculously, and inexplicably so, but don't spark the reaction fuel prices do. Some examples:

• Mobil1 - $24/gal
  
  Whole Milk - $3.80/gal.
  
  Listerene - $9/gal.
  
  Bottled Water - $8.72/gal.
  
  Starbuck's - $64/gal.
  
  Orange Juice - $4.89/gal. (and rising)
  
  Diet Snapple - $10.32/gal.
  
  Soft Drinks - $7.04/gal.
  
  Pepto Bismol - $123.20/gal.

Happy Motoring!... Jim'99

[Perfectlap]

I can do without nearly all of those things...but the engine oil which I only need once a year.

gas is something that you really don't have a choice about. You may save a few bucks by going to different gas stations but if the lowest price to fill your tank is nearly twice what it was two years ago. You are a paying. Or you are a staying home, or taking public transportation (if it shows up, waited 2 hours today).
Everbody else can switch from Starbucks to cheapo instant brand, from listerine to generic supermarket brand, from bottled water to tap water, and make tremendous savings yet still be able to go one with their lives without skipping a beat. Can't do that with unleaded.

[Brucelee]

Originally Posted by Perfectlap

I can do without nearly all of those things...but the engine oil which I only need once a year.

gas is something that you really don't have a choice about. You may save a few bucks by going to different gas stations but if the lowest price to fill your tank is nearly twice what it was two years ago. You are a paying. Or you are a staying home, or taking public transportation (if it shows up, waited 2 hours today).
Everbody else can switch from Starbucks to cheapo instant brand, from listerine to generic supermarket brand, from bottled water to tap water, and make tremendous savings yet still be able to go one with their lives without skipping a beat. Can't do that with unleaded.

I just changed cars and improved my mileage per gallon by 50%. Also switched from premium to regular gas, save another .20 per gallon.

In the long run, everyone has alternatives. It is the use of these alternative that has resulted in the drop in demand for oil and the drop in oil prices to under $50 per barrel. Simple economic behavior.

BTW-I will take any bet you want on that gas price you pointed to. Lastly of course, the historic price increases on gas has actually been moderate on a percentage basis. Adjusted for inflation, it has NOT been a large issue for many many years. It appears that the last year was a blip. Of course, you do have to strip out the taxes on gas to see the REAL cost, which in some states is nearly .40 per gallon. So, in the example above, the real cost of gas is likley about $1.40 per gallon. Not bad I think!

We shall see.

Next time, read the article and respond with facts, not hype!

[Perfectlap]

question, when crude was last $50 a drum two years ago, how much was a gallon of unleaded? Now that its back to $50 why is unleaded still a dollar more per gallon than it was two years ago?
Are we going to see a a dollar drop in the price of a gallon of 93?

[Brucelee]

Originally Posted by Perfectlap

question, when crude was last $50 a drum two years ago, how much was a gallon of unleaded? Now that its back to $50 why is unleaded still a dollar more per gallon than it was two years ago?
Are we going to see a a dollar drop in the price of a gallon of 93?

As the article pointed out, crude prices have plunged quickly and gas prices are following, with some lag.

Regarding the specific price per gallon in your area, look to your state and fed gas tax as a source of discrep. In CA case, we also have our own "special fuel" mandated by state law. Costs more!

[Allen K. Littlefield]

One must also take into account, while the rest of the nation freezes in extremely cold temperatures, the Liberal North East ( a vast consumer of all energies) is enjoying a rather mild winter which has led to surplus of heating oil due to less demand. More crude is now available for gas but since that demand is off things are starting to back up.

We also are not "addicted" to oil. Oil is the life blood of a free capatilist economy. Are we addicted to a steady flow of red blood cells? Too bad the Ecocrats will not allow drilling in the Arctic or Gulf for our own oil which would add to the surplus and thus furthur drive down prices and boost the overall everyday Joe's economy. We can only wait and see.

986geezer

[Brucelee]

Too funny! See below:



Read the latest on global cooling in the Winter 2003-2004 issue of 21st Century in "The Ice Age Is Coming" by Zbigniew Jaworowski, M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc. (pdf format)


Return to top Is a New Ice Age Under Way?
by Laurence Hecht

“Watch out, Al Gore. The glaciers will get you!” With that appended note, my friend, retired field geologist Jack Sauers, forwarded to me a report that should have been a lead item in every newspaper in the world. It was the news that the best-measured glacier in North America, the Nisqually on Mount Rainier, has been growing since 1931.

The significance of the fact, immediately grasped by any competent climatologist, is that glacial advance is an early warning sign of Northern Hemisphere chilling of the sort that can bring on an Ice Age. The last Little Ice Age continued from about 1400 to 1850. It was followed by a period of slight warming. There are a growing number of signs that we may be descending into another Little Ice Age—all the mountains of “global warming” propaganda aside.

Our current understanding of the long-term climate cycles shows that for the past 800,000 years, periods of approximately 100,000 years’ duration, called Ice Ages, have been interrupted by periods of approximately 10,000 years, known as Interglacials. (We are now about 10,500 years into the present Interglacial.)

What Causes Ice Ages
These cycles are not mere statistical correlations, as some Wall Street prognosticator working at the modern PC version of a ouija board might spin out. They are determined, with great scientific precision, to correlate with long-term, cyclical changes in the Earth’s orbital relationship to the Sun. Three fundamental orbital relationships are involved, each of which contributes to the amount of sunlight received in high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. When these cycles combine to reduce the incoming solar radiation (insolation) during summer months, over a number of years, the ice sheets which permanently cover Greenland, parts of Alaska, northern Canada, Scandinavia, and elsewhere, begin to advance.

At a certain point, the growth process becomes self-feeding, partly because the high reflectivity of ice and snow reduces the local temperature, partly for reasons that are not fully understood. The glaciers thicken and expand until they become continental ice sheets, one to two miles thick, creeping ever southward. Geological evidence shows that in the last Ice Age, the southern boundary of the continental ice sheet, known as a terminal moraine, stretched down the center of Long Island, through New York City, across New Jersey and Pennsylvania to Southern Illinois and Missouri, then up the Plains States through Montana and Washington State. All of this real estate was buried under one to two miles of ice.

Geologically and climatologically speaking, we are due for another such glacial advance. It might not happen in our lifetimes, but radical shifts in the climate of northern regions can take place suddenly, and in some places may already be taking place.

How to Look at ‘Global Warming’
A very important thing to understand in interpreting all the swill that issues daily from the Global Warming mill (really the anti-industry, anti-population lobby, headed and pumped with money by the Royal Consort Prince Philip, and former Nazi Party member Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands), is that the onset of an Ice Age is not marked by global cooling. In fact, the very same astronomical conditions which cause a cooling at high latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere, produce the opposite effect in the Southern Hemisphere, where there is much more ocean to absorb and retain the incoming solar radiation. Thus the global average temperature does not tell us anything of importance.

The geological requirements for an Ice Age are the presence of a large landmass around the Polar Circle and extending southward. A look at the globe, or world map, shows that those conditions exist in the Northern Hemisphere, but not in the Southern. Therefore, the important thing to look at is the climate conditions in northern and far northern regions. Some of the indicators:


• Since 1980, there has been an advance of more than 55% of the 625 mountain glaciers under observation by the World Glacier Monitoring group in Zurich. (From 1926 to 1960, some 70-95% of these glaciers were in retreat.)

• A comparison of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 1965 and 1990 Plant Hardiness Zone Maps, shows a southward change of one zone, or 10°F, between 1965 and 1990.

• Careful measurements of the oxygen isotope ratios in German oaks, which are rigorously calibrated to temperature data, show a 1°C temperature decline from 1350 to 1800 (the lowpoint of the Little Ice Age). Temperature thereafter increased by 1°C from 1800 to 1930, and has been declining since then.

• From weather stations in the Alps, and in the Nordic countries, we find the temperature decline since 1930 is also 1°C.

• Satellite measurements have shown growth in the height and breadth of the huge Greenland ice sheet, the largest in the Northern Hemisphere

On Nisqually
That brings us to the Nisqually glacier, up on the 14,410-foot Mount Rainier, near Tacoma, Wash. Just 85 feet shy of Mount Whitney, the highest point in the lower 48 states, Mount Rainier has 26 glaciers, and is the largest single peak system in the United States.

In 1931, fearful that the receding glacier would provide insufficient runoff for their newly completed hydroelectric facility, Tacoma City Light began careful measurements of the glacier. Since the mid-1800s, the glacier had receded about 1 kilometer. Annual to semi-annual measurements, continued by the U.S. Geological Survey and private contractors for the National Park Service, provide the longest continuous series of glacier measurements in North America.

The details are described in a report by government specialists, which appeared in the September 2000 issue of Washington Geology:

“The greatest thickening during the period of measurement occurred between 1931 and 1945, when the glacier thickened by about 50% near 2,800 meters of altitude. This and subsequent thickenings during the mid-1970s to mid-1980s produced waves that advanced its terminus. Glacier thinning occured during intervening periods. Between 1994 and 1997, the glacier thickened by 17 meters at 2,800-m altitude, indicating probable glacier advance during the first decade of the 21st century.”

That’s the story from Mount Rainier. Retired geologist Sauers, who has been observing conditions in the Cascade Mountains of western Washington for a lifetime, says “I’m preparing for an Ice Age.” Perhaps we all should.


Laurence Hecht is Editor-in-Chief of 21st Century.

[MNBoxster]

Originally Posted by Brucelee

...In the long run, everyone has alternatives. It is the use of these alternative that has resulted in the drop in demand for oil and the drop in oil prices to under $50 per barrel. Simple economic behavior... in the example above, the real cost of gas is likley about $1.40 per gallon. Not bad I think!...Next time, read the article and respond with facts, not hype!

Hi,

I agree with what you say and found the article to be very credible and informative.

Gasoline, even at it's recent high was still a very good bargain given cost/mi. or Therms/gal. compared to many other possible fuels. We're just so used to paying a historically low price for it, that the new realities are stinging a lot of people.

Happy Motoring!... Jim'99

[RandallNeighbour]

When I have a sour stomach, I'd pay $200 a gallon for Pepto Bismol! I gotta have my pink stomach stuff when I feel like

[racer_d]

Paid $2.39/gal for Sunoco 93

[jeffsquire]

Originally Posted by MNBoxster

Hi,

Well, everything is relative. It's just that Gasoline prices impact the psyche more than many other things because it represents a loss of freedom - the freedom to go where and when one wants.

Many other everyday items cost waay more than gasoline, some ridiculously, and inexplicably so, but don't spark the reaction fuel prices do. Some examples:

• Mobil1 - $24/gal
  
  Whole Milk - $3.80/gal.
  
  Listerene - $9/gal.
  
  Bottled Water - $8.72/gal.
  
  Starbuck's - $64/gal.
  
  Orange Juice - $4.89/gal. (and rising)
  
  Diet Snapple - $10.32/gal.
  
  Soft Drinks - $7.04/gal.
  
  Pepto Bismol - $123.20/gal.

Happy Motoring!... Jim'99

_______________________

Alas don't forget Perrier or other high end water bottles. $10 a gallon. Much more depending on when and where you buy it. Even at Walmart bottled water runs about $3.00 for a 12 pack of half liter bottles. WATER, mind you. Water!! The planet's most plentify resource.

[Allen K. Littlefield]

Ah yes Bruce, the Global Warming (caused by American capitalisim of course) story. A computor model shows that greenhouse gasses caused by US mainly, have made the planet warm up and will soon kill us all. I will bet I could make a computer model that would prove a pig is a steam engine but that wouldn't make it so. G.W. is a THEORY. A cursory course in geology will reveal that the plant has cooled and warmed over the centuries, plates have shifted, mountains have risen and fallen, well you get the picture. The ice was one mile thick over here in the Hudson Valley and the debris it deposited created Long Island. All this without evil characters like Wallmart, Exxon, Wall Street and Enron. How could this be? Maybe the activety of the sun had something to do with it? Nah, doesn't fit the political agenda of the Progressive marxists who hunger for control. This anti american trash is pushed in our high schools and colleges but not everybody is buying it.

Enough of my soapbox, just might be able to get my gas guzzleing taxed 986 out for a spin as the sun is shining and I may need to pick up a few cigars (OH NO not Cigars!!). I may even start installing my nice new center caps. We will see.

986geezer

[Brucelee]

As usual, the science of "global warming" is more complex and less dramatic than the popular press or politicials can handle.

http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/

[Brucelee]

An except:



What are the take-home messages:


The temperature effect of atmospheric carbon dioxide is logarithmic, not exponential.

The potential planetary warming from a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide from pre-Industrial Revolution levels of ~280ppmv to 560ppmv (possible some time later this century - perhaps) is generally estimated at less than 1 °C.

The guesses of significantly larger warming are dependent on "feedback" (supplementary) mechanisms programmed into climate models. The existence of these "feedback" mechanisms is uncertain and the cumulative sign of which is unknown (they may add to warming from increased atmospheric carbon dioxide or, equally likely, might suppress it).

The total warming since measurements have been attempted is thought to be about 0.6 degrees Centigrade. At least half of the estimated temperature increment occurred before 1950, prior to significant change in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Assuming the unlikely case that all the natural drivers of planetary temperature change ceased to operate at the time of measured atmospheric change then a 30% increment in atmospheric carbon dioxide caused about one-third of one degree temperature increment since and thus provides empirical support for less than one degree increment due to a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

There is no linear relationship between atmospheric carbon dioxide change and global mean temperature or global mean temperature trend -- global mean temperature has both risen and fallen during the period atmospheric carbon dioxide has been rising.
The natural world has tolerated greater than one-degree fluctuations in mean temperature during the relatively recent past and thus current changes are within the range of natural variation. (See, for example, ice core and sea surface temperature reconstructions.)

Other anthropogenic effects are vastly more important, at least on local and regional scales.
Fixation on atmospheric carbon dioxide is a distraction from these more important anthropogenic effects.
Despite attempts to label atmospheric carbon dioxide a "pollutant" it is, in fact, an essential trace gas, the increasing abundance of which is a bonus for the bulk of the biosphere.
There is no reason to believe that slightly lower temperatures are somehow preferable to slightly higher temperatures - there is no known "optimal" nor any known means of knowingly and predictably adjusting some sort of planetary thermostat.

Fluctuations in atmospheric carbon dioxide are of little relevance in the short to medium term (although should levels fall too low it could prove problematic in the longer-term).

Activists and zealots constantly shrilling over atmospheric carbon dioxide are misdirecting attention and effort from real and potentially addressable local, regional and planetary problems.

Remember: Water vapor and carbon dioxide are major greenhouse gases. Water vapor accounts for about 70% of the greenhouse effect, carbon dioxide somewhere between 4.2% and 8.4%. Much of the wavelength bands where carbon dioxide is active are either at or near saturation. Water vapor absorbs infrared over much the same range as carbon dioxide and more besides. Clouds are not composed of greenhouse gas -- they are mostly water droplets -- but absorb about one-fifth of the longwave radiation emitted by Earth. Clouds can briefly saturate the atmospheric radiation window (8-13µm) through which some Earth radiation passes directly to space (those hot and sticky overcast nights produce this effect - that is greenhouse but has nothing to do with carbon dioxide). Greenhouse gases can not obstruct this window although ozone absorbs in a narrow slice at 9.6µm. Adding more greenhouse gases which absorb in already saturated bandwidths has no net effect. Adding them in near-saturated bands has little additional effect

[z12358]

Z: You can bring a thirsty donkey to the water but you cannot make it drink.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

"The extent of the scientific consensus on global warming—that "most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been attributable to human activities"[1]—has been investigated: In the journal Science in December 2004, Dr Naomi Oreskes published a study of the abstracts of the 928 refereed scientific articles in the ISI citation database identified with the keywords "global climate change" and published from 1993–2003. This study concluded that 75% of the 928 articles either explicitly or implicitly accepted the consensus view—the remainder of the articles covered methods or paleoclimate and did not take any stance on recent climate change. The study did not report how many of the 928 abstracts explicitly accepted the hypothesis of human-induced warming, but none of the 928 articles surveyed accepted any other hypothesis[1]."


Z: You can learn about a person from the company he keeps.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Kyoto_Protocol_signatories


Z.

[MNBoxster]

Originally Posted by Brucelee

An except:



What are the take-home messages:


The temperature effect of atmospheric carbon dioxide is logarithmic, not exponential.

The potential planetary warming from a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide from pre-Industrial Revolution levels of ~280ppmv to 560ppmv (possible some time later this century - perhaps) is generally estimated at less than 1 °C.

The guesses of significantly larger warming are dependent on "feedback" (supplementary) mechanisms programmed into climate models. The existence of these "feedback" mechanisms is uncertain and the cumulative sign of which is unknown (they may add to warming from increased atmospheric carbon dioxide or, equally likely, might suppress it).

The total warming since measurements have been attempted is thought to be about 0.6 degrees Centigrade. At least half of the estimated temperature increment occurred before 1950, prior to significant change in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Assuming the unlikely case that all the natural drivers of planetary temperature change ceased to operate at the time of measured atmospheric change then a 30% increment in atmospheric carbon dioxide caused about one-third of one degree temperature increment since and thus provides empirical support for less than one degree increment due to a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

There is no linear relationship between atmospheric carbon dioxide change and global mean temperature or global mean temperature trend -- global mean temperature has both risen and fallen during the period atmospheric carbon dioxide has been rising.
The natural world has tolerated greater than one-degree fluctuations in mean temperature during the relatively recent past and thus current changes are within the range of natural variation. (See, for example, ice core and sea surface temperature reconstructions.)

Other anthropogenic effects are vastly more important, at least on local and regional scales.
Fixation on atmospheric carbon dioxide is a distraction from these more important anthropogenic effects.
Despite attempts to label atmospheric carbon dioxide a "pollutant" it is, in fact, an essential trace gas, the increasing abundance of which is a bonus for the bulk of the biosphere.
There is no reason to believe that slightly lower temperatures are somehow preferable to slightly higher temperatures - there is no known "optimal" nor any known means of knowingly and predictably adjusting some sort of planetary thermostat.

Fluctuations in atmospheric carbon dioxide are of little relevance in the short to medium term (although should levels fall too low it could prove problematic in the longer-term).

Activists and zealots constantly shrilling over atmospheric carbon dioxide are misdirecting attention and effort from real and potentially addressable local, regional and planetary problems.

Remember: Water vapor and carbon dioxide are major greenhouse gases. Water vapor accounts for about 70% of the greenhouse effect, carbon dioxide somewhere between 4.2% and 8.4%. Much of the wavelength bands where carbon dioxide is active are either at or near saturation. Water vapor absorbs infrared over much the same range as carbon dioxide and more besides. Clouds are not composed of greenhouse gas -- they are mostly water droplets -- but absorb about one-fifth of the longwave radiation emitted by Earth. Clouds can briefly saturate the atmospheric radiation window (8-13µm) through which some Earth radiation passes directly to space (those hot and sticky overcast nights produce this effect - that is greenhouse but has nothing to do with carbon dioxide). Greenhouse gases can not obstruct this window although ozone absorbs in a narrow slice at 9.6µm. Adding more greenhouse gases which absorb in already saturated bandwidths has no net effect. Adding them in near-saturated bands has little additional effect

Hi,

I agree mostly (about 99%) with what you say/cite here. Global Warming is a theory, as yet unproved. Lack of historical records and the relative infancy of climate modelling are poor foundations from which to make predictions.

The Historical Record dates mainly back only 150 years or so. Speculation beyond that is based on such diverse sources as Chromatic study of gas bubbles trapped in ice (which is really only a snapshot from which much speculation is derived) to old paintings of Winter Scenes which showed rivers being frozen, which are now usually not frozen over. There can be many other explanations of such events than Climate Change, such as occasional aberrations, which we have also experienced in our lifetimes, but which in and of themselves, do not support a theory of man-made climate change.

Computer modelling is currently such that the earth is broken into 15 mi.² grids. In each of these, the grid is either reflective (cities, desert, rock) or absorbant (vegetation, Lakes, etc.), precipitating or dry, etc. Now, we all have experienced where it can be cloudy or raining just a couple blocks away, while in our position, it is sunny and dry. So, these models are not yet developed to a point where they provide useful and undeniable replication of real-world events.

So, in all, I remain unconvinced of some of the more dire predictions. That said, there are literally billions of tons of Carbon released into the atmosphere which were, prior to the industrialization of the world, locked up in the oceans and rock. A gallon of gasoline weighs about 6.25 lb. and is composed of about 80% Carbon. This means that everytime we burn a gallon, we're releasing 5 lbs. of Carbon into the atmosphere (or about 80 lbs./tankful). I cannot state, nor do I believe, that this is having no effect whatever.

Global Warming may well be happening, and a Tipping Point may be reached in my, or my nephews' lifetimes. I'm just saying that so far, the Science has not proved such a thing. And if unproved, there is no guarantee that they will ever be correct with these predictions, or if so, as severely as a prevailing view seems to think. But, the Science is not as pure or as empirical as the Scientific Method dictates. Politics and Funding have much to do with how the argument is presented and pursued. How much funding do you think is currently available to those Scientists and Institutions who are proferring the opposing view that all this is incorrect?. If you are a scientist with a family to support, and a career to advance, or a University with need to fund R&D and gain Grant money, which position are you most likely to pursue from a practical standpoint?...

Happy Motoring!... Jim'99