Gasoline Prices

[Zathras]

Latest [-]ripoff[/-] price is $3.67/gallon.

Don't be surprised and don't feel it is a ripoff. It is going up in the future, and here in the US we pay much less than most countries (although certainly not all).

Global demand is on an upward trend, Chinese consumers purchased more cars for the first time last year, than US consumers. Gasoline powered verhicle ownership is going up in India as well.

Add to that, oil is getting more expensive to get out of the ground and refine. Sure, there is lots of it still underground. But it costs a lot more to get oil out of deep sea rigs, or shale than it does from the middle east or texas.

Before you even consider removing subsidies from oil, actually paying for the true cost of 'stablizing the middle east' or environmental concerns, those two factors alone are enough to give us a general increasing cost trend.

So plan ahead and be prepared to either pay more, or not need to purchase gas for transportation.

 

[NW-Bound]

Things always make me nervous when I see something clearly and wonder why those in charge of such things are blind to it. Can anyone understand why we don't have fields of wind turbines and solar panels instead of nuclear power?

A recent issue of Time magazine has an article on why the revival of nuclear power will not be happening, even if the Japanese nuclear mishap did not happen.

I love wind turbines, but the wind still dies out sometimes, doesn't it? Wind turbines will need a back up power source. The initial cost may not be that low. And some of the early designs appear costly for maintenance.

Travelers on I-10 between Arizona and California cannot miss the field of turbines near Indio. In the mid 70s, the first time I drove on that road, I already saw some standing. So many have been abandoned over the years, their blades locked even in a strong breeze of 10-15 mph. Simple as it looks, obviously it took time for the industry to come up with a robust and efficient design to build and to maintain.

Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens had a grand plan for large scale wind power, and I was following it with great interest. Then, boom, came the recession, and I understood that he had to pull the plug. Have not heard any more about it in the last year or two. It's sad.

 

[samclem]

So CAFE laws are making the kinds of cars we want to buy more expensive, so the car companies can afford to shuttle out cars no one's buying but makes the environmentalists feel better?

Hey, make the most of it. The carmakers have to lower the prices of the cars that good gas mileage just to move them so they are allowed to sell more gas guzzlers without paying a fine. I'm getting my next econobox purchase subsidized by the buyers of SUVs and huge cars. It ain't right, but those are the rules put in place by those who know better than the public.

 

[Isadora]

But, the only reason we have as much as we do is that the federal government subsidizes wind power. It's still cheaper to dig coal out of the ground than to build high tech windmills.

See, that is simply something I can't comprehend. The mining equipment, the danger to the miners...how can it be less expensive than wind farms. At least the US government (as well as Germany) subsidizes the building, in Hungary you need to apply for permission - this, of course, means that you pay people off along the way to get the permission. You already paid for a windmill before you ever get to build it. The other problem is - getting parts if anything should go wrong. Up on the slope behind the house a fellow has one that had been still for over a year. He needs a 50 Euro part that he can't get. In my mind, there is simply no excuse for such inefficiency.

 

[M Paquette]

See, that is simply something I can't comprehend. The mining equipment, the danger to the miners...how can it be less expensive than wind farms.

Wind farms have their own issues. There is the appearance issue, the bird kills, hazards like icing (picture a half ton chunk of ice thrown from a 116 foot spinning arm) and blade breakage (around 1% of turbines per year), and the noise, both high frequency and ultra-low frequency (pulse), for persons living nearby and particularly downwind. The flashing aviation warning lights have also been a source of complaints.

Construction requires heavy machinery and considerable concrete work. The tower for a turbine is anchored to a concrete and rebar platform 30-50 feet across and 6-30 feet deep, on the order of 1000 tons. Blasting may be needed to prepare the pad area.

In terms of deaths per terawatt-hour generated, wind turbines come in at around 0.15 deaths per TWh, using statistics collected through 2000. That's about 1% of the rate from coal in the US, which runs around 15 deaths per TWh as of 2000. Hydroelectric power runs about 0.10 deaths per TWh, and nuclear runs about 0.04 deaths per TWh.

 

[BigNick]

Things always make me nervous when I see something clearly and wonder why those in charge of such things are blind to it. Can anyone understand why we don't have fields of wind turbines and solar panels instead of nuclear power Safe, as abundant. Perhaps there is no mystery that allows them to charge outrageous prices for? I don't know, but it is sad for many reasons.

Are you a mechanical, civil, or nuclear engineer ? If not, it could be that what you think you see clearly is, in fact, a greatly oversimplified heuristic image. This stuff is way harder than the stories in the media would have you believe.