$8 per gallon of gas - Page 3

On June 08 2008 12:52 Jibba wrote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/08/science/earth/08wbiofuels.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0323/p01s01-sten.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/29/AR2008042903092.html
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1725975,00.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/21/AR2008042102555.html

Stop
Supporting
Fucking
Biofuel.

And it is negatively affecting agriculture, even in the countries that can sustain it like the US and Brazil. Corn is being overplanted (bad for soil) which means less land is going towards other crops, driving their prices up. Then livestock owners are getting screwed by the increase in corn price so their prices rise as well. The biofuel industry is not driven by science or reason.

On June 09 2008 00:49 Superiorwolf wrote:

Ahh... Costco is always 10-15 cents less than surrounding gas areas :D

On June 09 2008 03:23 Mortality wrote:


Why do you pay such high taxes? How do you think your countries can afford to subsidize/partially subsidize health care and things of that nature? We pay a lot less in taxes.

Part of the cost of gasoline is that there are only so many refineries in the world that are up to the standards of USA/Europe/Japan. Four of the biggest ones are in the USA; I don't know how many are located in and around Europe. If there aren't enough, then refined oil would have to be shipped back to Europe from the USA.

Part of it is that a lot of wealthy investors have parked their money in oil futures, which has jacked up oil prices by creating an artificial demand.

Probably the reason they are doing this is to bail out of real estate. In the past, investors would make "risk free" transactions by treating real estate as a commodity. In other words, so long as the value of real estate would continue to increase, a the transaction would be almost certain to turn a profit.

...But this caused a bubble in the real estate market, and when that bubble burst a lot of investors found themselves losing money really fast. So they asked themselves, "what other safe commodities are there to invest in?" No alternative fuel source has come along yet that is as efficient or effective as oil. Even this E-83 ethanol shit the media keeps touting -- the amount of energy needed to produce it is almost exactly the same as it gives in return, so this means that more oil burning powerplants will use more energy in order to produce the E-83. The difference between the enivornmental movement 30 years ago and the environmental movement today is that the corporations have figured out how to turn a profit from it (hence why it hasn't taken off in America -- who flips the bill? Tax payers, not corporations, not wealthy investors, which is something most people have yet to grasp).

But I digress. The point is that no matter what happens, demand for oil will continue increasing for AT LEAST 10 more years. So in order to make "risk free" deals, oil is the thing to use, but this creates an artificial demand for it, just like how real estate became over priced 2-3 years ago.

On June 09 2008 04:15 Jibba wrote:

This is a pretty sweet post.

I just want to defend the US transportation system a little bit. I know it's not good, especially here in Michigan, but this is a large fucking country. I've seen idiots talk about how we need to develop a more modern transit system similar to Japanese subways and trains. Well, that may work when you're the size of New Mexico (which is a huge exaggeration, because Honshu is the only island that well connected) but not so much in America. If the Czech Republic were 122 times larger than it currently is, its roads would be a lot shittier than they currently are. We're 17 times bigger than the largest Western European country (France) so give us a bit of a break with the road systems.