Rising Gas Prices - 2006/12/05 18:05Well the midterm elections are over, and so are the falling gas prices. I heard a lot of speculation that the price decline was a Republican ploy to get votes. I thought that there could be some truth to this, but there was likely more going on. And even if this were true, they would wait a while before increasing prices so it wouldn't look so suspicious.
As we saw, soon after the elections gas prices began to rise once again, do you think this connection is real? Further, do you think high gas prices are necessarilly a bad thing?
While I hate paying high prices, and understand the potentially devastating consequences to our economy, I fear that we need something like higher gas prices to motivate people to move to and support more renewable energy sources.
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kroboto
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Re:Rising Gas Prices - 2006/12/06 02:11Conspiracy theories are a dime a dozen. Litterally.
While the President may have some influence regarding the price of gas the price of crude oil is public knowledge. As such he has little to no influence in the pricing. Most oil companies prolly couldn't give a hoot as to republicans in general. Bush himself, maybe. But still, there is pretty much nothing he can do or say to influence the prices.
Regarding the benefits of high prices, there really is no good to come of it. A person can convert a passenger car or truck, even easier, to all electric for around $2000-3000 dollars. Exact price depends on the features and setup needed of course. The price of getting the components will increase with the higher prices of petroleum. So if you spend around $20 week for fuel, like me, then the entire setup will pay for itself in about 2-3 years. Not including the increase in ones electric bill. The major decrease in range in a pitfall. Going all electric will result in a range of 30-40 miles total per charge. Basically, you would spend the same amount dollar-wise as going just straight gasoline. Cleaner, yes. Cheaper, sorta. No oil changes. No environmental inspections.
As to the inevitable switch from petroleum to hydrogen, until the general population is willing to fork out the cash for the massive infrastructure rebuild, it won't happen. Not until the oil runs out. Little factoid here: the Uintah Basin, and surrounding areas, contain what could possibly be the worlds largest oil deposit on earth in the form of oil shale. None of which has been seriously researched let alone extracted. Linky: http://ostseis.anl.gov/guide/oilshale/index.cfm
So my question to you is this, what would you prefer, hydrogen or electric for cars? Hydrogen costs more but goes much farther.
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mikehamel
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Re:Rising Gas Prices - 2006/12/06 07:04Well I guess the main questions isn't as much whether or not Bush actually created the lower prices, but maybe whether the oil companies lowered oil prices in an effort to keep republicans in office. Republicans, generally speaking, are more friendly to the oil interests (this is especially true of the Bush whitehouse).
As for cleaner cars, maybe it's not that higher priced gas leads to some particular new technology, but that it get people thinking about the issue more generally. I think that over the past year there has been a major shift peoples view of global warming and a need for alternative energy. I spent some time in congress in 2003, and at briefings on global warming, it was apparent that the republicans weren't buying it- I think this has changed quite dramatically (although I am aware that there are still plenty of skeptics).
I think we have a lot of research to do as far as technology goes. While there are shale oil supplies, they are rediculously expensive to extract today-- I think that once we become dependant on shale oil the prices will be sufficiently high that we'll have much broader energy sources. I'm also not so sure about hydrogen yet. Much of what I have heard at this point shows a lot of uncertaintly. I think that the cost of production is too high right now, but maybe we can reach economies of scale if we continue to pursue this path, and maybe concerns like oil supplies and gas prices will prompt this change.
Unfortunately I'm risk averse, and although I'd like to see new technologies implemented, I don't want to spend money on technology that will be dropped or difficult and expensive to maintain. I think this feeling is fairly common, and it's something that we will need to overcome in the coming years.
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mikehamel
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Re:Rising Gas Prices - 2006/12/07 00:02Getting a little bit off topic, but related, I think we have missed some serious opportunities to improve the situation. First off congress has been consistently rejecting bills to increase national mpg requirements, this issue has come up time and time again, and the proposals are far from unreasonable. I don't think that most Americans realize that average fuel economy in the mid '80's was better than it is today, to me this is incomprehensible.
The question before the supreme court of whether the EPA should be regulating car based carbon dioxide on a national level is also very important here. I don't think there is one silver bullet that is going to magically solve all of these issues, but I think we need a series of different things to take place, including private innovation and government oversight.
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kroboto
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Re:Rising Gas Prices - 2006/12/07 01:13The current requirements are 27.5 MPG for passenger cars. Not very impressive considering my 1987 Chevy Celebrity still gets 26 MPG. (Mostly highway speeds) After nearly 20 years of 'innovation' I would think that they could do far better for a mid-sized sedan. The 2007 Honda Accord, at best, gets a rough 24 city/34 hwy. A couple miles more per gallon per decade. Go figure. At that rate, we will run out of oil before anyone gets to buy the 100MPG car.
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