Boycot Fuel Week!!

"Darrel Toepfer" wrote in message
. 18...
"Lawson" wrote:

IF the government was truly interested in helping, they's stop giving
tax breaks to oil companies, tax the crap out of gasoline and let it
rise to $10. Then maybe we'd use less, maybe. Addiction is a hard
mistress, it leads us to make poor choices and then justify them

http://storyofstuff.com

That's a very interesting video!

"Darrel Toepfer" wrote in message
. 18...
"Lawson" wrote:

IF the government was truly interested in helping, they's stop giving
tax breaks to oil companies, tax the crap out of gasoline and let it
rise to $10. Then maybe we'd use less, maybe. Addiction is a hard
mistress, it leads us to make poor choices and then justify them

And government is a WORSE (the worse) mistress.

http://storyofstuff.com

Interesting choice given the apparent audience.

Reality Check!

The cost of producing the fuel is about 10 to 20 % of the cost of
crude. A boycott is useless. Learning to conserve on a daily basis,
week by week and year by year would have an effect on crude.
IOW we need to become independent of "foreign oil".

Back in the 70's when people were willing to conserve the price of
crude dropped...and we went right back to the HP race and big
cars/trucks. The same would happen again, but until the price forces
people to conserve "It aint gonna happen" and the average drivers
aren't going to conserve until forced into it.

Maybe by then we'll have synthetic, or renewable fuels such as the
algae produced Bio-diesel which could also be used to reclaim the CO2
out of power plants. Eliminating the need for petroleum to power cars
would cut our emissions to nearly half of present. Unfortunately
there are two problems. Even if we could wave a magic wand and have
unlimited bio-diesel tomorrow it'd take decades before our fleet would
be changed over. The average life of a car in 2006 was 9.2 years and
the scrapage rate was about 5% which is almost a record low. That
means if we changed all new cars to this magic fuel that in 10 years
we'd still have half the original fleet. In 20 years we'd still have a
substantial number of them on the road, but after 20 years it'd be a
small % of the fleet. Then we'd also have to come up with some form of
subsidy to allow poor and even a portion of the middle income class to
afford the new cars. However there is no magic wand and it could
easily take a decade to perfect the process even if it does show great
promise.

Oh! It's quite likely these now fuels will be comparable to the
current price of gas. OTOH they should have little or no effect on the
food chain as do corn and soybeans. (Except for transportation costs)

As to the question raised about spending 50 grand to convert an
aircraft to a diesel engine. You bet I'd do it even if that would be
a major portion of the Deb's value. 50 Grand would be a bargain. Then
again, with all the other stuff, maybe we could get some sort of
subsidy or low interest government loan:-))

Roger (K8RI) ARRL Life Member
N833R (World's oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

The cost of producing the fuel is about 10 to 20 % of the cost of
crude. A boycott is useless. Learning to conserve on a daily basis,
week by week and year by year would have an effect on crude.

It was just in the paper that -- for the first time since they started
counting -- traffic counts in Florida are down 7.5% for the first three
months of 2008.

Considering it has consistently gone up 2% every year, that's a huge change.
Translated nationwide, this could mean the biggest drop in demand for
gasoline since WWII.

Dunno how that translates into price per gallon, though, given the weakness
of the dollar. But it certainly can't hurt.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

wrote in message
news
Reality Check!

The cost of producing the fuel is about 10 to 20 % of the cost of
crude.

Are you saying that the cost of producing a gallon of gas, with oil at
$100/bbl (50 gal), is another $10-20/gallon?

A boycott is useless. Learning to conserve on a daily basis,
week by week and year by year would have an effect on crude.
IOW we need to become independent of "foreign oil".

Do you have any figures on how much we could conserve even with wartime
levels of conservation?

Studies (that I've mentioned here in the past) indicate that we could save
15% or more, nationwide, just by synchronizing our traffic signals for
better traffic flow, which makes sense seeing that over 50% of our gasoline
use is in metro areas.

--
Matt Barrow
Performance Homes, LLC
Cheyenne, WY

wrote in message
news

Back in the 70's when people were willing to conserve the price of
crude dropped...

Cite?

and we went right back to the HP race and big
cars/trucks. The same would happen again, but until the price forces
people to conserve "It aint gonna happen" and the average drivers
aren't going to conserve until forced into it.

Yes, Americans (many) are into forcing people to do things...until it slams
them in their own ass.

Then they bitch and moan and blame everyone else.