Are you annoyed with the high gas prices?

[bwalker25]

it costs me $40.50 to fill up my car from "E" the other day and it was $3.75 here I fill up 2 time s a month and dont go any damn places 'cept work and home....it sucks...we need a retro 50's day or something so that everything at the gas stations would cost what it did back then!

[snowskate]

Originally Posted by noooorb

My energetics class professor keeps asking still rhetorically, "Why is gas so cheap?"

something to think about...

Originally Posted by LukesInn

I was watching something on MSNBC about the gas prices. It seems as though gas prices are rising like crazy yet people still have to buy it. I don't think prices will go down unless a significant change in demand decreases.

Originally Posted by Jace

You guys have it easy, here in england we are getting raped for fuel !!


Diesel $2.38 per litre (4.5ltre=gallon $10.75)


Leaded $2.21per litre (4.5ltre=gallon $9.94)



Based on a £ x $ exchange rate of 1.99

Originally Posted by Asad_A203

1.40/L here. I wouldn't mind paying 4.04/gallon...

I think I heard somewhere that the price is set at what the market will bear. The above statements back that up. As well as the fact that a lot of car manufacturers are still in horsepower wars. The US won't really make significant changes to the way we go about things (car pool / buy more fuel efficient cars / walk and bike more / just more sacrifices) until the price of gas is 4 - 5 times more than when it was 2 years ago. ($10)

I for one love the sound of a V8 with a Borla exhaust, but at the same time, if you chose to own heavy cars with heavy HP and poor gas mileage you can't complain.

Hybrids are coming in force soon with the domestic automakers, but this 'green'hybrid' movement is really just marketing (a new trim level) and no real results. 25% increase in mileage for big SUVs and pickups? (plus the premium $$$ for the hybrid system) They're really trying to impress us with trucks and SUVs that get 15mpg vs 12. Lame.

But hey, a lot of people are buying into it.

It's funny, my dad (DOT retiree) remembers back in the 60's when VW approached the US gov't with a diesel car that got 100mpg. He said the bigwigs above his head all scoffed at the idea and let it die with the prototype.
Call it a conspriacy theory, but there must be a select few higher forces at play who mastermind keeping oil up and MPGs down.

[jetset4me]

I just got back from Chicago and ditto on the potholes. I travel there once a month from Southern California. The airfares have really gone up! I guess I'll have to start eating "Fancy Feast" or braise the cat with some sauerkraut.

[mazdaguy]

Just went up to 3.89 Yesterday....

[themightytimmah]

Originally Posted by snowskate

Hybrids are coming in force soon with the domestic automakers, but this 'green'hybrid' movement is really just marketing (a new trim level) and no real results. 25% increase in mileage for big SUVs and pickups? (plus the premium $$$ for the hybrid system) They're really trying to impress us with trucks and SUVs that get 15mpg vs 12. Lame.

Going from 12 to 15 saves more gas in a year than going from 25 to 35 mpg. It sounds sort of counter-logical, but 12 -> 15 is better than 50->100, too.

[Bunky]

As GWB says, bring it on.....

[dmw2692004]

i have to fill up tomorrow. this is going to be painful. 22 gallon tank, 4.07 a gallon. Gah.

[Cookie Lab]

Originally Posted by themightytimmah

Going from 12 to 15 saves more gas in a year than going from 25 to 35 mpg. It sounds sort of counter-logical, but 12 -> 15 is better than 50->100, too.

Curious, how so?

[themightytimmah]

Originally Posted by Cookie Lab

Curious, how so?

Let's say we each drive 10,000 miles a year. I get 12 mpg currently, you get 50. Right now I'm burning 833 gallons a year, you're burning 200. We then both upgrade our cars to hybrids, raising my gas mileage to 15 and yours to 100.

You're down to 100 gallons a year, and I'm down to 667 - a savings of 100 gallons in your case, and 166 in mine.

In a weird way, replacing a Sierra 1500 with a 1500H has a greater positive environmental impact than replacing a Civic with a Prius.

[smoknfastlegend]

Some statistics for your guys to ponder:

Everyone says the United States is the largest oil consumer in the world. This may be true, but only because the size of the United States makes it one of the largest entities in the world, but in all honesty, for its size it can be considered one of the least users of crude oil per sq mile. Taking size measurements based on the Wikipedia for the comparison (comparing the US, to Europe [since Europe is close to the size of the US] to then Japan) and oil consumption from nationmaster.com, the US is not the biggest user, but in all actuality Japan is. How do i come to the conclusion? Here is how:

The US is 3,794,066 sq miles in size with a daily consumption (based off nationmaster) of 20,730,000 barrels a day of crude oil. This equates to 5.46 barrels used per day per sq mile.

Europe is 3,930,000 sq miles in size with a daily consumption (based off nationmaster by combining consumption from the many countries of Europe, some not being represented) of 19,431,080 barrel a day of crude oil (some countries were not represented because data was not available.) This equates to 4.944 barrels used per day per sq mile.

With these measurements, Europe is only 135,934 square miles larger then the US.

Which in all honesty, makes Europe the second leading user of oil in the world.

But this next number I consider staggering.

Japan is the third leading country behind the US and China for oil consumption with a square mileage of 145,883 square miles. Their daily oil consumption is 5,578,000 barrels per day. Not much compared to these other areas, or is it? This means that Japan uses 38.236 barrels of oil per day per sq mile. With this estimate in size, Japan is 26x smaller then the United States. If Japan were to be the size of the United States and were to keep up with their oil consumption per square mile, their daily usage would be roughly 145,000,000 barrels of crude oil per day.

If you see a hole in my logic, please point it out. I figured these numbers because im sick and tired of people trying to say we are energy hogs, when in all honesty, Japan is a bigger energy hog then the US.

[Cookie Lab]

It's rather fallacious to measure consumption by barrels per SQ mile as it trivializes the individual and his/her choices as a consumer.

If I'm the only person in my household and I commute to work every day and use 2 gallons of gas, yet my neighbor is a three person household and uses a combined 3 gallons of gas for all three of them to get to work/school, would it make sense to trumpet my household as being more energy conservative than my neighbors'? Perhaps technically, however why create an artificial boundary like "per household" or "per SQ mile" to spin the numbers when the real "boundary" is per individual and his/her choices?

The only measurement of consumption that makese sense is per person or per capita.

Originally Posted by smoknfastlegend

Some statistics for your guys to ponder:

Everyone says the United States is the largest oil consumer in the world. This may be true, but only because the size of the United States makes it one of the largest entities in the world, but in all honesty, for its size it can be considered one of the least users of crude oil per sq mile. Taking size measurements based on the Wikipedia for the comparison (comparing the US, to Europe [since Europe is close to the size of the US] to then Japan) and oil consumption from nationmaster.com, the US is not the biggest user, but in all actuality Japan is. How do i come to the conclusion? Here is how:

The US is 3,794,066 sq miles in size with a daily consumption (based off nationmaster) of 20,730,000 barrels a day of crude oil. This equates to 5.46 barrels used per day per sq mile.

Europe is 3,930,000 sq miles in size with a daily consumption (based off nationmaster by combining consumption from the many countries of Europe, some not being represented) of 19,431,080 barrel a day of crude oil (some countries were not represented because data was not available.) This equates to 4.944 barrels used per day per sq mile.

With these measurements, Europe is only 135,934 square miles larger then the US.

Which in all honesty, makes Europe the second leading user of oil in the world.

But this next number I consider staggering.

Japan is the third leading country behind the US and China for oil consumption with a square mileage of 145,883 square miles. Their daily oil consumption is 5,578,000 barrels per day. Not much compared to these other areas, or is it? This means that Japan uses 38.236 barrels of oil per day per sq mile. With this estimate in size, Japan is 26x smaller then the United States. If Japan were to be the size of the United States and were to keep up with their oil consumption per square mile, their daily usage would be roughly 145,000,000 barrels of crude oil per day.

If you see a hole in my logic, please point it out. I figured these numbers because im sick and tired of people trying to say we are energy hogs, when in all honesty, Japan is a bigger energy hog then the US.

[smoknfastlegend]

Originally Posted by Cookie Lab

It's rather fallacious to measure consumption by barrels per SQ mile as it trivializes the individual and his/her choices as a consumer.

If I'm the only person in my household and I commute to work every day and use 2 gallons of gas, yet my neighbor is a three person household and uses a combined 3 gallons of gas for all three of them to get to work/school, would it make sense to trumpet my household as being more energy conservative than my neighbors'? Perhaps technically, however why create an artificial boundary like "per household" or "per SQ mile" to spin the numbers when the real "boundary" is per individual and his/her choices?

The only measurement of consumption that makese sense is per person or per capita.

If the information were more recent, i would post that, but what im trying to get at is people always say that America uses the most oil, but if you were to compare sizes of the countries, it puts the oil consumption in perspective compared to the rest of the world. According to the same website, that has per capita info based off 2004-05 info says the US is actually 15th in per capita use of oil. Link: NationMaster - Oil > Consumption (per capita) (most recent) by country

The numbers i mentioned earlier is so many can see that the US's consumption isnt as outrageous as they would like us to believe. Im sure if you were to compare the consumption of individual states compared to countries in europe, they would be fairly similar. Instead they would rather cause shock and not take the US's size into consideration.