But soon we will be mad for $6-7 gas 6

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1. 

   green8659 Posted 12:33 am
   23 May 2008

   Hopefully...Hopefully by then we will have a decent and reliable wide spread alternative fuel source.
   
   Green and Environmental Website | Almighty Cleanse

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2. 

   amazingdrx Posted 1:09 am
   23 May 2008

   We already doIt just insn't being utilized for the most part.  Human power.  Plugin power for bikes to assist.
   Biogas from your own digestor, free fuel.  natural gas, 1 dollar per equivalent to a gallon of gasoline.
   Plugin cars plugged into your own solar panels, free.  Plugged into the power grid, 66 cents per gallon.
   How high does gas have to go before these sources of cleaner, cheaper, greener fuel (and the devices to utilize them) are tapped.  Drill the GHG free energy field.
   5 dollars?  15 would be great!!  It would kill the age of oil.  RIP exxonmob OPEC bushco, rest in pieces.  We can recycle the whole mess with renewable energy, solar concentrating furnace/factories.
   Keep those prices rising mobsters, you are losing every bit of political support with every month that prices rise another 10 cents.  Try for 20 cents per month!  I bet you a futures contract, that consumers will pay it.  No problem.
   
   http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

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3. 

   amazingdrx Posted 1:19 am
   23 May 2008

   Close down coalFurthermore, close down coal.  In the next ten years transition to renewables and conservation for grid power and building heating (no more fuel oil or natural gas furnaces).  Stop mining coal and simply turn it into natural gas underground.
   That would replace most diesel fuel use.  Tanks of methane can power trucks, trains, tractors, construction equipment, and so forth, machines normally dependenty on oil.
   Eventually batteries could replace most transportation fuel as energy density and charge rate gets better.  Solid oxide fuel cell/turbine generators  are over 3 times the efficiency of ICE generators.  Everything could go to plugin hybrid, bikes to mining shovels.  With fuel cell backup running on biogas.
   New nano-tech methane storage is being developed, it stores the gas at a much lower pressure and higher density, meaning smaller tanks and less costly compression.
   
   http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

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4. 

   nycowboy Posted 4:14 am
   23 May 2008

   Best Solution: Ban CarsI don't see why people need to have cars, particularly in urbanized areas. As prices continue to go up, the fair and reasonable solution would be to ban all private automobiles in all cities, all villages, and towns with population greater then 20,000 people.
   All cars are dirty and polluting -- even hybrids. We know all cars, even the newest ones, spew out carcinogens, and accidents in private automobiles in are one of the leading causes of death. Cities are not friendly places to be from the noxious odors of cars and the dangers of crossing streets.
   I have no problems with rural people owning cars. More power to them -- if they want to own 10 MPG cars, then so be it. But there are too many cars in our major urbanized areas, that need not exist.

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5. 

   Will Candler Posted 12:53 pm
   23 May 2008

   How High Can Oil Go?    How High Can Oil Go?  Well, at the pump it can easily go to $8 or $10 a gallon. Europeans have been paying $8 a gallon for decades.  The difference is that most of their high price has been tax, that helps explain how they can afford universal health care and good state schools.
       The basic problem is that increasing demand (for economists, a global demand function shifting to the right) is running up against essentially fixed demand (for economists, a fixed and almost vertical supply function).
       As Joseph Romm points out (Salon "Peak Oil? Consider it Solved"): "Last year, consumption was 86 million barrels a day, up from 78 million in 2002, roughly a 2 percent annual rise.  Where is all the demand coming from?  Hint: It's not just the rapidly developing countries.  From 1995 to 2004, China's annual imports grew by 2.8 million barrels a day. Ours grew 3.9 million.  China now sucks up about 6 percent of all global oil exports.  We demand 25 percent. American's trade deficit in oil alone is nearing $500 billion a year."  That is U.S. demand grew slightly slower than world demand or about 1.6% a year, while China grew much faster, or about 4.5% a year.
       Charles Komanoff at http://www.Carbontax.org has estimated the long-run U.S. price elasticity to be -0.4.  That is a 1% rise in price (over the long term) result in a 0.4% decline in U.S. consumption. No need to take any of the above numbers too seriously, but they give us an indication as to where prices may be going.  If we want U.S. demand to hold constant, when absent a price change it would increase by 1.6%, we need a 4% price rise (1.6/0.4).  Using this figure if we have $4.00 gas in 2008, we would need (only) $4.16 gas in 2009 to hold American demand constant.
       However, this is much too optimistic a picture. The estimated elasticity of -0.4 is for a long-run elasticity, when people have had time to replace SUV's with more fuel efficient cars, to take public transport, move closer to their work, reduce air-travel and the like.  Interestingly Komanoff also estimated short-run price elasticities, and observe that these seem to be rising: "Gasoline's short-run price-elasticity is rising. After a low of -0.04 in 2004, the short-run price-elasticity increased to -0.08 in 2005, -0.12 in 2006 and -0.16 in 2007."  That is, people are becoming more sensitive to gas prices, and adjusting their behavior, even in the short-run in response to price changes.  If short-run (year to year) price elasticity was even -0.12, we would require a 13.3% price rise (1.6/0.12) to keep demand constant in the short run, to say $4.50 gas in 2009.  
      Even that is not the end of the story.  What about the Chinese?  In order for them to hold consumption constant, with the demand function moving right 4.5% a year, and even a short-run elasticity of -0.12 they would require a 37.5% price rise (4.5/0.12) to keep demand constant, that is they would be paying $5.50 for gas in 2009, if they were paying $4.00 in 2008. And a $2.00 rise to $7.50 in 2010, and so on.
      These are only "back of the envelope" calculations, but they do show the implications of three realistic assumptions:
   *    World demand for oil is growing faster than production,
   
   *    Chinese (Asian) demand for oil is growing faster that American (or developed world) demand, and
   
   *    Elasticity of demand for oil is inelastic, and in the short term, highly inelastic.
      If a price rise to $4.50 a gallon would hold American demand in check, but a rise to $5.50 is needed to keep Chinese demand in check, we can bet that a simple market solution would lead to a intermediate price (say $5.00 a gallon) with American consumption declining slightly in order than Chinese consumption could expand slightly.
      Now we come to the tricky bit. If the above is unclear, it is going to get worse, so by all means go back and see if I have made a mistake.
      The above has argued that:
   *    A reasonable (albeit back of the envelope) calculation suggests that a price of about $5.00 might be needed to limit demand in American and China to the available supply, and
   
   *    At least in the short-run, supply cannot be increased.  
      That means that supply is not affected (in the short run at least) by price.  Given a $5.00 price at the pump, supply will be the same regardless of whether the whole $5.00 goes to the oil companies, and oil producers, or say $3.00 goes in taxes leaving $2.00 for the oil companies and producers. A $3.00 a gallon tax would produce enormous revenues, of about $2.6 billion a day, or just under $1 trillion a year.  If we do not tax it away, this "excess revenue" will simply end up in the pockets of the oil companies and oil producers.  If we do tax it away the trillion dollars a year would be available to reduce other taxes, pay-off the national debt, or be returned to citizens as an equal per capita rebate (unrelated to gas consumption).  For more on this see http://www.capanddividend.org, or http://www.carbontax.org, or my book "Global Warming: The Answer. (The Energy Dividend)", available from Amazon, or
   
   http://www.powells.com/biblio/61-9781434345080-1 or from me as a free pdf file, at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
   
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6. 

   meander Posted 1:55 am
   26 May 2008

   $ per mile vs. $ per gallonSomehow we need to stop thinking only about the price per gallon of gas and start thinking about the price per mile traveled.  I don't know about you, but I don't buy gasoline because it's a nice liquid and good to have around -- I buy it because it provides mobility.  
   A car that gets 70 mpg will go as far with a dollar's worth of $7 per gallon gasoline as a 35 mpg car goes on a dollar's worth of $3.50 per gallon gasoline, so both gas prices look about the same in terms of miles per dollar.  With plug-in hybrid and other advanced technologies (like Amory Lovins' super-car), we can significantly increase the mpg in the next decade.
   Of course, thinking on a dollar-per-mile basis is longer term thinking -- it is no easy task to switch cars.  The new car development cycle is a few years long, so even if the CAFE standard was magically increased today, it would take a few years for the changes to ripple through the system.

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