Why is Gas Expensive: An American Cross-Section

<Heavy, disheartened sigh>

We can' t all be this dumb, can we? I haven' t seen much beyond my own state, but I' m hoping they just got a really bad sample group.

No, there is a lot of idiots like this where I live. Most of them just blame it on the war and think that we' re not getting gas from the middle east at all.

so what is the real reason of high gas prices?

Change is inevitable. Except from a vending machine.

Viva La Revolution! erm, I mean Viva La Wii!

Well... there' s a lot of factors, but I' d say OPEC price fixing, plus the fact that we are near or already past " peak oil" and there' s dwindling reserves from here on out. And, for Americans, the fact that Bush and Cheney are oil barons certainly has to be considered a factor.

I paid $51 to fill my tank the other day... I could' ve bought a game for that! I remember being able to get a full tank of gas for ten bucks. And that' s not even some old timer talk there, it wasn' t that long ago.

There are a lot more taxes on gas than you think. Although US taxes on it is nothign compared to most of Europe. It would also help if we used more Nuclear Power plants, then the demand for oil wouldn' t be so high.

"If you knew how good I am you would think I'm modest."

Nuclear power is not so good... a power source that creates a carcinogenic waste product that lasts for thousands of years? Nuclear power is a sham industry that' s been propped up by government handouts. The future is in limitless energies like solar, wind and hydro.

instead of spending billions on new nuclear power stations they should fork out so everyone has solar panels and wind turbines on the side of every house.

and you Americans think you have it bad on petrol try spending the equivalent of $9.50 per gallon (£1.06 per litre). That' s this pinko taxman we have.

ORIGINAL: Zoy

Nuclear power is not so good... a power source that creates a carcinogenic waste product that lasts for thousands of years? Nuclear power is a sham industry that' s been propped up by government handouts. The future is in limitless energies like solar, wind and hydro.

The only reason they have huge windmills for energy is because of huge government subsidies. Solar just doesn' t give enough power, and like wind, it isn' t consistant. Hydro is pretty good, but there aren' t many places you can have them.

I don' t see how nuclear power is a sham industry that has been propped up by government handouts.

"If you knew how good I am you would think I'm modest."

Hydro is pretty good, but there aren' t many places you can have them.

so what is the real reason of high gas prices?

Politics. The only non-conspiracy related theories on high gas prices that I' ve heard that slightly made sense were because America gets oil in America, but due to EPA laws we cannot burn the oil, so instead we sell it to Mexico, and somewhere down the line they sell it back at a larger price than we sold it. The other, somewhat more reasonable, is that the Chinese are just recently in the last decade or so starting to use more gas than they have the last 30+ years and because they have such a high population they need moar of teh oilz. American motto = " When in doubt, blame some Chinese folk."

The only reason they have huge windmills for energy is because of huge government subsidies. Solar just doesn' t give enough power, and like wind, it isn' t consistant. Hydro is pretty good, but there aren' t many places you can have them.

I don' t see how nuclear power is a sham industry that has been propped up by government handouts.

For the simple reason that it' s never turned a profit. That' s why the industry didn' t expand at all from the mid-1980s until recent years, because it was only with a Republican president and Republican controlled congress that federal money began getting dumped on it again.

Now I' m not saying that government funding energy industries is a bad thing... I think they should just eliminate nuclear as a viable option, due to the fact that it creates a carcinogenic byproduct that doesn' t biodegrade for thousands of years and must be hidden underneath mountains to keep people safe... assuming there' s no earthquakes. That' s why I call it a sham. The less nice way for me to put it is that it' s a crime against humanity to endanger future generations with nuclear waste.

If the amount of money that has been poured into nuclear were poured into wind, solar and hydro, we' d be seeing better results from those sources. Results that will never run out for millions of years.

This is the problem with the current form of capitalism: it ascribes a higher value to scarcity than to abundance. Thus, the most difficult, contrived, wasteful and often downright dangerous methods of generating energy such as coal mining and nuclear, are most profitable. While sources of energy that are (within the scope of human experience) truly limitless and abundant are deemed less valuable -- primarily because the means of production would be decentralized. People wouldn' t be buying their energy from a big company in the long run. There wouldn' t be a few wealthy industrialists, even though for practical purposes more wealth would be generated with a decentralized system of capitalism based on valuing abundance.

Something that' s going to be big is putting turbines similar to wind mills only under water. I' m not sure if they call this Hydro or not, I believe hydro is when you use a dam (which is more location restrictive).

The idea is that water preduces far far more current and torque than wind. Water current is also more reliable than wind. So you have more power per turbine as they can charge much larger generators and they are active for more often. This ends up producing far more power than wind and is more versatile than traditional Hydro. They are already preparing a huge project in New York city using such a system. Verdant Power is spear heading this project I think.

http://www.greentechgazette.com/index.php/wave-power/water-power-is-the-wave-of-the-future/



Another thing that looks interesting is a vertical spiral type of wind mill. I might have talked aobut this already. They will spin regardless of the direction of the wind. We' ve been attempting to make similar designs at this size for a while but was never feasible with the weight and friction of the fan contact point resting on the vertical support. They solved this problem by using powerful perminent magnets.

http://www.inhabitat.com/2007/11/26/super-powered-magnetic-wind-turbine-maglev/

ORIGINAL: Zoy

The only reason they have huge windmills for energy is because of huge government subsidies. Solar just doesn' t give enough power, and like wind, it isn' t consistant. Hydro is pretty good, but there aren' t many places you can have them.

I don' t see how nuclear power is a sham industry that has been propped up by government handouts.

For the simple reason that it' s never turned a profit. That' s why the industry didn' t expand at all from the mid-1980s until recent years, because it was only with a Republican president and Republican controlled congress that federal money began getting dumped on it again.

Now I' m not saying that government funding energy industries is a bad thing... I think they should just eliminate nuclear as a viable option, due to the fact that it creates a carcinogenic byproduct that doesn' t biodegrade for thousands of years and must be hidden underneath mountains to keep people safe... assuming there' s no earthquakes. That' s why I call it a sham. The less nice way for me to put it is that it' s a crime against humanity to endanger future generations with nuclear waste.

If the amount of money that has been poured into nuclear were poured into wind, solar and hydro, we' d be seeing better results from those sources. Results that will never run out for millions of years.

This is the problem with the current form of capitalism: it ascribes a higher value to scarcity than to abundance. Thus, the most difficult, contrived, wasteful and often downright dangerous methods of generating energy such as coal mining and nuclear, are most profitable. While sources of energy that are (within the scope of human experience) truly limitless and abundant are deemed less valuable -- primarily because the means of production would be decentralized. People wouldn' t be buying their energy from a big company in the long run. There wouldn' t be a few wealthy industrialists, even though for practical purposes more wealth would be generated with a decentralized system of capitalism based on valuing abundance.

Nuclear energy used to be much, much cheaper. It has gotten more expensive due to safety enhancements. It wasn' t because some evil republican subsidised it. Now nuclear energy costs slightly more than using regular power plants.
Nuclear waste sucks though. Too bad we can' t just eject it into space or dump it on the moon or China.

Those underwater turbines look pretty good. But are they worth it for how much it costs install and maintain? They have to make sure the blades are sharp enough to cut through delicious whale flesh.

"If you knew how good I am you would think I'm modest."

Those underwater turbines look pretty good. But are they worth it for how much it costs install and maintain? They have to make sure the blades are sharp enough to cut through delicious whale flesh.

http://www.reuk.co.uk/New-York-Tidal-Power-Project.htm

This source breaks down a few numbers for the NY project in text form.

http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=a16561a2d9322a0e5953813fd7c930aa6fd8e41e

This video is an excellent source of info including a bit on marine life.

Looks promising. Those articles are from over a year ago, I wonder how it is doing now.

"If you knew how good I am you would think I'm modest."

Costs me $75-$80 to fill my tank up right now. F.ucking criminal if you ask me.

Most wanted games:

Mass Effect
Assasins Creed
Crysis
Little Big Planet
Drakes Fortune
UTIII
Kane and Lynch
Heavy Rain
Alan Wake

It usually costs me around $50. My tank holds around 18 gallons.

"If you knew how good I am you would think I'm modest."

Gas is expensive so you give them more money and because too much people do nothing good with their gas except drive their cars and they know lots of people need a car.
There' s plenty of other practical uses for gas.
Gassing your family and pets to death.
A bbq.
Happy gas so you can get through those tough family dinner discusions.
If people just started using it for other stuff maybe they would put the price down because they would start to adopt some of the ideas i bought up themselves, like gassing their family to death and taking their cars with leftover fuel.

What gets me about this whole Petrol / gas pricing, is that the executives of these companies can still give themselves the over inflated bonuses. The governments can still sign off MP' s or Senators fuel expenses for running more than 1 vehicle.

Without sounding like a tree hugging hippy, this planet is screwed whatever fuel source we use, oil based will run out sooner rather than later, with global climate change wind and solar energy cannot be relied upon, nuclear there are too many fundamentalists out there that would use them as targets.

Best alternative would be to use oil seed rape, however the drawback of that is that it would take up too much farm land and that is needed to build houses for immigrants and young women who should have kept their legs crossed.

with global climate change wind and solar energy cannot be relied upon

It will be used to suppliment our energy needs rather than replace all other sources.