Clean Energy & Efficiency

I see the oil has now gone over 120 dollars. The dollar itself is stronger than when it last approached this level. Gas here is 3.57 and should hit 4 dollars soon. Things are getting interesting. Iheard today that public transportation was up 6% from last year. Some experts reckon 3.50 is the figure that drops driving down. How high can juice go back there until serious angst appears.

youngdan wrote:

I see the oil has now gone over 120 dollars. The dollar itself is stronger than when it last approached this level. Gas here is 3.57 and should hit 4 dollars soon. Things are getting interesting. Iheard today that public transportation was up 6% from last year. Some experts reckon 3.50 is the figure that drops driving down. How high can juice go back there until serious angst appears.

Holy God, that'll be causing pain... and more financial chaos. On the plus side, maybe it'll hit demand and give us a breather to get our acts together.

Oil has now gone to 122 dollars. It is at the disastor range now for middle America

What a neat couple of sites I just found - green chemistry and science and sustainable business and activists too ..
http://greenchemistry.wordpress.com/

Back in February they predicted HERE that Americans would be dumping their SUVs for Priuses and other hybrids when gas reached $4 a gallon (from a sister-site sustainable business - link directly HERE)

youngdan I've discerned a note of deep bitterness with you lately which others have interpreted as paranoia regarding New World Order or somesuch - but now it's time for the truth youngdanny boy - you just didn't buy any shares in Toyota did you?

Auditor #9 wrote:

What a neat couple of sites I just found - green chemistry and science and sustainable business and activists too ..
http://greenchemistry.wordpress.com/

Back in February they predicted HERE that Americans would be dumping their SUVs when gas reached $4 a gallon (from a sister-site sustainable business - link directly HERE)

Just for a moment I thought Sun cyles were going to be a new solar powered form of transport

youngdan wrote:

Oil has now gone to 122 dollars. It is at the disastor range now for middle America

It bewilders me that Americans cannot cope with petrol prices that are about 55% of the EU average. I thought average income was about 15% higher in the US than in the EU, surely they can cope by driving less and, gulp, using public transport?

Ard-Taoiseach wrote:

youngdan wrote:

Oil has now gone to 122 dollars. It is at the disastor range now for middle America

It bewilders me that Americans cannot cope with petrol prices that are about 55% of the EU average. I thought average income was about 15% higher in the US than in the EU, surely they can cope by driving less and, gulp, using public transport?

Their rebuttal of that has been "Have you ever bin to Wyoming?" I'm sure they could get from A to B in Wyoming in a Nissan Micra...

youngdan what's the average size of an American engine for feck sake! And wouldn't ye just tax the gas for a finish so your people aren't hooring around Wyoming and my own private Idaho like no one's business and so that there will be some of it left in 7 years time when we need it for transporting the monstrosities of wind turbines that GE will be building for the Lakota people who have declared independence from the US of A...

Auditor #9 wrote:

Ard-Taoiseach wrote:

youngdan wrote:

Oil has now gone to 122 dollars. It is at the disastor range now for middle America

It bewilders me that Americans cannot cope with petrol prices that are about 55% of the EU average. I thought average income was about 15% higher in the US than in the EU, surely they can cope by driving less and, gulp, using public transport?

Their rebuttal of that has been "Have you ever bin to Wyoming?" I'm sure they could get from A to B in Wyoming in a Nissan Micra...

Exactly, and if the car manufacturers like GM, Ford or Chrysler were subject to even half the mpg improvements the likes of PSA, Volkswagen, Renault and Fiat have to fulfil in the EU, they'd be in a much better state. You reap what you sow, I suppose.

Ard-Taoiseach wrote:

youngdan wrote:

Oil has now gone to 122 dollars. It is at the disastor range now for middle America

It bewilders me that Americans cannot cope with petrol prices that are about 55% of the EU average. I thought average income was about 15% higher in the US than in the EU, surely they can cope by driving less and, gulp, using public transport?

UK male incomes are now higher than US male incomes. US incomes stagnated from 1970 - 2000 and there have been declines since then.



http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/24/business/main1342205.shtml

http://mwhodges.home.att.net/family_a.htm#income

Quote :

Average incomes after adjusting for inflation actually fell from 2001 to 2004, and the growth in net worth was the weakest in a decade, the Federal Reserve reported Thursday.

Many families were struggling in the aftermath of the 2001 recession and the bursting of the stock market bubble in 2000, the Fed's latest "Survey of Consumer Finances" showed. The comprehensive look at household balance sheets comes every three years.

Average family incomes, after adjusting for inflation, fell to $70,700 in 2004, a drop of 2.3 percent when compared with 2001. That was the weakest showing since a decline of 11.3 percent from 1989 to 1992, a period that also covered a recession.

The average incomes had soared by 17.3 percent in the 1998-2001 period and 12.3 percent from 1995 to 1998 as the country enjoyed the longest economic expansion in history.

The median family income, the point where half the families made more and half made less, rose a tiny 1.6 percent to $43,200 in 2004 compared with 2001.

Economists said the weakness in the most recent period was understandable given the loss of 2.7 million jobs from early 2001 through August of 2003, when the country was struggling with sizable layoffs caused by the recession, the terrorist attacks and corporate accounting scandals.

The weak income and the stock market decline in the early part of the decade, which wiped out $7 trillion of paper wealth, had an adverse impact on family balance sheets.

We really need to listen to what youngdan is telling us about the state of the States.

There is a lot of answers called for. Firstly Auditor you are correct I did not buy Toyota. They recently surpassed GM in global sales. That is a shocking thing. GM have just announced a 3.4 billion loss and it is an unsaid truth that with I believe debts of 240 billion dollars they have no chance of surviving. The foreign makers can come in and get tax brakes and grants from competing states for the factory. The build a modern state of the art factory but most important they escape the union deals which gave big benefits to the workers. I forget the figure but there is a huge number of people relying on GM and they are doomed.
All figures of inflation should be discounted here as they are rubbish. Food has doubled and fuel has tripled over the last 5 years. These are what people use. The average wage going up by whatever percentage is meaningless.
There is relatively low tax on juice here and hy would anyone want it dearer. The rich don't care what price it is. I am suposed to be the right wing person and I am worried about the working man and ye the left wingers want to screw the working man. People budgeted for paying say 5% for gas but now at 15% their budgets are busted.
Minivans would have engines of 3.3 to 3.8 litre and SUVs would be a bit more. Even small cars here have bigger engines than it's European twin. Full size cars like you see the cops driving on tv have 5.7 litre engines but only older people mostly drive these

youngdan wrote:

There is relatively low tax on juice here and hy would anyone want it dearer. The rich don't care what price it is. I am suposed to be the right wing person and I am worried about the working man and ye the left wingers want to screw the working man. People budgeted for paying say 5% for gas but now at 15% their budgets are busted.
Minivans would have engines of 3.3 to 3.8 litre and SUVs would be a bit more. Even small cars here have bigger engines than it's European twin. Full size cars like you see the cops driving on tv have 5.7 litre engines but only older people mostly drive these

This is a good question about the low juice tax - how would if affect your economy positively to raise it? And not cripple the working man etc? Cars the size you mention above are not at all common here - virtually nowhere in the EU. In Germany the common cars tend to be Audis Mercs BMWs and VW Polos funnily enough and many of those cars though some of the biggest on the road are as little as 1.4 litres - the VW Golf and the Audis are generally around 1.4 - 2 litre. Mercs and BMWs tend to be bigger fair enough, but very few here drive 5 litre cars - maybe a school bus is that litreage... My german friend recently got her father to get rid of their 18-year old 1.8 litre Audi 80 for a 1.2 litre VW polo and they're not doing it out of poverty, they're feckin rich. I also know a doctor here whose perfect car is a Toyota Yaris. I've a 1.3 litre car and that's plenty big for me - sometimes I think it's too big. SUVs here tend to be 2.3, 2.5 litre but the Nissan Qashqai SUV-style yoke is 1.8, still considered big.

America will shift their engine size down or you'll continue to starve. Bigger animals eat more and your cars are devouring finite world resources at a rate twice that of the cars of other nations... The EU has a lower average mpg but it doesn't mean we are poorer than you or that there are less cars - actually I believe Austria has the most cars per head on the planet.

Look at this average mpg table per country/bloc from wikipedia, it was the only one I could find and it's only rough too but it shows how greedy ye are. Or how inefficient. Be careful, the dinosaurs might have died out because they were too big.

wiki

America exists in a globalised world - how you can expect to get away with overuse of finite resources coming from abroad without paying high tax is beyond me. Having a zoo full of megafauna is unsustainable -they eat way too much. You will pay it in another way anyway if you're not paying it already but if you tax the fuel the process will be more in your control. Punters will trade down or sideways to hybrid or diesel (Diesel's Second Coming - Will Americans finally warm to diesel cars? The Economist, 4th April 2008) GM might adapt and jobs might rise there - American tech savvy might even triumph over foreign tech and your exports might rise in the future. At the moment the Indian company Tata is hoping to capitalise on American gas prices by introducing their air car there aren't they? The tax gleaned from the SUV and 5.7 litre-drivers can surely be distributed into public transport, raising energy efficiency of public buildings, promoting energy efficiency in homes etc. thereby creating a multiplier effect of sustainable technomics.

It's all about activity after all - just the right (sustainable activity) is the one you need to pick.

Auditor. that mindset would get you sent to a mental home here. Why do you think you can force a guy to pay tax so that you can buy a bus to give a guy a free ride. Why is one individual forced to help a stranger even though he might be broke himself. Why are you paying 8 dollars a gallon. Why not vote in a socialist government that will help the little man by taking the tax off petrol so he can pay 3.50 dollars a gallon like me.
Today I saw a nice car for sale, the man was asking 13000 dollars. The car was pristine. It was a 1957 morris minor with a pull back canvas roof. I have seen a couple of minor and mini's down through the years here. The air car that we talked about a while back was not the Indian company but a French company and shows great promise. I don't smoke and very very rarely drink but how working people can vote for anyone that puts taxes on fags, gargle and juice is beyond me. Put a huge tax on an engine over 2 litres fine but give the average pleb a break.

Morris Minor convertible mmm. Lovely little car, although you wouldn't want to try much more than 40 miles an hour in it.

It is just possible that by some miracle the Greens won't make a mess of it and in a couple of years time we will see the centre of Dublin mobbed with cycles and pedestrians. if they are going to keep cars out they should put out 10,000 free bikes on the streets. After the last London underground bombings there was a substantial switch to cycling and it stuck. There they have had the advantage of climate change in that it is a much drier and warmer climate in south east england than it used to be. People are making wine there again.
Anyone remember the Sinclair? Something like that might work in Ireland's city centres. You are covered up, put you can pedal or use a tiny motor - it could be from a wind energy rechargable battery.

My main fuel economy has been to cut down driving as much as possible. I shop for food on foot (5 minutes walk) and work from an office next to the house. I use the phone rather than meetings as much as possible.

The flying is a devil though, very hard to give up.

http://www.finfacts.ie/irishfinancenews/article_1013493.shtml

oil to go to $200 a barrel, possibly by October

It's not good

Now oil is over 123 but the Euro is also down versus the dollar. Looks like it is time for the middle class in Europe to enjoy some medicine.

youngdan wrote:

Now oil is over 123 but the Euro is also down versus the dollar. Looks like it is time for the middle class in Europe to enjoy some medicine.

The euro is way down against the dollar today. That will have adverse effects on petrol/diesel pricing here. I think most of the weakness in the euro today is as a result of the shocker of eurozone retail sales which were much worse than anticipated.

Ard. It has been my contention for a long time that you will experience many more shocks of this type. The consumer is tapped out here for months and the consumer there must be hurting as well.

Does anyone think that this graph...



...is bearing the hallmarks of a speculative bubble which will burst in the coming 12 months?

I will answer that later as I have to rush to fill up 2 big guzzlers because I see the attendent getting ready to up the price again. Where the hell is the wifes purse.

youngdan wrote:

I will answer that later as I have to rush to fill up 2 big guzzlers because I see the attendent getting ready to up the price again. Where the hell is the wifes purse.

Are you going to economise by trading in for a more fuel-efficient car? How elastic is your demand curve?

youngdan wrote:

I will answer that later as I have to rush to fill up 2 big guzzlers because I see the attendent getting ready to up the price again. Where the hell is the wifes purse.

I'd say you're towing one of them cars back from the gas station because the huge engine will have used up all the gas in the tank by half way back to your house

There was an article in the globe yesterday about people trading down
Frustrated owners try to unload their guzzlers
The problem is who is going to buy them when everybody is broke and there is still money owed on them

youngdan wrote:

There was an article in the globe yesterday about people trading down
Frustrated owners try to unload their guzzlers
The problem is who is going to buy them when everybody is broke and there is still money owed on them

Some desperate car dealers and consumers, are willing to lose thousands of dollars just to get rid of their SUVs. Last July, 20-year-old Sannan Nizami, of Lowell, bought a 2007 Toyota 4Runner SUV for $32,000 when it cost about $65 to fill the tank. Six months later, as a gallon of gas soared to $3.50 and more, and tank refills climbed over $80, Nizami put the vehicle up for sale. He posted it online for $27,000 but received no responses for months.

It's good to see people reacting at least - I hope this isn't the start of some panic-buying of 1.5 litre diesel Nissan Qashqais when I still don't have any savvy about share-buying. This is the kind of thing the irish are going mental for now - there's a waiting list that Nissan are surprised by.



It might look like you'll be left with a rake of unsaleable cars though - unless they get shipped around the world to the emerging rich... might it not just be better to flog it and get a Yaris at any price? Because gas is going to do more than soar to $4 ...

I don't remember seeing that laughing thing when I read the article. I failed to mention that diesel is way more expense than gas at over 4.50. Oil finished at 123.81 and knocked down the stock market. It should rattle the European markets tomorrow

What price was a barrel of oil this time last year? $50? That's nearly a 200% rise - I don't think the price of diesel here has risen by that factor, 200% - it's €1.33 for a litre of diesel around Clare at present and was around €1 for a litre this time last year. Is the rise in price of the barrel like the rise in price of a companies shares yet the price of their product doesn't change or is the rise in the price of the barrel a real price rise?

Do Americans ever count petrol in terms of litres at all? You might start doing that next... American gallon = 3.8 litres, English gallon = 4.5 litres. Petrol is €1.23 a litre here which is €4.70 a gallon. At $3.50 a gallon for you then a litre is $0.92 which is still cheap but then a dollar is €1.55ish so that means you are now paying the equivalent of us unless I am getting my calculations wrong.

No one's laughing now, so.