[Chris Vais]

The high price of gasoline here on the West Coast has more to do with the fact that there is no competition from fuel refined outside of California. There are no gasoline pipelines to bring refined product from Texas or from anywhere else east of the Sierra. Our only source of fuel is from California refineries and with no competition from outside of the State our prices will always be higher than elsewhere in the US.

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[Langley968]

[quote name='ds968' timestamp='1369084424' post='142932']

or to Oregon, where I heard you have no choice.. no self-servce ! ( anyone here from Oregon thatcan verity if that's fact or fiction ? ) <img src="/forum/images/smilies/968/huh.png" class="smilie" alt="" />

[/quote]



FACT! I hated stopping for fuel in Oregon on my recent trip to Paso in the 968. They do not employ the brightest people to pump gas...

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[ds968]

[quote name='Langley968' timestamp='1369103844' post='142946']

They do not employ the brightest people to pump gas...[/quote]



I know someone who will probably resent that remark..or, as he'd say in protest, " - hey ! I resemble that remark ! "



http://images.tvrage.com/screencaps/28/5574/173426.jpg

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[Tom030]

[quote name='Chris Vais' timestamp='1369091575' post='142937']

The high price of gasoline here on the West Coast has more to do with the fact that there is no competition from fuel refined outside of California. There are no gasoline pipelines to bring refined product from Texas or from anywhere else east of the Sierra. Our only source of fuel is from California refineries and with no competition from outside of the State our prices will always be higher than elsewhere in the US.

[/quote]



FYI Washington has 6 or 7 refineries some of which process oil from Alaska and others oil from the midwest. It ain't where it comes it how much the state and feds can tax it. That coupled with EPA restrictions on building any new refineries, the requirement that 10% ethanol be added and each little county and berg has it's own formula based on local air quality are in part at least responsible for high gas prices. Add to that increasing world demand and the price has nowhere to go but up.

DS yes, Oregon and one other state (Vermont?) require an employee to pump your gas. I never minded it when I had a company car and it was pouring rain. When I am driving one of my personal cars in Oregon and have to get gas I just stand beside the "pumper" and glare <img src="/forum/images/smilies/968/ninja.gif" class="smilie" alt="" /> .

~tom

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[Rap]

Tom NJ requires attendants to pump gas also. Just think about all of the illegal immigrants and future would be malcontents(terrorists) that have gainful employment and get to glare at you as they pump gas.

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[Cloud9...68]

Back the the subject of the resurrection of this very old (but certainly still lively!) thread, I wonder that as more manufacturers introduce smaller displacement turbocharged engines which will presumably require higher octane gas (unless direct injection can quench the charge enough to still enable the use of 87 octane), causing the demand for premium to rise, how will the spread in price across the octane levels respond?

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[Chris Vais]

Tom, California refineries process oil from out of state locations as well. What I was referring to is the distribution of refined gasoline. If I were to buy gasoline refined in Texas to sell in California, the only way that I can get it here would be to bring it by rail or truck tankers making it too expensive to actually do. There is no pipeline from Texas to California, that I am aware of, the transports refined gasoline as is the case for some products like natural gas. My thesis is that if you could purchase refined oil from outside of California and send it here economically, the price would go down.



It is true that some of the air quality regulations regarding fuel formulation add cost, but I don't think that you are going to hear very many people in California complain about the tradeoff between higher fuel cost and clean air. That is especially true if you were born and raised in California as, I was, and can remember what it was like to breath unhealthy air on a hot summers day. Too many of the people who complain about the cost of things like pollution control are transplants from elsewhere who have no institutional memory of polluted air or a polluted SF Bay.

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[Cloud9...68]

I know that things like taxes and environmental regulations add a significant amount to the cost of a gallon of gas, but it really amazes me that the base cost of gasoline is as low as it is, when you consider what the oil companies have to go through to get it to us: First they have to make ongoing significant investments in R & D to continually discover new sources, develop the methods to extract it from the increasingly difficult areas where so much of it is located, actually drill the stuff, often in hostile climates or less-than-friendly countries, collect it, transport it, refine it, meeting the needs of several different formulations, and jugggling the impact of this mix on their refining process, and finally transport the refined product to the fueling stations. And not being in the business, I'm sure there are a half-dozen steps I've left out. Pretty miraculous stuff, as I've said before.



I saw an episode a few months ago on the history channel describing the value of the raw materials contained in the earth, and the latest estimate is that at projected usage rates, there's about 160 years of refinable petroleum left on the planet. Seeing as these estimates are universally pessimistic (I remember in the '70s many "experts" were predicting we'd be out of oil by now), I bet 250 years is closer to the truth. Other than environmental reasons, I don't really understand why "alternatives" are even being investigated. And when you dig beneath the surface of many of the supposedly more environmentally friendly alternatives, you discover that they're really not any cleaner or greener than petroleum, in many cases.

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[flash]

"other than environmental reasons" - lol - isn't that enough???



we have now hit the highest CO2 levels in 2 million years (400ppm), and it is increasing at a rate 100 times that since the last ice age. this is resulting in sea level rising at a rate of 3.2mm per year. that doesn't sound like much, but by the end of the century it's about 3 meters. that puts new york under water.



the other issue is what the temp increase is doing to the currents and weather. we are already seeing larger and more frequent storms. this trend is only going to continue. once we get enough of them back to back, the air temp will fall, and then we go into an ice age.



so, i'd say that environmental concerns are enough to say "screw the economy". fix the planet, whatever the cost. we won't need money when we are all dead.

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[Rap]

If one doesn't like the price of gas, buy a more energy efficient vehicle, carpool, get alternative energy, ride a bus or don't use gas. I was going nuts at what I thought was a huge expense that we were incurring in our fleet by people leaving the engines running, I don't, but overall costs over a 5 year period didn't bear out my concerns. Hard to believe. The prices of everything have gone up and will continue to some degree. This is the cost of living in the modern world.

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[Cloud9...68]

Flash,



While I don't necessarily buy into the worst-case-scenario global warming theories, I don't disagree that environmental concerns are indeed reason enough to keep doing research on alternatives to petroleum-based fuels. It's just that so many of the so-called alternatives bring plenty of environmental baggage of their own (e.g. the gargantuan amounts of energy it takes to produce a few grams of hydrogen, the fact that ethanol and natural gas also create plenty of CO2, the environmental impact of lithium mining, etc.). As long as the focus, and my tax dollars, are on truly environmentally beneficial alternatives, I'm OK with it.

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[Tom030]

".... and can remember what it was like to breath unhealthy air on a hot summers day....".



Chris, no argument here. The same can be said for Seattle where I grew up and just about any population center. My objection is to the unintended consequences of say turning Nebraska into a nursery for growing methanol to add to our gas which inturn forces the cost of corn based food products up. We support Exxon et-al with huge tax breaks and then ship the refined product overseas because they will pay more than we wil. At the same time we are buying oil from countries that would like to see us gone. Air polution is a global problem. All the catalytic converters in the world are not going to help our air quality if third world countries continue to pollute at the current rate. These are just observations thrown out for comment. I sure don't have the answers. I would be interested in Jakes comments having lived in South America.

Rant off pass the Scotch <img src="/forum/images/smilies/968/glare.gif" class="smilie" alt="" />

tom

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[flash]

the third world countries contribute nothing by comparison to the united states. we only represent 5% of the world's population , but we use 25% of the world's resources, produce 30% of the world's waste, and produce a whopping 45% of the world's emission based C02.



it's not them. it's us.



as for any "worst case" stuff, it's here. it's happening. it's going to get ugly in the next few years. i'm not talking 160 years. i'm talking 10-20. it takes very little change in air and ocean temps to really screw things up. they're not even sure we can reverse it at this point. we may have waited too long.

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[Cloud9...68]

I think the impact of one factor (the percent of CO2 in the atmosphere) on a system with as many variables as the earth's climate is way too complex to make reliable predictions. Not saying a really bad scenario isn't possible, just that it's equally likely that the long-term impact of mankind's burning of fossil fuels will be relatively mild. We just don't know, and can't know, because of the overall complexity of the system.



Personally, I believe the issue of climate change, like most challenges mankind has faced, will ultimately have a technological solution. The factor that is so often overlooked when discussing seemingly insurrmountable problems is mankind's ingenuity. Einstein said, "The major problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking that was used when they were created" (or words to that effect). I'm confident that if the threat truly turns out to be as great as the more extreme scenarios predict, humans will device a geoengineering-based solution, such as stratospheric sulfate aerosol injection, or something similar.



As far as the US being the biggest offender, not sure where you're getting your numbers, but the US has actually made amazing strides in reducing our CO2 emission, largely as a result of the dizzying pace at which natural gas has displaced coal for power generation:



http://ecowatch.com/2012/us-leading-the-...-coal-use/



And according to this, the US is a very distant second to China in worldwide CO2 emissions, at only 18%:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cou..._emissions



Not this this really matters a whole lot, because you're correct that worldwide atmospheric CO2 concentation has crossed the 400 ppm threshold, and isn't showing any signs of slowing down. But I'm not losing any sleep over it, because we humans have a great track record of solving seemingly impossible problems when pressed into a corner.



Always interesting to see where the discussion leads when the subject of gas prices comes up...

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[flash]

it's not too complex at all. it makes me crazy when i hear things like that. it's often from people who say things like that who are just looking for excuses for their selfish behavior. other times it's from those who just don't know the facts. this is basic science. we do know the outcome. we already have the data, and the models to prove it. you would be surprised and very scared if you saw it. it's definitive. you just don't get to hear about it in the media because it would be really bad for the economy. we get a very filtered stream of carefully crafted information. corporate america, as well as the government, do not want you to hear it though. it would really screw things up for them. in reality we are on a VERY short path to a very real problem. within the next 10 years we will see the coastal areas severely compromised. we are already seeing crops failing at alarming rates. these things are adversely affected by minute changes. the kinds of changes we are seeing are well beyond minute.



the ocean currents are already changing. at the rate they are going, the weather patterns will see significant changes in the next 15-20 years. this will result in major shifts in temperature, further exacerbating the problem.



as for us solving it, we have little hope for actually curing the problem as long as we burn fossil fuels and such. we can't even get a cell phone to work properly, and that is purely profit driven. how can we hope to fix a planet wide problem with the resources we are willing to dedicate?



saying we have reduced emissions, as if to say "things are ok" is like saying "but honey, it's 50% off, so we're saving this much money" when you can't afford anything at all. we really need to stop ALL emissions to stand any chance of fixing this before disaster. a 7% reduction is nothing. even the 17% they are supposed to hit will not do the job.



on the item of sources, i would not trust wikipedia. google is your friend, and it's not hard to find stuff. i pulled the C02 percentage from a 2006 washington post article. the shift in percentage is due to the recent dramatic increase in china's coal burning. it doubled in the last 6 years. that flipped positions in who is worst. but, we aren't going to be able to tell china what to do as long as they hold the mortgage on the country.



back to the price of gas, it all goes to profit. that is what drives everything we do in this country. as long as the oil companies are allowed to do what they are doing, gas prices will remain where they are. why charge less? people will continue to pay it.



if we were to take away the industry from the profit driven free market, and put it under the control of the government, like every other energy source, we would have a far better chance of dealing with the issues. oil is the only energy source not currently price regulated and controlled by the government. we need to ban oil imports and control and regulate domestic sources. that would eliminate the greed, and control pricing. it would also spur on research for alternatives that work.

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[ds968]

   



photo of flash taken while he was unaware..



hey, I'm just sayin'.... <img src="/forum/images/smilies/968/tongue.png" class="smilie" alt="" />

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[flash]

lol - what can i say? i had the advantage of an early and unfiltered education. i wasn't stuck with only what the establishment wanted me to hear.



i am not a capitalist. in my perfect world, there would be no money. everyone would have exactly the same things. unfortunately, there are humans involved, and they are greedy by nature. hence the mess in which we find ourselves, and have for all of human history.



so, as long as these are the rules, i am just as bad as anyone else, and will continue to accumulate and consume at absurd rates. this attitude is just as much of a problem as the problem itself. until that changes, we are destined for failure.



so, i am also a part of the problem. i will continue to pay the gas prices, rather than do something else.

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[94SilverCab]

If you want to reduce CO2 emmisions, start with farming methods...



http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_an..._cent.html



Farming comprises 30% of CO2 emmisions.



JMHO,



Jay

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[flash]

again, profit is the issue here. we are destroying our farmland due to over farming. we subsidize the farming industry, pay them to grow crops we don't use, and not to grow crops we don't want, yet don't require that they let the land sit dormant. because of this, we essentially encourage farmers to farm beyond what the land can sustain, because they think they can make more money that way. in the short term, sure, but in the long term, the land gets burned out, and we create huge problems along the way.



we need more regulation over the farming industry.

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[Cloud9...68]

I agree with some of what Flash says, but am dumbfounded at the statement the the earth's climate is not complex. The only thing I can think of that rivals our climate in complexity is the human body.



Here's an analogy I would use. Take Jim, an American male in decent health, well educated, with a family history of pretty good longevity. Given all the factors, his life expectancy is 84 years. Then, on his 30th birthday, he has a huge slice of chocolate cake, and decides that from that day forward, he's going to eat a big slice of chocolate cake every day for the rest of his life. What will this do to his life expectancy? More than likely, it will shorten it, what with all the sugar and fat he's begun ingesting on a daily basis. But by how much? Will he drop dead of a heart attack at age 35? Entirely possible, but not very likely. Will he make it to 90 (thanks to some theorized health benefits of chocolate)? Again, probably not, given his increased risk of heart disease, diabetes, and other ailments as a result of his new habit. The truth, again, is that we just don't know how much this single factor of his bad habit will reduce his life expectancy, just that it will likely reduce it to some degree. He may develop an insatiable longing for fresh vegetables that he begins eating on a daily basis in place of the butter-smothered mashed potatoes he used to eat. He may begin exercising more. There may be unforeseen breakthroughs in medical science that will help mitigate his new bad habit.



I would never trust the predictive ability of a model with as many factors as the climate models, especially considering that if anything, given the strong leftward leaning of the news media in this country, the reporting will naturally be slanted toward the worst-case scenarios.



But if the really bad scenarios really are correct, I do agree that there isn't time to reduce worldwide CO2 emissions fast enough to save ourselves. While the developed world has made strides in reducing CO2 emissions, there zero chance the developing world can be convinced to adopt more expensive, greener forms of energy in time to make a difference. So either a) We're doomed, b )The problem won't be nearly as severe as some predict, or, c) Mankind will harness its collective ingenuity and come up with an out-of-the box solution that will mitigate the effects of elevated atmospheric CO2. I'm betting on b ) or c), if only because doomsday predictions have an abysmal track record.

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