Unusually for a spring season, gasoline prices
have been steadily climbing in the US since the beginning of 2011, and have surpassed $4/gallon in many US states, largely due to
political instability in many oil-producing African and Middle-Eastern nations.
"Not so fast," says the Department of Energy. Although the price of crude oil has climbed steadily throughout the year, the price of gasoline has climbed much faster -- a disparity known as the
crack spread, which
has remained at its highest level in 32 months, even in light of a sharp decline in the price of crude oil at the beginning of the month. The DoE speculates that although crude oil is cheap and plentiful enough, the
2011 Misssissippi River Floods are currently more to blame for $4 gas than the uprisings in the Middle East.
posted by schmod
on May 19, 2011 -
125 comments
Car companies were facing a variety of efficiency and emission standards throughout the United States, from the Department of Transportation, the Environmental Protection Agency, On May 19th, and then an even stricter emission standard from California and 13 other states (plus DC). On May 19th,
President Obama announced nation-wide new vehicle fuel efficiency standards for new cars and trucks through 2016. The goal is to rapidly increase fuel efficiency,without compromising safety, by an average of 5, culminating in 39 MPG for cars and 30 MPG for light trucks. Currently,
no auto makers are meet the final standards, though some are closer than others.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on May 28, 2009 -
85 comments
In 2009,
a remarkably gifted politician, confronting a remarkably difficult set of challenges, will
have to learn to say "No we can't",
Guantánamo will prove a moral minefield,
economic recovery will be invisible to the naked eye,
governments must prepare for the day they stop financial guarantees,
we will judge our commitment to sustainability,
scientists should research the causes of religion,
we will all be potential online paparazzi,
English will have more words than any other language (but it's meaningless),
Afghanistan will see a surge of Western (read: American) troops,
Iran will continue its nuclear quest while
diplomacy lies in shambles,
the sea floor is the new frontier,
we should rethink aging,
(non-)voters will continue to thwart the European project --
but cheap travel will continue to buoy it --
though it has some unfinished business to attend to, and
a Nordic defence bond will blossom.
The Economist: The World in 2009.
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posted by goodnewsfortheinsane
on Nov 27, 2008 -
31 comments
CitizenRe is a solar power rental company for the home. Free to install (!), a monthly rental fee is equal to what would normally be paid to the power company.
Video.
posted by stbalbach
on Jan 11, 2007 -
67 comments
A
study released by
CERA has some interesting tidbits: the average motorist in 2005 used 703 gallons of gas, and drove 40 percent more than 25 years ago; the US has 1,148 registered personal vehicles for every 1,000 licensed drivers; the percentage of vehicles that are SUVs (including minivans and light trucks) is slowly going down from 55% in 2005 to 53% in 2006; the average fuel consumption for all vehicles is 19.8 mpg in 2005, a drop from when it peaked at 20.2 in 2001; and the share of U.S. household budgets going to gasoline and oil has has been relatively stable for decades, at about 3.8 percent in 2006.
posted by jaimev
on Dec 1, 2006 -
18 comments
Thomas Friedman: The First Law of Petropolitics, in short, argues that the price of oil and the pace of freedom operate in an inverse correlation. As the price of oil goes up in what I call petroauthoritarian states—like Iran, Sudan, Venezuela—the pace of freedom goes down. These regimes can afford to be less responsive to their people and outside pressure. And as the price of oil goes down, the pace of freedom goes up because these regimes have to open up to the world if they want to deliver for their people, and they have to empower their people more.
But how to lower oil prices and help freedom on its proverbial march? Many, from
Alan Greenspan to
Andrew Sullivan to
Ray Magliozzi from Car Talk think the answer may be to . . .
raise the gas tax? The
Pigou Club is an ever-updated list of economists, politicians and others who have advocated Pigouvian (or is it
Pigovian?) taxes to not only lower oil prices, but reduce greenhouse gases, fix the federal deficit and strengthen our national security. Though some remain more than a little hesitant to
jump on the bandwagon and others
remain skeptical that the movement is anything more than "just talk," this could be an idea whose time has come, especially since the gas tax
isn't as regressive one would think.
posted by joshuaconner
on Oct 25, 2006 -
57 comments
the new urban jungle . . . is a growing movement led by cities like
San Francisco,
New York, and
Leiden to restore active and vibrant natural systems in urban areas. Far from the eden-like depictions of nature of yesteryear, i.e.
the garden of earthly delights (nonetheless, still attracting some dynamic
new christian converts), the movement has morphed into today's backyard and grassroots environmental movement which is more and more a picture of hybridity, compromise, mixed-use, and ultimately, taking nature out of the walled islands of zoos, aquaria, national parks and other thick-walled institutions and offering a different kind of everyday
"unmediated" community experience with the new
urban wilderness.
VIDEO LINK
posted by huckhound
on Jul 6, 2006 -
1 comment
The Acoustics of Gases. The high-pitched version of your voice that you hear when you inhale helium represents a cool principle. Unlike the speed of light, the speed of sound is quite sensitive to the composition of the medium that it travels through. A gas such as helium that is much less dense than the air we normally breathe and hear in will actually cause the speed of sound to increase, a phenomenon that we perceive as a
Chipmunks-like change in pitch. A couple of scientists have used this relationship between sound frequency and gas composition to
invent an acoustic device for monitoring the gas composition of air. Of course , if you're a canary this is nothing new.
posted by derangedlarid
on Oct 25, 2005 -
23 comments
Running on Fumes -- a fascinating essay by
the Nation's Sasha Abramsky on what rising gas prices will do to poor exurban communities.
posted by digaman
on Oct 4, 2005 -
165 comments
Petroleum Industry Christmas Wishlist Conservative pundits are quick to point out that no "
new refineries have been built since 1976", and even quicker to blame "environmentalists". But the facts just don't support that. Refiners have chosen the environment that they do business in, and in some cases have willingly contributed to it. (
Plenty of data here.) Here's why:
- The government has allowed the industry to merge, consolidate, and restrict refining capacity, thus impacting pricing, supply, and demand.
- The quest for profits has caused the need to run extremely lean supplies (ie. no stockpiles of crude - it arrives when you need it, not before) and has resulted in susceptability to wild volatility in prices, but has allowed refiners to operate at very high efficiency but with no margin of excess capacity for temporary shortages, disasters, etc.
- Oil refiners trimmed back capacity after the Oil Crash of the early 1980s and have been unwilling to reinvest in new technologies unless environmental restrictions and local fuel cleanliness mandates are reduced.
As one would expect, Bush's solutions nicely match up with the wishlists of
OPEC and
US refiners, who in the past few decades have largely undone the breakup of Standard Oil (
via) via mergers and joint ventures. Representative
Joe Barton, (R-TX), Chairperson of the
Energy and Commerce Committee, incidentally up for reelection and
well funded, by "
the industry" through various
Political Action Committees, has released a draft of the predictably named (to be
found here when released)
Gasoline for America's Security Act of 2005 (committee discusion and
webcast are scheduled for 9/28 at 8 am.) Given that new refineries are years away, there is still no solution for current prices or the (90%?)
increase in prices since January of 2001.
posted by rzklkng
on Sep 27, 2005 -
22 comments
Never use a debit card to pay at the pump: "Each day millions of Americans use their debit card at gas stations to "pay at the pump." What you probably do not know is gas stations have the right to overcharge you a certain amount to ensure they get their money. Each gas station decides how much to overcharge and hold on your account. Some put a $75 or $100 hold on the account while others only hold $5 or $10. But, these stations also decide how long to hold that money. Some hold the money for up to three days. . ." How is this even legal? Am I the last schmuck in the U.S. to find out about this? I just found out that Sam's Club (for example) charges $50 and deposits your change
three days later.
posted by spock
on Jun 19, 2005 -
94 comments
