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Re: RV Fuel Issues & Prices - Post 'Em Here!
Point of order: The Alaska oil pipeline was a Nixon/Ford/Carter thing, started in 1973, finished in 1977. Reagan was governor of CA for a couple of those years, but I'm not seeing the connection between him and the Alaska pipeline. It's always possible I'm just missing something obvious.249Views0likes0CommentsRe: RV Fuel Issues & Prices - Post 'Em Here!
Found the link I'd mentioned earlier. Rick Wagoner (GM CEO) on Charlie Rose On the subject of incentives he said that GM doesn't expect the government to pay for the development of vehicles like the Volt, but would like to see the government encourage the demand side to help build volume. That would be a combination of incentives to buy, and also allowing fuel prices not to drop too much. The company is already realigning its production capacity to the reality of high gas prices and they would hate to see a reversal in demand for trucks at this point. Not expressing approval or disapproval, but it seems possible there will be a long term impact on tow vehicles.265Views0likes0CommentsRe: RV Fuel Issues & Prices - Post 'Em Here!
Each form of power has a risk/reward and a cost/benefit relationship. Renewables aren't heavy on the power density side of things, but nobody's going to make a movie called "4000 Acre Island" about the core meltdown at the solarium. Wind power has its issues too, so does coal - not the least of which involve strip mines and black lung. France has gone heavy into nuclear energy, the Germans and the Danes seem to be leaning more toward solar and wind. Be like the French, be like the Danes? Pros and cons there too. I'm personally glad Fez is here. A discussion where everyone agrees with everyone else is of no value, either for entertainment or education.263Views0likes0CommentsRe: RV Fuel Issues & Prices - Post 'Em Here!
http://www.autoblog.com/2008/07/02/mercedes-runs-out-of-gas-by-2015/ Article synopsis: Mercedes Benz plans to abandon the gasoline engine by 2015. Alternative fuels, electrics, and fuel cells or H2 engines, I guess. Presumably they have reasons.263Views0likes0CommentsRe: RV Fuel Issues & Prices - Post 'Em Here!
mrjimboalaska wrote: ... Show me John Deere's, or Massy Furgason's Tractor that is "Electric", how about an International Combine that is Electric? Or, an Electric Peterbuilt? ... Not a Pete, but a Mercedes, and not a pure electric, but a hybrid cng/electric here Hybrids are coming, Peterbuilt has a few. For some applications diesel will probably remain the choice. But not all.193Views0likes0CommentsRe: RV Fuel Issues & Prices - Post 'Em Here!
Charlie D. wrote: How are you going to charge the Volt? ... ... As others said. Drill and drill now. Electricity isn't that difficult to produce. It's tricky to do it for free. I've looked into it, and am pretty sure we could go off-grid if we had to. It might mean conservation (gasp). As to the last... why? Even if that lowers the price of gas to 2004 levels, we may see Ford, Chevy, and/or Chrysler go under. They won't be able to retool plants to shift from cars back to trucks before their cash runs out, and with cheap gas, nobody here wants a good small car (seen any VW Lupos here? no? "A" class Mercedes? Why not?). Beyond that, with cheap enough oil, there is no impetus for private industry to develop other sources of power. It's going to run out at some point, and it makes a lot more sense to me to figure out a transition while there's time rather than gotterdammerung. And even beyond that, every time we buy a gallon of gas, we are indirectly supporting people who very much don't like us. Yes, that's probably kind of us, but it's also kind of stupid of us. Drilling more won't solve that, not as long as it's easier to ship crude from Alaska to Japan than from Alaska to the Bronx.193Views0likes0CommentsRe: RV Fuel Issues & Prices - Post 'Em Here!
A number of posters appear to have the attitude of "Apres moi le deluge" which interpreted means: "as long as I get enough to keep me happy, nuts to everyone else." To the outsider, this is just a fantastically ugly image - an obese man at a buffet fighting off others with a cane as he shoves fistfuls of pasta into his mouth. One hopes they aren't like that in person. Autoblog reported that Ford figured $3.50 was the breaking point for turning sales from trucks to cars. Ford and GM have religion in this now and are furiously shuttering some plants and retooling others. They are doing this by drawing on whatever reserves of cash and credit they have left - quite literally they are gambling the futures of their companies on this change. They have one shot, they've got religion about it, and they're taking that shot as I type this. Mulally's a believer, and Lutz is oozing all the passion of a new convert, pressing GM's board even a year or two ago to keep the Volt program alive. (as an aside, in January of this year he was quoted as saying that if you saw $5 gas, you'd see a H of a shift to small cars... turns out he was frighteningly prescient What does this mean? It means that at least Ford and GM cannot afford for fuel to dip much below $3.50 for very long. Now that's ironic.139Views0likes0CommentsRe: RV Fuel Issues & Prices - Post 'Em Here!
Remember the good old days when the Cuyahoga River was burning, the Love Canal kids were starting to be diagnosed with some bad things,the smog in LA was thick enough that you could see thermals that popped the inversion layer (or not see the tops of buildings). I do. A certain amount of environmental responsibility (inconvenient word!) goes along with industrialization. How much is up for debate. After 8 years of tilting away from Europe, it's a dead gimme that the next pres is going to swing back a little (or a lot). One last thought, a little more on topic, is that the simplest way for government to be involved is to institute rationing. Maybe you can get $3 gas, but only 100 gallons a year, for example. After that it's $6. (gotta pay the subsidy, you know). Somehow I don't think this is what people have in mind when clamoring for government intervention, but it's good to be careful what one asks for.408Views0likes0CommentsRe: RV Fuel Issues & Prices - Post 'Em Here!
It's convenient to think of things in the past as always being one way or the other, but we should remember that Lincoln's funeral train avoided Cincinnati because of concerns for northern Copperheads - and this after the war was all but over! 1940 had its own share of debate and disagreement - had it not been so, the US would have responded differently to Chamberlain's appeal from Munich in '37. Ultimately, conservation and moderation are not crimes, pursuing new sources for energy is prudence against future fluctuations of this sort, and encouraging our overweight bottoms to do some self-propelled motion to stores and parks is just common sense. Does this mean that people shouldn't go RVing? Of course not. We have a 6L truck with a 31' trailer. On a good day we'll see 12mpg, more often it's around 11. We can plan around this. I may not like it, but we can plan. And we do. Is the oil in these new reserves recoverable? In all likelihood, but at what cost remains to be seen. It may pan out to be $140-145 given today's price of 2016 oil futures; it may not.229Views0likes0Comments
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