Wow thats kerazay. I just checked and its still 3.93 right here in the part of PA that I live in.
Gas just hit $4.65 in southern california. Why?
On Nantucket, we have been paying at minimum over $4.20 a gallon for the past three years. When prices are high in the US our gas is $4.70 to $4.80, when it is low in the US our gass in $4.30 to $4.50. I think a gallon of regular was $4.80 this week.
$9.50 to $10 per gallon in Norway, but you can't compare prices like that. You need to account for price of living in that country and average salary. In Norway the average salary is around 80.000 compared to America, which is around 40.000, so all in all the prices are the same.
@Butano said:
Yep. Up in here in northern California it went from around 3.89 to 4.39 overnight. Glad it's my weekend off from work so that I don't have to commute back and forth 2 hours.
Fortunately, as I noted earlier, you should see that ease up in the next few weeks. California's just seeing a particular state shortage at the moment.
@CL60 said:
Americans always complaining about gas prices when they're FAR more expensive everywhere else.
Yeah I lol'd alone at the thread title, literally #firstworldproblems.
@TruthTellah said:
It's amazing how quickly this became about some discussion of alternative energy sources, overpopulation, and America-bashing. Come on, guys. This is embarrassing. It's like an Internet thread stereotype.
The specific question was why gas prices suddenly shot up in Southern California. It doesn't have to do with the US getting oil from people that hate them or long term economic trends. It is a temporary supply shortage exacerbated by poor planning, recent market volatility, and local public policy. These factors led to a temporary jump in prices in the state which should ease in the coming weeks.
We have a winner. Nice point well made. :)
@BraveToaster said:
Does anyone here remember the scene in I Am Legend when they show the gas prices on that old gas station's sign? I thought of that when I read the thread title.
I saw it at the movie theater when it came out and there was a reaction from the crowd when the showed the gas prices. If I remember right the prices were like $5.70 or something.
@Nightriff said:
Glad I'm not in Cali, but it is still expensive as hell, can we blame Obama for this or is it still Bush?
I know that was sarcasm. BUT, if anyone thinks it isn't, know that presidents have so little to do with gas prices, it's set by a european market. It's affected by tons of things, and the president can't make it go higher or lower if he tried, aside from economics, but even that is stretching it.
Something to note: Refinement facilities are in the south while major consumers are in the east and west. The pipelines are filled to capacity pushing oil around. This is why I roll my eyes at claims that we need to open up more oil exploration because demand is such it is faster and cheaper to ship in oil to east and west coasts than using domestic. This is why I roll my eyes at those who claim we need to drill even more where the result will simply be the US exports more oil out of souther ports than ends up at the gas pump in New York or San Franisco.
I'll be glad when the world finally converts to sustainable energy so Americans will finally shut up about gas prices.
@Nightriff said:
Glad I'm not in Cali, but it is still expensive as hell, can we blame Obama for this or is it still Bush?
It's been a whole four years.... so Bush.
@RollingZeppelin said:
I'll be glad when the world finally converts to sustainable energy so Americans will finally shut up about gas prices.
You do realize you need natural gasses TO ACTUALLY MAKE "sustainable"/artificial energy, right? RIGHT?
@Godlyawesomeguy said:
@JasonR86 said:
Oil is expensive and we're getting it from people who fucking hate us.
You mean Mexico, Canada, and domestic sources? AKA- The places where the United States gets its gasoline.
But where do they get THEIR gas from? FOLLOW THE MONEY.
That was just an excuse to say "FOLLOW THE MONEY."
@Fredchuckdave said:
@Nightriff: Obama lost the debate and therefore caused the increase in gas prices! My logic is flawless.
@CL60: Hey at least your prices are due to enormous taxes instead of arbitrary bullshit
Arbitrary bullshit? I think you should look up the word "arbitrary."
California lost power to a major Refinery for like a week, and then didn't it also just straight up explode another one? That is the opposite of arbitrary, and someone said early in the thread that there's some regulation on gas during these months that are interacting with troubles in the market already.
The entire city of Chicago would like California to quit bitching. Our gas prices have been some of the highest in the country for two years now, topped only by our murder rate.
@ripelivejam said:
@Fredchuckdave said:
@believer258 said:
@ripelivejam said:
how about humanity's dogged resistance to alternative/clean/renewable fuels?
can't wait for society to crumble when gas runs out and we regress to 18th century living and cannot access any remaining fossil fuels anymore.
So how 'bout you go and supply all of us with those cars, eh? Some people can't afford them. In fact, a lot of people can't afford them.
EDIT: Doesn't help that a whole lot of those cars that don't use gasoline are fuck-ugly. Not all of them, but a lot of them are.
This is hilarious, good show unintentional or not.
it's cool for humanity to blindly live on in ignorance of its own plight, its own selfish devouring of resources, and its own rampant overpopulation. yeah it's expensive, but it's a matter of maintaining our current society and way of living or having it come crashing down. we need to set in place the infrastructure to allow these changes to start happening. yeah it won't happen overnight, it probably will never happen, but we have to try for the sake of our species.
overpopulation sickens me the most. why are so many people so eager to bring more lives into an already troubled world like this? we should know better.
Overpopulation occurs in essentially a negative heatmap of combustion engines being a thing: poorer the country, the more the population grows. There are exceptions, certainly, but most of the highest birthrates are in the poorest, least developed countries. So I fail to see what it has to do with high gas prices in California.
@ripelivejam said:
@TruthTellah said:
It's amazing how quickly this became about some discussion of alternative energy sources and America-bashing. Come on, guys.
The specific question was why gas prices suddenly shot up in Southern California. It doesn't have to do with the US getting oil from people that hate them or long term economic trends. It is a temporary supply shortage exacerbated by poor planning, recent market volatility, and local public policy. These factors led to a temporary jump in prices in the state which should ease in the coming weeks.
yes cause we will always have fossil fuels, forever, until the end of time, with no consequences...
Sees a call for on-topic discussion, decides to continue rant off topic!
You know that computer you're using? It has a fossil fuel cost too, so either give it all up, give a solution, or shut up.
@Seppli said:
@Nightriff said:How about the truth? The Earth's resources are finite. Especially fossil fuels.Glad I'm not in Cali, but it is still expensive as hell, can we blame Obama for this or is it still Bush?
This. Also, in my country 1 US Gallon (roughly 3.78 Liters) is $8.09 or so (1 Liter being at $2.13)
America actually pays roughly the same as Europe does for their gas, it just doesn't seem like it because about half of what we pay is in the form of government subsidies using our tax dollars. Which if you think about it,means that people who don't drive but use public transport are subsidizing the people who drive gas guzzling vehicles.Seems like Europe has the right idea: Let those who drive the most pay for it.
The prices are high because you will pay them. When they are higher, you will continue to pay them. You've constructed your entire society to run on fossil fuel, and let companies with no responsibilty to the people control the sale of it.
This also goes towards overpopulation; people congregate and slums are built, but there is still unfathomable stretches of land all over the world that aren't being used for anything. A million places where you can go, point in any direction and not see a single person or building. This isn't even bringing into account land and living space we create ourselves. If the idea is 'how will we feed them'; with merely today's technology, we could _easily_ feed every person on earth, twice over. It just doesn't make economic sense for the people creating the food. But economics are entirely intangible and malleable. The only thing stopping Africa from being a global center of food production is political instability.
And this isn't even taking into account what the Information Age has actually brought us; the core of human existence is relating to one another, like you and I doing here. The only space I'm taking up right now to have this discussion, to listen to music I want to hear, to be connected and to experience everything in human creation; the only physical space it takes is a seat and room to look at my smartphone. As technology continues to advance, the quality of that experience will increase and the physical space of the tools to connect to it will decrease. To communicate with you 100 years ago would require writing a letter, handing it to a person who would then physically travel to various mail outposts until another person delivered it to you. 50 years ago it would be a massive telephone tower and phones hardwired to our walls. Today it's a wireless router, fibre optic cables and underground Amazon server clusters. Can you imagine what it'll be 50 years from now? How about a hundred?
Well, it's about time we started disincentivizing the rampant consumption of a fossil fuel. People in my country pay over $8 per gallon and that's still cheaper than what I'd have to pay for any decent brand of orange juice.
@ripelivejam said:
how about humanity's dogged resistance to alternative/clean/renewable fuels?
can't wait for society to crumble when gas runs out and we regress to 18th century living and cannot access any remaining fossil fuels anymore.
Problem with that is petroleum simply provides so much energy for what we put in to get it. At its current state, well past the prime of easy to drill oil like the early texas fields, its still at a ration of 20:1 in terms of energy extracted compared to energy used for extraction. Nothing else comes close to it, not even the new natural gas boom. Remember the ethanol craze? Ethanol has an energy ration of about 1.3:1. Something like solar, wind, and hydro electric are far more efficient, but still doesn't come to petro. (I don't remember their ratio off the top of my head).
Bottom line is, while we really alternative fuels, humanity's current rate of energy consumption does not allow for any other energy source to replace petro on its current scale.
When are we going to start attaching solar panels and hydrogen fuel tanks on to our cars all haphazardly like in Looper?
Gas will forever be going up in price. i Recently watched a video about it. With hybrid cars and solar power coming around less people are buying gas, oh be it a small margin, so they raise prices, also its taking more and more work to get the gas, so they raise prices, the gas you put in your car comes from the same shit we use to get electricity. In about 10 years supposedly it will be cheaper to go solar for your home and electric for your car.
@MAGZine said:
@ripelivejam: I don't think we're running out of oil just yet.
We don't need to run out of oil. We just need to get to the point where existing oil supplies reach a level where they are no longer profitable to drill. That will happen in our life time. If you look at statistics, in the last...5 years iirc, international drilling has been steadily increasing while actual oil production has been decreasing. That's the larger problem. Whenever we hear about how much longer we can subsist on oil, the numbers often include the very much difficult to extract oil reserves in half depleted fields from the 50s that would require much higher sales prices to warrant a profit.
With China and India expanding at the rate they are, world wide demand is increasing rapidly every year.
There is huge political instability in the middle east, I.E. Egypt, Libia, Syria, Iraq, Iran, etc.
We give big oil companys all the leverage in the world to screw people over however they see fit.
Oil prices are partially controlled by mob like Opec, whose members are made mostly of arab countries that hate us and Venezuela, that hates us.
Our dedication to alternative energy is mostly lip service, that gets politically attacked when its convenient.
We've been at war for something like 10 years.
So many other reasons, let alone the fact that Oil is finite and we're projected to hit serious shortages in our lifetimes.
Its time to incentivise serious alternative energy research, don't you think?
That is to say nothing of Global Warming.
@Brodehouse said:
The prices are high because you will pay them. When they are higher, you will continue to pay them. You've constructed your entire society to run on fossil fuel, and let companies with no responsibilty to the people control the sale of it.
Your sentence reads kind of like you don't pay such prices nor live in a society dependent on petro. Wanna share your secret?
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