Guest mdhopeful23 Posted May 11, 2004 Report Share Posted May 11, 2004 anyone a little peeved with the price of gas lately? its 89.9 today in southern ontario :eek ...this is madness! i thought it would last a week or so, but now i hear all these stories about the whole summer...nooooo:( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Ibraheem Posted May 11, 2004 Report Share Posted May 11, 2004 in the NB its like 90.9 or something, its WILD:eek Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest UWOMED2005 Posted May 11, 2004 Report Share Posted May 11, 2004 Welcome to the future. That's what we get living in a society that for years has mortgaged its energy future for big cars and cheap gas. SUVs and bombing countries that have oil hasn't exactly helped, either. At least we still have SOME fossil fuels left to use, expensive though they might be. That probably won't be the case for our great grandchildren (or at the least, their great grandchildren. . . ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Ollie Posted May 11, 2004 Report Share Posted May 11, 2004 You can all stop complaining because it's 98.9 in Vancouver! Although I don't have a car so I don't care. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest mdhopeful23 Posted May 11, 2004 Report Share Posted May 11, 2004 i would like to think my great grandkids would have another source of feul/energy available to them by that time. hopefully by then, hydrogen cells (or whatever theyre called) will power vehicles, solar energy will be harvested, and highpowered windmills will become as common as lamposts... i totally agree that we are paying for our gas guzzling ways...except that the states (home of the monster vehicles) haven't seen a similar rise in their gas prices! as well, the iraq war has been blamed for rising gas prices. okaaay, so why are friendly canadians taking on this burden? oh well, time to get my bike out and start pedalling. :b Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest UWOMED2005 Posted May 11, 2004 Report Share Posted May 11, 2004 Ahh, Hydrogen cells. Hydrogen cells are an amazing clean battery, so as long it's figured out how to make them safe and cost-efficient. Thing is, they aren't a primary source of energy! That is, there pretty much isn't any source of straight up Hydrogen to fuel Hydrogen cells. Instead, we'd be (or rather are) looking at using electrolysis to split Water into free H2 and O2. Problem is, that takes energy. All you're doing with H2 cells is storing energy cleanly derived somewhere else. And with so many of our current power plants powered by fossil fuels and Uranium (which itself is in fact a depletable resource - there are almost as many questions as fossil fuels to who how many more years worth of reactor quality Uranium we have left) and Fusion demonstrating itself to be prohibitively expensive for relatively little actually net energ gain, H2 cells aren't going to bail us out unless we dam every river and panel the entire planet in Solar energy collectors to charge those H2 cells. Not to mention, rarely does anybody (at least nobody in George Bush's reelection campaign) point out that it is hoped that the developing world is in fact developing. . . and could at some point in the next 100 years require almost as much energy per capita (less heating use, but with roughly 4-5 times the population!) as us North Americans and Europeans. Something's going to have to give. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest UofT Student Posted May 11, 2004 Report Share Posted May 11, 2004 Two thumbs up for (good old reliable!?) public transportation! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest noncestvrai Posted May 11, 2004 Report Share Posted May 11, 2004 I just wanted to mention that the increase in gas prices do not only hurt regular drivers, but truck AND public transit companies as well. This will invariably in the long run increase the cost of products as well and public transportation costs...so even if I don't have a car, it will affect me if my bus pass' and my goods' costs increase. If you think about it, even the health system would be affected...last time I checked ambulances don't run on water... Just a thought. noncestvrai Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest chemgirl Posted May 11, 2004 Report Share Posted May 11, 2004 I think this is a wake up call that we can no longer continue with our nonchalant use of gas, there is not a neverending supply. In some ways I want this trend to continue, to encourage people to actually THINK about the vehicles they buy in terms of consuming a limited resource. Sure that Caddy Escalade LOOKS nice, but... You would not believe the amount of @#%$ going on in Edmonton now that our gas has gone up to 83.2 or 82.9. It's been on the news for two days in a row. The provincial government is talking about rebates. Personally, I bought my car with a view to gas consumption. Its a 2001 Echo and even though my husband has to drive 50 kms a day or more for work, we only fill up every 1.5-2 weeks, and that's with an automatic transmission. I wish that we could have afforded a civic hybrid, but maybe next time! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest bananacreampie Posted May 11, 2004 Report Share Posted May 11, 2004 Gas was 82.9 in Calgary for a couple of weeks but it just jumped to 88.2!! I feel old talking about the days of 40 cent/litre gas :\ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Koppertone Posted May 11, 2004 Report Share Posted May 11, 2004 You know, even at 98cents (here in Van), it's still not as expensive as in Europe. North America gets a real break on its gas prices, and even at these new high prices, it still only costs $35 to fill the tank of my Honda Civic and I only have to fill it maybe every two weeks (except lately as I'm prepping for my Manitoba move and so have to move a lot of stuff back to Kamloops). But really, it probably costs about $25 worth of gas to get to Kamloops which is 400km away. It beats the hell out of walking. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest medschoolboy Posted May 11, 2004 Report Share Posted May 11, 2004 why isn't the states seeing the same kind of rise in gas prices? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Ibraheem Posted May 11, 2004 Report Share Posted May 11, 2004 lets go buy some hybrid cars Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest UWOMED2005 Posted May 12, 2004 Report Share Posted May 12, 2004 I drive an Eagle Summit (bought off my neighbour who wanted to sell it when she finished her anaesthesia residency and wanted to upgrade) with standard transmission. I can practically make it across the province without refilling. Yep, gas is way more expensive in Europe. As a result they walk everywhere and have excellent public transportation. I'd argue on average they're fitter than us North Americans even though, on average, more Europeans smoke and drinking wine is a larger part of their culture (at least from personal experiences living in Switzerland.) At least they're slimmer on average. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest DonaldKaufman Posted May 12, 2004 Report Share Posted May 12, 2004 The USA IS seeing increases in gas prices. I was just there. Gas prices have almost doubled since the weeks after Sept 11th, which is a larger increase than has been seen in this country over the same period. The station I used to go to was $0.99/gallon in Nov '01, and now it's $1.88. Gas prices are at record highs all over North America, not just in Canada. It's hardly unexpected - the war in Iraq, recent reductions in production by OPEC, growing demand in India and China...and it is a nonrenewable, natural resource. Oil production might peak as early as 2007, and certainly no later than 2020, and after that happens 98.9 cents/L is going to seem like a steal. It will recession-city, population 6.3 billion. It's scary stuff, for sure. The hydrogen thing is turning out to be a bit of a pipe-dream as I understand it, so it might be time to get serious about solar, hydro, or wind power. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest CaesarCornelius Posted May 12, 2004 Report Share Posted May 12, 2004 Just to add something about europe. It is true that gas is almost $2/litre but it is also true that their vehicles are almost 60% more efficient on gasoline than north american cars. Imagine paying $70 to fill up your civic, or $200 to fill up your SUV, you would quickly DEMAND more efficient cars. THe day of the SUV is soon to be over. CC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Kirsteen Posted May 12, 2004 Report Share Posted May 12, 2004 Hi there, Regarding SUVs, if you have a trot around the UK and take a look at the cars that the British are driving (most especially in the cities), SUVs are clearly not as prevalent as they are here. In fact, in Glasgow and London it's fairly shocking to see an SUV in amongst all the relatively wee smart cars, Rovers and Fiats. I mean, parking is a virtual magic act in the UK as is, but parking an SUV there would require perpetual Barnum and Bailey-esque talent. Cheers, Kirsteen Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest mdhopeful23 Posted May 12, 2004 Report Share Posted May 12, 2004 yes, i remember seeing quite a few 3-wheelers in the uk :rollin . up till then, i thought only mr. bean owned such a vehicle...oh i miss that show...remember when he met the queen :rollin :lol i digress...anyhoo, im still peeved about this big hike in gas prices. imagine goin to timmies this morning and your med coffee cost $2, instead of the regular $1.20. thats a big jump in the price, id have to do a double take to see im at starbucks :b . thats how i feel driving to the pump these days...i can justify putting it up another 5 cents...but its like a 15 cent inflation in a week! :eek Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Koppertone Posted May 12, 2004 Report Share Posted May 12, 2004 Everybody has been forcasting massive gas price increases. If people are still buying, by supply and demand, the price should still be increasing. Look at air travel. If it got any more expensive, I'd really doubt that I'd ever make any more flights (well the only ones I have made in the last 8 years were for med interviews) but if it were any cheaper EVERYBODY would be travelling that way. Lucky here in Van we're blessed with one of the best public transport systems in North America (if you're a public transport user, if you're a moterist it can be expensive) The question is, how high will it have to go for people to really start changing their driving habits and begin carpooling/transit using/ etc.? I would have to say if the price got over $2/lr I would seriously have to consider either getting a gas/electric hybrid, switching to propane, or picking up friends and splitting the costs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ploughboy Posted May 12, 2004 Report Share Posted May 12, 2004 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Random thoughts and wankery, since I'm procrastinating instead of studying. I've been thinking a lot about energy use over the last year or so, and I can hardly pass this topic up. Most of this is based on things I've read over the years, so I can't cite any of it off the top of my head. Writing "I think...", "I believe..." and "It's my understanding that..." every few sentences gets kind of tedious, so I'll say it once: this is all just my humble opinion. Corrections welcome, along with opposing points of view... $1.00 gasoline - my fuel still costs me about $0.65/litre - ha-ha! ;-) I have lots of fun when I fill up my diesel Golf. I always give a big smile to the soccer mom putting a hundred dollars of gas into her Canyonaro... If gas prices stay up I'm sure I'll notice the knock-on effects in the price of other goods, just like everybody else. I might not smile so much then. My "to-do" list this summer includes brewing up a few litres of biodiesel, just to see if I can. With a little luck I hope to be set up to run almost exclusively on biodiesel or straight veggie oil within the next decade or so. Not perfect, but not a bad solution for an individual who has access to some land. Certainly not applicable to everybody's situation. I haven't done the sums yet, so I don't know what kind of land-base would be required to grow enough bio-fuel to support me (I drive ~ 50,000 km/yr). I don't know how well it would scale, either. Somebody once told me that in order to completely replace dino-fuels with bio-fuels all of N. America's farmland would have to be diverted from food production. Since he didn't give me any numbers (and since he had an agenda all his own) I've never quite trusted his assertion. Echoing chemgirl here - from a long-term point of view rising fuel prices are a good thing, as it should encourage conservation and efficiency. Keyword there is "should". I'm not convinced that North American society will react gracefully if fuel prices continue to rise. North American (and to some extent global) society depends so much on having cheap fuel! Everything from just-in-time manufacturing to urban planning to Uncle Sam's ability to project military power on a global scale, it all comes down to cheap oil. Take away that cheap energy and certain things will stop working, and that will have weird and unpredictable effects. In my darker moments I wonder if the US isn't like one of those huge plant-eating dinosaurs dealt a mortal blow by a T-Rex: it's already dead, but it keeps walking along with a smile on its face 'cuz it's so darn big that the nerve impulses haven't travelled all the way to the brain yet... UWOMED2005 - Couple of points, one in agreement and one in disagreement. I'm not picking on you, just using you as a launching point for a sermon. Hope you don't mind! 1) I agree that anybody pushing straight hydrogen as an energy panacea is selling a bill of goods. Hydrogen is definitely a pain to handle, it will leak through all sorts of things you wouldn't expect it to. As well, on a per-volume basis the energy density of hydrogen isn't wonderful compared to something like gasoline, simply 'cuz the gasoline is a liquid. For these reasons alone electrolysis and transport seems like a non-starter. Personally I think that as a medium for storing and transporting energy, hydrocarbons are here to stay. However, it'd be nice (and more efficient) to use reformers and fuel cells instead of infernal combustion engines. Sooner or later the source of those hydrocarbons will have to change, though. Pumping them out of the ground just to burn them seems silly, somehow. As a society we need to figure out a way to synthesize hydrocarbons cheaply from a primary energy source, whether that be via genetically modified bacteria crapping out long-chain hydrocarbons, purpose-bred plants that yield appreciable quantities of useful oils, or a magical nuclear-powered box that sucks in air and water and spits out Texas Tea... ;-) 2) Regarding nuclear fuel supply, there's enough easily-extracted uranium kicking around that at current rates of consumption we won't run out for a few tens of thousands of years. I think the French already have some funky programme going on involving breeder reactors, so it might be possible to stretch that fuel supply even further, if necessary. To get politically incorrect for a second, I'm actually a fan of nuclear energy as a base source of power, supplemented by conservation and renewables. When it comes to producing enough energy to run a country with tens/hundreds of millions of citizens, given the level of our technology I think nuclear is the lesser evil. The fuel has an incredible energy density, nuclear energy generation doesn't produce greenhouse gases, and the power can be relatively cheap (including plant decomissioning and waste disposal), if it's done right. I admit that "relatively cheap" hasn't always been the case here in Ontario, but a good chunk of that can be attributed to political, not technical, causes. Older Western reactor designs have an enviable safety record, and new designs benefit from decades of operational experience with the older plants (Don't even get me started on the criminal design of the Chernobyl reactor...) To head off some of the anti-nuclear arguments that I usually hear: i) No, I wouldn't mind having a nuclear power plant in my back-yard. Already got one, in fact. Well, not literally in my backyard, but close enough. If the whole meds thing doesn't work out for me I might try to get a job there again someday. ii) No, I don't want a long-term nuclear waste dump in my back-yard, thankyouverymuch. Nobody else does either, which is why those empty mine-shafts in geologically stable regions in the middle of nowhere are so appealing as storage sites. Given the choice between dispersing millions of tonnes of somewhat nasty stuff into the atmosphere versus keeping a few tonnes of really nasty stuff safe and secure I know what I'd choose. Yes we're leaving a nice "present" for our decendants (for the next 10,000 years or so), but the same thing could be said about dumping lots and lots of CO2 into the atmosphere. It's the lesser of two evils. iii) Yes, efficiency and conservation are incredibly important. The thing is, even with more efficient use of our resources, society still needs a large input of energy to keep working and Walden Pond ain't big enough for all of us to camp there (nor would everybody want to!) Wow, what a rant! I hope I don't sound too much like Montgomery Burns. Again, all of this is just my humble opinion. I'm a pretty technical lad, but I don't have particular expertise in any of these areas - I'm just regurgitating things I've read over the years. The amount of stuff I *don't* know about these topics would fill libraries. Cheers, pb -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (MingW32) iD8DBQFAorCH/HNgbK3bC2wRAqJ/AJ9qMkqAUwnL4tmf+AlUTosZjbkaaACgiFxB 8eFk6HOfYSoul1PcHcxz8E4= =d8Eu -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest UWOMED2005 Posted May 13, 2004 Report Share Posted May 13, 2004 Tens of thousands of years? Really? I did a major project on Fusion in High School. I remember one of the sources quoted as stating that reactor rich Uranium stores would be used up within 80 years at current rates, 200 at most. That must have excluded breeder reactors, and may have excluded CANDU reactors (don't CANDU use both U-235 and U-238? Sorry, it's been a while since I've taken Physics!) But I stick by my point - to try and use nuclear power for ALL our energy is somewhat impractical and replacing coal and gas fired plants with nuclear (entirely) would be prohibitively expensive. Yeah, thanks for "picking on me" - there's absolutely nothing wrong with challenging someone's points Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Koppertone Posted May 13, 2004 Report Share Posted May 13, 2004 Well, we probably won't be switching to solar or wind any time soon because coal and nuclear power are just so damned cheap, whereas solar and wind require a large amount of both money and land (in respect to their power outputs). So what is the incentive to cross over to these methods (from a business perspective) other than the existing fuel's depletion? Coming from BC, I don't see the big problems in hydrogen fuel production that you may see in either the prairies or Ontario. Here we're run soley on hydro dams, so although production of the additional energy needed to produce hydrogren would require damming of additional rivers, and after the initial damage little more harm is done to the environment. Put solar plants in deserts throughout the world. Place wind generating plants on the coasts. However I think where the problem lies is that, strategically, having only a few centers of hydrogen production would leave energy supplies open to attack in the event of war. Want to take out a country's energy supplies? Then take out the few hydro dams that they have available for energy production. So how could you get around this? Equip all coal/nuclear electric plants with the necessary facilities to produce hydrogen fuel but do not use these unless there is a war/disaster. As well keep reserves of hydrogen throughout North America. And the military should keep its vehicles running on conventional hydrocarbon fuels until it is no longer viable to make it harder to cripple its energy source. Just an idea I guess. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ploughboy Posted May 14, 2004 Report Share Posted May 14, 2004 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hey UWOMED2005, Well, I figure I'd better back my assertions, so I did a little digging. It made for some interesting reading on a dreary Friday afternoon. I was overly-optimistic on my initial assertion about fuel supply. I probably picked up somebody else's rhetorical exaggeration and filed it away in the "proven fact" section of my brain. I hate it when that happens. The most authorative figures I could find come from the IAEA, and are cited in _Survey of Energy Resources (19th Ed)_ published by the World Energy Council. (www.worldenergy.org/wec-g...rview.asp) IAEA claims there are proven uranium reserves of 3.2 million tonnes (recoverable at $US130/kg), and gives a high-end estimated requirement of 80 000 tonnes per year. This gives 40 years of proven reserves. That doesn't mean there isn't more uranium out there, it's just all the stuff that we know about. Exploration will certainly lead to the discovery of more. It's still a far cry from "tens of thousands of years" though, so I take that statement back. The best support I can find for my original claim is "Seawater contains an effectively infinite amount of uranium, if we can learn to recycle our fuel and to take more energy from it." (Meneley/AECL, _Fuel for the Next Millenia_ canteach.candu.org/library/20010201.pdf) There are a whole bunch of hypotheticals in Meneley's analysis, so although it's not whack-job crack-pottery, I wouldn't take it to the bank. However, I would still argue that as a medium term solution (200+ years) nuclear energy is, on balance, the least evil way to generate the gi-normous amounts of power the developed and developing world will need for the next several generations. As fossil fuels get used up I think nuclear will become more cost-competitive, too. Maybe in a few generations we'll have figured how to reduce demand from 'gi-normous' to merely 'frighteningly huge', and have developed the technology for a completely sustainable system. Also read some interesting scenarios involving burning thorium instead of uranium, and using fast breeder reactors. The best quick overview is a book (www.magma.ca/~jalrober/Decide.htm) written by a former AECL employee. Probably not a completely unbiased source. ;-) As an aside, I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation of the landbase required to support my addiction to long-distance driving. If canola yields 0.7 tonnes/acre of grain having 35% oil with a density of 0.9 g/cm^3, it would take 15 acres of land to propel me down the road 50 000 km/yr in a VW Golf that gets 7 L/100 km (ignoring crop inputs etc). Not bad for one person. Using the same assumptions and naively assuming that veggie oil can be substituted 1:1 for crude oil, the US would need to grow ~4 billion acres of oilseed crops per year. Since the US only has 500M acres of arable land this is a bit of a problem. If ya do the math for China, assuming US-style per capita energy consumption, the figures are even more hilarious. I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader. Like you said, something's gotta give. Have a good one, pb -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (MingW32) iD8DBQFApQcU/HNgbK3bC2wRAupDAJ4gq7/Kr7m9rsPAA+5pTESnS4cu+QCgnfEe 4MsWVG98scG/ZWsLPbLMqbc= =+Tzg -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Koppertone Posted May 14, 2004 Report Share Posted May 14, 2004 Well I guess we can all agree on the fact that eventually energy use is going to have to take a big drop (ie. in the next 100-200 years). Just think, we'll all have to buy flourescent light bulbs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest DonaldKaufman Posted May 14, 2004 Report Share Posted May 14, 2004 Also, the entire state of Arizona should be covered with solar panels. No room for people, we'd have to move them out of there too. The place is sunny 355 days a year. We'd have to be wary of a terrorist attack on the Sun though, with all of our incandescent eggs in one electrical basket like that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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