Record High Gas Prices?

[NeilBlanchard]

Well, they apparently do not add in a portion of the military costs, or other things that they could have.

Well, there are many hidden costs such as:

Health effects due to gasoline related pollution. In 2008, CSU Fullerton's Institute for Economic and Environmental Studies released a report showing that the cost of air pollution for the greater Los Angeles area adds up to more than $1,250 per person per year, and is more than $1,600 per person in California's Central Valley. In addition to all the medical costs of asthma, and other respiratory illnesses, there are lost workdays, and missing school days that factor in.

Reduced crop yields due to air pollution. The U.S. Global Change Research Program released a report in 2009 that showed greenhouse gases can reduce crop yields for "soybeans, wheat, oats, green beans, peppers and some types of cotton."

Cleaning up oil spills and leaking gasoline storage tanks. While this one is harder to quantify, some estimates on the Gulf spill cleanup are upwards of $20 billion, although we would hope BP is footing the bill for that one. But besides the large oil spills there are thousands of leaking gasoline storage tanks that the EPA cleans up (they've already cleaned up over 400,000 in the last 30 years).

How much is a clean environment worth?

[Arragonis]

Describing the film and the California Watch article it is based on as a 'Study' is adding a little too much oeuf to the souffle IMHO Its more of an opinion piece using (mostly) EPA (and related organisations) press releases to support their side of the argument over polutants and what to do about them.

I did follow the first link into healthcare impacts - I am a severe asthmatic myself. It is quite a dense read where the authors map polution levels to respiratory health problems which seems quite effective, although I'm not sure if the outcome is significant or not or whether other factors such as income, diet, levels of excersize and so on are taken into account or even if there is a control group to compare against.

A large number of the remaining links are to other polutant effects - tank leakages and cleanups (which looks like a success story to me) and of course a lot of "CO2 is to blame for everything" stories.

I suspect two things will happen with this

1) A right-wing blogger will make a counter video to it within a few days - also probably missing the point by burying themselves into politics and "playing the man, not the ball" type arguments. This happened with the Story of Stuff...

2) We could hit a threadlock again.

Back OT diesel prices have eased here as have some food prices finally. I think the latter is more down to the fact that Egypt and similar places are a little more peaceful than they were leading to reduced speculation.

However domestic energy costs are going up by 19% again this year although seeing as the wholesale price for gas has eased, nobody seems to be able to explain why. And all we are going to get is easier to understand bills, not an enquiry into how they are priced and why they all rise and fall together.

BBC News - Energy bills: Will Ofgem review lead to cheaper bills?

Like seemingly everyone in the world, I am totally fed up of politicians pretending to be in charge and doing nothing but wasting our money...

[Frank Lee]

Originally Posted by Thymeclock

Another cartoon video from our favorite Greenie activist...

Ooooo, burn!

Seeing as how ecomodding is pretty much a "green" activity, perhaps you'd find the content on a redneck fuel wasting site such as chevelles.com more suitable?

[user removed]

Funny how since year 1900 with all of the modern pollution, chemicals, cigarette smoking, and many other sources of deadly contamination (Christ we used to paint pennies with mercury, WITH OUR FINGERS NO LESS!), we have come very close to doubling life expectancy over the period of 100 years from 1900 to 2000. You would think that we would be dying off en masse.

I am not against controlling pollution and emissions, I just think the agenda is driven by financial considerations more than it should be and less by real conscientious and rational actions.

It's a real shame that our US political situation has turned so ugly in the last few decades, an uncompromising bunch of jerks that should be standing in front of an unemployment line if we had enough sense to send them the right message.

regards
Mech

[Odin]

thats a poor time period to look at considering how far we've come with our medical tech, wait 40 years and then watch at the life expectancy plateau around now and by 2050 will probably be on the decline

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

...the cost of air pollution for the greater Los Angeles area adds up to more than $1,250 per person per year, and is more than $1,600 per person in California's Central Valley.

But is that properly a cost of oil, or a cost of cramming too many people into too small a space, in places surrounded by mountains which trap all the emissions? (Not just the gas-caused ones.)

In this context, you might reflect on the air pollution problems of pre-gasoline 19th century London, or some of the 3rd world megacities with little per-capita gasoline use.

How much is a clean environment worth?

Quite a bit less than the cost of effective birth control, apparently :-(

[Thymeclock]

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

Ooooo, burn!

It's a statement of fact: Neil is a self-admitted environmental activist and he has promoted propagandistic videos here, including cartoonish ones.

Seeing as how ecomodding is pretty much a "green" activity, perhaps you'd find the content on a redneck fuel wasting site such as chevelles.com more suitable?

So this is a polite way of telling me to go away? Too bad, Frank - you don't run the playground and you'll have to tolerate a difference of opinion.

[Frank Lee]

Originally Posted by Thymeclock

So this is a polite way of telling me to go away? Too bad, Frank - you don't run the playground and you'll have to tolerate a difference of opinion.

Oh no, not at all. I've managed to get banned from there and it was quite entertaining- I think you'd love it (while it lasts).

You know me; I'm always here to help!

[NeilBlanchard]

Well, the prices around here seemed to have gone up again after about 3-4 weeks at a nadir. My local station was at $3.639 for two fillups, and now is up to $3.699 on my most recent fill up.

[larrybuck]

I appreciate the bantering on here as long as it doesn't come to blows! (lol!)

I think that there are plenty of people on this forum that wear their T-shirts, so to speak; in many DIFFERENT shades of green.

I will be the first to say that God entrusted mankind to take charge over the day to day "running" of the earth; and I don't think its a stretch to say that man has done a very ^rappy job of it!
But with that being said, there needs to be the proverbial common sense meeting in the middle.

I don't worship trees and rocks. In the future, the government will want us to move out of scenic areas, as we ruin it: purposeful (to them) plans are well under way to de-populate the planet! The green movement makes their ultiment goals easier to achieve!

Green is fine to a point before it becomes a Nazi like thing.

Yes; cars before the mid-70's polluted too much! But that has been well taken care of. It ticks me off that it seems nearly all of the hate is directed towards autos.
Yes, there have been some inroads toward cleaning up factories, and such; but there are too many double standards, follow the money trails in any big industry, and you'll find the I'll scratch your back if you do mine 1st mentality.

The USA is screwed when it comes to future Carbon credits. 1984 is just a little late getting here; that's all!

Thanks for letting me share! It's good to get it off my chest.