<p>I drive an 8-year-old minivan with 180k on it. I’m hoping to keep it for another year, but when I buy, I WILL downsize. As someone else said, I’d love to drive a small car, but it’s scary when you’re surrounded by SUV’s. I’ve driven Ford Escorts for years, and I love the economy of them, but we had a lot of kids to cart around for a while there. Now that they’re flying the coop, I’ll downsize. Unfortunately, lots of popular smallish cars don’t get much better mileage than my minivan. Subaru’s and the Honda Civic comes to mind. WashDad, every article I’ve read has said it doesn’t make sense to trade your reliable paid-for car to get something greener, but when it comes time to get a new car, I’ve always thought cost to operate (including MPG) is an important factor.</p>
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<p>I have never bought a gas guzzler since the 1970’s after having to wait in lines for gas. At least this time, we don’t have to wait in lines.</p>
<p>“Am I the only one here fighting an impending sense of doom?”</p>
<p>I’m hopeful. While I don’t think any of the presidential candidates is perfect, I think that things will improve under any of them.</p>
<p>Poetsheart, I’m with you.</p>
<p>Water the next problem.</p>
<p>With all the melting ice and glaciers there should be more than enough water. ;-0</p>
<p>We Californians have already lived through a water shortage and survived. Seen on my '70s dorm bathroom door: “In these days of drought and sun, please don’t flush every time for Number One.”</p>
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<p>That’s what I used to think. But I’ve lost hope after so many times of seeing people “get moving” in the direction of fuel efficiency during the crisis of the moment only to see them lose interest in small cars and make a beeline for the huge SUVs or other obscenities once the hyper-inflation has abated.</p>
<p>Hoping that people will finally “get it” this time and begin making smart choices on a permanent basis is like Charlie Brown hoping that Lucy won’t pull the football back and he’ll finally get to kick it.</p>
<p>I’m with barrons on this one - hedge funds are driving commodities prices way up. Biotech, high tech, real estate, financials, oil, precious metals, food - what’s going to bubble up next?</p>
<p>Wages??? Nah. I’m beginning to think our capital markets need far more controls on them. A fat tax on short-terrm HF profits would take some of the fun out of it.</p>
<p>I’ll even put this out–whichever candidate for Presdient says he/she will go after hedge funds and the like gets my vote.</p>
<p>Can anyone explain to me the reason that diesel and fuel oil are now higher than gasoline? I thought they were suppose to be cheaper because they were less refined. Weren’t people buying diesel vehicles in the 70s because that was the way to save money on your driving expenses. I don’t understand the uproar about the price of gasoline and the concern that people won’t be able to afford to drive somewhere for summer vacation in the light of what it is going to cost people to heat their homes next winter. That’s what has me scared.</p>
<p>“I’m hopeful. While I don’t think any of the presidential candidates is perfect, I think that things will improve under any of them.”</p>
<p>To the extent that this is at all related to who sits in the oval office, I have the opposite opinion. All 3 candidates have similar anti-domestic oil production platforms, so for the foreseeable future we will be increasingly dependant on imported oil.</p>
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<p>We should explore alternative energy sources, and not limit to oil only.</p>
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<p>There are lots of bits to this answer, so I’m going to do it briefly.</p>
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<li><p>Supply and demand. Over the years transportation that uses diesel has increased faster worldwide than that using gasoline. Europe in particular has embraced diesel engined cars in large numbers. More demand = higher prices.</p></li>
<li><p>Every oil refinery is tuned to produce a certain mix of products. This mix cannot be changed immediately. Even though demand for diesel is up, it might not have been economical for the refineries to shut down and re-tool to make more diesel. The ability of the refineries to increase supply is limited.</p></li>
<li><p>Each barrel of crude oil can only produce a certain range of each product. I am making up the numbers, but the principle is right on: let’s say you can make as little as 5 gallons or as much as 15 gallons of diesel from each barrel of oil. Nothing you can do in the refinery will get rid of that last five gallons, and nothing you can do will produce more than fifteen.</p></li>
<li><p>As far as I know (and I am not a petroleum engineer), the refinery process is pretty much the same for each barrel of oil. It is no easier to get diesel than gasoline – it just comes off at a different stage of the process (or a different level in the cracking tower – and I sure hope I got that terminology right). Gasoline has stuff added after refining, as does diesel.</p></li>
<li><p>There are two reasons why diesel-engined vehicles get better fuel economy than gasoline engines of similar power. First, diesel contains about 30% more energy per unit volume than gasoline. You would expect to go about 30% farther on a gallon just from that. More or less. Second, diesel engines burn fuel more efficiently. This accounts for another few percent. The drawbacks to diesel engines are that they are heavier than similar gas engines because they run at much higher pressures, the fuel delivery system is much more expensive, and they generally produce power over a smaller range of RPMs. Now that diesel is about 25% more expensive than gasoline (at least here), the advantage in cost-per-mile is not that great.</p></li>
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<p>[S.D</a>. looks north for help marketing recycled water | The San Diego Union-Tribune](<a href=“http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050912/news_1n12water.html]S.D”>http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050912/news_1n12water.html)</p>
<p>“We should explore alternative energy sources, and not limit to oil only.”</p>
<p>I agree with that as well, which is one are where McCain may have an edge because he seems to advocate nuclear which is the only technology that could provide any meaningful relief in the foreseeable future. All the other stuff is just exploratory or not feasible on the scale that would be required. Exploratory work is needed as well, but to claim that this will get us out of any kind of energy crisis in the near term is just pulling the wool over the voting public’s eyes.</p>
<p>At the same time Congress blocks drilling in ANWR and wants to discourage off-shore drilling, they pass a farm bill to subsidize mega corporations while raising the price of food for consumers and increasing food stamps. I guess it all makes sense to the Ds.</p>
<p>Not sure as to why there is so much blame going to hedge fund managers. They can spectacularly crash and burn too. It’s just a bunch of wealth folks and institutions (like universities) placing bets on markets. Like mutual funds, common stocks and exchange-traded funds which anyone with a trading account and a little capital can dabble in.</p>
<p>Many here may be jealous of their returns or of the people running them but they go bankrupt too. The downside can be really huge along with the upside.</p>
<p>There are some pretty big bets on oil to the downside out there by some pretty smart people. On the other hand, there’s news like Indonesia becoming a net importer in the future and problems in Nigeria. Demand is running higher than supply pushing up the price. At some point, we get equilibrium. Either a higher price or lower demand.</p>
<p>It’s less than $4.49 around here but not much less. And a carton of eggs at my local market are $5.49 per dozen. Ouch. Our business provides company cars and gas cards. Between the cost of those vehicles, the gas, insurance, health insurance, etc. it is getting tougher and tougher. </p>
<p>Still I feel much better off than those I know who are barely making enough to make ends meet now because it doesn’t seem like it’s going to get better any time soon.</p>
<p>Usually short-term runups are due more to speculation than real supply-demand issues. When they crash and burn WE get left holding the bag. This smells more like an Enron like situation all the time.</p>
<p>We’ll be OK, poet. Whatever happens a solution will be developed…and we’ll adapt. </p>
<p>:)</p>