Bad Case of Gas

Raped by Big Oil without Lube! Oh, painful irony!

Midnight Rants

| Wednesday, May 28th 2008 8:23 pm

Scene from Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior

When I bought my little 4x4 economy car a few years ago I could top it off for a tad over $13. But the price of gasoline was on the rise and no reason to think it would stop. Indeed it has not. When I arrived in town in the early afternoon today the price of regular was effectively $4.10. When I departed later on that evening it was $4.18! It now costs nearly twice as much to top off my tiny little tank than it did when I first bought my car to save on gas in the first place.

And what the fuck is with these car commercials sporting 34 mpg highway as if that's a really good thing? That sucks! That fuel economy is not just bad but actually getting worse. If I'm going to buy then I'm going to buy up and there's no reason to settle for anything less than 50 mpg.

But mileage is only part of the equation. The other part is the fuel itself. We are wholly dependent upon imports in large part from nations whose regimes don't like us and distribution by a small handful of obscenely rich companies who, for all intents and purposes, seem to be price fixing. And our government, who we rely upon to regulate such affairs, has repeatedly proven itself to be powerless. It's not like we can just stop consuming oil when everything depends upon it so we (at least me) need to stop depending on it.

One good thing to come out of staggering fuel prices is the innovation of commercially viable alternatives. Hybrids and electric cars are great for traversing urban areas but not so much out in the wilderness where I live. I'm all about hydrogen but it requires quite a bit of technology to extract and utilize and in a Mad Max scenario (like, say, Afghanistan) it would quickly become a worthless relic of a lost age. The most viable options, especially for rural areas, is vegetable oil and alcohol based fuels seeing as we've been deriving these things from the world around us for thousands of years.

So the solution that I'm looking to invest in lies in some form of easily sustainable, possibly home-makable, bio-fuel. With a gallon of milk being more affordable than a gallon of gas, I would just as soon pull in to a dairy for a fill up if it would work.

Mooooove it!

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Re: Bad Case of Gas

I walk or ride the bus to get my way around King County, and because they use a lot of biodiesel ( http://www.govlink.org/biodiesel/ ), I thought I was helping. That is until I did a quick news search and found this:

http://www.westseattleherald.com/articles/2008/05/27/news/local_news/new...

--begin snip--

Metropolitan King County Council member Reagan Dunn, chair of the Council's Regional Transit Committee, has introduced legislation calling for a full "life-cycle analysis" of the canola-based biodiesel fuel blend that is currently being used extensively by the King County Metro bus fleet.

"We need to determine if, in fact, our biofuel policies are worsening climate change and leading to higher food prices around the world," said Dunn. "We also need to see if county taxpayers are at additional financial risk because we are a member of the Chicago Climate Exchange."

Recent reports from global leaders and the scientific world are increasingly concluding that biofuels, such as corn ethanol, sugarcane ethanol, and biodiesel are leading to severe unintended consequences. Peer-reviewed science journals, and international organizations are now indicating that biofuels may actually do more damage to the environment than fossil fuels and contribute to world hunger. A full life-cycle analysis of the canola biodiesel will determine the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions and environmental impact generated throughout the entire development of the fuel. It examines the impacts from land-clearing, planting, harvesting, transportation, biodiesel conversion, blending, and usage of the fuel.

In addition to environmental impacts, Dunn is asking the Executive to establish recommendations for alternative climate change mitigation strategies that take into consideration the county's financial liability as a member of the Chicago Climate Exchange.

--end snip--

I wonder if its just oil company FUD or is biodiesel really just as bad, or worse?

Perhaps an underlying problem in all of this is people just love owning their own cars to a fault, here in the urban sprawl we seem to have more of them than people.

Neil C. Obremski

Thu, 05/29/2008 - 20:26

Secret of the Green Goo

From what I understand, biodiesel itself has a much smaller carbon footprint than fossil fuels. However, the life-cycle analysis being requested calls into question all the emissions and other consequences from the point where the seed for the biofuel "feedstock" is planted into the ground all the way up to it's use in engines and those consequences (deforestation, hunger, etc.) is a valid concern.

I just watched a story on the local news the other day about the UW experimenting with biodiesel derived from algae which they figure would retail at about $2.50 or so a gallon. I recall watching a feature on PBS with Alan Alda where algae (this same algae in many cases, apparently) was being used to reduce carbon emissions from coal-burning power plants. So not only does this solution thrive from the CO2 emissions we currently put off but we don't have to clear land or use food staples to make it.

There are always going to be carbon emissions from burning fuel, whatever it is. I think urban areas would do well to move towards hydrogen-electric based transit solutions to help with air quality whereas long distance transportation would benefit more from a biofuel solution whereby the emissions that do occur are dispersed over a greater area.

The higher prices putting stress on drivers will compel many of them to turn to mass transit. Right now, transit systems suck in this country because fuel was cheap and plentiful. But it was not always the case. There used to be a trolley called The Galloping Goose that had stops from Chehalis to Burnt Ridge that went by the wayside due to cheap fuel. Well, all that is changing now. There is a reason you don't see big pickup trucks and SUV's in other countries and, at our current pace, we won't see them much long in ours either.

Tarraccas

Thu, 05/29/2008 - 22:42

Stop Animation