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Price of gasoline around world


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Originally Posted By: 2pints,mate
I am not hugely knowlegeable in these things, but aren't 'they' saying that biodeisel is contributing to our upcoming food crisis?


some crops such as rape seed are being grown increasingly with this in mind at the expense of food crops BUT as I understand it a lot of bio-diesel is re-harvested from used cooking oils etc. They could make a killing taking all the oil from the chippies in the UK and changing it into bio-diesel.
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The crops are being used, like sugar cane and maize, to make ethanol which goes into the cars as an alternative fuel. Brazil has been doing this for years.

 

The EU has stipulated a 5% of fuels sold should be from renewable sources (by 2020 or something) , (read crops). That is the real culprit in a decrease in the crops for food. That and of course more animals eating it. By that I mean more cows 'cos there's more demand for beef.

 

Biodiesel is what Tubbs says.

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Originally Posted By: thursday.
The crops are being used, like sugar cane and maize, to make ethanol which goes into the cars as an alternative fuel. Brazil has been doing this for years.


I heard that Brazil no longer has to import any oil.
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Originally Posted By: thursday.
I'd guess that would be a very small percentage dinosaur.


In actuality, petroleum is probably mostly pre-Cambrian zooplankton, but "dino-diesel" sounds more cool. "Pre-Cambrian zooplankton diesel" just doesn't roll off the tongue nicely.
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Originally Posted By: 2pints,mate
I am not hugely knowlegeable in these things, but aren't 'they' saying that biodeisel is contributing to our upcoming food crisis?


"They" have concerns that a lot of developing countries will turn subsistence agricultural plots to commercial palm-oil plantations with intent to sell to industrialized nations, and nobody will be growing food. In developed countries, the worry will be that surplus grains and other products that originally went to food aid to the develpoing world will be used instead for bio-fuels.
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But ... and this is quite easy to substantiate with a quick google ... there is plenty of starch and sugars in the WASTE from food production (ie the straw from rice/wheat/corn) for the production of ethanol (as an alternative to, or addititve to, regular petrol.

 

Biodiesel is slightly different, but all the waste oil from the world's fryers could make a dent in that.

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reice farmers in Japan, about 250 of them I think, have joined an experiment to produce the quickest growing, mass market rice to turn into ethanol for bio-fuel.

 

Combined output of bio-fuel is today equivalent to 300,000 barrels of oil per year. Miniscual.

 

The above brought to you from recollections of the Wall Street Journal. Readers are reminded that the price of oil can go up and up forever

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Well given that world oil consumption currently runs at about 1000bbl per second - thats right folks 160,000 ltr every second of every day of every week etc, the whole bio fuel thing can only ever make a small input into the fuel equation. Further to this the energy overhead to prodec and refine bio fuels is huge compared with extracted fossil fuels.

 

My read - in the absence of any revolutionary technology goes like this -

 

1. Improvements in fuel ecconomy and general downsizing of vehicle size and usage.

2. Cocktailing of fossil fuels with recovered and reprocessed bio solids fuels including sewage and algae farming

3. the emergence of micro commuter cars which are largely electric but probably have a small ( under 500cc) petrol motor to extend range

Remember fiat bambino and gogo mobiles and all those other 1950s micro cars.

4. A massive industrial development producing liquid fuel from coal - mainly for aviation and industrial uses ( military too)

5. A significant development of the use of gas - methane / butane / propane - from fossil and bio sources for many of the land based mobility devices

 

All of the options will generally see a requirement for further increases in electricity production to process the fuels in the first place - and this - whilst it can be easily provide by coal / gas fired or nuclear power plants is probably where the real key to reducing carbon emissions lies.

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So if bio fuels production is about 300,ooobbl /pa that would be 5 minutes out of next year sorted, we just need to sort out the other 525,595 minutes and then every 4 years we need another 1440 as well.

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It seems insane that we continue to use this (rapidly reducing) resource for moving stuff, and people, around the planet.

 

Take a look at your stuff, List all of the stuff that has no plastic (petroleum derivative) componentry. There is precious little, I'll warrant!

 

I did this exerecise on my desk at work, apart from the glass and stainless steel coffee plunger and the ceramic coffee mug, there wasn't much that wasn't plastic in its entirety, or in substantial part.

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we will never run out of oil. There will still be plenty of it around. It would just be too expensive to use that's all.

 

Pain for many years to come while the world calmmers for alternative energy sources.

 

Anybody noticed how hybrids are selling so well these coupla months.

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Originally Posted By: JA
It seems insane that we continue to use this (rapidly reducing) resource for moving stuff, and people, around the planet.

Take a look at your stuff, List all of the stuff that has no plastic (petroleum derivative) componentry. There is precious little, I'll warrant!

I did this exerecise on my desk at work, apart from the glass and stainless steel coffee plunger and the ceramic coffee mug, there wasn't much that wasn't plastic in its entirety, or in substantial part.


JA, that's only because it is cheap to use plastic. Increase the price of plastic and other materials will be used instead. As Thursday says, we're not going to run out of oil. As the price goes up, other materials will become more cost effective. The price of oil today doesn't seem to be a scarcity issue - take speculators and the US dollar out of the equation and the price of oil, whilst still expensive, isn't all that high.

Also, as a proportion of people's income in Aust petrol still isn't as high as it has been in the past. This is not the end of the world, not by a long shot.
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Originally Posted By: thursday.


Anybody noticed how hybrids are selling so well these coupla months.
Choice Mag in Aust did a survey recently on the weekly cost of running cars. Hybrids, it turns out, actually cost more to run than a similar sized petrol car.
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I think that would be the case if you're on the highway all the time and the petrol engine is running most of the time.

 

If you're stuck in stop-go for 30 minutes each day, and for much of the time the engines is not running then I suppose there would be your savings.

 

Comparative test by a friend. He has a GS300 and costs $2.1/km, he got a prius for this commuting trip and managed $0.7/km

 

Taking $16.98 per litre now, that's 8.3 km/l and 24 km/l repsectively.

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I'm sure km/l the hybrids are way in front. But add to those costs things like purchase price, insurance, maint etc. and the difference may not be quite a pronounced. But then I have absolutely no idea...

 

 

On a different point altogether - why should green or organic or generally non-toxic stuff cost more? The governments should be doing everything they can to encourage people to opt for the good stuff. Instead there is a kind of pain imposed on anyone who wants to do their bit and move away from the bad old ways.

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Maybe the government still think it is early-adoption phase, where people are happy to pay extra to be the cool guy.

 

I'd say with Hybrids its just about coming out of that phase now, so hopefully (what with the recent oil prices) they do start to take action to get people using them.

 

Another issue is production capacity, maybe toyota/honda can't bang them out quick enough.

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