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| Thread ID: 84540 | 2007-11-09 17:18:00 | Petrol Prices | Choker (12893) | PC World Chat |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 609889 | 2007-11-12 06:49:00 | Home heating in the North East and North West are usually kerosene . . a lighter form of distal oil . . but then there are areas that use propane exclusively now too . We have natural gas in SoCal and propane in some of the outer areas too . Electric heat is very expensive . . and I know people who pay over $600 . 00USD/mo for heating and lighting that way . That's $791 . 875NZD . . . just for electricity! |
SurferJoe46 (51) | ||
| 609890 | 2007-11-12 06:53:00 | don't they use oil to heat their homes in northern states and the UK? I believe they do. Colder than Southland in winter, in those places, though. Too many people for wood fires too. Coal fires caused terrible smog. London springs to mind. I suppose technology could've advanced to the stage where coal could be burnt more efficiently; but you only have to mention the stuff & the pc eco zealot nazis get off their high horses; and the rest of us crawl back into our shells. |
jcr1 (893) | ||
| 609891 | 2007-11-12 06:56:00 | According to this (LINK) (www.nationmaster.com) NZ and the US are pretty close in the cost of gasoline/petrol to each other anyway. So I think you're wrong with your assumption there. |
SurferJoe46 (51) | ||
| 609892 | 2007-11-12 09:11:00 | Most here also drive over 125 miles one way to work and have a lot more travel here than NZ in the first place . That's 201 . 17km each way . Try that on expensive gas . There is no inter-community public transportation, although there IS a little inner city busing and a few commuter trains . Most don't make enough money to actually live where we work and need to have our homes that far outside of town just to survive . ALSO . . everything . . and I mean EVERYTHING travels by truck between the cities . Food, oil, construction supplies, new cars/trucks, EVERYTHING! uh, i think all that is a consequence of cheap petrol, not a justification for it:2cents: |
motorbyclist (188) | ||
| 609893 | 2007-11-12 09:12:00 | According to this (LINK) (www.nationmaster.com) NZ and the US are pretty close in the cost of gasoline/petrol to each other anyway. So I think you're wrong with your assumption there. it's relative to cost of living too; what's the average annual income there compared to here? |
motorbyclist (188) | ||
| 609894 | 2007-11-12 16:09:00 | it's relative to cost of living too; what's the average annual income there compared to here? I cannot speak about NZ...but ya gotta remember that the US...and California in particular have some very diverse income levels. My very best couple of years got me $300,000.00USD/$267,018.13NZD a year. My last-before-retirement got me about $35,000.00USD/$46,724.23NZD. So..even there you can see the viability and variety in incomes of the "average" American citizen. The LEGAL minimum wage is somewhere around $7.00USD/hr...I might be a little off at that as I don't work for a living any more..but that feels about right. Compare that to wages that some people have of over $2,000.00USD/hr. The big bucks people live in virtual palaces or very nice estates at the least...others live like I do in a semi-retirement community that has a large percentage of mobile homes valued at $70,000USD or so. The problem is that the lower-wagers have to commute from their humble abodes to work for the people who live and own businesses in the higher-expenses neighborhoods. The travel to/from these jobs is the biggest problem. Don't get me wrong...there are people in Palm Springs who are very affluent and drive the route to and from either San Diego or LA or Orange County to work their high pay jobs too. The inequality is that everyone is paying the same amount for the fuel..and the lesser-wage earners also seem to have the least economical vehicles (read: older cars) that suffer a penalty for weight/fuel economy. Then there are the hybrids..cars that cost so-o-o-o-o much that the average wage earner cannot afford them. The "haves" have and the "poors" need...it just the imbalance that makes it tough. Now here comes fuel prices that are affecting BOTH echelons of earners/owners. When fuel gets to be the prime consideration and a major take-away part of the paycheck...then both sides will suffer....and they will suffer a lot. If a guy cannot afford to drive to work, then he won't go to work. If an owner has employees at a low wage (the big business ethic, it seems), then the cannot operate their businesses as they have no employees willing to trade fuel for food and providing for their families. The afluent will need to either: A~ raise the employee wages to compensate for the increased cost of fuel B~ hire from a more local talent pool...like the inner cities barrios where educational and desirability factors come into play. (Who wants to hire a tattooed and criminal record person?). C~ move the whole business to a lower income area and suffer production losses while that is being done and hire all new, green people to fill positions that had experienced people doing the work before. D~ move the entire operation to Mexico or Sri Lanka or China and to hell with the local laws about minimum wages, health benefits and retirement funds. E~ close shop, cash out whatever materials they can and move themselves to places like: Philippines Indonesia Australia Thailand New Zealand .........buy some property, get a retirement visa and live like kings on the money they have and forget about anything business-like! When things get tougher..and they will...the poor will pull in close to the vest and just try to survive..some in crime, others in sweating it out by washing windows, selling candy and flowers on the roadsides, but the rich will just let a yacht slip into foreclosure and not go to Paris this next year but Hawaii instead. |
SurferJoe46 (51) | ||
| 609895 | 2007-11-12 18:07:00 | Here's an interesting link about our colder Northern area . High Oil Prices Fuel Winter Heat Fears ( . yahoo . com/ap/071112/heating_oil . html" target="_blank">biz . yahoo . com) |
SurferJoe46 (51) | ||
| 609896 | 2007-11-12 18:43:00 | Greg - in which plant did you work - I worked there as well. Chicken one, to classify the plant as the biggest single source of CO2 in the world is a piece of utter greenie claptrap. Also, you can try high school science and see if you can make oil from coal cheaply enough. The Sasol process uses the Fischer-Tropsch process, using catalytic conversion as the primary process. I do not think you will be able to emulate that in a school lab, it's a bit technical and difficult, more so since the catalyst is known to explode in the presence of air. SurferJoe - there is even a plant at Great Plains, using the same technology. sarel |
sarel (2490) | ||
| 609897 | 2007-11-12 18:48:00 | Greg - in which plant did you work - I worked there as well. Chicken one, to classify the plant as the biggest single source of CO2 in the world is a piece of utter greenie claptrap. Also, you can try high school science and see if you can make oil from coal cheaply enough. The Sasol process uses the Fischer-Tropsch process, using catalytic conversion as the primary process. I do not think you will be able to emulate that in a school lab, it's a bit technical and difficult, more so since the catalyst is known to explode in the presence of air. SurferJoe - there is even a plant at Great Plains, using the same technology. sarel And Sasol's largest plant releases an estimated 7.7 million tons of carbon a year through the fuels it produces, helping make it the largest point source of carbon dioxide in the world, according to a CMI paper looking at mitigating global warming with current technologies. This is from Sasols own website so an apology should be given and next time dont be so quick to talk about stuff you know nothing about. C1 |
chicken one (6501) | ||
| 609898 | 2007-11-12 18:52:00 | Peice of piss in my old school then again Sir Ernest Rutherford went to it. C1 |
chicken one (6501) | ||
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