Oil Consumption

Public transportation is quite fine by me. Denton switched up their municipal fleet to biodiesel and I suppose the mayor of NYC had stated he wanted to do the same as well as explore other viable options for public transport. . d/k, haven't checked up on it, that was months ago.
Amtrak was offering those rail pass things for awhile.
I too would like to see us weather this in the direction of public transport.

 

I like my good little mazda, plus I car share lots of the time and I won't be driving for much longer because I'm going back to Japan, in which case I will be using the public transport constantly. big ups to JR!

 

I'm still trying to figure out how to carry the stroller, my portfolio, a diaper bag and 3 backpacks onto a bus. Hell, it won't even fit in my trunk.

 

Last month I used 3.5 gallons of gas in my car and 4 gallons in the lawnmower ,This month I have already went through 5 gallons in the truck , but that was because i had to got to the farm supply to get fence post and wire so i could turn the yard into pasture for the horses I bought to replace the car, truck ,and lawnmower screw OPEC

 

Gas here is $3.25 per gallon today.


I use half a tank a week.

 

Hondas are good efficient choices for transportation. I would be reluctant to get a VW unless it had a diesel. They're not as efficient as you might think and they're not as reliable as a Honda or Toyota. If I were to buy a car with a gas engine, I'd pick a Toyota over a Volkswagen. It's not uncommon to see Toyotas and Hondas with over 200,000 miles on them, so long as they've been taken care of.

 

In the Baltimore-Washington corridor, I've noticed that gasoline is about $3.30 diesel is about $3, depending on where you go.

 

Also, don't forget the New Beetle and certain Passat models also were available with TDIs! Do keep in mind that few Passats were equipped with diesels and thus will be difficult to find if you want to buy a used one!

Thanks for the heads-up! Do also check out:
http://www.hempcar.org/

 

i wonder if there is a connection between the ridiculously high fuel prices in the UK and the fact that as a rule we drive far more econmical vehicles than those driven in america?

i have a ford transit diesel which is very economical, but it will be even more so once i have it converted to run on pure vegetable oil next year.

over here you can buy bio diesel which is a mixture of regular diesel and vegetable oil which can be put straight into your tank with no conversion neccessary. its better than regular diesel but not as environmentally sound as pure vegetable oil. do they have biodiesel on forecourts in the USA?

for anyone in the UK who is interested in biodiesel conversions, the website for the centre for alternative technology has loads of useful info.

peace and love
stardust
xxx

 

I've got a VW Jetta TDI, gets 49 mpg (according to the specs, but I don't think it's quite that high), and it's got 220K miles, still reliable as hell. I'm looking into making biodiesel for it, found a cool websight:

www.biodieselamerica.org

If we could all cut down on consumption, we could put the oil cartels and the oil men in the white house out of business, then there wouldn't be a need to send our youth off to muslim countries to get slaughtered...

 

There are a few biodiesel stations scattered around the US....but not nearly enough to make it convenient.

 

I know, that's unfortunate, plus it's also more expensive than conventional diesel, but once the cost of conventional diesel gets high enough, biodiesel will become more attractive, the demand will go up, more places will start manufacturing it, it'll become more readily available, and economies-of-scale will kick in and the price will come down.

So go ahead, Americans, keep buying those huge SUV's, and drive them as often as possible, the sooner the world's supply of oil is used up, the sooner the greener alternatives will become readily available (just kidding, but you get my point).

 

Peak oil or the end of cheap oil isn’t just to do with cars

Our food comes from a system that depends on oil you have tractors irrigation harvesting shipping processing and packaging all oil dependant .natural gas which is also running out produces fertilizers that are the basis of most modern agriculture

if oil gets harder to find we will have a massive worldwide famine, look in your local shops and see how much of your food is produced locally , where I live not that much .
Now we could produce food without all this oil but it would take time and would mean a lot more people involved in local agriculture .

also you need to look at all the products produced by oil thats made out of oil (like plastics ) or using oil to power factorys or transported by oil .

I dont think biodiesel or hydrogen or anything else is going to be able to replace oil and not in time to stop us having some very nasty years, on a positive note I could see sail ships returning

 

True, I'm hoping it's ok to run biodiesel in my furnace as well, but I'm sure there are a number of forms of energy that may not be so easy to be replaced with biodiesel, and the biggest obstacle to persuing alternative environmentally friendly sources of energy is the bottom line: cost. Most folks would love to see these alternatives in practice, but it costs more, and they're unwilling to spend the extra money to make it a reality.

Ironically enough, many of the success stories I've heard about biodiesel are farmers using it in their machinery. It makes sense that they would be the most likely to take advantage of this technology, since they have the most to gain from it, and they have the raw materials to produce it.

If we can close the carbon loop without fossil fuels, we could have a renewable "green" energy source, how cool is that?

 

where I am I dont really need heating in the winter, I have a rayburn cooker which heats my hot water as well having a oven and a hotplate you can cook on and I run that on wood .

Ive lived in tents outside all winter and personally dont find it that hard being in a cold house because with decent insulation thats a hell of a lot warmer than a tent.

you could run radiators off a rayburn or aga and I would think wood would be a better system for heating a house than biodiesel .

I think we need to grow more trees, and practice using the most efficient cooking methods ,hotboxs and hayboxs are good where you heat the food and then place it in a heatbox to cook so are pressure cookers .

I think biodiesel is great but I dont think it will allow us to have all the cars vans engines that we have at the moment

 

I also supplement my heating with firewood. It's more work, but nicer, and a lot cheaper. We got plenty of trees in New England!

I agree bio-diesel is useless for gasoline engines, so it doesn't provide much of an alternative in the short run, but I plan to buy diesel vehicles like my VW TDI in the future.

Incidently, I just found out I can source my electricity soley from "green" producers (wind, hydro, and natural gas) for like 8% more on my electric bill, so I switched.

 

mostly i travel by bicycle or walk but i'll hop on the scooter (100 miles to a gallon!) too.

 

Mellow Yellow, the problem with replacing fossil fuels in farming is the use of fertilizers and pesticides, which are oil based. You can't make them out of wind, solar, etc. But it is them that has increased yields so much to allow the 6.2 (and growing) billion souls world population. there are advanced organic techniques that can have yeilds close to petrofarming, and studies are showing that pesticides dont' help much (and sometimes are associated with increased pest damage)...so there is hope, but it's going to be a huge effort. I wonder if we will be able to do it. Think of it, when oil really gets expensive and we finally realize we need change, our whole world will be turning upside down. We are so oil-dependant that to move away from it requires a restructuring of our entire economy and living systems. It'll be hard to manage all this at once, and if food production falls a lot, the rest of the world will suffer (the USA being a major exporter of food).

As far as home heating goes, well, with creative planning, it wouldn't be a huge problem. Building on the south side of a hill, putting large glass windows facing south, with deciduous trees all around your house...there's all kinds of architectural and landscaping techniques that can help with keeping warm in winter and cool in summer (eg: deciduous trees with leaves in summer shade the house, without leaves in summer let sun through while still breaking the wind). My dad had some plans for such a house that he wanted to build in his retirement (if my mom will ever let him move...she's quite attached to this house, even though it's not going to be practical when I've moved out and the oil (and natural gas) shitstorm hits in full force.

 

Exactly, which is why I think it is important to become educated about alternative energy sources, regardless if you use them or not. The more of us that know about this stuff, the better, then it won't be such a shock when the fossil fuel runs out.

It's all about cost, we as consumers are attracted to the lowest cost alternatives, and oil for us in America is artificially cheap, but when it becomes more expensive than the greener sources of energy, those sources will become more mainstream. Incidently, that's the reasoning behind using fertilizers versus more organic alternatives, it's cheaper in the short term, but in the long run I think the costs to our health and the environment are greater. The unfortunate reality is that most people are either unaware or not concerned about the long-term affects.

 

Today gas dropped below $2.50 per gallon.


Love that Toyota Pirus.