Genius
Posts: 785 
Location: Red Deer AB
Location: Red Deer AB
May 1st, 2008, 07:12 PM
Why would anybody think 'they' will even contemplate any alternative before they have exhausted the supply we now use (leaving enough for essentials such as lubrication)?
Karrie, in any such collision it is always the pick-up that is the one that is smoked
One report I saw on the tube was that the $120/bbl was due to a refinery strike in the UK over the week-end, when the price was there on Wednesday.
Why would anybody think 'they' will even contemplate any alternative before they have exhausted the supply we now use (leaving enough for essentials such as lubrication)?
Karrie, in any such collision it is always the pick-up that is the one that is smoked
One report I saw on the tube was that the $120/bbl was due to a refinery strike in the UK over the week-end, when the price was there on Wednesday.
Newbie
Posts: 36
May 2nd, 2008, 10:56 AM
Quoting karrie
Maybe not, but your chances would be much greater to survive in a pickup.
that doesn't mean a pickup would be victorious either though now does it? Besides, it seems to be the guys in the pickups who toss it into 4 wheel drive and whip down the highway like there's no ice, that end up smoking the semis anyway.
May 2nd, 2008, 10:58 AM
Let me further clarify. Crash test performance and how a vehicle matches up against a semi matters some, but, to me handling and visibility to keep you out from under that semi in the first place matter a great deal as well. Driving a box on wheels with sloppy steering (Ford), poor visibility (Chev), or poor road feel (almost all pickups), doesn't leave me with much faith that it's going to prevent an accident in the first place. There are more factors to consider than the one slim eventuality. Driving a truck so that you're better matched up against a semi, is little comfort when you hit the ditch and roll because you were driving a big arse pickup (and likely would have just come to an abrupt stop had it been a car with a lower center of gravity). Now which is more common?
Quoting Risus
what constitutes 'much greater'?
Maybe not, but your chances would be much greater to survive in a pickup.
Let me further clarify. Crash test performance and how a vehicle matches up against a semi matters some, but, to me handling and visibility to keep you out from under that semi in the first place matter a great deal as well. Driving a box on wheels with sloppy steering (Ford), poor visibility (Chev), or poor road feel (almost all pickups), doesn't leave me with much faith that it's going to prevent an accident in the first place. There are more factors to consider than the one slim eventuality. Driving a truck so that you're better matched up against a semi, is little comfort when you hit the ditch and roll because you were driving a big arse pickup (and likely would have just come to an abrupt stop had it been a car with a lower center of gravity). Now which is more common?
Newbie
Posts: 36
May 3rd, 2008, 07:57 AM
My pickup has excellent road feel and handling...
Quoting karrie
On what do you base these generalizations????
what constitutes 'much greater'?
Let me further clarify. Driving a box on wheels with sloppy steering (Ford), poor visibility (Chev), or poor road feel (almost all pickups),
Let me further clarify. Driving a box on wheels with sloppy steering (Ford), poor visibility (Chev), or poor road feel (almost all pickups),
My pickup has excellent road feel and handling...
May 3rd, 2008, 11:04 AM
Quoting Risus
On the experience of driving pickups versus driving cars. Trust me, I've driven many. I've also seen many many pickups meet ditch (not me personally), and it almost always ends in a rollover. And given the amount of time I've spent on Northern highways (High Level, Grande Prairie, Fort St John), I know how prone pickup drivers are to driving like they have more control than everyone else on the road, and how often they're proven wrong. They may have more size for a pickup versus semi truck collision, but, there's a lot more safety issues to look at too. Like I said, for me, hitting the ditch is the most common accident I see (I feel sorry for you if you see more semi versus vehicle than you do ditch strikes), and pickups fare way worse there due to their height. I'd rather hit the ditch in a car thanks.
On what do you base these generalizations????
My pickup has excellent road feel and handling...
My pickup has excellent road feel and handling...
May 3rd, 2008, 11:34 AM
Quoting MHz
The report posted supposed that the human factor is perhaps why minivans are amongst the safest vehicles... because they're driven more cautiously (as a general rule), than pickups not full of kids. I know that with pickups, a lot of the problem I see is the human factor. People driving like their pickup isn't susceptible to ice, or will handle nimbly at 140 without losing control.
Hitting an approach (which are very common on the highways mentioned) is just as deadly as hitting a semi. The human factor is probably higher than type of vehicle in any incident involving highway speeds.
Newbie
Posts: 36
May 3rd, 2008, 01:43 PM
The majority of trucks in the ditch are good drivers who are trying to avoid idiots driving their compact vehicles who dart in and out constantly cutting other vehicles off with no regard to anyone but themselves. You see it all the time on the 401.
Quoting karrie
Whoa. You said 'Fords had sloppy stearing, Chevys had poor visibility and pickups had poor road feel'. These are generalizations that just cannot be blurted out without reason. Maybe you you are basing your expertise on driving a Ford Pinto, a Chevy Vega, or a Ford Ranger. Obviously you havent driven recent pickups because you would know they handle almost as good as any sedan.
On the experience of driving pickups versus driving cars. Trust me, I've driven many. I've also seen many many pickups meet ditch (not me personally), and it almost always ends in a rollover. And given the amount of time I've spent on Northern highways (High Level, Grande Prairie, Fort St John), I know how prone pickup drivers are to driving like they have more control than everyone else on the road, and how often they're proven wrong. They may have more size for a pickup versus semi truck collision, but, there's a lot more safety issues to look at too. Like I said, for me, hitting the ditch is the most common accident I see (I feel sorry for you if you see more semi versus vehicle than you do ditch strikes), and pickups fare way worse there due to their height. I'd rather hit the ditch in a car thanks.
The majority of trucks in the ditch are good drivers who are trying to avoid idiots driving their compact vehicles who dart in and out constantly cutting other vehicles off with no regard to anyone but themselves. You see it all the time on the 401.
May 3rd, 2008, 05:24 PM
Quoting karrie
Did you just ignore this part because it was said by a woman? lol.
On the experience of driving pickups versus driving cars.
Quoting Risus
I've driven plenty of pickups, recent and past. Full size pickups. The only I haven't got much experience driving is Dodge. Ford (including their sedans) has steering sloppier than a $2 hooker. I love almost everything else about a Ford, but can't get past that. I'd have happily bought a Freestyle the last time I was looking at vehicles, but it handled like mud, as does my hubby's pickup. The instant they fix that up, I'd gladly buy their product again.
Whoa. You said 'Fords had sloppy stearing, Chevys had poor visibility and pickups had poor road feel'. These are generalizations that just cannot be blurted out without reason. Maybe you you are basing your expertise on driving a Ford Pinto, a Chevy Vega, or a Ford Ranger. Obviously you havent driven recent pickups because you would know they handle almost as good as any sedan.
Bright Spark
Posts: 401
May 5th, 2008, 12:53 AM
Politicians have their head in the sand, they pray peak oil will not happen on their watch.
Businessweek magazine has a good article on peak oil. In rhe 1960s big Oil controlled 80% of world oil reserves, not its down to about 20%. Oil nationalism is kicking in, meaning countries don't want to or can't expor like they used to.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine...6/b4040074.htm
From Peak Oil To Dark Age?
Oil output has stalled, and it's not clear the capacity exists to raise production
With global oil production virtually stalled in recent years, controversial predictions that the world is fast approaching maximum petroleum output are looking a bit less controversial. At first blush, those concerned about global warming should be delighted. After all, what better way to prod the move toward carbon-free, climate-friendly
But climate change activists have nothing to cheer about. The U.S. is completely unprepared for peak oil, as it's called, and the wrenching adjustments it would entail could easily accelerate global warming as nations turn to coal (see BusinessWeek.com, 4/19/07, "Rx for Earth: Sooner Not Later"). Moreover, regardless of the implications for climate change, peak oil represents a mortal threat to the U.S. economy.
Peak oil refers to the point at which world oil production plateaus before beginning to decline as depletion of the world's remaining reserves offsets ever-increased drilling. Some experts argue that we're already there, and that we won't exceed by much the daily production high of 84.5 million barrels first reached in 2005. If so, global production will bump along near these levels for years before beginning an inexorable decline.
What would that mean? Alternatives are still a decade away from meeting incremental demand for oil. With nothing to fill the gap, global economic growth would slow, stop, and then reverse; international tensions would soar as nations seek access to diminishing supplies, enriching autocratic rulers in unstable oil states; and, unless other sources of energy could be ramped up with extreme haste, the world could plunge into a new Dark Age. Even as faltering economies burned less oil, carbon loading of the atmosphere might accelerate as countries turn to vastly dirtier coal.
GIVEN SUCH UNPLEASANT possibilities, you'd think peak oil would be a national obsession. But policymakers can hide behind the possibility that vast troves will be available from unconventional sources, or that secretive oil-exporting nations really have the huge reserves they claim. Yet even if those who say that the peak has arrived are wrong, enough disturbing omens—for example, declining production in most of the world's great oil fields and no new superfields to take up the slack—exist for the issue to merit an intense international focus.
The reality is that it will be here much sooner for the U.S.—in the form of peak oil exports. Since we import nearly two-thirds of the oil we consume, global oil available for export should be our bigger concern. Fast-growing domestic consumption in oil-exporting nations and increasing appetites by big importers such as China portend tighter supplies available to the U.S., unless world production rises rapidly. But output has stalled. Call it de facto peak oil or peak oil lite. It means the U.S. is entering an age when it will have to scramble to maintain existing import levels.
We will know soon enough whether the capacity to raise production really exists. If not, basic math and the clock tell the story. All alternatives—geothermal, solar, wind, etc.—produce only 3% of the energy supplied by oil. If oil demand rises by 2% while output remains flat, generation of alternative energy would have to expand 60% a year. That's more than twice the rate of wind power, the fastest-growing alternative energy. And all this incremental energy would somehow have to be delivered to transportation (which consumes most of the oil produced each year) just to stay even with the growth in demand.
Nuclear and hydropower together produce 10 times the power of wind, geothermal, and solar power. But even if nations ignore environmental concerns, it takes years to build nuclear plants or even identify suitable undammed rivers.
There are many things we in the U.S. can do (and should have been doing) other than the present policy of crossing our fingers. If an oil tax makes sense from a climate change perspective, it seems doubly worthy if it extends supplies. Boosting efficiency and scaling up alternatives must also be a priority. And, recognizing that nations will turn to cheap coal (recently, 80% of growth in coal use has come from China), more work is needed to defang this fuel, which produces more carbon dioxide per ton than any other energy source.
Even if the peakists are wrong, we would still be better off taking these actions. And if they're right, major efforts right now may be the only way to avert a new Dark Age in an overheated world.
Views expressed in Outside Shot are solely those of contributors.
Politicians have their head in the sand, they pray peak oil will not happen on their watch.
Businessweek magazine has a good article on peak oil. In rhe 1960s big Oil controlled 80% of world oil reserves, not its down to about 20%. Oil nationalism is kicking in, meaning countries don't want to or can't expor like they used to.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine...6/b4040074.htm
From Peak Oil To Dark Age?
Oil output has stalled, and it's not clear the capacity exists to raise production
With global oil production virtually stalled in recent years, controversial predictions that the world is fast approaching maximum petroleum output are looking a bit less controversial. At first blush, those concerned about global warming should be delighted. After all, what better way to prod the move toward carbon-free, climate-friendly
But climate change activists have nothing to cheer about. The U.S. is completely unprepared for peak oil, as it's called, and the wrenching adjustments it would entail could easily accelerate global warming as nations turn to coal (see BusinessWeek.com, 4/19/07, "Rx for Earth: Sooner Not Later"). Moreover, regardless of the implications for climate change, peak oil represents a mortal threat to the U.S. economy.
Peak oil refers to the point at which world oil production plateaus before beginning to decline as depletion of the world's remaining reserves offsets ever-increased drilling. Some experts argue that we're already there, and that we won't exceed by much the daily production high of 84.5 million barrels first reached in 2005. If so, global production will bump along near these levels for years before beginning an inexorable decline.
What would that mean? Alternatives are still a decade away from meeting incremental demand for oil. With nothing to fill the gap, global economic growth would slow, stop, and then reverse; international tensions would soar as nations seek access to diminishing supplies, enriching autocratic rulers in unstable oil states; and, unless other sources of energy could be ramped up with extreme haste, the world could plunge into a new Dark Age. Even as faltering economies burned less oil, carbon loading of the atmosphere might accelerate as countries turn to vastly dirtier coal.
GIVEN SUCH UNPLEASANT possibilities, you'd think peak oil would be a national obsession. But policymakers can hide behind the possibility that vast troves will be available from unconventional sources, or that secretive oil-exporting nations really have the huge reserves they claim. Yet even if those who say that the peak has arrived are wrong, enough disturbing omens—for example, declining production in most of the world's great oil fields and no new superfields to take up the slack—exist for the issue to merit an intense international focus.
The reality is that it will be here much sooner for the U.S.—in the form of peak oil exports. Since we import nearly two-thirds of the oil we consume, global oil available for export should be our bigger concern. Fast-growing domestic consumption in oil-exporting nations and increasing appetites by big importers such as China portend tighter supplies available to the U.S., unless world production rises rapidly. But output has stalled. Call it de facto peak oil or peak oil lite. It means the U.S. is entering an age when it will have to scramble to maintain existing import levels.
We will know soon enough whether the capacity to raise production really exists. If not, basic math and the clock tell the story. All alternatives—geothermal, solar, wind, etc.—produce only 3% of the energy supplied by oil. If oil demand rises by 2% while output remains flat, generation of alternative energy would have to expand 60% a year. That's more than twice the rate of wind power, the fastest-growing alternative energy. And all this incremental energy would somehow have to be delivered to transportation (which consumes most of the oil produced each year) just to stay even with the growth in demand.
Nuclear and hydropower together produce 10 times the power of wind, geothermal, and solar power. But even if nations ignore environmental concerns, it takes years to build nuclear plants or even identify suitable undammed rivers.
There are many things we in the U.S. can do (and should have been doing) other than the present policy of crossing our fingers. If an oil tax makes sense from a climate change perspective, it seems doubly worthy if it extends supplies. Boosting efficiency and scaling up alternatives must also be a priority. And, recognizing that nations will turn to cheap coal (recently, 80% of growth in coal use has come from China), more work is needed to defang this fuel, which produces more carbon dioxide per ton than any other energy source.
Even if the peakists are wrong, we would still be better off taking these actions. And if they're right, major efforts right now may be the only way to avert a new Dark Age in an overheated world.
Views expressed in Outside Shot are solely those of contributors.
May 5th, 2008, 01:00 AM
Quoting dumpthemonarchy
Oh bite me. Threads wander. You could have tried to get the topic back on track without being an insulting jerk.
Why aren't these moronic posts deleted that are completely off topic? Is it too hard for these rude people to start their own topic elsewhere and talk about pickups and driving? Bunch of dumb yahoos.
Where is the moderator?
Where is the moderator?
Bright Spark
Posts: 401
May 6th, 2008, 12:30 AM
Ok, people wander. I want CC for serious discussion, freedom of speech on political issues is important. To me, and I think the country. We get the gov't and democracy we deserve.
Because we are on as they say Internet time, things can change fast. Who heard of the 100 mile diet five years ago? Or peak oil? Or that Big Oil, which helped keep us in our comfy lifestyles can't find more oil? There are forecasts of $2.25 per litre oil by next year. Wouldn't surprise me. But it will shock us.
Ok, people wander. I want CC for serious discussion, freedom of speech on political issues is important. To me, and I think the country. We get the gov't and democracy we deserve.
Because we are on as they say Internet time, things can change fast. Who heard of the 100 mile diet five years ago? Or peak oil? Or that Big Oil, which helped keep us in our comfy lifestyles can't find more oil? There are forecasts of $2.25 per litre oil by next year. Wouldn't surprise me. But it will shock us.
Super Genius
Posts: 1,110
Location: Canada
Location: Canada
May 6th, 2008, 08:06 PM
Fighting $4-a-gallon diesel
As diesel was threatening to break through the $4 level in January -- the most recent month for which data is available -- U.S. refineries shipped 982,000 barrels or 41.2 million gallons of diesel to Mexico. The 2008 shipments far exceed January shipments in any other year except 2000 and 2001.
Posted May 6, 2008 05:28 PM PST
Category: ECONOMY
That diesel fuel sells in Mexico for $2 a gallon.
http://www.oilwatchdog.org/articles/...2&topicId=8059
Fighting $4-a-gallon diesel
As diesel was threatening to break through the $4 level in January -- the most recent month for which data is available -- U.S. refineries shipped 982,000 barrels or 41.2 million gallons of diesel to Mexico. The 2008 shipments far exceed January shipments in any other year except 2000 and 2001.
Posted May 6, 2008 05:28 PM PST
Category: ECONOMY
That diesel fuel sells in Mexico for $2 a gallon.
http://www.oilwatchdog.org/articles/...2&topicId=8059
Clever Clogs
Posts: 640
Location: Baja Canada
Location: Baja Canada
May 6th, 2008, 11:08 PM
Uncle
Quoting Stretch
I've been hearing a number of stories about truckers who drive to Mexico (from Texas) to fill up because it saves them so much money. If Mexico can sell gas at $2.00 a gallon and make a profit, why can't the US? Fighting $4-a-gallon diesel
As diesel was threatening to break through the $4 level in January -- the most recent month for which data is available -- U.S. refineries shipped 982,000 barrels or 41.2 million gallons of diesel to Mexico. The 2008 shipments far exceed January shipments in any other year except 2000 and 2001.
Posted May 6, 2008 05:28 PM PST
Category: ECONOMY
That diesel fuel sells in Mexico for $2 a gallon.
http://www.oilwatchdog.org/articles/...2&topicId=8059
As diesel was threatening to break through the $4 level in January -- the most recent month for which data is available -- U.S. refineries shipped 982,000 barrels or 41.2 million gallons of diesel to Mexico. The 2008 shipments far exceed January shipments in any other year except 2000 and 2001.
Posted May 6, 2008 05:28 PM PST
Category: ECONOMY
That diesel fuel sells in Mexico for $2 a gallon.
http://www.oilwatchdog.org/articles/...2&topicId=8059
Uncle
Clever Clogs
Posts: 640
Location: Baja Canada
Location: Baja Canada
May 6th, 2008, 11:15 PM
Uncle
Quoting karrie
The point I was trying to make is that: We are doing it. Expensive or not. We are doing it. Sign-up fees are at an all time high. When the process of drilling in a heavy population is completely mastered (Sask. is not high population), it should become cheaper (I hope). And remember - huge reserves still exist in the US.
The point isn't that it can't be drilled or done Uncle, we've been drilling shale formations for a while now. The Bakken Formation in Saskatchewan is one such example. The point is that it's expensive oil that wasn't gone after before, not a new reserve that will solve the problem. It's not the end of peak oil, it's a symptom of it. And as they keep going after more and more difficult deposits and extracting more and more of this stuff that isn't quite crude oil, then the price is going to keep driving up higher and higher and higher.
Uncle
