by frog
Those of you who just started paying 3 cents a litre more for petrol will not be surprised to hear oil has gone up again. Luckily this problem may be quickly solved according to the conservative newspaper American Daily, which brings us the happy news that the world’s oil fields are self replenishing!
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
There may well be more oil in some fields than was first thought. That doesn’t alter the need to look at how much carbon is being emitted and the effects it might have over time. The current price of oil is very high due to both increased demand from rapidly industrialising countries, but also due to the brain-dead US/UK/AU invasion of Iraq in 2003. The sub-prime crisis of today is at least in part due to the attempts of the US Fed to quell inflationary pressures unleashed by the simultaneous cost of the invasion and the effects of the Bush tax cuts – both helping to create the largest US government deficits in history. At the same time, food and fuel prices are eating away the money that could have absorbed the higher cost of the huge debt many families were carrying. Oil. Interest rates, War. All interwined in a potent cocktail causing global financial indigestion.
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Meanwhile…..
http://poneke.wordpress.com/2008/04/09/act-2/
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yawn, so people can go overboard and a journo has no spine, big deal. You forgot to mention the hard left though…
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Keep trying, BB. I’m sure there are some who will accept that picking out a few isolated data points in a series and developing a “theory” around them proves something, but those of us who have some undertanding of mathematics do not.
Hey, but at least you’re linking to things these days to try to substantiate your argument, event though the link you’ve chosen in this instance bases its argument on false mathematics.
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Toad & Stephen
As I have said many times, show me the proof and I will be right behind you, surprisingly enough not one of you has managed to do that as yet.
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Well it’s not as if anybody can just say ‘look – there!’ and voila! It tends to be a question of credibility for the vast majority of people, I know I sure as hell am not qualified to examine the latest developments in Paleotempestology, and neither are you, i’d venture. Your references to ‘the hard left’ seem to indicate you think it’s a political ploy anyway, so how could you be convinced? Just ‘give me proof’ is not going to cut it.
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Did a simple sum to quantify how much it cost to use the car. One tank full cost $100. This tank full takes me 600 km. (2.2 Litre Toyota Camry)
So cost is $1 per 6 Km’s.
Now compared to public transport which, even subsidised, is way higher then the $1 per 6 km it cost me to run the car.
While admittedly I dont take into consideration the capital cost of the car nor Repairs and Maintenance, or WOF and Registration, nor Insurance. This is still cheap transport.
Bonus of running a car is the individual freedom to go where there is no public transport.
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So back to oil…
I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re seeing $2/l petrol within a year or so. Price rises may not be quite as fast as you’d expect in simple peak oil calculations due to the possibility that price has been influenced a lot by refining costs rather than necessarily by the supply:demand ratio, but we’re definitely looking at something that’s approximating an exponential curve. Eww.
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What if there’s say, only one paying customer on the bus – surely then it is much more expensive per passenger and therefore inefficient.
The stupid thing about running a car is that the more people exercise that freedom, the harder is it to exercise that freedom because of congestion.
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Ari I think BP’s 98 octane is juuuust about to hit $2.
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ALthough not many use that blend…
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Nor do you take into account the cost of building and maintaining the road you drive the car on, Gerrit, which either taxpayers or ratepayers pay for.
Of course a car is useful to get places public transport doesn’t go. But what the Greens are saying is that there should be fewer places public transport doesn’t go, giving people more journeys when they can leave their car at home.
As for cost, I travel from Glen Eden in Waitakere to Kingsland in Auckland return for work – at a cost of $34 a week on the train. When I used to drive it, in a similar sized car to yours, the fuel bill alone was more than that, and would be substantially greater now.
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Stephen: I meant more consistent accross-the-board $2 prices, but yeah, in some areas with higher prices I bet we’re about there already. Doesn’t really effect me directly, I walk or take public transport, so…
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Am I the only one who thinks that many greens are about to have a $2 a liter party?
Tread very carefully Greenies, the vast majority will not appreciate being reminded that fuel is going up, most have no choice but to pay whatever the price is, you run the very real risk of alienating them should you now start to lecture them about public transport.
Meanwhile the rest of us who have not been taken in by the global warming con just sigh and wait for the inevitable backlash when the real truth does come out.
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Ari
In that case you are not paying enough tax, I propose that all those who walk pay an extra 3c in the dollar.
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Toad,
Irrespecticve if I used the road or not, I have paid my taxes to build/maintain it. It is not an individual cost. Your bus uses the same road so is included in your transport cost as well.
Your weekly transport charge is interesting. I commute from Manurewa to the North Shore every day. Admittingly missing peak traffic by leaving home real early 5.30 and returning at 2.00. (the joy of being self employed-choose the best work time) Travelling time is 20 minutes on a good day, usually 25 to 30 minutes (has been 2 hours on a really really bad day!). Door to door. No walking from a bus stop at either end. Distance is a shade over 60 kilometers return.
Cost is $50 per week. So for the extra $16 dollars I get individual freedom to go fishing, call in and do personal stuff anywhere along to way, or even go out of the way to see friends.
Plus can make deliveries and pick up raw materials as and when required. Something a bus is not suitable for.
Naturally it is a business related expense and thus tax deductable.
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As an aside, oil has dropped to $110.0
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I’m starting to get the feeling oil is a volatile commodity. I’ve heard some guy say that unions should be pushing for more tele-commuting, though I don’t know how practical that is for say, the EPMU.
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I have to agree with the comment of big bro that the Greens shouldn’t have a $2 a litre party, because the public transport alternatives are starting to show their own strains due to increased popularity. Last week Friday, the 5:14 train from Auckland had 366 passengers (this on a set with 268 seats and room for 432 passengers); and morning peak rail services in Auckland are carrying 400 passengers on sets that have to slow down if there are more than 326 passengers. Of course, more capacity on that front is not coming anytime soon, and electrification is going ahead extremely slowly.
On some corridors (particularly Dominion Road, Great South Road and Great North Road), I even believe that bus services are set to reach saturation point, and of course if the buses and trains cannot cope with extra demand then we are screwed
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Toad, The only taxpayers who pay anything towards roads are those who buy petrol. Those who buy diesel have to buy the more accurately named Road User Charge licences.
When the petrol tax was introduced in 1927 it was definitely intended as a user charge to pay for the development of a national highway system.
It could have been funded the same way as the development of the national telephone system but that would have meant tolls, but without the simplicity and convenience of being able to use existing staff at existing facilities to act as toll collectors. There would have to be hundreds or thousands of toll gates. Besides the government had just abolished the Taranaki toll-gates so it was hardly going to reintroduce them.
It could have been funded the same way as the development of the national electricity system but that would have required the invention of a tamper proof odometer. Had such a device been invented then it would have been easy enough to get the meters read at the post office every month.
Since neither of those options were viable the Main Highways Board concluded that since almost all of the roads that were to be included in the highway system were either dirt or gravel surfaced then the cost of maintenance would actually be dictated by the same factors that dictated fuel consumption, ie weight and speed. Therefore an excise duty on motor spirits collected by customs at the port of entry would be a simple, inexpensive and convenient means to raise the revenue needed to build and maintain a national highway system. Parliament agreed with the Board. The government also new that with farm incomes in a slump this “rates relief” would be a vote winner despite increasing the price of petrol from roughly $1.60 a litre to more than $2.
Unfortunately whilst this rates relief was sporadicly increased over the next 30 years there has been no increase in the last half century. That, IMHO, is an abrogation of parliament’s responsibility to provide good governance. It’s impossible to work out how much urban ratepayers are actually paying for roads and how much of that is for carriageways. It is actually possible that urban carriageways may be fully funded by cars and buses with ratepayers only paying for footpaths, streetlights, stormwater drainage and tree maintenance (or streetscaping as CCC refers to it). Rural ratepayers are definitely paying for carriageways, but mainly on roads where almost all the users are local ratepayers.
In support of my claim that the petrol tax is a tax in name but not in intent, here is the actual debate wherein the government and the opposition MPs state that this is so.
http://www.petroltax.org.nz/PDF/PetrolTaxResolutionDebate.PDF
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john-ston said:Last week Friday, the 5:14 train from Auckland had 366 passengers (this on a set with 268 seats and room for 432 passengers); and morning peak rail services in Auckland are carrying 400 passengers on sets that have to slow down if there are more than 326 passengers.
Hey, where do you get this information from john-ston? Would be useful for those of us who are trying to lobby for improvements in Auckland public transport to have this sort of detail available to us!
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I happened to get the 366 passenger figure from another board that I belong to, along with the 400 passenger figure. I don’t get daily figures (unfortunately), it was just a one off piece of information.
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Where’s BB and his ‘proof’ criteria conflammit
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My local train line was ripped up in 1959
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Of course the price is going to reach $2. Govt interference through tax changes and biofuels will ensure that. They are going to add around 30cpl over the next couple of years.
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30 eh? ha
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Gerrits right about petrol still being cheap. Mathew Simmonds pointed out that in the UK they pay the equivalent of $328 (??) a barrel and the roads are still clogged. The pride of place of a garage smack bang on the north side of a cross-leased section shows how imp0rtant cars have become. A car is a travelling climate controlled room.
Your not going to tell me how many cars/children I can have are you Frog… that would be cultural imperialism.
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I think it’s time to come up with an objective rating system (accreditation) of Greenness. I’ve said it 23 times before but the Greens use the green brand duplicitously*
Now it’s about tree frogs and tuis; now it’s about greasing the skids on the population. Serious Greens recognise population as an issue . The argument that it only matters amongst the rich (consuming) nations is spurious; poor humans compete with other spicies for wood , water etc. What do Tangata whenua think? Maybe you all need to talk to the kaitiaki.
*Given to or marked by deliberate deceptiveness in behavior or speech
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big bro Says:
April 10th, 2008 at 7:18 pm
Meanwhile the rest of us who have not been taken in by the global warming con just sigh and wait for the inevitable backlash when the real truth does come out.
BB says more: I thought about it and for a while I was almost convinced, then I reviewed the anolog of the logrithnic antidorital metabolites and noticed it it didn’t match the periordital friorditals data from the zircon extension. Subsequently however, my eyes burst open and I saw the truth with the clarity of an aphorism…… after watching a shrill for Exon Mobil on Fox…..
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