Re: OT: a dumb query? pls humor me
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On 02/26/07 15:21, Andrew Sackville-West wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 26, 2007 at 02:08:24PM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote:
>> On 02/26/07 13:55, Andrew Sackville-West wrote:
>>> On Sun, Feb 25, 2007 at 09:36:51PM -0800, Freddy Freeloader wrote:
>>>> Paul Johnson wrote:
>>>>> Michael Pobega wrote:
>>>>>
>> [snip]
>>> I wonder what burning a gallon of gas really costs? (I don't know, I
>>> found a couple websites that suggest the true costs is somethinglike
>>> $5-6/galloon, but they were out of date and from likely biased
>>> sources).
>> Whatever the cost, it's irrelevant.
>>
>> It's an *excellent* source of transportable energy, and most of it's
>> secondary costs will either exist with other forms of burning liquid
>> fuel, or be transferred to different sources.
>
> Agreed, somewhat, but I think its relevant to a discussion fo the costs of
> gasoline. Gasoline's costs are artificially low when you look at the
> deferred or external costs. Some other technologies *may* not
> necesarily have as high deferred or external costs making their
> initial higher costs not so bad. Its a matter of perception. Some
> recent reading I'm doing (Our Angry Earth -- Asimov and Pournelle?)
> talks about using renewable bio-fuels instead of fossil fuels. Part of
> the argument is that renewable bio-fuels pull carbon, for example, out
> of the air in their production and put it back cyclically. This means
> that some of the external costs you see with fossil fuels aren't there
> with the renewable bio-fuels. So their logic is that even though these
> renewable bio-fuels are (were, written 1991 or so) more expensive at
> the pump, their total cost, including external factors, is lower. How
> valid all of that is, I don't know.
Bio-fuels *are* a great idea.
Until you realize *how much* gasoline & diesel this country uses
(then add 3x more to that for the rest of the world), and the fact
that stuff like corn ethanol needs lots of (*petrolem* based)
fertilizer.
(However, sugar cane ethanol in Brazil is a *great* idea, because of
cane's higher sugar density, Brazil's proximity to the equator and
lower population).
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