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$5-6/galloon, but they were out of date and from likely biased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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