Where do you think we're headed?

[C-pher]

I wonder what you all think here?

Where do you think that we're headed as a nation? With the price of gas going up to 3-4-5-6 dollars a gallon. That means that the price of milk is going to go up. The price of eggs are going to go up. Anything that's on a truck, that price is going to go up.

I know that my wife's company just said that the cost of service calls have gone up effective yesterday due to the increase of gas prices. Thats' due to the miles that they have to drive everyday to get from one hospital to another.

But that means that people aren't going to go anywhere for vacation, or day trips because they can't afford the gas.

Then factor in that there are now millions of people that are homeless. The ones that didn't leave, and the ones that left don't have a home to come back too. And when you add in that I would guess 60-80% might not have a job to come back too. The unemployment rates are going to go up as well.

It makes you wonder what's going to happen to the economy.


Do you think that I'm worring too much? I'm starting to wonder about what home oil cost are going to be... Yea, we locked in a price back in July. But from what I'm hearing, thats "Subject to Change." I wonder if the heating oil companies would just go out of business if they can't... I'm going to have a newborn right in the middle of winter.

Maybe I'm stressing over nothing. Maybe I'm not. I'm just wondering what you guys are thinking...

All I do know is that the price of gas isn't just the price of gas. It's the price of anything that moved by equipment that runs on gas.

 

[Walter Smitty]

Well we do indeed live in interesting times. The good news is that we are all in it together. Traditional sources of encouragement and support are available. Family,friends,church. For a long time before our present government existed we as Americans relied on each other through those institutions. We will again and remember, a man is not licked until he believes that he is. I don't suspect that you are the type to roll over.

 

[Admin]

We need to drill in Alaska, and build a few more refineries.

 

[MrsWildweasel]

C-pher, we also locked in our oil prices,but we also mainly heat with a pellet stove. Granted we have a 200 plus year old house,so we had to find something else to heat with. I also live out in the sticks,so especially with the winters we have and also having gone through a time when we first moved into our house having 4 downs of no power,or phones. Due to a freak storm,
I learned to always have way more groceries around. I always buy extra. I buy my meats in bulk. Yes, I do have water around too. We also have wells, and septic here.
I learned a long time ago you just roll with the punches. I also know I can go down the road,buy my milk right from the cow if need be. I also know as a community here we'd pull together and help each other out.
Basically what Walter said. We're all in this together.

 

[MrsWildweasel]

Derek, we needed to do that along time ago. Maybe now we say screw the earthy crunchies and actually do something about it.

 

[Adam_MA]

Maybe now we say screw the earthy crunchies and actually do something about it.

AMEN! It's about time we started worrying about our PEOPLE and not get let the tree hugging dirt lovers dictate to us, that we can't do what's right for our PEOPLE because it will upset the mating ritual of the caribou.

Adam

 

[dwarven1]

Maybe now we say screw the earthy crunchies and actually do something about it.

AMEN! It's about time we started worrying about our PEOPLE and not get let the tree hugging dirt lovers dictate to us, that we can't do what's right for our PEOPLE because it will upset the mating ritual of the caribou.

Adam

Wait until the tree huggers have to spend $100 to fill up their Prius's and Insights... they'll geek. So many of them don't practice what they preach.

 

[C-pher]

C-pher, we also locked in our oil prices,but we also mainly heat with a pellet stove. Granted we have a 200 plus year old house,so we had to find something else to heat with. I also live out in the sticks,so especially with the winters we have and also having gone through a time when we first moved into our house having 4 downs of no power,or phones. Due to a freak storm,
I learned to always have way more groceries around. I always buy extra. I buy my meats in bulk. Yes, I do have water around too. We also have wells, and septic here.
I learned a long time ago you just roll with the punches. I also know I can go down the road,buy my milk right from the cow if need be. I also know as a community here we'd pull together and help each other out.
Basically what Walter said. We're all in this together.

OH I know. And we're in the same boat. Our house was built in the 1800's. So heating is a bitch. Too many air leaks. We go thought a lot of oil. We don't have a stove. I wish that we did...or a fireplace.

I'm sure that we'll get by I'm just wondering what's going to happen in the rest of the world.

Remember in England several years ago. Truckers starting doing rolling road blocks. They were not doing shipments, so people couldn't get food. I just hope that we don't start doing the same things.

 

[Jeremiah]

C-pher,

I don't think things are going to get too bad. This is the news today, and for the next few weeks. But the US is a huge country and we've got a lot of resources to handle and absorb the problem. By the time cold weather hits New England, I think that--aside from higher heating oil prices--things will be back to normal. It will probably put a dent in the economic recovery we've been having, but not break it.

It'd be nice if this event was used to show how ridiculous the energy strangling environmental policies can be. We need more refineries, more nuclear power plants, more oil. Not because we're selfish jerks who like to drive gas guzzling SUVs but so that the entire country can function.

 

[MrsWildweasel]

C-pher,the nice thing about a pellet stove is you can go right through a wall. None of the fireplace we had in this house work,the chinmeys were all gone. We had started with a wood stove,but as Glenn's back got worse we new we had to do something else. The first year we lived in the house we heated with just oil,decided we could not afford that. Plus with the wood stove it was very uneven heat. With the pellet stove anywhere you go on the first floor the temp is comfortable.
Our was built 1796,no insulation, and horse hair plaster for walls. When Glenn's grandparents inherited the house they are the ones who put electricity,heat,and running water in. Heat was in only half the house,so the other half you get to freeze your ass off. We do have an old well underneath our bathroom floor too.
It's a neat old house and never been out of the family. We'll have to get you and your family up here. Then you can see how we did the pellet stove.

 

[dwarven1]

OH I know. And we're in the same boat. Our house was built in the 1800's. So heating is a bitch. Too many air leaks. We go thought a lot of oil. We don't have a stove. I wish that we did...or a fireplace.

When Kath & I bought our first house in Hudson (a converted summer cottage), it had a hookup for a woodstove in the finished basement, and electric baseboard heat. We moved in over Halloween weekend 1988... and had a cold snap in November/early December.

We saw our first electric bill just after Christmas - the bill was around $300 for a month. Went shopping for a wood stove on Dec 30th and had it in within a few days.

We went through about a cord and a half each year for the next several winters. I put in a fan that moved warm air up to the first floor and stacked wood next to the stove to dry out before use.

During a blizzard in the mid-90's, I expected to lose electric power and brought in double the amount of wood that I normally use. Sure enough, power went out and stayed out for about 26 hours. But by the end of that 26 hours, the temp in the basement was up to about 82 degrees and the first floor was about 72 degrees. That wood stove made the difference between us being refugees (with 3+ feet of snow on the ground!) and staying in our home. The biggest trouble was getting something to eat - our stove was electric! (Honestly, I don't remember what we did... I suspect that we went down to our friends' house in Marlboro to eat. Jeff & Donna's house used gas, and they had power. Or maybe we used our camp stove... we used to camp a lot.) But we made do.

Anyway, the point of this long-winded rambling is that that woodstove made it possible to afford to live there, and kept us warm when we had our (frequent) power outages. Get something like that... wood, pellet, propane... whatever. It's worth it.

Ross

Oh, yeah... almost forgot. We bought a Dover "Horizon" stove... wonderful stove, just wonderful. Not as decorative as a Vermont Castings, but much less expensive.

 

[Moderator]

We need to drill in Alaska, and build a few more refineries.

I agree, I can appreciate nature as much as the next guy but, I didn't evolve to the top of the food chain so some liberal fag can hug a tree and make sure some rat I never heard of can make 300 new rats every year.

 

[YogSothoth]

Just to chime in: I'd prefer not to setup drilling facilities in some of the few "pristine" areas of the planet left if we could, instead, find ways to reduce our dependency on oil (be it foreign or domestic).

I'm not defending the "earthy-cruncy" types with their "love your mother" stickers all over their pollution-spouting Vanagons. My worry is that views on both sides are too extreme in their respective directions. We should investigate all our options (solar, wind, clean coal, domestic oil drilling, refinery changes for alternate oil types, as well as combinations of the above) instead of knee-jerking one way or the other.

Just because we don't like or respect the group of people who are the most vocal defenders of the environment or necessarily agree with their more extreme views (eg: drilling for oil in the wildlife refuge will immediately destroy the entire region and that nonsense) doesn't mean that we should dismiss their argument entirely. After all, some of the biggest environmentalists I know are hunters with strong conservative views.

IMO we need to think long-term. Finite fuel sources are just that. We may not know when they'll run out, but we know that they will so shouldn't we actively investigate alternatives? Besides, I would friggin' love to see the look on OPEC's collective face when the US stands up and says "we don't need you anymore, thanks for everything." That would be incredible!

 

[dwarven1]

Well said, YogS!

One potential resource that's being fought tooth and nail is WIND. But the residents of Nantucket (including our dear Senator Fat & Drunk) are complaining that it will ruin their VIEWS to put a wind farm off of Cape Cod.

Hey, the wind is free... the only cost would be installing and maintaining the windmills. And with the protests about nuclear power closing nuke plants, wind power would reduce our oil requirements some.

Ross

 

[MrsWildweasel]

Ross when we lost power/phone for the 4 days we have an electric stove,mother-in-law next door has gas. We were cooking over there. Now I have the motor home I can cook/bake in if needed. Yoou could get creative and cook on the wood stove. I also have oil lamps in every room of this house. I was also thinking I might have to get a few more wall ones. Since the last outage 12 hours,would have been nicer if they were brighter. I learn from each outage what I need to change. CB radios was also how we communicated with our family. From our vehicles.

 

[Admin]

YogSothoth,

Calling it an environmental area is a bit of a stretch. The area they want to drill is frozen tundra with next to zero wildlife. Modern drilling technology minimizes any damage to the drilling area.

The people who live in that county in Alaska have voted twice to have drilling start, both votes were over 90% for drilling. Who are we to say what they can and can not do in their own home land?

Shit we have local garbage land fills that are worse on our LOCAL environment than any oil drilling will ever be.

There is absolutely no reason we should be drilling there.

Just so you know the area they want to drill is marked 1002. It is at the nothern most part of Alaska, it is TUNDRA.... They can produce oil at $24 a barrel there, we are currently paying $70.

 

[dwarven1]

Ross when we lost power/phone for the 4 days we have an electric stove,mother-in-law next door has gas. We were cooking over there. Now I have the motor home I can cook/bake in if needed. Yoou could get creative and cook on the wood stove. I also have oil lamps in every room of this house. I was also thinking I might have to get a few more wall ones. Since the last outage 12 hours,would have been nicer if they were brighter. I learn from each outage what I need to change. CB radios was also how we communicated with our family. From our vehicles.

Although my house is electric, it's now in a much more reliable area for power - I don't think that we've lost power for more than 2 hours since we moved in here.

As for cooking... I have a small hiking stove in the garage, we usually have at least 6 gals of bottled water at any given time, and I don't want to think about how much ammo we have. Plus there's a pretty good first aid kit in my car.

Heat... getting a 500 gal propane tank installed next week and a hydro air system installed, and we're looking at gas fireplaces now that we're getting propane in.

And if I needed to, I could run up to my buddy's house and give him one of our GMRS radios. All my CB's have died of old age and I no longer know where to get them repaired.

 

[MrsWildweasel]

Actually there's a place out of Westfield. I'd have to ask Glenn though. Actually since the power company comes around and does tree trimming,we don't have too many,but it seems like when we do there good ones. It's just the joys of living in the sticks.
Glenn and I were talking this morning how we really didn't think there would be much looting here...... [lol] [lol] [lol] any of us being armed around here,I think if anyone tried it they'd be quite surprised.
First aid for us we can even do stitches if we had to. Glenn and I are both EMT trained too. Plus the extreme wheeling we were doing we knew we had to be prepared for everything.
Like I said I learn with each outage what I need to make changes on.

 

[KMaurer]

Maps and numbers are nice for people who deal with them regularly, but the message still doesn't get through to the vast majority of people. A couple of years back someone did the following comparison: If the Artic National Wildlife Reserve were the size of Massachusetts then the total area that would be impacted in any way by the proposed drilling and support operations would be slightly smaller than than Framingham. Even with that, the environmental protection regulations imposed by the companies on the existing operations are so strict that even the most extreme tree hugger would be screaming "police state" if they had to live under them for a week. Example: drop a candy wrapper on the ground and, even if you immediately realize your mistake and pick it up, you're fired; absolutely no second chances or discretion involved.

Drill ANWAR; build nuclear power plants.

Ken

 

[C-pher]

We don't have any oil lamps, but I have several Colman lanterns. And they are BRIGHT. But as long as I've lived in MA (4 years) we've never lost power.

We can't put in a stove as we're renting. And the landlord I don't think would let us. Our house is also Horse Hair, Tube and copper...which means that we don't get any cell coverage in our house..etc. It's nice, but drafty.

 

[Lynne]

I'm hearing libs moaning about how everyone is guzzeling gas and should all be driving hybrids. Well - that's fine - just one problem - hybrids still need gas, and the electric back up system is produced by oil run electric companies. [roll]

Also - keep one thing in mind here guys - there's something called supply and demand. At the moment, there's a hiccup in the supply, ergo, the price will increase. As long as people don't panic (like they are in Atlanta), then there won't be gas stations running out of gas. I said it before - part of the price going up is to keep folks from hording and filling up on days they don't usually (meaning panic).

And yes, other prices will also increase temporarily. The cost of oil is ballooning. Steve Forbes said yesterday that it's a knee jerk reaction and, within 12 months, that balloon will pop. He's predicting that within 12 months, oil will be back to $35 - $40 a barrell. From my somewhat limited knowledge of economics, I thinks he's right.

I''m not saying that we shouldn't drill here in the US or not build more refineries - I believe we should, and we should start this afternoon. I also think there's a lot more ways of creating energy and those things should be pushed more than they are now.

But then again, all of this is Bush's fault anyway.... [roll] I hate liberals.

 

[MrsWildweasel]

Actually we get some cell coverage here. Only because there is a tower on the hill behind us.
I agree all options need to be explored.Like yesterday. Just like the earthy crunchies need to get over hugging trees. We can still preserve the wildlife,and still try to make it so we are not so dependent on other countries,etc.