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#more#oil#prices#water#american#https#diesel#solar#issue#price
Discussion (69 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
The issue here is that we based our entire economy around a substance that is incredibly price-volatile, run by a cartel, and is plentiful mostly in places that are unstable or hostile to us. I think it’s crazy that we’ve completely normalized the idea that fuel needs to have prices listed outside a gas station because it changes so frequently. Imagine if supermarkets had to list the price of a loaf of bread outside because it kept changing so often.
And it’s really our own fault (or at least the fault of politicians bought by oil companies) because the dangers of oil dependence were obvious at least back in the 70s.
The paradox is that it _can_ cause worse traffic, not that it always does. American cities are built like shit for transport, but it's not as simple as "roads too big, therefore traffic". Sprawl is a much bigger (and more difficult to do ~anything about) issue.
Plentiful in places we keep making unstable and hostile to us by bombing.
https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by-topic/wars-conflicts-...
The enmity between "the West" and "the middle east" goes back to the islamic colonisation era which created a religious incentive to "fight the infidels" and/or plunder and enslave them.
If by "we" you mean the United States, it's worth noting that the US is a net exporter of fuel products and our net imports of crude oil have dropped a lot.
> Imagine if supermarkets had to list the price of a loaf of bread outside because it kept changing so often.
This actually happens when prices become volatile. Not long ago I could see the prices of eggs posted outside different stores on my drive home.
They're competent enough to be able to model the demand destruction occuring globally.
In the meantime, given "Canada supplied the U.S. with more than 60 per cent of its crude oil imports last year," Canada's oil bonanza may not only make up for their tariff losses but actually put them into a net surplus [1].
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-oil-prices-trump-ira...
I don't think they'll post bread prices outside when the hyper inflation starts, they'll just use e-ink digital price tags.
But you won't have to wait long for food prices to become wildly volatile in the upward direction...
As the price of diesel fuel continues to skyrocket, so will the the price of bread (and every other physical item you buy).
People think inflation is bad now, later this year and in 2027 it is going to be so, so much worse on the current trajectory.
Single-digit percentage points of turnout changes would swing the House and Senate. Double-digit percentage changes in voter turnout, as in 15 to 30 percent of unlikely-to-vote registered voters turning out for Democrats in deep-red Republican stronghods like Alabama and Mississippi, gives Democrats a Congressional supermajority.
MAGA voters aren't dropping their identity for a while. Possibly never. Most voters who aren't registered or don't vote are lazy and nihilstic and worth ignoring. But a tenth should be pitchable. In a reach, a third of them could find motivation.
i swear to gods, the australian method of mandatory voting is the benchmark best way to do it.
I kinda hope they bring back the old idea that oil is actually formed out of non-biological matter and so that means its just basically infinitly seeping up from the earth, we just have to drill a bit deeper. But I think that's a little too nerdy for them
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin
It was only about 3 years ago when I learned that petroleum comes from almost anything organic. So, ferns and trees and moss, in addition to Velociraptor and Triceratops, I guess?
Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil refineries. That's not particularly American election issue.
Energy prices are absolutely an American election issue. Variations in real personal disposable income growth and inflation predict a vast majority of the variation in election outcomes after accounting for incumbency.
And Iranian proxies seizing the Bab el-Mandeb–and the U.S. being unable to help Saudi Arabia respond militarily while Iran cements control of the Strait of Hormuz–is the direct result of an American foreign policy choice to, once again, blunder into a war in the Middle East.
That said, we're hitting 2030 with ~20% of American electricity coming from solar and wind versus 40 to 60% under the IRA baselines. We may wind up in a long-term spiral where our adversaries have not only more manufacturing capability and structurally lower labour costs, but structurally cheaper energy, too.
[1] https://seia.org/research-resources/us-solar-market-insight/
$5500 in solar panels including a battery would be just enough to keep the AC on all summer, and that's being fairly high on the temperature, around 26.
So based on cost alone and not power draw, with the AC off you could comfortably power a fridge, PC, and water heater, I guess? But I'm talking out my ass here
The issue is winter: It gets down to -25c and there is very little sun (not that it would help due to snow on the panels). In January and February this year I generated a grand total of 5kWh :D
However my house is a new house, it's designed to modern building standards and has 30cm of PIR insulation in the walls and even more in the roof. There's just no way to properly renovate old buildings to be like that without basically rebuilding the whole thing. The actual cost of materials is not expensive though (for the west). In milder climates (UK I'm looking at you) there's really no reason all new houses cannot be net-zero.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_at_the_White_House...
It is also true that solar water heating has unpleasant failure modes.
On the global market, you can get the equipment for much less, the same inverter is a fraction of the cost that the UL listed American company version costs, the panels are a good bit less. But in the US, this stuff gets marked up pretty hard.
If your main load is for summer A/C, with a mild winter, the generation and usage line up much better.
It takes a lot more than $5K to build a system that can replace a household's energy use. For 24 hour coverage you need substantial battery capacity, too.
To cover theoretical EV charging it gets even more expensive.
Prices continue to come down, but it still takes a lot to actually replace all of a household's energy usage with solar.
diesel is widely used for things like shipping and other supply chain stuff, so expect knock-on price impacts.
semi-trucks might be viable electrically, none of the other options currently are.
Trucks will stop delivering trash (ex. China dollar store crap, lower margin non food items and a billion other nonessential items). Food prices go up, people will do without less desserts or fancy foods but enough deliveries continue with the fuel saved that no one starves.
Now imagine if we replaced only 10% of diesel trucks with electric. Hell just focus on the short haul trucks. That unburned diesel could have helped buffer the remaining fleet.
E10 petrol is £1.64/L, for ref.
US Sees Diesel Stocks Falling to 2003 Low Ahead of Peak Demand - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-09/us-sees-d... | https://archive.today/Dmnid - September 9th, 2026
I live in the east bay and my trips to the ocean and Tahoe have dropped to zero.
* Houthis have taken control of all of the Yemeni coastline along the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait (and an island in the middle of it), which gives them the ability to effectively interdict trade through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, just as Iran has shut down the Strait of Hormuz.
* Not that it matters that much, because the Saudi pipeline that lets it export crude via Yanbu, in the Red Sea, has been disabled, and current estimates suggest that the recovery time is in weeks-to-months. That's about 4-5mbpd of crude oil that's down for the near feature, or about 4% of global crude oil production.
* Now that the summer driving season is over, US refineries are starting to switch from summer blends to winter blends, and this is one of the periods that refineries go down for maintenance. So US refinery capacity is down.
* The supply shock has been mitigated for the past several months by drawing down reserves (note that reserves were relatively high when the war started). This includes both national strategic petroleum reserves, but also corporate reserves (e.g., tanks on-site at refineries). It seems some of these reserves are starting to hit effective 0.
* On top of this, Trump is making it more and more clear that he has no intention of actually doing anything to end to the crisis. For example, he's effectively said that he's not going to do anything before the midterm elections, two months away. Which means the market optimism that the war is going to be over, like, tomorrow is fading.
https://wixx.com/2026/09/11/chevron-ceo-says-depleted-crude-...
A single molecule of water isn't wet. But wouldn't it be correct to say that a collection of them are? They're "wetting" each other...