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Automotive News & Views How does gas at $4 and higher impact you?
2183 messages, Last post on Nov 21, 2009 at 5:13 PM
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Replying to: larsb (Sep 24, 2008 9:46 am) Just out of curiosity, what was there first? The tree or the solar panel? I could see if the solar panel had been there for ages and the neighbors planted a fast-growing tree that blocked it. But if the tree was there first, I say tough ta-ta's. Back in the 80's, the neighbors behind us got satellite tv. Unfortunately, the trees in our back yard, established old Poplar trees that were probably 80 feet tall, were blocking the signal, so they had someone cut them down...without our permission! That little stunt cost them about $4,000, as I recall. |
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Replying to: andre1969 (Sep 24, 2008 9:56 am)
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Replying to: larsb (Sep 24, 2008 9:46 am) |
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Replying to: grbeck (Sep 24, 2008 11:38 am) Redwood = Bad / Solar Panels = Good SUNNYVALE, Calif. — Call it an eco-parable: one Prius-driving couple takes pride in their eight redwoods, the first of them planted over a decade ago. Their electric-car-driving neighbors take pride in their rooftop solar panels, installed five years after the first trees were planted. Trees — redwoods, live oaks or blossoming fruit trees — are usually considered sturdy citizens of the sun-swept peninsula south of San Francisco, not criminal elements. But under a 1978 state law protecting homeowners’ investment in rooftop solar panels, trees that impede solar panels’ access to the sun can be deemed a nuisance and their owners fined up to $1,000 a day. The Solar Shade Act was a curiosity until late last year, when a dispute over the eight redwoods(a k a Tree No. 1, Tree No. 2, Tree No. 3, etc.) ended up in Santa Clara County criminal court. The couple who planted the trees, Carolynn Bissett and Richard Treanor, were convicted of violating the law, based on the complaint of their neighbor, Mark Vargas, and were ordered to make sure that no more than 10 percent of the solar panels are shaded. A few weeks after The San Jose Mercury News wrote about the situation, the first act ended with the couple pruning 10 feet to 15 feet of Tree No. 6’s upper branches. The event drew more cameras than an episode of “Extreme Home Makeover.” |
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Replying to: duke23 (Sep 23, 2008 7:07 pm) $4.50 or more as per the RUG national average fuel price as per the EIA data published weeky here...EIA US Retail Gasoline prices - Regular by July 4, 2009 ( I will be 60 on that date ). If the economy tanks and we are revisiting the Great Depression you will understand if my donation is a little late  .
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Replying to: larsb (Sep 24, 2008 9:46 am) Fat Knowledge Berkeley approves program to loan money to residents for solar systems |
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Replying to: andre1969 (Sep 24, 2008 9:56 am) Regardless of all that fuel prices have impacted my wife and I but only regarding what vehicles we own. But we changed up our vehicle program back in 2003. I reduced my weekly use from 20gallons to 6 gallons by getting a Scooter and riding that about 80% of the time to work. We did end up buying an old SUV in late 2003 given our smaller car was not capable of hauling our sail boat and camping gear. The SUV is a 1994 Toyota and only gets driven when its full of people or lots of stuff. Both our cars get 25mpg - next cars will be the highest milege vehicles we can buy but will not be hybrids. The new Jetta TDI is high on the list though we are waiting as long as we can to see what other diesel vehicles arrive on US shores. Our driving habits haven't changed but our vehicles have and will continue to change.
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Replying to: watkinst (Sep 24, 2008 2:26 pm) Still, the key factor should be what was there first. And in this instance of the solar panels versus the redwood trees, it looks like a mixed victory. Notice that trees 1-3, which were planted in 1996, and were already shading the area that the solar panels were installed in 2001, were sort of grandfathered in. Trees 4-8 were planted "within the next 5 years", but it doesn't specifiy the dates that they went in. That would imply that they were in by 2001, when the solar panels were installed. It's entirely possible that they were all planted before those solar panels were installed. Even if they weren't blocking the panels, they still could have been there first. I think that's sort of a gray area, where the trees could have been there first, and while they might not block the solar panels that were installed later, they will eventually, because trees tend to grow. However, any tree that's planted AFTER a solar panel is installed, should be removed if it ends up blocking it. One major benefit that a tree can provide is shade, which will help with cooling. However, if these trees are blocking the neighbor's solar panels, I'd presume that they're north of the owner's house, so they're not really providing him any shade. But they still could be providing privacy, to a degree. I guess one compromise could be to remove the redwoods and replace them with some other evergreen that will grow tall enough to give privacy, but not tall enough to block the solar panels.
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Replying to: andre1969 (Sep 24, 2008 3:45 pm) The latest ballot measure in CA will run all of the egg ranches out of business. I guess then we buy synthetic eggs from China. Or have them trucked up from Mexico. They want every farm animal to have quiet time outside in the fresh air each day. I am just surprised that CA has not raised our gas tax higher. We are already number one in the nation. The latest has CA at 74.9 cents per gallon of gas and 84.3 cents per gallon of diesel. Way ahead of second place. http://www.api.org/statistics/fueltaxes/upload/July_2008_Notes.pdf
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Replying to: kdhspyder (Sep 24, 2008 12:00 pm) " Noted... $25 donation to the charity of your choice. " Noted and duly accepted. May I now congratulate you on your upcoming birthday as well as your choice of vehicle. It's a rough road ahead, I see the stock market doing well as all the other asset classes are busted and the sideline cash is too much after the election. Later when the rates start to rise..... Goldman is calling for a market bottom in October and 1070 spx . Though I feel we had a market bottom last Wednesday, vix at 42, t-bills negative it does not meet Goldman's schedule so we must revisit. Their oil analyst ( my saying, never forget what the first 4 letters spell) is a peak oil advocate and stated $200 oil first. They were the first to say fnma/fre were insolvent scaring the foreign central banks who held trillions of their short term debt and threatened to dump leading to all US guaranteed debt being a pariah., the real reason fnm/ fre failed, their capitaliztion ratio's were fine as they stated. Anyway, the price of oil peaked China stockpiling pre- olympics and tanked there after. No man is an island. So what the hell do they use on their sandwiches there ? Bad mayo/Ireland joke, please excuse. Regardless, we go down they go down, oil gets extreme. All is better later but the world has a corrective mechanism against $200 oil. It's good to be Warren Buffet.Hell it's good to be Jimmy Buffet. pop top and lost shaker of salt.
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