The price of gas can be uniquely volatile

In the early 1930s, an American motorist could pull up to the pump in a Ford Model T Speedster running on fumes, and for little more than a dollar drive away with a full tank. Today, the same amount of gasoline costs about $25.

Inflation is the primary reason for the increase in gas prices over time. However, while inflation affects the cost of all goods and services, the price of gasoline is subject to a number of additional market forces -- and it can be uniquely volatile.

The average cost of a gallon of gas in the United States is the product of a number of interrelated global market forces. Foreign and domestic oil production, consumption, projected demand, financial markets, refining capacity, supply chain disruptions, transportation costs, futures speculation, and the value of the U.S. dollar all affect the price of gasoline.

Seemingly unrelated geopolitical and economic events can also influence the price of crude oil, which largely determines the price of a gallon of gas. For example, the cost of a barrel of oil more than doubled in the early 1970s, when oil-exporting Arab states imposed an embargo to retaliate against the United States for lending military aid to Israel. Similarly, the price of crude oil hit an all time high of over $160 per barrel during the 2008 global financial crisis. Today, crude oil prices are around $68 a barrel.

More: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/what-a-gallon-of-gas-cost-the-year-you-were-born/ss-BBL3COw?ocid=spartanntp




1929
Price per gallon (inflation adj.): $0.21 ($2.41)
Price per barrel (inflation adj.): $1.27 ($14.30)
U.S. oil production: 2.8 million barrels per day




1957
Price per gallon (inflation adj.): $0.31 ($2.08)
Price per barrel (inflation adj.): $3.09 ($20.71)
U.S. gas consumption: 1.3 billion barrels
Per capita consumption: 322.2 gallons
U.S. oil production: 7.2 million barrels per day

Houston - The burning of fossil fuels is the driving force behind climate change, and now the companies responsible want the federal government to help pay to protect them from the consequences to the tune of about $12 billion.

In Harris County, Texas, voters are going to the polls on Saturday, one year to the day after Hurricane Harvey ravaged the Gulf Coast of Texas. Harvey made landfall as a Category 4 storm, creating a disaster of epic proportions in southeast Texas.

For the voters in Harris County, to cash in on matching federal funds, they have to decide on a $2.5 billion bond referendum for critical flood control projects.

For Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, the vote is one of the most important decisions residents there will make. "We can’t afford to wait any longer. We cannot afford to get this one wrong," he said during a press conference earlier this month.

With Harris County residents, passing the referendum will mean an increase of 1.4 percent in property taxes, in the broadest sense, a small amount to pay to protect your home and livelihood. And Harris County is not the only municipality asking voters to back bond sales to cope with climate change.


Much more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/politics/texas-oil-companies-want-feds-to-pay-for-climate-protection/article/530288#hv69577



Hurricane Harvey, which flooded these homes near Lake Houston, Texas, in August 2017, cost $125 million and was the second-most expensive hurricane in US history WIN MCNAMEE, GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File

Next month, NASA will launch into space the most advanced laser instrument of its kind, beginning a mission to measure – in unprecedented detail – changes in the heights of Earth's polar ice.

Called the Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2), the mission is currently scheduled to launch in mid-September. ICESat-2 will measure elevation changes on Earth, one laser pulse at a time,

The mission will measure the average annual elevation change of land ice covering Greenland and Antarctica to within the width of a pencil, capturing an unbelievable 60,000 measurements every second. To put this more in perspective, the decadal mission will measure the changing thickness of individual patches of ice from season to season and year to year.

"The areas that we're talking about are vast — think the size of the continental U.S. or larger — and the changes that are occurring over them can be very small," Tom Wagner, a NASA scientist studying the world's ice, said during a news conference on August 22, reports Space.com. "They benefit from an instrument that can make repeat measurements in a very precise way over a large area, and that's why satellites are an ideal way to study them."


Much more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/tech-and-science/technology/nasa-launching-advanced-laser-to-measure-earth-s-changing-ice/article/530304#ixzz5P80Szf6r


ICESat-2 Adds the Third Dimension to Earth



ICESat-2 will provide scientists with height measurements that create a global portrait of Earth's third dimension, gathering data that can precisely track changes of terrain including glaciers, sea ice, forests and more. The single instrument on ICESat-2 is ATLAS, the Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System, will measure melting ice sheets and investigate how this effects sea level rise, investigate changes in the mass of ice sheets and glaciers, estimate and study sea ice thickness, and measure the height of vegetation in forests and other ecosystems worldwide. "Eternal Circle," Laurent Dury, Koka Media SACEM Complete transcript available.

How much alcohol is safe to consume? Advice varies considerably between different medical studies, and with different studies offering advice that this sometimes confusing to consumers. A new study cuts through this and puts the case for abstinence.

According to the new research there were three million deaths in 2016 attributed to alcohol. The researchers use these cases to to state the case that alcohol consumption carries 'massive health risks' and that other studies that seek to establish a 'safe' weekly consumption of alcohol are wasting their time. This is because, the research, from University of Washington School of Medicine, concludes, there is no safe level of alcohol.

The three million deaths in 2016 were drawn from a total population of drinkers estimated to be 2 billion people, with the ratio 63 percent makes to 37 percent females. Data was drawn from a larger study called the Global Burden of Disease. Alcohol related diseases were classified as cardiovascular diseases, cancers, communicable diseases and unintentional injuries.

From the analysis, the researchers discovered that the risk of all-cause mortality, and of cancers specifically, rises with increasing levels of consumption, and the level of consumption that minimizes health loss is zero. The researchers make the case of increased government action globally to help to reduce alcohol consumption.

The research did not make any differentiation between beer, wine, and spirits *or 'liquor'). The scientists drew on general data pertaining to alcohol-related deaths and associated health outcomes to determine their conclusions, according to the BBC. A key finding was that alcohol is the leading risk factor for premature mortality and disability in the 15 to 49 age group, accounting for 20 percent of deaths.


Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/life/health/no-safe-level-of-alcohol-research/article/530326#hv69592

Monologue: Orange Tuesday



Bill recaps the top stories of the week, including more bad news for the Trump crime family.




Former CIA Director John Brennan



Former CIA Director John Brennan joins Bill to discuss Donald Trump's attacks on the intelligence community and the president's failure to hold Russia accountable for interfering in US elections.




Kara Swisher: Keeping Tech Honest



Recode Editor-at-Large and New York Times contributing writer Kara Swisher joins Bill to discuss the need for values and standards in the tech industry.




New Rule: Wok the Vote



In his editorial New Rule, Bill argues that the Democratic Party needs a ringer of its own to counter Trump's partnership with Russia.




Tipped Wages, Constitutional Convention, Reality Winner | Overtime



Bill and his roundtable guests – Kara Swisher, Rick Wilson, Saru Jayaraman, and David Corn – answer viewer questions after the show.

Comedian D.L. Hughley describes how society devalues black people and why white people are ill-equipped to identify when something is racist.

NBC News correspondent Katy Tur talks about covering the 2016 Trump campaign from the beginning, what she gained from being an outsider and how coverage should work in 2020.

As questions swirl about whether President Donald Trump's rollbacks will harm the environment, one crucial factor looms large over the fate of emission standards: consumer's wallets.

The Trump administration proposes that a rollback on CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) standards will produce a $2,340 reduction in overall average vehicle ownership costs for new vehicles and save $500 billion in societal costs over the next 50 years. Yet auto industry experts warn that the rollback could add thousands to consumers' fuel bills over the lifetime of a car.

"Consumers are going to lose," said David Friedman, vice president of Consumer Reports. "Consumers are going to end up with cars that they're spending $3,000 moreover the lifetime of car and $5,000 more for the lifetime of an SUV, " he added, referring to greater fuel costs.

In 2012 the Obama administration initiated the gradual increase of federal fuel economy standards with the goal of reaching 54.5 mpg for new vehicles by Model Year 2025. Obama pushed for greater fuel efficiency to combat climate change and to "save consumers more than $1.7 trillion at the gas pump." Instead, the Trump administration is attempting to freeze the standards to 37 mpg by MY 2026, up from the enacted target. Trump contends that the price of new vehicles will quickly become "out of reach for many American families," if CAFE standards continue to rise.

The auto industry cheered on Trump's proposal. Car manufacturers long argued that adding fuel-saving technology on every single vehicle is overtly expensive and will skyrocket car prices. In May, CEOs and other executives from 10 U.S. and foreign carmakers met with Trump at the White House to push their defense. The administration agreed, saying the Obama-era standards could cause consumers to keep their old cars rather than upgrading to a new model with better fuel economy and pollution control.

Those claims are disputed by some industry experts. Experts believe that automakers have the capacity to create new vehicles with greater efficiency without exorbitantly raising the price but are begrudged to do so.

"Anyone who tries to downplay the engineering innovation of the auto industry is selling them short," said Friedman.


Read more (Includes video): https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/how-trumps-plan-to-roll-back-fuel-emissions-could-affect-your-wallet/ar-BBMfcNv?li=BBnbfcN&ocid=Login

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Tuesday made public the details of its new pollution rules governing coal-burning power plants, and the fine print includes an acknowledgment that the plan would increase carbon emissions and lead to up to 1,400 premature deaths annually.

The proposal, the Affordable Clean Energy rule, is a replacement for the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, which was an aggressive effort to speed up the closures of coal-burning plants, one of the main producers of greenhouse gases, by setting national targets for cutting carbon dioxide emissions and encouraging utilities to use cleaner energy sources like wind and solar.

The new proposal, issued by the Environmental Protection Agency, instead seeks to make minor on-site efficiency improvements at individual plants and would also let states relax pollution rules for power plants that need upgrades, keeping them active longer.

Trump administration officials say the Clean Power Plan, in its effort to reduce carbon emissions, illegally tried to force electric utilities to use greener energy sources. The new plan, they said, would achieve many of the benefits sought by the Obama administration but in a way that is legal and allows states greater flexibility.

“Today’s proposal provides the states and regulated community the certainty they need to continue environmental progress while fulfilling President Trump’s goal of energy dominance,” Andrew Wheeler, the acting administrator of the E.P.A., said in a statement Tuesday.

However, the hundreds of pages of technical analysis that accompany the new proposal indicate that emissions would grow under the plan.

Compared to the Obama-era plan, the analysis says, “implementing the proposed rule is expected to increase emissions of carbon dioxide and the level of emissions of certain pollutants in the atmosphere that adversely affect human health.”



More: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/cost-of-new-epa-coal-rules-up-to-1400-more-deaths-a-year/ar-BBMejDn?li=BBnb7KB&ocid=Login




A power plant in Cheshire, Ohio. The mortality numbers for the Trump administration plan are calculated using a modeling system reviewed by the National Academy of Sciences. © Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

Fans of “The Simpsons” now can now travel to slurp a Squishee, munch a Heat Lamp Hot Dog and gulp Lard Lad Donuts — Mmm, donuts! — at the world’s first permanent real-life Kwik-E-Mart store.

It’s designed like a favorite location from the long-running animated TV series, and it opened Friday in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Other items for sale include memorabilia associated with Bart Simpson, his parents, Homer and Marge, sisters Lisa and Maggie and the rest of the globally known characters from the town of Springfield.

Those include Apu, owner of the show’s convenience store, Kwik-E-Mart, who is of Indian descent. The show received criticism recently from viewers troubled by the stereotypical characterization, like Apu’s accent provided by actor Hank Azaria.

“The Simpsons” is known for its many catchphrases, including one from Apu that is painted on a wall inside the store:

“Thank you, come again!” it says.


More (Includes video): https://ktla.com/2018/08/20/the-first-kwik-e-mart-store-from-the-simpsons-is-now-open/