Quote:
Originally Posted by Kona_Silat
People ***** about the cold and the snow but I think it is a small price to pay for financial and civil peace of mind. It just seems like a cool (no pun intended) country to live in. The people over there are warm and tolerant. Correct me if I am wrong.
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Depends on where you live. Toronto can get hot in the summer with actual temperatures regularly going above 32C / 90F and the humidity making it feel even hotter. And in the winter we don't get as much snow as Buffalo, NY does or other smaller cities north of Toronto.If you want a bit more moderate climate, then try Vancouver - its pretty much like Seattle.
Yeah most Canadians are a laid back bunch. You'll find that the people in the western, prairie provinces have the same conservative attitudes as their counterparts in Texas, Oklahoma, Wyoming, etc. More liberal attitudes are in larger cities like Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, etc.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kona_Silat
Bro, you seem to know a lot about economics..i was curious to know why gas prices are going up? Is it because of Opec?
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The
short simple answer is that its the same as any other product - supply and demand. When the supply is tight and demand is high, prices will be high. If the demand is lower, prices will be lower, and if the supply is in greater availability, prices will go even lower still.
But yeah, there's a lot of factors at work. Personally I don't think OPEC is really to blame - people just like to point fingers at them because those same people just want to satisfy themselves by believing that its the big bad oil oligopolies controlling the market.
Other issues like hurricanes in the Gulf, wars and conflict, and speculation easily cause major fluctuations in the price per barrel. For example, look what happened when Iran captured those British sailors a while back - per barrel prices shot up like crazy, all because traders were speculating that it might get really bad and war would start, thereby constricting the supply even further and increasing demand at the same time.
Then you have emerging economies like India but mostly China who are really starting to suck up a lot of oil that was previously available on the market for the Western nations. China is freaking
huge - its demand for natural resources and commodities is unstoppable, and its not afraid to demand more and more from the world markets to satisfy its hunger.
Prices are going to keep going up, so don't hold your breath waiting for them to come down. Suck it up and get used to it.
Alberta [in Canada] has the second largest proven reserves of oil in the world, after Saudi Arabia, but the total cost of processing Albertan oil is still very high, like around $20 / barrel because its very heavy with tar and sand and it has to be refined extensively. In contrast, Saudi Arabian oil is so light that it requires very little refinement and the total costs per barrel, for refining, are about $1 or $2.
If they have any major technological breakthroughs within a few years that would allow them to cut the refining costs of Albertan oil by like 70% or greater, then we could probably see a huge global shock as Canada begins to supply more and more oil to USA and other markets. Alberta in particular is unaffected by political instability, there are no wars here [yet] and none on the horizon, and no hurricanes either.
blah blah blah