Miguel at GunFreeZone had a great piece up about heating oil.
There’s a smell to an old city when it gets cold. You have the snap of the air and a faint industrial smell which seems to make the city colder. It’s not industry, since where I grew up, Washington DC area, had no heavy industry to speak of and still had the city smell.
It’s the smell of oil fired boilers used to heat office and apartment buildings as well as older homes. Further north you go and the older the city is, the more homes have oil powered steam heat. You don’t see that much down here in Texas because it doesn’t get that cold. BTW, your other choices are natural gas (Both steam and forced air) and electric. You’ll see a few heat pumps in some of these cities, but they can be horribly expensive in a typically cold winter up there.
Heating oil is essentially the same compound as fuel oil (in ships), diesel, kerosene, and jet fuel.
Where am I going with this?
They are taxing the crap out of fuels like gasoline and diesel. But you won’t see that as much on heating oil. Matter of fact what’ll happen, sure as the sun comes up, they will be subsidizing heating oil deliveries when it gets cold. So they are paying for some denizen of a blue city to burn the same fuel that they are taxing and crushing when it comes to your SuperDuty Ford or the trucks that bring your stuff. Stuff like heating oil to your home.
Here’s another thing; that smell? that’s the combustion exhaust.
Do these old houses with boilers have catalytic converters?
Do they have to buy DEF like you have to for your Diesel vehicle?
Nope. No they don’t. That goes straight up the chimney.
And unlike your car, a boiler is running all day, every day, at least once an hour…times the number of people that use them. Not a peep from the greenies. They’ll pay to help out the poorest among us hurt the environment.
Whatever.
It’s going to be cold. Fuel will be expensive, energy will be expensive.
And so, probably, will food as Peter from Bayou Renaissance posts.
These are all ‘dots’.
Yeah, you’re Cocoa Puffs and Corn Pops cost twice as much. But, hell, you can go with the generic brands or even the bulk section cereal. But most around the world have no such option with their staples of Wheat Flour, Corn, and even Rice. Harvests are looking bad from war, incompetence, and drought.
You think these fools are going to handle things any better than they gooched COVID?, keep dreaming. The fact that they are stroking their chins about heating oil as fall is fast approaching tells you all you need to know. Time for that was before you demonized fuel companies or even back in the spring when you were coming out of the cold.
You really need to have a pantry system of sorts. You needed this awhile ago, but there’s still some time. You use it to cushion the blow of shortages. You need to prepare.
Because sure as God made little green apples, TPTB have already screwed up, and will continue to do so. Being prepared and miserable is better than being simply miserable.
Inspected By Pat 