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Jerry,Goldrushcam Photographer
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 03, 2006 - 7:56 am: | |
This photo was taken looking East from Bear Valley,California toward Yosemite National Park. The ridge the clouds are building up over must have a name that maybe one of our readers knows the name of. Climbing to the top of the ridge you could probably gaze into Yosemite just as L.H. Bunnell did back in 1850 as he reached the top of the grade above Ridley's Ferry (Bagby)!
This photo from the spot Bunnell probably stood at
we took a photo of back in February with a telephotos lens.
http://www.goldrushcam.com/discus/messages/871/882.html
On another trip over there we will shoot the scene with a normal lens to give perspective of how he viewed Yosemite if he did not have binoculars.
Yosemite is about 30 miles away from this spot, but El Capitan, Clouds Rest and Half Dome can be clearly seen ! |
Jerry,Goldrushcam Photographer
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 03, 2006 - 8:14 am: | |
Off The Front Page of the Goldrushcam.
A press release from Yosemite National Park says the snowpack is about 185 % of normal, creating waterfalls that have not flowed like this for many years.
Get in the car take highway 41 or the 120 ( Highway 140 is still closed due to a rock slide)
and have a fun day in the park. Take a rain coat or plastic garbage bag as you will get wet near the base of the falls!
A nice story also about the frog jumping champion of the Angels Camp Frog Jump. This years jump is fast approaching (May 17-21)!
And a story out of Fresno about how the city will spend an extra million dollars for fuel costs for the next three months.
Can you imagine how this is impacting school districts with bussing, city sheriff's dept's, city vehicles ? Money that could have been used for other purposes. When will the people stand up and say enough is enough ? We are leaving our children and grandchildren a fine legacy ! |
Rochelle
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 03, 2006 - 8:40 am: | |
There are two places over in that directon where the clouds always seem to build first. I've often wondered if is related to the location of the falls and all of that water vapor spraying into the air as they make the plunge. |
Jerry,Goldrushcam Photographer
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 03, 2006 - 11:19 am: | |
Rochelle, has a very good point !!
That has to put a lot of moisture in the air, thus creating those afternoon cumulus clouds that can reach thousands of feet into the sky. |
Jerry,Goldrushcam Photographer
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 03, 2006 - 12:12 pm: | |
Follow me on this : in the San Francisco Chronicle today David Lazarus has a column on oil prices and other things related to oil,
Here is a link to it;
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/05/03/BUGAQIJF6U1.DTL
What I found really interesting was the part about the three biggest oil companies profits increasing 17% over a year ago in the first quarter of the year.
Okay so I go to FresnoGasPrices.com and look on a year to year chart of Fresno average gas prices.
http://www.fresnogasprices.com/retail_price_chart.aspx
On about Jan 12, 2005 gas was about $1.85 then to close out the quarter it was about $2.41. If we take $2.41- $1.85 we get .56 cent difference. So if we half that to the $1.85 beginning price we arrive at $2.13. ( $1.85 + .28 cents ) average price for the quarter.
Okay now we go to January 2006 and estimate the beginning price at about $2.20 and finishing the quarter at about $2.65. If we take $2.65 - $2.20 we arrive at a .45 cent diference. So if we half that to the $2.20 beginning price we arrive at $2.43 ($2.20 + .23 cents) average price for the quarter.
Okay here is where it all comes together !
Average price first quarter 2005 $2.13
Average price first quarter 2006 $2.43
We then take the $2.13 average price and add 17% to it since this was the oil companies year to year profit. We arrive at $2.49 a gallon !!
Pretty ___ close I will say !!
So everything we paid was apparently pure profit to the oil companies !!!!
Wow,that is really hard to believe right?
Now what will happen in this quarter compared to last year this quarter? We will do this again in about July when they release their 2nd quarter results. But so far with gas almost up to $3.25 in Fresno I think they will do just fine.
Like I said in an earlier post when is enough, enough? When are you going to do something about it ?
Bill O'Reilly no matter what you think of him, says he will never by Exxon fuel again. I hope he sticks by what he says. There is an Internet E-mail going around that says just do not buy any fuel from Exxon ever again !
What an America we are creating for our children !!
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Anonymous
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 03, 2006 - 1:59 pm: | |
Here's an explanation I heard:
Copied:'
"Take a hypothetical:
You sell cookies for a buck, and let's say you make 7% profit on each cookie. So for every cookie you sell, you make 7 cents. Now suppose your costs rise to the point that you are selling the cookies for 2 bucks a piece, and you're maintaining your profit margin at 7%. Now you're making 14 cents for each cookie you cell. Voila, your "profits" have doubled, but of course your margin has not.
Now lets suppose you were selling 100 cookies a day at the beginning, so you were making 7 bucks a day on your cookies. After the costs went up, suppose you started selling even more cookies - let's say 1000 per day just to keep the numbers easy. Now, even though you haven't changed your margin at all you're making a whopping $140 per day. You really look like you're making a killing, but in fact you haven't changed your profit margin strategy at all, the entire variation in profits comes from increased demand and the fact that costs have been driven up.
This is more or less my understanding of what has happened with oil. The price per barrel is up, demand is at an all-time high, and so even though companies operate within the same margins as before, or maybe even lower margins, they're making extremely high profits.
But their margins are pretty much in line with everyone else (higher than some industries, lower than a lot of others), so think of it in terms of being a business owner. Would you cut your margins way back? Most business owners certainly would not (and if you were in a public company and did so you might have to answer to the shareholders by way of a lawsuit)."
Another thing to consider is that many pension funds are heavily funded by oil companies. I don't like to see the prices rise, but I think there are a lot of factors working together.
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Jerry,Goldrushcam Photographer
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 03, 2006 - 4:15 pm: | |
Hi there Anonymous, Good point, yes every business must make a profit. But let us look at the situation again.
Yes the price of oil is up in that time period. In fact it is up 35% ! Averaging $48.00 a barrel in 2005 for the same time period versus almost $65.00 a barrel in 2006 for the same time period
Read this:
http://www.tax.state.ak.us/programs/oil/PRICES/index.asp
So now the cost of oil is up 35% per barrel but gasoline at the pump was up only about 17 % And there profit was only 17%.
Who ate the difference ?
Or did they keep the prices low on purpose?
What happened to that 18% diference in the cost of oil and the the price at the pump ?
Did they absorb it at loss? No they made a profit of 17%.
Let us go further:
From the last day in March,2006 until May 1,2006 a barrel of oil rose from 66.63 to 73.70 up 11%
Gasoline went from 2.65 to 3.24 up 22%
Who is now enjoying this profit margin?
The station owners say it is not them so who is it?
Those last two were examples of no rhyme or reason on pricing unless you can see one in relation to a barrel of oil !
Pension funding should only be their employees and that should be just fine as they have been on on a upward tilt for years and they employ 106,000 people. If you mean company's that invest in them for their own employee's pension that is the risk the pension fund manager has to take.
Finally, Yes demand is up worldwide, and our prices for fuel will go up. Dick Cheney said we cannot conserve ourselves for lower oil prices.So what causes these prices to fluctuate all over?
Speculators maybe? And who are these speculators that can buy so much oil they can control the market? Not me or you or day traders ! It is people or corporations that are behind the scenes who we will never know.
And who gets hurt in these price manipulations ?
The lower income people who cannot afford a gas saver new car. And do not say it is there own fault, as we will always have lower paying jobs, could you imagine if everyone was educated, who would work at the stores? Nobody because they all went to college and have good jobs. The children whose schools must now pay out more money for fuel instead of using that money for better things, the Cities who now must pay higher fuel costs thus not hiring people. The old who along with high drug prices must endure these fuel costs.
Oil is a commodity that we all must use. It is not like cookies that if they get to expensive we just will not buy cookies or at least not from that maker! And there profit margin cannot be 17% all the time or soon we will all be priced out of it.
Plus the outlandish paying of the retiring boss of $400,000,000.00 dollars for a job well done. You see it is much more than just cookies, peoples lives are at stake in this as they charge us prices that have no corelation to anything!
Plus when you are making billions and can afford to pay wages for the top people in the company that must run into the high millions of dollars why can you not reduce the margins?
Remember in the movie, Wall Street, the famous line "greed is good".
Well that line of thinking is taking over America.
It is sad the legacy we are leaving the next generation. |
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