Comments on words / myth / ampers & virgule: Fact checking

Quadrillion?! That number doth indeed reeketh of ...

2007-02-05T13:26:00.000-05:00

Quadrillion?! That number doth indeed reeketh of snake oil.

As an erstwhile student of resource management, I may have an insight into where such apparent inflation creeps in.

For some economic purposes, the value of a resource is counted not as the present value of the resource in the marketplace today, but as something far more esoteric. It could be the summed value all of the money that changes hands along the way from in-ground to final consumer. Or worse, it could be based on a scenario, like "What if OPEC throws us under the bus twenty years frm now?" Or even more provocative, "What would the value of the last barrel of oil be if the mid-east oil fields suddenly are revealed to have gone dry fifty years ahead of schedule?"

When it comes to statistics, especially gov-a-munt statistics, there is always the chance that someone, who will not be accountable, has skewed them for some special purpose. I think we saw a similar force at work in the report on global warming a few years ago.

Thanks for blogging their fact unchecked mis-step, Dick. Whatever accounts for their error (maybe Murdoch bought them in a secret deal?) I'll be watching more closely what I read there.

Anonymous,

You are correct. Magazines are i...

2007-02-05T11:08:00.000-05:00

Anonymous,

You are correct. Magazines are identified by the cover date, which is generally some days after subscribers receive the magazine in the mail.

checking facts -
Your blog is posted 01/18/07 ...

2007-02-05T11:04:00.000-05:00

checking facts -
Your blog is posted 01/18/07 but you reference the 01/22/07 New Yorker.

I'm with you on the words and numbers issue. I di...

2007-01-21T22:10:00.000-05:00

I'm with you on the words and numbers issue. I did corporate editing for a bit, and had to pay attention to numbers and mathematical formulas. I often had the feeling that the people reading the reports wouldn't have noticed, however. It was my own personal purgatory.

Now I have a different job, and I feel much better.

Nice blog, also found you from Miss Snark.

Dave,

Yes, we're on the same wavelength. My...

2007-01-20T20:23:00.000-05:00

Dave,

Yes, we're on the same wavelength. My point about a "kilo" was exactly that it got lost between watt hours and kilowatt hours in the New Yorker article.

Sorry you're on dial-up. You'd have enjoyed the recording. Basically, the guy was quoted a price of 0.02 cents and got a bill at the 0.02 dollars rate, and nobody at Verizon could comprehend the difference. All they could do was punch ".02" into their calculators and multiply, with no regard for units or where the decimal actually belonged.

I'm on dialup so I don't do youtube. There is a b...

2007-01-20T20:12:00.000-05:00

I'm on dialup so I don't do youtube. There is a big difference between 0.02 cents and 0.02 dollars (like 2 cents verus 2 mils, think property tax rates)

And you see what happened on 143 and 43 - I read it too fast and missed the "one hundred and" ... THat's why numbers are so hard and why you must have help and fact checking.

As for kilo - A kilo is 1000 of anything. A kilometer is one thousand meters or 1000 meters.

An average lightbulb, let's use 60 watts consumes 60 watt-hours of electricity in one hour. A kilowatt-hour (they always leave the hour off, everyone knows it's there, oh wait, the science types know its there).

A kilowatt is 1000 watt-hours of energy. It's the equivalent of burning the light bulb for 1000/60 or 16.6 hours (give or take a little bit).

My background is chemical engineering - BTW

I should add one thing, the EIA and the rest of the world separate energy consumption into four categories: Transportation, Residential heating, Electricity consumption and Industrial use.

Can you see why?

It's simple - Transportation (motor fuels, aviation fuels) are made from petroleum.
Electricity is mostly made from coal.
Residential heating is normally natural gas (methane).
And Industrial uses are predictable loads regardless of the fuel source. They are also non-essential in winter or summer peak loads crises.

Dave,

The article was a profile of Amory Lo...

2007-01-20T14:46:00.000-05:00

Dave,

The article was a profile of Amory Lovins by Elizabeth Kolbert. The paragraph in question was Kolbert's (I wouldn't want to blame Lovins for being that far off with his figures).

Thanks for correcting the figures I didn't take time to check. As you said, what a mess! However, the gasoline figure wasn't really off. She had 143 billion, not 43 billion. You have 138 billion. The two numbers are close enough for gummint work.

As for the electricity figure, what's a "kilo" between friends? Did you catch the YouTube recording of the guy arguing with Verizon over the difference between 0.02 cents per kilobyte and 0.02 dollars per kilobyte? It's a classic!

I don't know what point the article was trying to ...

2007-01-20T14:30:00.000-05:00

I don't know what point the article was trying to make. Yearly energy consumption figures are big.

All of those figures are contained in the Department of Energy's Annual Energy Outlook. These aren't secret numbers. the Energy Information Agency publishes the numbers every month, year, etc...

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/index.html

I used to work for DOE. I'm retired. If it weren't for "the Mouse that Roared being on TV, I wouldn't do this. ;)

DOE reports that Total retail sales of electricity in 2005 were 3,661 billion kilowatthours.

That could be close to 4 trillion if you wanted to really use rough estimates {?} NOT!!!

Also, DOE reports that
3,343,131,000 Barrels of U.S. Finished Motor Gasoline Product Supplied to USA in 2005. These are 42 gallon barrels not 55 gallon drums. So estimating - 3.3 times 42 is 138,000,000,000

That's not 43 billion.

What a mess. WHoever did that article needs a day or two to read the reports and put the facts together. I helped do that once and it took several of us a week complete with duplicate verification of the numbers and math.
Hard work...

Thanks for dropping by!

Sounds like your ed...

2007-01-20T14:04:00.000-05:00

Thanks for dropping by!

Sounds like your editor was a pro. You lucked out—with your editor and your boat.

I found your blog from Miss Snark! So interesting....

2007-01-20T13:49:00.000-05:00

I found your blog from Miss Snark! So interesting.
I am really glad I did!
Re: facts.
I am astounded at how detailed my editor got when she was going over my manuscript. Facts really are important and when you make a mistake it can come back and bite you in the you know what!

Comments on words / myth / ampers & virgule: Fact checking

Quadrillion?! That number doth indeed reeketh of ...

Anonymous,You are correct. Magazines are i...

checking facts - Your blog is posted 01/18/07 ...