<The Carriers are Coming, the Carriers are Coming! (or, Thursday's Open Thread) The Oil Drum San Francisco Passes Peak Oil Resolution>

202 comments on Friday Open Thread

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louGrinzo on April 14, 2006 - 12:42pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Wow, that's a pretty blatant case of someone (CNW) cooking the books.  Lies, damn lies, and statisics, indeed.  

I think this is a good example of why we all have to be VERY careful in our energy research.  Between politically and financially based biases floating around out there in the infosphere, it's incredibly easy to unknowingly trust bad data and reach an absurd conclusion.

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Engineer-Poet on April 14, 2006 - 5:24pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Only about 10% of the life-cycle energy consumption of a typical vehicle goes into manufacturing, so CNW would have had to radically cook the books to make an H3 come out better than a Prius.

Pity we don't have a legal cause of action against such people for lying their behinds off; they have to be lying about us.

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Essex Land Rover Man on April 20, 2006 - 10:30am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I have been told it is much nearer to 50% of total energy used by a car is used in its manufacture. I think I heard that "fact" on UK TV news . Don't know if this is because UK/European cars are much more fuel efficient and don't drive so many miles over its life span. Average is supposed to be 12,000 miles per year at say, 30 mpg for 12 years typically = 144,000 miles before being scrapped. Quite a few cars do very many short mileage journeys and, in a very small minority, some reps cars do 50,000 miles per year for 3 years before having a second owner and do over 250,000 miles before being scrapped. Anybody have much better evidence of how much energy is required to make a car like a Mondeo, Discovery or Mini?
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Engineer-Poet on April 20, 2006 - 12:45pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
It's relatively easy to see that the 50% figure is bogus.  Just look at the nation's total energy consumption numbers; in the USA, motor gasoline is about 45% of total petroleum products consumed.  Energy consumption by the auto industry would have to equal that for the claim to be true.

It's so far from true that the person who gave that figure should be demoted to janitor.  Even my current car, which  gets about 40 miles per gallon (of fuel that weighs roughly 7 pounds per gallon) burns its own weight of fuel every 23,000 miles or so; call it 6 times over a 150,000 mile lifespan.  For its life-cycle energy consumption to be 50% in the manufacturing, it would have had to require another 6 times its weight in oil (roughly 12 tons) to make.

Maybe innumerates in public life should have to take and pass a course in practical math analysis before being allowed to return to their jobs, and this fact should have to be made public along with the errata. ;-)

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202 comments on Friday Open Thread

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