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151 comments on DrumBeat: September 10, 2008

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Pitt the Elder on September 10, 2008 - 10:00am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

they are counting OPEC NGL as part of non-OPEC supply....I suppose they have their reasons.

I believe the reason is that OPEC NGLs are not subject to production quotas.

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xeroid on September 10, 2008 - 2:28pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Peak oil is a crude oil phenomenon and primarily a future serious transport problem.

NGLs have almost nothing to do with transport and IMO are included to deliberately cloud the already fuzzy statistical picture.

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x on September 10, 2008 - 3:11pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

It's the same old problem that plagues discussion of oil/energy issues that I have railed against umpteen times. Things that are different can not be compared, added, subtracted, multiplied or divided. If they are the result is silly nonsense.

Those who repeatedly do this stuff can not be that stupid IMO. They have an agenda which benefits from it. There is financial gain in it somewhere for someone.

Watch the money. It is often oil money that is behind it as in the totally fallacious EROEI "studies" of ethanol by Pemintal et al. If ethanol can be slowed or stopped it decreases competition at the gas pump enabling price rises and increased refining margins.

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embryonic on September 11, 2008 - 2:52am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Things that are different can not be compared, added, subtracted, multiplied or divided.

You keep repeating this mantra, oblivious to the fact that people multiply and divide different quantities all the time: what's a kWh? Well, it's what you get when you multiply a kilowatt (a measurement of instantaneous power) by an hour (a duration). Oh no! Two completely different things are being multiplied together. Forget the LHC, this act of wanton senslessness will destroy the universe. (I won't digress into the more mathematical areas where "adding" different kinds of things occur.)

The key point is that you've got to actually engage your brain and think about what these quantities mean (in particular a kWh is neither a kW nor an hour but something different), but that's not saying it's silly nonsense. Combine that with your obdurate lack of specificity about what you don't like about a specific calculation and I start to get suspicious.

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Ricky on September 11, 2008 - 5:43am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

"Things that are different can not be compared, added, subtracted, multiplied or divided. If they are the result is silly nonsense."

MPG.

Miles Per Gallon.

Silly nonsense?

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xeroid on September 11, 2008 - 7:34am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

MPG, a ratio, isn't silly nonsense.

But directly comparing miles and gallons is silly nonsense - just like comparing NGLs and crude, they aren't the same thing and aren't used as alternates - a ratio of NGL to crude might make some sense and give insight though.

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151 comments on DrumBeat: September 10, 2008

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