From: yar@cs.su.oz.au (Ray Loyzaga)
Subject: Re: Wake up Australian!!
Reply-To: yar@cluster.cs.su.oz (Ray Loyzaga)
Organization: Basser Dept of Computer Science, University of Sydney, Australia
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 01:28:49 GMT

In article <1992Dec9.043749.248@trl.oz.au> c.oneill@trl.oz.au (Chris O'Neill) writes:
>In article <1992Dec9.002925.18036@cs.su.oz.au> yar@cs.su.oz.au (Ray Loyzaga)
>writes:
>:As for heating oil, the US uses twice the amount of electricity
>:in the household as heating oil (as measured in Btu) so this
>:doesn't help terribly much.
>
>Why not?  We are comparing US and Australian consumption, not US electricity
>consumption with US heating oil consumption.

I am trying to look at the inputs to greenhouse gas production
and tallying them against the OECD findings, if you want to take
them at face value, then fine, I prefer to gain an understanding
of what the findings are actually saying, and the lessons that
can be learned. Sometimes it is possible to show that a report
was produced from such a narrow perspective that applying its
findings generally would be in error. You do not seem to be one
that attempts to perform reality checks on data presented as fact.

The facts of the matter are that electricity generation and oil
consumption are large factors in a developed economys greenhouse
gas generation, the fact that the usage patterns of the US and
Australia seem very similar, and not enough to diminish the 1.8 times
GDP productivity gap seem to remove some of the believability of
your single line OECD reporting, it seems that the report was rather
narrowly focussed.

>>>>Of course you might find that those crazy US people drive
>>>>their cars 1.8 times as much but I don't have any stats on that so
>>>>I'm willing to take accept that :-).
>>>
>>>I'll quote some figures supplied by Brendan Jones some time ago:
>>>
>>>>                City                    MJ petrol/person
>>>>                -------------------     ----------------
>>>>                Moscow                          380
>>>>                Hong Kong                      1987
>>>(some deleted)
>>>>                Sydney                        27986
>>>>                Adelaide                      28791
>>>>                Melbourne                     29104
>>>>                Brisbane                      30653
>>>>                Perth                         32610
>>>(some more deleted)
>>>>                Houston                       74510
>>>>                -------------------     ----------------
>>>
>>>Houston was the worst of the US cities stated but I recall the average of the
>>>US cities stated was about double the average of the Australian cities.
>>
>>Fine, so your big ticket item, petrol shows up as an area that seems
>>to show that the US does consume 1.8 (or close to double) the per-capita
>>petrol when compared to OZ.
>>But that isn't the whole story, the petroleum energy consumption
>>in the US accounts for only 42% of total energy consumption. In the
>>other areas
>
>that you considered,

No bozo, total US energy consumption, i.e. from coal, natural gas, petroleum
hydro, nuke, geothermal, where lpg and other oil derivatives were factored
as petroleum.

>>the US and OZ are very comparable. But to meet the
>>results that the OECD claims it would all have to be 2 times the
>>per-capita OZ output ... which of course means the OECD numbers
>>are either bogus or a much more limited study than reported.
>
>So Governments around the world should forget about the OECD as a source of
>information, they should call on Ray Loyzaga instead.

Sounds like a good policy, they would save a lot of time and money,
although my guess is that the report gives a little more detail
about the areas that are being targetted and that the little news
grab that was printed in the local papers may not tell the whole story.

>>>>My guess is that the numbers from the above study didn't look very hard
>>>>at what constitutes greenhouse gas production, particularly when
>>>>sheep out number the people 10 to one, 
>>>
>>>They don't drive cars though.
>>
>>No, but they fart and believe me they fart a lot. 200 million
>>grass fermenters produce a hell of a lot of methane and they
>>contribute a great deal to the greenhouse effect, I would surmise
>>that their contributions would exceed those of the Australian motoring
>>public.
>
>Maybe the OECD didn't include methane production but then maybe they had a
>reason for not including it such as the fact that methane has a finite
>half-lifetime in the atmosphere.  (The atmosphere was mainly methane and
>ammonia at one time.  Lots of methane producing animals have lived since then. 

Ok, but since we are using geological time scales, there is no greenhouse
problem, since in a few hundreds of millions of years it will all be
sunk back as coal and oil ... Of course Venus doesn't have a methane
problem either ... it's always that muggy this time of the year.

>Some process must have removed it.)  The OECD might not have included carbon
>dioxide produced by living things because this is matched by living processes
>that remove it.

Me thinks that before the white man came, there were very few sheep in
Australia, you could count them with each of your functioning neurons.
In Australia sheep and cattle are industry, just the same as any other.

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