From: c.oneill@trl.oz.au (Chris O'Neill)
Subject: Re: Wake up Australian!!
Organization: Telecom Australia Research Laboratories
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 23:55:48 GMT

In article <1992Dec14.012849.28032@cs.su.oz.au> yar@cs.su.oz.au (Ray Loyzaga)
writes:
>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, 

You weren't doing a very good job of it.

>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. 

So do I, e.g. the US is not a very good model if we want to minimize carbon
emissions.

>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. 

Sometimes.

>You do not seem to be one
>that attempts to perform reality checks on data presented as fact.

No, that's why I presented statistics on petrol consumption.

>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, 

You said that the US uses twice the amount of electricity in the household as
heating oil (as measured in Btu).  Does the same ratio apply to Australia?  If
the ratio of electricity to oil consumption in Australia is greater than in the
US then this means that Australia's heating oil consumption is less.  Hence
heating oil make less contribution to carbon emissions in Australia than it
does in the US.  Besides, the ratio of household electricity consumption to
total electricity consumption could be different in each country and besides,
there are more things than households that consume heating oil.

>and not enough 

in your opinion

>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.

in your opinion.

>>>>>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.

All I said was that you didn't consider the other 58% as a whole.  You only
considered parts of this 58%.

>>>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.

One would expect that they are measuring the same thing from country to
country, at least.

>>>>>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, 

Well do you know what the methane half-life time is?  Besides, the point is
that the methane consuming processes have been able to keep the methane
concentration down to what it was.  If the rate of methane production is
doubled then the steady state concentration of methane is doubled.  Once in
steady state, continuing methane production by animals does not increase the
greenhouse effect, unlike CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels.

>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.

But not necessarily a net greenhouse gas producer, when you consider the
related biochemical and chemical processes.
Newsgroups: aus.followup