Thinking is good. Numbers are good.

I'm seriously jammed for time in my other life right now; luckily there are two excellent quickies available for me.

One - readers will know that I sometimes toss out calculations for someone to do- someone did! In a very early post I asked someone to just quickly figure out how much gasoline is used, worldwide, just to run the airconditioners in the car- every day.

Brian West did take a quick run just today- outstanding! Do please take a look at the original post and his comment # 2; Unthinkable.

The number he gets is pretty scary- actually, there were 2 factors he left out (understandable in quick/dirty first tries) that would make a pretty large difference- that's the number of cars that actually HAVE airconditioning; and, the percentage of time the airconditioners are actually running. I think that would make a big difference it the final number.

Here's his calculation:

"Using some Very Rough assumptions:

cars worldwide = 600,000,000

average daily car mileage = 40m

average car fuel consumption = 27.5mpg

average increase in fuel consumption when using air con = 7.5% (the figures I found varied from 2%-18%)


...656, 250, 000 gallons


or for us more metric antipodeans, that's 2, 483, 906, 250 litres, or enough fuel for quite a road trip.."

THAT'S PER DAY.

Now- I DO think that's going to turn out high- there are a lot of cars out there without a/c, or with a/c that doesn't work. At this point it's a wild guess- but let's guess it's only 1/5 of the cars out there that have working AC - that would make it a mere 131 Million gallons/day.

Then, too- nobody runs their AC all the time; but then there are some that DO - like everyone in TX, FL, AZ - so let's say half again. That gets us to a mere 65 Million gallons/day.

Or - 23 BILLION gallons/year. And that estimate is brutally short of Brian's original - which would be 237 billion... ??

boy, that seems pretty high.... Something else we're missing, so we can do a quick check on whether these numbers make any sense at all - what's the stated dail/annual global gasoline consumption? Somebody's got that number. I tried a quick google, and hit the reason why I ask others to to this; it's a tangled mess, and the only stats I could find quick were "total petroleum products" - in barrels. uh. what?

Points-

a) Doing these kinds of calculations is pretty EASY - don't leave them to the experts- use your own brain and your own googling ability.

b) Is 23 billion gallons/year- and climbing- worth talking about? or 237 BILLION, if Brian's number is closer? (I'll bet mine is actually low- other corrections might well move it back towards The West Number.)

c) Boy, you better check your numbers before publishing....... :-) I put up like 3 different versions here this morning; because... I'm jammed for time..... haste makes waste..... had to do it over and over... and it's probably STILL not right. No time.

d) Regardless; all those little tiny individual actions- that don't make any difference-
MAKE A HUGE DIFFERENCE.


Ok, item 2 - this blog has been given an Award!
Thinking Blogger

:-) Gollyjeepers.

Thanks, More Deliberately. I am honored, humbled, etc. And vastly amused that you think I "probably won't appreciate the recognition..." I'll be chuckling about that a good while. Hey, my crusty grandpa act is working! No- I'm human. A pat on the back feels good. Thanks. And, of course, I'm TOTALLY tickled that I'm #3, and Colin is #4. HA! :-)

(that's intended as purely silly juvenile humor, Colin- nothing more. ) :-)

gotta zoom off for the day-