enthalpy

Saturday, June 28, 2008


From the "sounds like a lot, but really isn't" department:
Americans drove 22 billion fewer miles from November through April than during the same period in 2006-07, the biggest such drop since the Iranian revolution led to gasoline supply shortages in 1979-80.
The headline says 30 billion, so let's run with that. 30 billion miles in five months? That's nothing. Assuming these miles were driven at 10 miles per gallon, that's roughly 150,000 barrels of crude oil. Over five months. We burn 20 million barrels of oil a day. I mean, it's cute and all, but that's a 0.00000087% decrease in usage. So it makes for a good headline, but "market forces at work to decrease oil dependency?" Not so much.



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