Disappointment

I must confess, I am disappointed in the response to these posts and my little advertising/email campaign.  Site visits is way up, but I have not yet had one single response or comment from anyone.  I know we are all busy, but I really thought that some interest would have been shown by now.  Maybe I am some kind of nut pursuing the utopian dream of having honest and factual debates on the very serious issues we face.  Perhaps.

But I do believe deeply that probably our most significant core issue today is that we are allowing ‘the establishment’ to feed us vague, undocumented ‘facts’ and lots and lots of emotional arguments and arguing.  This is all we have to  base our decisions on.  We have been letting them get away with it for 35 years on energy.  I do not believe we will exist as a nation if we let them get away with it for another 35.

I am off to do other things, have a few busy days ahead of me.  As I get time, I will continue my question for the 1973 numbers, and, of course, my personal examination of the details of both candidates energy offerings.

Rix

Acquiring the Data

Phew, what an ordeal. I am not going to mention any names, but some dummy for some unfathonable reason ‘upgraded’ to latest version of MS Office, 2007 I believe it is. It’s all different. That cost me a bunch of time, had a heck of a time trying to get Excel to do even basic functions with the data I found. I have around 4 hours invested now, somewhere between 2 and 3 of them due to problems with Excel. Net time to acquire the data and see if Fox is correct, somewhere between 1 and 2 hours, and the oldest I have been able to find thus far is 1991.

I found a site which I would consider reputable, it is published by the branch of the US Departement of Energy that is responsible for collecting and reporting on such things. My experience with goverment statistics over the past many years has been that they are accurate. There is a whole slew of them, about any piece of data u could want to find, sliced and diced about every way imaginable. Except showing what percentage of oil consumed is imported.

What I did find was oil consumption, and oil imports, I have that data for 1991 through June 2008 in the format of average barrels per day. For 2008, according to that data, we have imported an average of 64.03% of our oil, or we import 13.17 million barrels of the 20.57 million barrels we consume each day . The data I am using, two separate tables, are here:

Imports: http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/wttimus24.htm

Consumption: http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/wrpupus24.htm

My conclusions from this little exercise, first, phew, the volume of data is overwhelming, so many choices, so many ways it is presented, terms we must understand, and on and on. They say that figures don’t lie, well true, but with so many options, it would be very easy to make mistakes, or for two individuals trying to answer the same question coming up with different results.

As to what started me on this research, the number from Fox News seems to be pretty close, they said we are importing 61%, I came up with 64%. The data I was able to find for 2008 was only the numbers for total crude oil and oil products imported. The table they had for crude oil alone stopped at 2004. Those numbers were a bit smaller, perhaps that is the data that Fox based their numbers on. I have been unable to find the numbers for 1973, but will continue my quest.

Obama’s numbers still do not add up. He promises to cut consumption by 35%, ok, that is clear enough, but then he says “or 10 million barrels per day.” I am showing we are consuming just over 20 million a day now, 35% would be 7 million a day. Either he thinks our consumption is higher ( 35% of 28 million a day is very close to 10 million), or what? I don’t know. But he goes on to state, well, suggest, that this would “more than offset the equivalent of the oil we would import from OPEC nations in 2030.” I’m not sure exactly what that means, but it looks like he is trying to suggest that this would get us to oil independence. And that just does not add up. Reducing our consumption by 35% would only save 7 million a day, and even at 10 million a day, it is still short of the 13 million a day we are importing today.

I chose a comment from Obama to put under the microscope, along with information from Fox News, simply because it was the first thing that jumped out at me as I was looking at his website. I am not trying to suggest or hint that only the big bad liberals are blowing smoke, I am not nearly that naive, they have all been blowing a bunch of smoke for 35 years.

This exercise does convince me more than ever that we do need to examine the facts carefully. We do need to ask for documented/footnoted facts from our leaders, candidates, media. When someone states a fact along with the source, it is very easy to look at the source, make a judgement as to the validity of the numbers. It is extremely rare for that to happen these days, people throw out the number as fact, but don’t bother to tell us where they got that ‘fact’ from. And the effort for us to check is amazing. 4 hours to check 2 numbers that ought to be easy to get, total imports, and total consumption for 2008. None of us has the time to do that every time someone gives us a fact. Because it is so hard, and because they know very very few of us will make that effort, falsehoods are easy to throw out. I am not accusing Obama, Fox News, or McCain of deliberately putting out falsehoods, mistakes can easily happen.   But there are those on both sides of the aisle who are not averse to spouting complete lies, pundits, surrogates, 527 groups, etc.  I remain convinced that this project is good and worth the effort.

Rix

Found a Problem, a couple actually

The biggest problem I found applies equally to both candidates, that is an abundance of well written words, with a severe shortage of facts, and to total void of footnoted facts.  Both espouse doing great things, but neither tells specifically how much energy that will save, or produce, or how much it will reduce the cost.  Neither of them tie it all together and show me how this will lead to energy independence in 20 or 30 years.  Sorry to say, but after listening to similar nice words for 35 years and finding ourselves again in a crisis, I must insist on the facts to back up proposals.

Here is a specific problem.  Obama says this:

Obama’s plan will reduce oil consumption by at least 35 percent, or 10 million barrels per day, by 2030. This will more than offset the equivalent of the oil we would import from OPEC nations in 2030.

But Fox News says this:

During the oil embargo in 1973, we got only 35 percent of our oil from foreign sources. By 1995, we were up to 45 percent. And so far this year, we are getting 61 percent of our oil from foreign sources.

By those numbers, reducing our oil imports by 35% by 2030 as Obama proposes will still leave us importing a greater portion of our oil than we did in 1973.  A 35% reduction will not get us there, unless Fox News is lying.  Somebody is blowing smoke at us, which one.  I’m going to find out, I am going to spend the time and find the facts from reputable sources and I’ll show you what I find. And I will tell you how long it takes to find them.  Care to guess??

Rix

Rix