Resurgance of the railroads

Um I think the US uses 25%. of the world's annual energy usage. According to the wikipedia article on energy use in the US, for 2004, the world used 5.6 TW, and of that, the use used 1.34... and that's just in oil.

mark

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mark
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On 4/28/2008 6:53 PM mark spake thus:

You'll have to do better than that; Wikipedia (the "encyclopedia" that any idiot can edit) is not what I would call a "reliable source" (to use their own jargon).

Not that I didn't also say in the post you responded to that the U.S. is still the world's biggest energy hog.

Reply to
David Nebenzahl

Greg cherry picked some usless old information to prop up his anti US rant??? NOOooo say it ain't so.

Reply to
Paul Newhouse

On 4/28/2008 9:01 PM Paul Newhouse spake thus:

Well, like I said, I agree with the gist of what he said; he was wrong about this particular number, but it doesn't refute the fact that we (U.S.) are the world's energy hogs.

Reply to
David Nebenzahl

Oh WOW! China has 4% of the US's automobiles per head of population - they are responsible for all the oil usage! Now do you see how you're conned by US political brain washing? I guess not.

Reply to
Greg Procter

On 4/29/2008 11:04 AM Greg Procter spake thus:

That's 4% and rising fast: just look at the difference between your source of 5 years ago and the situation today. At this rate, they'll easily catch up with us in a decade or so.

Reply to
David Nebenzahl

Ok, so I used info that was out of date, so we had better start again:

- US has 255 million registered vehicles for 300 million people.

- China has 57 million registered vehicles for 1400 million people.

When China has circa 1190 million vehicles, you yanks can start whining that the Chinese are _as bad_ as you. Until then, _you_ are the problem.

Get real!

Reply to
Greg Procter

So essentially you're complaining that an economically backward country is improving it's lot and has circa 20% equivalent of the oil wasting vehicles the US has for 5 times the population! Perhaps the US could reduce it's fleet by 20% to compensate?

Meanwhile, the price of oil will increase 1000% over the next decade and I'll be spending more on petrol to get to the supermarket than I will be on groceries.

Regards, Greg.P.

Reply to
Greg Procter

I'm not saying their automobile transport is rare or nonexistent. My sister & brother-in-law are there as teachers and they ride bicycles which is still much the norm in many communities.

Cheers, John

Reply to
John Fraser

Keeping in mind that a fair number of those vehicles are taxi, bus, and trucking fleets.

Cheers, John

Reply to
John Fraser

Keep in mind that crude oil consumption doesn't necessarily mean road vehicle. That includes air transport and power utilities as well.

Cheers, John

Reply to
John Fraser

I have to admit that the air polution over Beijing, as it's shown to us on TV, is impressive, but it's not all private cars speeding on motorways! Here in New Zealand our largest city, Auckland, suffers "gridlock" from time to time because the ring-road conceived in the 1960s/70s is only about 80% complete and public transport was always developed/not developed subject to private enterprise rules. What I'm getting at there is that if you stuff enough vehicles into a city you will get traffic problems, especially when the streets and traffic system were designed to cope with bicycles, rickshaws and the occassional government motorcade.

Regards, Greg.P.

Reply to
Greg Procter

As long as you're worshipping meaningless statistics, why don't you compare the two based on GDP of the respective nations? Seems to me that is as relevant as any sort of per capita comparison. China is "growing" in many ways to catch up with the US, but they aren't nearly close in terms of personal cars. That doesn't mean they won't catch up... and despite the huge gap in productivity and standard of living, their home grown pollution problems appear to be much worse than ours. Explain please?

Is oil use now a sin unto itself?

=DC

Reply to
eüphemism

On 5/1/2008 10:25 AM eüphemism spake thus:

Good question, and I think the answer is "yes". At least the developed world *says* it's trying to get away from oil as fast as possible (even though there are no real signs of this happening any time soon), leaving the developing world to continue to pollute the planet at record levels.

In reality, we are still an oil-based world and probably will remain so for a long time to come.

Reply to
David Nebenzahl

Why would one do that? The meaningful comparison of vehicle usage can either be in total or in terms of per hhead of population. Either way, China is so much lower as to be irrelevant.

In what sense - do vehicles operate on a dollar basis? ie the more dollars a country has the more oil wastage?

Of course they can't "catch up" in terms of vehicles per head of population - there isn't that much ongoing supply of oil in the World.

Compare US polution in industrial cities at a comparable stage of development.

There is only a finite amount of oil in the World, once it's gone it's gone. Wastage of that resource is a sin against humanity.

Reply to
Greg Procter

The future has to be an ever increasing cost of oil as more and more people want to use it. The US cannot hope to artificially hold down the price by invading and occupying ever more oil producing nations.

Reply to
Greg Procter

The latest invasion and occupation doesn't seem to have held down the price any.

Reply to
video guy - www.locoworks.com

There are so many possible answers! ;-)

eg. Where do you think the price would be now without Iraqi oil? or; Doesn't that demonstrate US strategic incompetence? or (add your own)

Reply to
Greg Procter

If it's true as has been alleged that certain Americans invaded Iraq for the procurement of oil, it's to their advantage if the price of crude goes up. Same goes for government taxes. Hey, it's a windfall all around, except for someone who just payed $45,000, for something which may get 15 mpg on a good day. Or, that new motorhome which gets 6 mpg.

Cheers, John

Reply to
John Fraser

This may come across as anti-Iraq, but what else do they have that any yank would want? Is there a shortage of dried dates in the US? Holiday home development in Iraq? Export/import opportunities for sand? ... What did I miss?

Greg.P.

Reply to
Greg Procter

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