Energy Matters

  Energy and Slavery The relationship of modern humans to their energy needs can be fairly well described in terms of slavery, as appalling as that may sound; and just as human slavery has been abandoned as unacceptable in a sane society, so might we consider re-drafting the slave-master energy relationship in which we are so mired. Energy is required for work. Human survival has always involved a lot of “work,” which, in physics terms, means “energy transfer involved in moving an object over a distance.”  Every aspect of sustaining human life requires work, from obtaining nutrition to protection from the elements, predators and other hostile forces; for getting from here to there. Most animals perform their necessary work using their own energy, which is obtained originally from plant-based food, which is obtained from photosynthesis, which is achieved courtesy of the sun.  Ultimately all energy on the Earth comes from the sun. Somewhere in human history, people began to live in group

                                                                      How To Not Lie With Statistics Back in the 70’s there was a popular Statistics textbook called “How to Lie with Statistics.”  It took the angle of exploring how perfectly true numbers can be manipulated to tell a perfectly false story, so it was an engaging and light-hearted text. We feel like it is time to re-explore this concept, because these days there are a lot of statistics in the news - and a lot of them convey useless or misleading information.  We notice that this very often stems from a lack of considering phenomena on a “per capita” or “rate” basis.  For example, we hear a reporter state that in 2019 China used the energy equivalent of 24 million barrels of oil while the U.S. used “only” 17 billion barrels, implying that it’s on China to clean up their act first. So what’s wrong with this statement?  China’s population is about 1.4 billion, while the US population is around 330 million. When you divide ene