percentages
in a recent bunch of speeches obama's let loose with a few stats. the us consumes 20% of the world's oil when we have less than 2% of the world's proven reserves. (it's actually more like 1.5%.) therefore we should do something(tm). at least one of them fact checking sites called shenanigans. these two quotes are both true. but putting them together doesn't make any sense. hrm. they both have points. obama's 20%/2% suggests our consumption is really out of whack. course japan consumes 5% and has 0%. the related number provided by the fact checkers is the us contribution of 9% of the total world production. 20%/9% is a much more reasonable share for the richest country. it means we import some 55% of the oil we use. not too bad. but wait just a minute. how the heck do we produce 9% when we have 1.5%? apparently we're blowing through our reserves 6x faster than the rest of the world. um, this is a bad thing(tm). a very bad thing(tm). which i think would make obama's point more clear. at least to the numerically literate. yeah. we have a problem. and we should do something(tm). course i think that something is to build solar and nuclear plants as fast as possible. the manhattan project and the appollo program rolled into one and made a few x larger.