Congratulations on you letter to the publisher and thanks for alerting me to Tim Flannery's book; I will seek it out — in the Australian edition.
On another issue, I think that any discussion on global warming will be severely hampered by the language difficulties we face because different nations and different industries have chosen at different times their own jargon measures for describing energy.
The energy industries as a whole are notorious obfuscationists who use, as their primary tool of confusion, many of the old pre-metric (and often officially deprecated) measurement names for different kinds of energy. Here is a list of the 68 that I could find that are currently in use in 2006 — there are probably many others:
Atomic energy unit, barrel oil equivalent, billion electron volts, British thermal unit (16 °C), British thermal unit (4 °C), British thermal unit (international), British thermal unit (ISO), British thermal unit (IT), British thermal unit (mean), British thermal unit (thermal), British thermal unit (thermochemical), Calorie, calorie (16 °C), calorie (20 °C), calorie (4 °C), calorie (diet kilocalorie), calorie (int.), calorie (IT) (International Steam Table), calorie (mean), calorie (thermochemical), Celsius heat unit (int.), coulomb volt, cubic centimetre atmospheres, cubic foot atmospheres, cubic metre atmospheres, dutys, dyne centimetres, electron volt, erg, foot-grains, foot-pound force, foot-poundal, gigaelectronvolt, gram calorie, gram calories (mean), hartree, horsepower hours, horsepower hours (metric), inch pound force, Kayser, kilocalorie (16 °C), kilocalorie (4 °C), kilocalorie (int.), kiloelectronvolt, kilogram calories (int.), kilogram force metre, kilojoule, kiloton TNT equivalent, kilowatt hour, kilowatt minute, kilowatt second, megaelectronvolt, megajoule, megaton TNT equivalent, megawatt hours, newton metres, Q unit, quadrillion, quad, Rydberg, therm (EC), therm (US), thermie (16 °C), ton TNT equivalent, tonne coal equivalent, tonne oil equivalent, watt hour, and watt second.
As an Australian example of the confusion that this can cause, I quote from the Australian Bureau of Statistics web page, 'Detailed Energy Statistics, Australia'. Notice how the choices of measuring units make it difficult to compare energy from oil with energy from black or brown coal. Notice too, that it is even difficult to compare electrical energy figures because coal folk use kt, natural gas people use TJ, and hydro-electricity producers use GWh. (See: http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/0/b18980e01b977cdfca256e60007dcfbe?OpenDocument )
In 2001-02: 216,316 GWh of electricity, 862,635 TJ of natural gas (including ethane, but excluding liquefied natural gas), 18,727 ML of petrol and 13,503 ML of diesel were produced in Australia.
53,576 kt of black coal, 65,075 kt of brown coal and 291,372 TJ of natural gas were used to produce electricity.
The supply of electricity and natural gas to end-users resulted in transmission and distribution losses of 14,825 GWh of electricity and 12,093 TJ of natural gas.
Australian industry end-users of energy . . . used 136,499 GWh of electricity, 378,576 TJ of natural gas, 9,711 ML of diesel, and 4,469 ML of petrol.
. . . Non-renewable fuels used to generate electricity include black coal (53,576 kt), brown coal (65,075 kt), and natural gas (291,372 TJ). Hydro-electricity was the main renewable source of electricity, and in 2001-02, 15,567 GWh of hydro-electricity were produced (table 1).
I included this information in a submission that I made to the Australian government on planning for energy futures over the next 50 years. You can find my submission as a pdf file at: http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/rrat_ctte/oil_supply/submissions/sub05.pdf — it is quite short.
As a mathematician you might like to figure how many conversion factors you need to convert from any one of the 68 words used to describe energy and any of the others. The reference: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Factorial.html might help you — but I got lost.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
PO Box 305, Belmont, Geelong, Australia
Phone 61 3 5241 2008
Pat Naughtin is the editor of the free online monthly newsletter, 'Metrication matters'.
You can subscribe by going to http://www.metricationmatters.com/newsletter
Pat is the editor of the 'Numbers and measurement' chapter of the Australian Government Publishing Service 'Style manual – for writers, editors and printers'. He is a Member of the National Speakers Association of Australia and the International Federation of Professional Speakers. He is also recognised as a Lifetime Certified Advanced Metrication Specialist (LCAMS) with the United States Metric Association. For more information go to: http://metricationmatters.com
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On 24/03/06 3:48 AM, "Bruce Raup" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hi All,
I was sent a proof copy of Tim Flannery's new book on global warming entitled "The Weather Makers", and noticed that all the numbers in it appeared to have been translated from metric originals to non-metric units. I wrote to the American publisher, and they confirmed that they have different editions for different markets, and that they translated all the units for the American version. Here's what he wrote:
Dear Bruce,
My name is Brando Skyhorse and I worked with Tim Flannery on The Weather
Makers. Thanks for writing in.
I understand why you'd be interested in a metric version of the book, however
no such edition exists in the United States. While metrics is certainly the
language of science, we also wanted this book to appeal to as large a group
of readers as possible. We felt that metrics would be confusing for a great
many readers, so we decided to covert to Imperial measurements for our
edition. The Australian, Canadian and British versions of the book (all
readily available through their respective Amazon sites) use metrics so I'd
invite you to order one of these editions.
Thanks again for your email. Hope you enjoyed the book.
All my best,
B.
My response:
Dear Brando,
Thanks for the confirmation that there are different editions for different
countries. I will pursue getting the book through Amazon.ca <http://Amazon.ca> .
I understand the importance of a book like this reaching as many people as
possible, but it would be nice if Americans had an easy and obvious *option*
of getting books with proper units. When I read phrases like "... a
temperature rise of 9 degF to 18 degF ...", it makes me feel like I'm trying
to read Braille with winter mittens on. I know the original was 5 degC to 10
degC, but there's a veil of medieval cobwebs over the clarity and logic of
the original numbers. I'm forced to reconstruct the original numbers at
every turn, which is highly distracting when trying to understand Tim
Flannery's points. This sort of publication policy only perpetuates the
confused state of the U.S. measurement non-system that isolates us from the
rest of the world.
That said, with pencil in hand for frequent marginalia, I am enjoying the
book.
Best regards, Bruce
I just thought I'd point out the option of getting books with proper units through Amazon.ca <http://Amazon.ca> , something that wasn't so obvious to me.
Cheers,
Bruce Raup
