On 2010/06/11, at 01:26 , John M. Steele wrote:
I hope that is a joke, as I KNOW you understand precision and
sensible rounding.
However, we have some "decimal dusters" who might not get it.
The 1000 m is of course one of "those" numbers where you ask how
many of those digits are significant.
Given a vertical plume, and general lack of precision in
measurements at sea, I'm guessing 1 or 2, although clearly it is a
guess.
However, I do wonder why British Petroleum measures the leak in
American "barrels." Do they think they are aidding or hindering
understanding? Given the range, that figure has no significant
figures and the order of magnitude seems debatable.
Dear John,
It has always seemed to me that the purpose of using barrels was for
obfuscation of oil prices.
If I know that the crude oil price today is about $76.00 USD (say
$90.00 AUD) and the local Australian petrol price is about $1.29 per
litre I don't bother to ask any further questions.
However, if I knew that the crude oil price today is about $0.48 USD
(say $0.57 AUD) and the local petrol price is $1.25 per litre I would
be very tempted to ask, 'Where did the other 72 cents go?' and 'How
much does it cost to refine oil?' and 'How much fuel does a litre of
crude oil provide?' and 'How much are the byproducts worth?' and so
on. As you can see the use of the mythical barrel for reporting the
price of oil is highly effective in reducing public commentary to
almost zero.
By the way, I don't know but I am reasonably confident that if you
were moving a ship full of oil from (say) the Gulf States to the USA
the simplest way to measure how much oil you have in your ship is to
use the Plimsoll lines on the side of the ship and then calculate the
mass of the oil in kilograms or tonnes using the local density of sea
water. You could then do the conversion to mythical barrels later (to
confuse the public) using the density of the oil as a factor in your
calculation.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
Author of the ebook, Metrication Leaders Guide, see
http://metricationmatters.com/MetricationLeadersGuideInfo.html
Hear Pat speak at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lshRAPvPZY
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216,
Geelong, Australia
Phone: 61 3 5241 2008
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From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
To: U.S. Metric Association <[email protected]>
Sent: Thu, June 10, 2010 11:00:56 AM
Subject: [USMA:47640] Re: Oil Spill Technical Team Using SI
Pat,
In my local newspaper I read that an oil plume was located at a
depth of "3 300 feet" which was probably reported at 1 000 meters.
i.e. 3 300 x 0.3048 = 1 005.84 meters. Note the discrepancy of 5.84
meters between the value reported and the numbed down value
disseminated by the Associated Press.
Shame on the AP distortion!
Gene,
Censor of Deviations from SI
---- Original message ----
>Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2010 11:29:29 +1000
>From: Pat Naughtin <[email protected]>
>Subject: [USMA:47625] Re: Oil Spill Technical Team Using SI
>To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]>
>
> Dear Gene,
> You might be interested in this article in our local
> newspaper, 'The
> Age':
http://www.theage.com.au/world/experts-at-loggerheads-over-oil-leak-rate-20100608-xtlj.html
> Since each of the sources has their own
> 'down-dumber' I don't suppose we can have any
> confidence whether the original data (kilograms,
> litres, cubic metres, metres per minute, metres per
> hour, gallons UK, gallons USA, feet per minute, etc,
> ) is being reported reliable given the possibility
> of multiple conversion errors.
> Cheers,
>
> Pat Naughtin
>...
