Friday, December 31, 2004
Physics students are used thinking in terms of "order of magnitude" calculations. In an order of magnitude calculation, all numerical quantities are rounded to an even power of 10. Thus, 234 becomes 100 and 512,123 becomes 100,000. The final answers are then only correct up to the order of magnitude.
Since I've been driving across the country a lot lately, I've been wondering what the true cost of gas is, given that 2 dollars a gallon is pretty hefty already. As I've noted before, in America much of the cost of gasoline isn't paid for at the pump, because so much of America's military spending is actually used to secure the nation's fossil fuel resources. What would be the cost of gas if we were to pay for the financial cost of the war in Iraq simply with a gasoline tax over the course of 2005?
This is easy, in an order of magnitude calculation. America's daily gasoline consumption is on the order of 100 million gallons a day. Since there are on the order of 100 days in a year, this brings annual gasoline consumption to 10 billion gallons a year. It has been reported that (for America) the financial cost of the war in Iraq is on the order of 100 billion dollars. Thus, if we were to pay for the war in Iraq with a gasoline tax over the next year, and hence pay for the true cost of gas, we would pay on the order of 10 extra dollars per gallon.
The good news is that all the oil that America has won through the conquest of Iraq is likely to last much longer than one year, and by paying for the war over the course of many years, the indirect gasoline tax becomes much lower, per gallon. The bad news is that no matter how it is hidden, the cost of stealing oil is real, and it will be coming out of our pockets one way or another, through one tax or another.
Another number that has been thrown around quite a bit in the media recently is the true number of deaths from the tsunami in Southeast Asia. I think that the physics undergraduate's perspective might be a good one to take here, as well. After all, the exact number of dead shouldn't be as important to us as what is being done to help those who have survived, but have lost everything. That there was on the order of 100,000 dead should be a good enough number to give us a feeling for the magnitude of this disaster, and how urgently we should feel about offering aid.
As for the aid offered, Motte informs me that the South Korean government has offered on the order of 1 million dollars in aid. I should point out here that South Korea's GDP is on the order of 1 trillion dollars. The American government, on the other hand, has pledged on the order of 10 million dollars in aid. America is, of course, a 10 trillion dollar economy. By these numbers, it would seem that the generosity of we who live in wealthy industrialized societies scales logarithmically.
Which speaks volumes about our generosity indeed.
Ed: Ironically the day after this post the US increased its aid pledge by a factor of ten (one order of magnitude), due to charges of stinginess.
Ed: The South Korean government, facing similar charges, also increased its aid to 50 million dollars (one order of magnitude) on Jan. 3.
Since I've been driving across the country a lot lately, I've been wondering what the true cost of gas is, given that 2 dollars a gallon is pretty hefty already. As I've noted before, in America much of the cost of gasoline isn't paid for at the pump, because so much of America's military spending is actually used to secure the nation's fossil fuel resources. What would be the cost of gas if we were to pay for the financial cost of the war in Iraq simply with a gasoline tax over the course of 2005?
This is easy, in an order of magnitude calculation. America's daily gasoline consumption is on the order of 100 million gallons a day. Since there are on the order of 100 days in a year, this brings annual gasoline consumption to 10 billion gallons a year. It has been reported that (for America) the financial cost of the war in Iraq is on the order of 100 billion dollars. Thus, if we were to pay for the war in Iraq with a gasoline tax over the next year, and hence pay for the true cost of gas, we would pay on the order of 10 extra dollars per gallon.
The good news is that all the oil that America has won through the conquest of Iraq is likely to last much longer than one year, and by paying for the war over the course of many years, the indirect gasoline tax becomes much lower, per gallon. The bad news is that no matter how it is hidden, the cost of stealing oil is real, and it will be coming out of our pockets one way or another, through one tax or another.
Another number that has been thrown around quite a bit in the media recently is the true number of deaths from the tsunami in Southeast Asia. I think that the physics undergraduate's perspective might be a good one to take here, as well. After all, the exact number of dead shouldn't be as important to us as what is being done to help those who have survived, but have lost everything. That there was on the order of 100,000 dead should be a good enough number to give us a feeling for the magnitude of this disaster, and how urgently we should feel about offering aid.
As for the aid offered, Motte informs me that the South Korean government has offered on the order of 1 million dollars in aid. I should point out here that South Korea's GDP is on the order of 1 trillion dollars. The American government, on the other hand, has pledged on the order of 10 million dollars in aid. America is, of course, a 10 trillion dollar economy. By these numbers, it would seem that the generosity of we who live in wealthy industrialized societies scales logarithmically.
Which speaks volumes about our generosity indeed.
Ed: Ironically the day after this post the US increased its aid pledge by a factor of ten (one order of magnitude), due to charges of stinginess.
Ed: The South Korean government, facing similar charges, also increased its aid to 50 million dollars (one order of magnitude) on Jan. 3.
