8 Americas ate America.

Well we have a lot of ground to cover. We have already started talking about oil prices, the benchmark and what a few terms mean. In later posts id like to talk about fuels in more detail, but for this post I want to hit a few Geographical highlights.

While posting on another forum I often discuss the causes, and effects of energy prices. Its a great way to sharpen debate skills but more importantly skeptics force me to be more thorough in my research. Sometimes what "feels" right is wrong under closer scrutiny. Skeptics are a bloggers best friend, because they teach you how to reach out to folks who don't want to believe your message. What follows are excerpts from my response to a skeptic.

It is the opinion of the Author that high energy prices, high food prices and higher metals prices are primarily the result of demand from rapidly growing countries like China and India. One skeptic refused to belive that China and India could have grown sufficiently - so quickly - to influence prices in this way. Its is a hard concept to understand, and one that will take more than one post to cover - but I started thinking about a way to express the sheer scale of the population of India and China.

First of all I hope I dont offend anyone buy lumping both countries together for the sake of this comparison. I call the two countries Chindia. So lets compare Chindia with the USA.
Population:
USA, 300 Million (rough numbers guys)
Chindia, 2.4 Billion (or 2400 Million) Roughly 8 times the population of the Unites States - Hence my posts title.

The entire human race consists of about 6.7 Billion. So Chindia makes up more than one THIRD the entire Human race. Both global population and the population of Chindia is growing, global growth is still over 1% per year. Chinas population alone grows by about 60 million per year, enough people to populate the United Kindgom.

Here comes the fun part.
We have all heard the myth about how if everyone in China jumped at the same time, something awful would happen, like an earthquake or a tsunami or something.

Well It dawned on me that Chindia with its combined 2.4 Million have a great deal of power.
Before checking any facts I wondered what would happen if everyone in Chindia took a pee into the same river. This is how it turned out:

The Mississippi discharges about 16 million liters a second. If 2.4 Billion people urinate at about 1/100th of a liter per second, wed have 24 million liters a second of pee - or a river to rival to mighty Mississippi. Thats quite a benchmark I think you'll agree. Perhaps they should all get together and give it a try, they could call it the Missipissi.

Hopefully you get the point. Chindia has a staggering population. During 2006, China alone used about 2 barrels of oil per person. For comparison, Mexico used 6.6-- Chinese oil consumption could triple and they'd still be using less per person than Mexico is today. The U.S. used almost 25 barrels per person.

So heres a new phrase to help you remember the real source of price pressure:
8 Americas ate America.