Yes, he should use the joule and its multiples. US energy consumption would be
about 106 EJ, using his figure.
I am torn on whether or not he should drop the BTU figure. In the long run, he
shoud. However, in the short term, with DoE, EIA, and the entire US fossil
fuel industry using the BTU, should he drop it and make his figures
uncomparable, or retain it in parentheses? We may need to get everybody using
the joule as primary before we advocate dropping the BTU entirely.
The real issue is using the calorie or kilocalorie. It has been deprecated in
favor of the joule as the unit for thermal energy since 1948. Isn't 61 years
obsolete enough? I hope this isn't how he teaches students to use units.
I'm also not sure what he is saying about 10.6 EJ of wood energy in the US.
Assuming this Wikipedia article correctly quotes the EIA, 2006 worldwide energy
usage was about 471 EJ, of which 4 EJ was the total in the combined category,
"geothermal, wind, solar, wood."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_resources_and_consumption
The other issue is that Science magazine may set the units policy for
articles. However, I searched their site for author guidelines (which were
limited) and could not find any metric policy or units policy.
--- On Sun, 3/29/09, Robert H. Bushnell <roberthb...@comcast.net> wrote:
From: Robert H. Bushnell <roberthb...@comcast.net>
Subject: [USMA:44216] Wood energy units
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <usma@colostate.edu>
Cc: USMA@colostate.edu
Date: Sunday, March 29, 2009, 10:21 PM
2009 March 29
Dear Professor Richter,
In Science 2009 March 13 p 1433 you write about Wood Energy in
America and list energy as follows:
"total U.S. energy consumption, currently about 100 quads
[100 x 10^15 British thermal units (BTUs) or
25.2 x 10^15 kcal] per year."
The text goes on to use quads (see "10 quads per year").
I suggest that it is time for Duke University to stop using old
units and use only joule and its multiples.
The article does a good job of making the case for wood.
I hope that on units you can do better from now on.
Robert H. Bushnell. PhD PE
U S Metric Association
