When talking about our looming energy crisis people often bring up numbers. The problem with the numbers people bring up is that they often only represent a fraction of what exists, ie they encompass a very small portion of what we are dealing with. Even worse, many numbers are false and misleading.
Tree Hugger just posted an article that contains a paper that addresses the numbers behind our little problem. Free for download, David MacKay, a professor at the University of Cambridge, has published an online paper "Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air". Download the article here. It is 400 pages long, I have not had to review it thoroughly but I think it is from a reputable source.
Too Much Information out there, I am doing some traveling for work over the next few weeks, maybe I can do some writing then.
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I am not exactly sure what you mean by 'they often only represent a fraction of what exists', but I gather I understand what you are getting at (and I didn't download and read the article). However, you are correct, numbers and perhaps more specifically, statistics, are often incorrect and thus misleading. For example:"BC has 12 million hectares of protected lands where no forestry, mining, or industrial development is allowed."
In reality, most of those 12 million hectares consist of alpine tundra, subalpine marginal forests, and bogs. About 3 million hectares of our parks consists of productive forests. The "12 million hectare" figure misleads readers into thinking that 12 million hectares of
productive forests are saved. See? None of this is to suggest that statistics are useless. Quite the opposite, statistics are indispensable to grasp reality better and to distinguish explanations that are correct from explanations that are erroneous. But statistics and numbers will assist us in our quest for understanding only if we approach them critically, aware that they can mislead as easily as they can enlighten.
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