Dear Mom - Letters to Heaven

Thursday, April 01, 2010

Almost one million gallons of oil enter the oceans of North America every year through extraction activities alone.

2 comments:

Jerry Critter said...

I like to put big numbers, like 1 million, into perspective.

1 million barrels of oil is 42 million gallons.

42 million gallons is 314.16 million cubic feet.

If we assume that an average house is 1500 sq ft and has 8 ft ceiling, then one house is equal to 12,000 cubic feet.

If we take that 1 million barrels of oil, and instead of spreading it over the ocean, we went into your home town and started filling up houses with it, how many houses do you think it would take?

26,180 houses.

That's a fair size town.

Jerry Critter said...

I made an error in my calculations. 42 million gallons is 5.615 million cu ft, not 314.16 million. I multiplied when I should have divided. That is still almost 468 homes. Still a lot, particularly if it is yours.