[Piwoslaw]

Oh, but think of all the jobs our wasteful lifestyle generates...

Total energy assessment keeps springing up here every so often. Maybe we could start a thread and jointly try to arrive at better estimates than the ones we've found so far? We'd start with Neil's outline and discuss how far we want to go: Since we're talking about (energy) costs of oil platform operation, then should we also take into account how many people work on the platforms, how much energy goes into transporting them, and food for them, to and fro, and how much energy goes into producing that food, etc.? And when we want to assess the energy input required for RE we should take into account the resources and rare earths needed for batteries, motors/generators, PVs, etc.

Estimating the amount of energy needed to produce a certain amount of oil, gas, fuel, coal electricity, solar electricity, wind electricity, etc., is no easy task, but that just makes it so much more interesting. And I bet we would find out about things the media don't write about...