5 thoughts on “Test Your Energy IQ”
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The mission of R-Squared is to foster civil, objective discussions on energy and environmental issues.
The previous post (and I don’t seem to have the ability to add any text to the post without wiping out the widget) includes some of the questions from the 2008 Energy Quiz that was done by Harris Interactive on behalf of the API, on America’s energy IQ. I reported on the results of last year’s survey here:
America’s Energy IQ
Some of my same observations from last year apply. For instance, I don’t expect a layperson to have any idea of what the oil and gas reserve projections are according to the Oil and Gas Journal. In fact, I missed that one as well. I missed two out of the ten, but both times I debated the answer against the answer that was ultimately right. I didn’t badly miss on the two I missed. But, neither would I expect the layperson to know some of these.
However, some of the points are definitely educational, even if others are clearly agenda-driven. Take the quiz, see how you did, and whether you think certain questions shouldn’t have been included.
RR
A little bit too agenda-driven for my taste, and in some cases, downright misleading.
I guess the main misleading part was that all the ‘where the money goes’ questions ignored or delibrately misrepresented the vertically integrated nature of the petroleum industry. Claiming that there’s only a dime of profit in a gallon of gasoline is just silly.
Claiming that there’s only a dime of profit in a gallon of gasoline is just silly.
It would be, if that’s what the quiz said.
It actually said a dime of profit per dollar of sales, i.e., a 10% profit margin.
I missed the question on fed/state/local taxes as a percent of pump price. Correct answer was 10-15%, which is certainly correct today but I figured 1Q08 pump price was closer to $3 than the current $4. Taxes average around 50 cents, so I got 17%.
The obvious agenda is more humorous than annoying. Like that blond Big Oil has walking through the maps and pie charts in the latest commercials. “We produce enough oil right here in America to fuel 60 million cars”. Yeah, babe, too bad we’ve got over 200 million cars.
I also loved the question about how much Big Oil invests in “emerging energy”. What the heck is emerging energy? Anyway, you know it’s going to be the biggest number because they used a stretched the time frame to six years and, besides, that was the whole point of the question in the first place.
Wonder why they didn’t ask how much profit Big Oil makes on each dollar of upstream revenue (>75 cents)? Or how much oil imports will cost us this year per family (>$6000)? LOL.
Weird. I get the impression that I took a different quiz than other people here. I got one question wrong out of what felt like about 10 questions. Do they ask different people different questions? I don’t remember getting a tax question. (Maybe I just didn’t get enough sleep last night)
It looked to me that if you took the answer that the highest percentage of people chose for each question, that would give a score of around 90%. Maybe it’s not lay people who are taking this quiz.