• tryptaminev 🇵🇸 🇺🇦 🇪🇺@feddit.de
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    13
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    You think it is all convenient and easy to use intuitively, until i ask you, to convert how much water you use a day to how much water you use in a year and how much water your city uses.

    Because your city measures in acre foot, which is 43,560 cubic feet or 325,850 US gallons. Actually there is a weird 3/7 of a gallon left

    So you have no way of relating the ~20-40 gallons of water you use per day to the water use in your city ir the water you use in a year that is measured in centi-cubic-feet without pulling out a table and calculator.

    Meanwhile i know that i use about 120 liters of water, which is 0.120 m3 a day. So my water bill in m3 is just a thousand liters per m3 and my city uses 230 million m3 a year or about 630.000 m3 a day. With that i can easily estimate that i use about 1/5.000.000 of my citys water.

    So when we are talking about drought issues, or water demand etc. i can understand the values in the scientific and political debate, because i can actually relate them to my personal life.

    The metric system empowers people because it makes SI units in any domain and of any size relateable and accessible. Meanwhile a kid in the US doesn’t know what a mile is until it learns that by being driven enough miles to get a feel for how many yards that is.

    • Misconduct@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      8
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Yeah, no. Knowing a different measuring system isn’t gonna make me suddenly want to know the nitty-gritty details of things. The way water volume/use is measured in the US has nothing to do with how much people understand their water bill. If I really wanted to I’d just find something online to help me convert. Which I’d probably do on the other system because that’s just reality. You know those things because you care about them or were interested not because you use what you consider to be a superior system of measurement lol. You guys really try hard to make it seem like a way bigger deal than it is.

      • tryptaminev 🇵🇸 🇺🇦 🇪🇺@feddit.de
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        of course you are free to be interested or not. But given the necessities of the transofrmation in energy, water, land use, transportation etc. i find it crucial to be able to relate to the political discussion to make an informed choice. I know most people aren’t interested. But given that we are in a technological society we cannot afford not to relate to these things.