Where that strange environmental data come from

Thirteen hundred gallons of water to produce a quarter-pounder? That's based on an ag extension report given to a high school class 30 years ago, according to this interesting article in the Wall St. Journal Friday. Pardon the pun but it depends on whose ox you want to gore. Carl Bailik provides a number of alternative figures. He says at his blog:

A respected nonprofit focused on water education repeated the number in pamphlets and other material. A scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey saw the pamphlet and used the stat for a USGS water-facts Web site. And once the estimate became a USGS stat, it was amplified and repeated — on other government sites, on PBS.org, on a bottled-water trade group site, in university newspapers and in other publications. It even showed up in the office elevator of Numbers Guy reader Joe Penrose, who saw the stat on the Captivate Network screen as a “fun fact” and emailed me to suggest I look into it.

But whoever you believe, we can live without oil, but we can't live without water, and using up our water to grow crops to burn in our automobiles to satisfy environmentalists who go crazy at the thought of the internal combustion engine and melting glaciers is just silly.