I've read things here stating that half of all the oil a car uses during its lifetime is used in manufacturing that car, the other half being used for fuel.
This got me thinking about how much oil/energy is really used to manufacture different commodities and raw materials.
Does anyone have any ideas on how to go about finding out? If by chance anyone has actually made calculations like this I'd be very interested in finding out, references and/or links would be very nice
I realise there are problem in knowing when to "stop" in these calculations. I.e. do you include energy used by the guy driving the mining machinery, the energy used by his car and so on. Obviously you can't go on like that, so my idea is to stop at the point of raw materials, e.g. how much oil/energy does it take to create steel, including the energy used in mining the iron ore, but not the energy used by the person running the various machines.
Anyone who can help me out here?