Here’s the Times’s technique. The article is mostly a personal tale of woe, focusing on a single Oklahoma couple, Daryl Mason and Genia Weitz, who live in the town of McAlester. It seems that Mason and Weitz are facing completely unaffordable electricity bills in the wake of this summer’s heat wave.
The New York Times has its narrative of climate change and indifferent Red states so it's inconvenient to apply even a little bit of skepticism to this couple's story of a $500/month electric bill:
At 14.33¢/kWh, $500 represents almost 3500 kWh of usage. The EIA has a “frequently asked question” page on this very subject, headed “How much electricity does an American home use?” Their answer is, on average, 899 kWh per month, or 10,791 kWh per year. Usage of 899 kWh in a month at 14.33¢/kWh will cost $128.83, not $500. Are we really to believe that Mason and Weitz use almost four times the amount of electricity used by an average household, while supposedly cramming themselves into one room, using a single air conditioner, and turning off the light and the ceiling fan to save on electricity, all as described in the article? It’s completely absurd.
Math is hard, right NYT?
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