This is an good example of a pet peeve of mine that seems to be cropping up more and more. Have you ever noticed people seem to be using phrases like "3 times less" or "10 times less" when describing a positive quantity that is less than a quantity they have just described? Of course, "one times less" the original quantity is enough to drive the quantity to zero. What people who do this really mean to say is something like "1/3rd as much," or "2/3rd's less" or "one-tenth," etc. but instead they prefer to appear mathematically challenged ("innumerate").
My peeve here does not begin to address the other mathematical ambiguity from this article that says "less than 1,000 times as much" carbon; namely, do they mean they used 1/1000th as much carbon as before, or something like 995 times as much carbon?
Sorry about the rant . . . (interesting article, though).
I had a Czech engineering technician who would go ballistic anytime I would say something like, "I need a 110% effort on this project."
Vojteck, is that you?