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"Just use less energy" arguments are insane. Even when we improve the energy efficiency of our processes, that just leads to said process happening more - not a
by denkmoon 4y ago
"Just use less energy" arguments are insane. Even when we improve the energy efficiency of our processes, that just leads to said process happening more - not an overall reduction in energy use. Just look at historical energy consumption trends to see this.
Anything less than producing more energy more cleanly is missing the point. Long term energy usage trends do not go down.
- Retric 4y agoThat’s simply not true, US electricity use per person has gone down.
- bmitc 4y agoDo you have a source? How is that calculated? I suspect it's a rather complicated calculation. Questions like what defines a person in this context, what defines electricity usage, where did it go or come from if it did change, etc. seem like important ones to answer.
- Retric 4y agoI don’t have the source where I read it, but it’s easy enough to calculate and the change is significant: https://www.statista.com/statistics/201794/us-electricity-consumption-since-1975/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/201794/us-electricity-co... https://www.statista.com/statistics/183457/united-states--resident-population/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/183457/united-states--re... 3887 TWH in 2010 / 309.3 million people = 12.57 MWH per person. 3954 TWH in 2019 / 328.3 million people = 12.04 MWH per person. 3930 TWH in 2021 / 331.9 million people = 11.84 MWH per person. And that’s with over a million electric cars added.
- mlyle 4y agoLikewise if one looks at total energy consumption in the US: 2000: 98.7 quadrillion BTU / 281.4 million people = 350 million BTU/person/year 2019: 100.5 quadrillion BTU / 328.3 million people = 306 million BTU/person/year. On the other hand, increased use of global manufacturing and reliance on ocean transport is concealed by this metric. Still, it doesn't look like overall things are getting worse. For the CO2 metric: 2000: 20.9 tonnes per capita 2019: 15.7 tonnes per capita https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/sec1_19.pdf https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/sec1_19.pdf
- bmitc 4y agoAccording to the below EIA article, things are getting worse worldwide. > Global electricity consumption continues to increase faster than world population, leading to an increase in the average amount of electricity consumed per person https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=44095#:~:text=In%20the%20United%20States%2C%20total%20electricity%20consumption%20has,%28as%20measured%20by%20gross%20domestic%20product%2C%20or%20GDP%29 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=44095#:~:tex....
- mlyle 4y agoWell, sure. You have developing countries... developing, in addition to the (difficult to quantify) outsourcing effects that I mentioned above. Note that I really want electricity usage to go up a lot, too. It's just overall primary energy usage that we want to stay level or go down. That's why I used the primary energy usage metric. After all, moving to an electric car or replacing natural gas heating with a heat pump "increases electricity usage."
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- wmf 4y agoSee https://ourworldindata.org/energy-gdp-decoupling https://ourworldindata.org/energy-gdp-decoupling and https://ourworldindata.org/energy-offshoring https://ourworldindata.org/energy-offshoring
- Teever 4y agoIs that because the US exported manufacturing to Asia?
- SamReidHughes 4y agoWe've had basic heating, insulation, and lighting efficiency improvements. Also, population has moved from colder to warmer climates. You can probably count up your personal energy usage and see that it's reduced. LED lighting, CRT televisions obsolete, vehicle efficiency, and so on.
- Teever 4y agoYes but where were all these things made? And is the energy that was used to make them accounted for?
- sdenton4 4y agoMeanwhile, people mostly use a couple devices with high energy efficiency that are used for basically everything, instead of twenty lower quality devices...
- Grimburger 4y agoResidential usage is about 1/5th of total consumption in the US https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/ https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/
- SamReidHughes 4y agoThe same facts apply to commercial usage.
- denkmoon 4y agoDon't feel it's really valid to calculate this by nation state. The system here is the entire planet, not individual nations.
- Jensson 4y agoBut that energy also serves way more people than before. Chinas energy use went up a lot, but their standard of living also went up a lot and is now comparable to cold war USA/Europe. You can't leave that out.
- jotm 4y agoYou really believe their standard of living is like Cold War times US/Europe? Wtf is with these misconceptions.
- mlyle 4y agoI really hate flames like this, especially since I can't guess which side you're arguing on: - "China's modern cities far outshine Cold War Europe-- Wtf is with these misconceptions?" - "A whole lot of China is rural and undeveloped. You think it's like Cold War Europe-- Wtf is with these misconceptions" Maybe make an argument instead of just being unkind to other commenters.
- jotm 4y agoI apologize for that. It was really an impulsive, useless comment.
- lelandfe 4y agoRelated: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
- monkeybutton 4y agoIf you halve the training time or energy costs of a model, DS peeps will just grid search an extra parameter.
- bmitc 4y agoThis is my primary concern with fusion. I have a gut feeling that fusion existing could actually accelerate consumption and thus climate and environmental change. I have been trying to find research about this. I recently found the book Green Illusions: The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism by Ozzie Zehner, which I think may be interesting. I should note that I am not against fusion and absolutely think we should be doing it. However, it's my feeling and something that I'm trying to learn about that we should also be doing many other things. For example, conservation of land and habitats is no longer viable. We have got to be restoring these things as best we can if we have a chance against climate change. I think it should be renamed environmental change, because that's more accurate and paints the more serious picture. Climate change seems to phrase it in very human-centric terms. We also need another economic system whose end goal isn't corporate world domination. We need an economic model that drives innovation but also redistributes and is sustainable. What's interesting is that this is exactly what nature accomplishes. But humans have gone off the rails in terms of consumption. However, with our adaptability and technology, we have been able to continually consume more and more, whereas other animals (e.g., rabbit populations) cannot continually exist outside of some bounds and are checked. What's interesting is trying to understand where our bound or what our check is going to be. I have a feeling that our destruction will eclipse our adaptability and technology at some point. It will not be pretty when that happens.
- akelly 4y agoIf fusion creates clean power for significantly cheaper than fossil fuels, causing power usage to accelerate, so what?
- rodun 4y agoI think more power usage = doing more things, and although the power was generated cleanly, it won't necessarily be spent similarly
- animal_spirits 4y agoIt's not just the usage of fossil fuels that causes damage to the environment. More energy from fusion will allow more precious resources to be mined, more wasteful stuff to be made, more trash to throw out. I'm not against fusion at all, but it is important to remember that carbon dioxide isn't the only problem harming the planet.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
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