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Run me through your numbers. Where did the 33% drop in per-capita energy use come from? What order of magnitude do you think is draft reductions? Because if th

by roenxi 2y ago

Run me through your numbers. Where did the 33% drop in per-capita energy use come from? What order of magnitude do you think is draft reductions? Because if that were true I'd expect the UK would be a world-leading paradise with vast energy surpluses and everyone having a high old time in great comfort. That isn't the vibe they're giving off. They look like a nation with a slow-rolling energy crisis and a social contract that is coming under quite a bit of pressure because of it. Happy people don't vote for Nigel Farage.

quink 2y ago
Got it. LED bulbs are destroying the social contract. One would call you a luminary but it seems you’d prefer being called predominantly a producer of hot air, like the old incandescents, instead. Also, the US is down 30% as well since peak MWh/person. If you had invested $1 in the S&P 500 at that peak, in about 1970, you’d have about $300 now. Seems like energy use mightn’t be all that coupled to economic success, but if you want to call the US since 1970 a failed society I’m not going to stop you.
- roenxi 2y ago
  > Also, the US is... The US just elected Trump, where he won the popular vote. And are experiencing a sort of general crisis across financial, military and political domains. I don't think the US is particularly stable either, they just cope a bit better than the Europeans and are more flexible in calling for change when things aren't working out. Although I doubt it'll help them in the short term.
  - quink 2y ago
    A) OK, so on the one hand we could blame $2 trillion going to billionaires in 2024 alone, near enough $6000 for every person in the country, with evidence of any trickle down effect being a thing still outstanding, but evidence of their political effect as clear as an outstretched arm over DC. B) Or we could blame people not keeping five terrible refrigerators with no insulation at full blast instead of one good modern one. I mean it’s probably not option A entirely, there’s sure to be options C through to Z too, but I’m probably not gonna consider B overly relevant.
Havoc 2y ago
>Where did the 33% drop in per-capita energy use come from? That's kinda my point - we don't know the answer. The 33% could be a bad thing (deindustrialization), or a good thing (energy efficiency) or the most like - a mix. It's largely a meaningless datapoint on its own.
- roenxi 2y ago
  > or a good thing (energy efficiency) It can't be energy efficiency. Energy efficiency causes energy consumption to increase. That's basic economics [0]. The argument, at best, is that the energy efficiency improvements are cancelling out the energy availability problems to the point where quality of life stays about the same. Although the type of efficiencies gains we'd need to see to cancel out a 33% drop would be so staggering to the point where it'd be a major deal to the point where nobody would be able to stop pointing at the UK's outrageous success as an international beacon of Quality of Life improvements. The actual message seems to be that they're having a lot of troubles and QoL is dropping. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
  - quink 2y ago
    > Energy efficiency causes energy consumption to increase. That's basic economics [0]. Switching from incandescents to LEDs reduces electricity consumption by up to 90% to produce the same amount of light. I mean sure, someone will have twice as much light in their life after that switch. Heck, show me the person who now have five times more light bulbs in their ceiling. But show me the person who now has ten bulbs in the ceiling to make your statement marginally true, or twenty times, increasing annually, to make it representative of your point. No, really. Show me the person who has twenty times the holes in the ceiling than originally designed, twenty times the light, they must have gone permanently blind. It’d be fascinating to meet that person. Given the confidence with which you stated that it’s basic economics, is it you?
    - roenxi 2y ago
      Modern houses do have a lot more lightbulbs if you feel like keeping count, I saw a kitchen with something like 6 or 7 of them recently. Although I'd assume the big uptick would be industrial consumers. Particularly 24/7 operations with lots of opportunities for lighting. Or people would start installing better streetlamps as the ability to do so improved. But the point I'd like to make is that your lack of imagination isn't going to overcome the laws of economics no matter how much you can't imagine change. "I can't imagine basic results playing out" isn't an argument for why they won't, it just means you don't understand the situation well. Jevons' paradox flows pretty directly from the laws of supply and demand and the observation that energy demand is highly elastic because it does anything and everything. And an important concept that you may be unaware of is 'fungibility' - that means some goods (energy being a prime example) can be repurposed across a wide range of activities and not just lighting. So if people don't need to put as much energy into lighting then they take the energy they would have used and put it to something else, like more comforts in their life. It is a very reliable trend.

by roenxi 2y ago

quink 2y ago

Got it. LED bulbs are destroying the social contract. One would call you a luminary but it seems you’d prefer being called predominantly a producer of hot air, like the old incandescents, instead. Also, the US is down 30% as well since peak MWh/person. If you had invested $1 in the S&P 500 at that peak, in about 1970, you’d have about $300 now. Seems like energy use mightn’t be all that coupled to economic success, but if you want to call the US since 1970 a failed society I’m not going to stop you.

roenxi 2y ago
> Also, the US is... The US just elected Trump, where he won the popular vote. And are experiencing a sort of general crisis across financial, military and political domains. I don't think the US is particularly stable either, they just cope a bit better than the Europeans and are more flexible in calling for change when things aren't working out. Although I doubt it'll help them in the short term.
- quink 2y ago
  A) OK, so on the one hand we could blame $2 trillion going to billionaires in 2024 alone, near enough $6000 for every person in the country, with evidence of any trickle down effect being a thing still outstanding, but evidence of their political effect as clear as an outstretched arm over DC. B) Or we could blame people not keeping five terrible refrigerators with no insulation at full blast instead of one good modern one. I mean it’s probably not option A entirely, there’s sure to be options C through to Z too, but I’m probably not gonna consider B overly relevant.

Havoc 2y ago

>Where did the 33% drop in per-capita energy use come from? That's kinda my point - we don't know the answer. The 33% could be a bad thing (deindustrialization), or a good thing (energy efficiency) or the most like - a mix. It's largely a meaningless datapoint on its own.

roenxi 2y ago
> or a good thing (energy efficiency) It can't be energy efficiency. Energy efficiency causes energy consumption to increase. That's basic economics [0]. The argument, at best, is that the energy efficiency improvements are cancelling out the energy availability problems to the point where quality of life stays about the same. Although the type of efficiencies gains we'd need to see to cancel out a 33% drop would be so staggering to the point where it'd be a major deal to the point where nobody would be able to stop pointing at the UK's outrageous success as an international beacon of Quality of Life improvements. The actual message seems to be that they're having a lot of troubles and QoL is dropping. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
- quink 2y ago
  > Energy efficiency causes energy consumption to increase. That's basic economics [0]. Switching from incandescents to LEDs reduces electricity consumption by up to 90% to produce the same amount of light. I mean sure, someone will have twice as much light in their life after that switch. Heck, show me the person who now have five times more light bulbs in their ceiling. But show me the person who now has ten bulbs in the ceiling to make your statement marginally true, or twenty times, increasing annually, to make it representative of your point. No, really. Show me the person who has twenty times the holes in the ceiling than originally designed, twenty times the light, they must have gone permanently blind. It’d be fascinating to meet that person. Given the confidence with which you stated that it’s basic economics, is it you?
  - roenxi 2y ago
    Modern houses do have a lot more lightbulbs if you feel like keeping count, I saw a kitchen with something like 6 or 7 of them recently. Although I'd assume the big uptick would be industrial consumers. Particularly 24/7 operations with lots of opportunities for lighting. Or people would start installing better streetlamps as the ability to do so improved. But the point I'd like to make is that your lack of imagination isn't going to overcome the laws of economics no matter how much you can't imagine change. "I can't imagine basic results playing out" isn't an argument for why they won't, it just means you don't understand the situation well. Jevons' paradox flows pretty directly from the laws of supply and demand and the observation that energy demand is highly elastic because it does anything and everything. And an important concept that you may be unaware of is 'fungibility' - that means some goods (energy being a prime example) can be repurposed across a wide range of activities and not just lighting. So if people don't need to put as much energy into lighting then they take the energy they would have used and put it to something else, like more comforts in their life. It is a very reliable trend.