Comment by nchmy
12 hours ago
Economic growth is not directly proportional to energy consumption. A major feature of any useful tool is that it (often dramatically) reduces energy consumption.
12 hours ago
Economic growth is not directly proportional to energy consumption. A major feature of any useful tool is that it (often dramatically) reduces energy consumption.
Economic growth tracks almost 100% with energy consumption. The earth at night map is quite telling on the matter.
Newsflash! Less happens while people are asleep!
Correlation doesnt say anything about the sensitivity/scaling. (i recognize that my original comment didnt quite make this point, though the correlation is definitely not 100%, so that point does still stand)
can you note the difference between the earth being lit by torches, candles, kerosene lamps and incandescent bulbs, versus LED lights? LED isnt glowing harder, it just wastes less energy.
A rocket stove, or any efficient furnace, can extract vastly more energy from the same fuel source than an open fire. I assume combustion engines have had significant efficiency improvements since first introduced. And electric engines are almost completely efficient - especially when fed by efficient, clean/renewable source.
How about the computing power of a smartphone versus a supercomputer from 1980?
What is more energy efficient, a carpenter working with crude stones or with sharp chisels?
and we can, of course, put aside whether any measurement of economic value is actually accurate/useful... A natural disaster is technically good for many economic measures, since the destruction doesn't get measured and the wealth invested in rebuilding just counts as economic activity
And, Of course, then there's creeptocurrencies which use an immense amount of energy to do something that was previously trivial. And worse, when it is used in place of cash. But even there, some are more efficient than others - not that anyone who uses them actually cares.
Facts are that you can absolutely tell how developed a region is by looking from above. And that there hasn't been a year in which the humanity has used less energy than the previous one and grown.
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