kind of related

The Jevon's Paradox is a Myth

In the physical world the consumption of material resources is a necessary activity for sustaining physical life. In the mid 19th century, humanity discovered that the use of mechanical implements allowed for more efficient resource production and material abundance. In this time, childhood mortality was rampant and the population was food and energy resource-scarce. It was so resource scarce that real physical population limits were being materially enforced through the mechanisms observed by a period researcher in political science named Robert (bobby) Malthus. Bobby's theory was that in any given environment a population "check" would occur once the material resource limits were attained in any given region. Not really difficult to understand, this work was groundbreaking because he applied it with scientific precision to the human species as simply another form of herd animal.

Two specific machines that were created during this time created the impetus for massive population growth by freeing up material resource for consumption. The first was the implementation of a machine that would plant seeds at the appropriate depth and spacing and in physical rows. This device was called a "seed drill" and is basically the reason that the plow was invented. By growing row crops, the greater efficiency of food production allowed for more abundant food supplies for the same amount of invested energy. Therefore the "efficiency" of food greatly increased.

The second machine that was equally responsible for the explosion of population during a period of time that would later be called the "industrial revolution" is the pulsometer pump created by an engineer named Charles Henry (Chucky) Hall. Chucky found that by allowing for the expansion and contraction of the volume of steam in metal cylinders one could create sufficient vacuum force and use the power of suction to remove water from accumulating in coal mines. This machine greatly increased the access of humanity to deeper coal mines and allowed for a much more efficient extraction of coal.

After this invention a schoolboy noticed that the piles of coal being placed in his family chute for the warming of his flat was becoming cheaper and cheaper, so they decided to burn more of the coal to allow for a much more comfortable environment. Later on, this schoolboy came up with an idea that if any resource is made to be cheaper then the resource would be consumed at a higher level, growing without end. Of course his idea was revolutionary at the time because nobody else on the schoolyard gave a damn about such trivial pursuits and would rather address their time and energy kicking hard rubber balls on the pitch and pulling girl's pigtails. Jevons though himself quite a smart little lad!

However, being just a simple schoolboy, his understanding was limited to his extremely myopic period and limited exposure to the world. His fanciful projection of unlimited consumption increases occurring at increased efficiencies of material resources, or in the case of food, unlimited population growth and increased material resource consumption would always hit a limit.

In the modern world then, the concept of energy efficiency is often attacked by disciples of Bobby Malthus who wish to assert that in the current world's resource system, we have or are fast approaching a population "check". They want to assert this kind of "disaster porn" scenario so intently that they make up cute acronymns like EROEI and tend to have invested heavily in wooded land in remote parts of their respective countries where they like to do crafty things like bury schoolbuses as bomb shelters and store canned goods and ammunition. They also tend to like post apocalyptic science fiction scenarios that usually include zombies and guns.

In the real world, the Jevon's paradox doesn't exist, at least not in the simplistic schoolyard view of a 9 year old boy. In the real world of energy efficiency, the residential energy efficiency gains for low-income sectors do experience a 'takeback' of energy efficiencies. This is due to the resource constrained nature of the low-income experience. This is also the environment that is the most analogous to the mid 19th century school-yard experience of Jevons. This low-income takeback has been widely studied and can be accurately assessed to be between 15% and 25% of total efficiency gains in a household.

Similarly, in industrial applications, arguments have been made with varying success to indicate that any production efficiency would naturally lead to price reductions and consumption increases, to an unlimited degree so that any increase in efficiency would naturally lead to increased material consumption, without out end. This, of course is laughable as there are limits to economic growth and consumption.

The physical nature of modern economy is fraught with improvisations placed upon the collective understanding by those who wish to maintain control of our labor and resources. The most insidious of these falsehoods are those regarding organized religion and modern economics. Of course these are basically the same thing. One believes in an invisible entity and the other believes in an invisible hand that will magically balance out the inherent assumptions being made by dimwitted theoreticians. Similar to the oil-industry myth that oil consumption (or even CO2 production) is a proxy for economic activity, the idea that all energy efficiencies must be met with equal increases in consumptions similarly relies on such magical thinking. The real-world examples of per-capita annual driven miles under price fluctuations in gasoline and the differences in energy intensity (joules per $ GDP) among different societies are only a few of the literally millions of real-world examples that disprove the Jevon's Paradox's null hypothesis.

I've been covering IPCC reports for 20 years so I've got a pretty good handle on them. And what I'm reading in this one is eye-opening in a lot of ways. So to all my reply guys who are like "well don't you already know what's in the report, things are still bad," I say actually what's in this report are the seeds for revolution, so let's take it all in shall we?
Throughout the month of April, I'll be posting weekly installments (at least) of analysis on this report, sometimes accompanied by bonus podcast episodes, sometimes not. These posts will be free, so feel free to forward or share. If you run a media outlet you're welcome to re-run anything, with appropriate attribution. If you feel so inclined, you can sign up for a paid subscription here, or via the button at the bottom of this post. Okay, here we go!

Debunking Demand (IPCC Mitigation Report, Part 1)
https://www.drilledpodcast.com/debunking-demand-ipcc-mitigation-report-part-1/

Juries keep letting Extinction Rebellion off the hook — here’s why | Evening Standard
https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/juries-judges-extinction-rebellion-innocent-just-stop-oil-protests-climate-activists-b992610.html

When it came to our turn to defend ourselves there were limits to what we could say. We were allowed to talk about who we were, what we had done, and why. We couldn’t give a lecture on the disaster of climate breakdown, but we could speak about our ‘subjective belief’ that it was taking place. Similarly, we couldn’t tell the jury about Shell’s wickedness, how it had lied for decades about what it knew about the effects of burning fossil fuels, and the damage its drilling had done to environments and communities around the world, but we were allowed to say why we wrote what we did on the walls of the company’s HQ. Each of us is a different character, and each of us had a different story to tell.

It is a strange, quite primitive experience to face a jury of your peers and explain your actions to them directly – the way I imagine it might happen in a tribe or a mediaeval village. With the mystification of the law removed, it was an intensely personal interaction, even with the judge’s many interruptions. Our jury reflected the diversity of London: mostly young, ethnically diverse, the majority women. I felt glad to be in their hands.

After the jury cleared us, some of the press coverage commented on our ingenious tactics. But they were no such thing. There wasn’t even much by way of eloquence or persuasion. What happened over the two weeks was that we shared something with the jurors – our understanding of the science, yes, but also our vulnerability, our grief at what was happening to the planet and the people who live on it, and our gratitude to them for listening.

TADEAS:

SHEFIK: fun fact: Food waste in Europe: One third of all the food that is produced for human consumption, is wasted.

cimz se nevyjadruju k tvymu dotazu, jen volna asociace

Peter Kalmus (klimatolog z Jet Propulsion Laboratory NASA)

I'll be engaging tomorrow in a global civil disobedience action along with 1200+ scientists risking in 26+ nations. We are - no joke - fighting to save Earth against dark powers that wish to continue expanding fossil fuels (so odd but here we are). Join us. Info: @ScientistRebel1

Troska opatrneho optimizmu
We WILL Fix Climate Change!
https://youtu.be/LxgMdjyw8uw


Je tam zminena i CR v souvislosti s decouplingem :)

Amy Westervelt
https://twitter.com/amywestervelt/status/1511029205605093376?s=19

Sorry but I must note that it seems incredibly problematic that the IPCC chair was previously Exxon's economist, and one of the two Coordinating Lead Authors of the cross-sector chapter is a senior staffer of Saudi Aramco, and the review ed for the energy chapter works for Chevron.