Cut short in its prime.

I thought he meant "maths" as in multiple "mathowies"

If "mathowie" is the singular for "math-induced injury", the plural would not be "maths", which isn't a pluralization anyway. Nor would it be "mathouchies" or any other such ridiculously wrong-headed notion.

I submit that you were erroneously correct in the first place with "mathowies". "mathsowie" would also be correct as a compound singular - however that gives ous the cumbersome and just fucking retarded "mathsowies", which sounds like a bunch of pregnant pigs doing math, and is therefore just plain wrong.
posted by loquacious at 11:10 AM on June 7, 2007

Do you know why we call it the dog watch?

(get this right, don't make a botch of it...)

Because it is cur-tailed.

OH HA HA HA HA HA HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE OH I SHALL NEVER TIRE OF THAT.

Killick, more port! If you haven't poured it all down your own throat.
posted by Divine_Wino at 11:20 AM on June 7, 2007 [5 favorites]

That does sound like an odd reason to delete a comment. "Joke" or "personal attack," fine, but "too mathematical"? I'm curious to see what jessamyn says.
posted by languagehat at 11:29 AM on June 7, 2007

and if you need a comfortable place to do equations, you could retire to the mathcouchies.
posted by boo_radley at 11:30 AM on June 7, 2007 [1 favorite]

That is a brilliant thread, and I agree the curtailment is weird. I bet DarkPlanet prefers the answers he's getting now to the maths Jessamyn apparently wants people to post.
posted by bonaldi at 11:32 AM on June 7, 2007

Cur-tailed! Ha!
posted by flashboy at 11:37 AM on June 7, 2007

I agree that this was a bad call. Math is more than just numbers. There's no way to build a useful mathematical model to answer the question if discussion defining initial conditions is disallowed. In this case, I'd say that jessamyn is actually creating hypotheticalfilter out of a question with possible solutions to explore.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 11:40 AM on June 7, 2007

I suck at maths. I'm more of a gyms person.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 11:44 AM on June 7, 2007

HULK SMASH MATHS
posted by kbanas at 11:44 AM on June 7, 2007

Barbie says that maths are hard.
posted by found missing at 11:45 AM on June 7, 2007

MORE PROOF THAT HYPOTHETICALFILTER IS THE BEST USE OF ASK.METAFILTER.COM. I rest my case.

Now, Zombies vs. Robots vs. Batman, who would win (given no element of surprise)?
posted by blue_beetle at 11:48 AM on June 7, 2007

So I think this is the sole deleted comment after biffa's but before jess's interjection:

Hey, no problem. You want shit blown up? We're all nuclear now. Better believe we can blow shit up.

Sorry, got carried away for a moment there... but seriously: open cut with ANFO isn't the only option. Another way to get uranium out of the ground is to pump sulphuric acid down a drill hole, wait for it to leach the uranium ore out of the rock, then suck it back up.

Unrealistic idealistic hippie commie tree huggers who object to permanent contamination of aquifers by vast amounts of radioactive battery acid can just be mercilessly mocked until they give up.

Make of that what you will. It does read a bit silly and far afield, but I don't have a dog in this one.
posted by cortex at 11:49 AM on June 7, 2007

No element of surprise? Batman. He would have anti-zombie and anti-robot batarangs on his belt.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 11:50 AM on June 7, 2007

But as the only source of brains in the fight, he'd be immediately overwhelmed by hordes of hungry zombies. Once he was dead the zombies would lose all interest, leaving the robots to win the day.
posted by InfidelZombie at 11:57 AM on June 7, 2007

Anti-zombie batarangs? Regular batarangs don't work on zombies?

How about nuclear batarangs? What sort of impact do they have on US energy consumption?
posted by solipsophistocracy at 12:02 PM on June 7, 2007 [1 favorite]

Metafilter: As the only source of brains in the fight, [you'll] be immediately overwhelmed by hordes of hungry zombies
posted by found missing at 12:03 PM on June 7, 2007 [2 favorites]

Point is, cortex, that the deleted comment was math, and was directly relevant to the question as so:

Poster wants to know how many nuclear power plants it would take to create the necessary power to run things with the inital conditions that we have to stop burning hydrocarbons (oil, coal, natural gas) completely, and everything is converted to run on electricity. biffa points out that nuclear capacity is currently hydrocarbon dependent, and the answer is therefore null. There isn't enough fuel to run sufficient nuclear power plants to provide the required power according to initial conditions.

The deleted comment provides a link to a possible solution for obtaining the necessary fuel without conflicting with initial conditions. It provides the possibility for an answer greater than zero. MATH!
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 12:06 PM on June 7, 2007

nah nah nah nah nah nah nah BATMATH!
posted by solipsophistocracy at 12:14 PM on June 7, 2007

Divine_Wino: Your aubrayying is testudoing my patience.
posted by taliaferro at 12:15 PM on June 7, 2007

MATHS
OUT
OF
INTERNETS
NOW!!
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:16 PM on June 7, 2007

So if how many British people would we have to put into a nuclear power plant per hectare to eradicate "maths" but keep "lorry"?
posted by dame at 12:16 PM on June 7, 2007

delete if
posted by dame at 12:17 PM on June 7, 2007

The deleted comment provides a link to a possible solution for obtaining the necessary fuel without conflicting with initial conditions.

Well, for the sake of argument, the initial conditions do include the general advisory that this is being done for environmental reasons:

Lets just say that the U.S. decided to stop burning hydrocarbons (oil, coal, natural gas) completely for environmental reasons.

Depending on interpretation, the commentor's acknowledgement that pumping the ground full of acid could be environmentally damaging might or might not violate those initial conditions rather badly. If the original "for environmental reasons" means simply "as a reaction to a specific hydrocarbon-use-related environmental crisis" as opposed to "as part of a unilateral commitment to ceasing environmental damage whereever possible", then the commentor gets a pass. And, yeah, I'd be inclined to see that reading.

But that's just kibitz, anyway; I'm not much arguing for or against.
posted by cortex at 12:22 PM on June 7, 2007

I don't have a dog in this one.

ha! good one.
posted by quonsar at 12:22 PM on June 7, 2007 [1 favorite]

Who needs if anyway? Delete if! World would be a better place and all that, no ifs.

Ands, Buts to go too.
posted by carsonb at 12:25 PM on June 7, 2007

Which I didn't touch the effing port, Divine_Wino.
posted by Killick at 12:27 PM on June 7, 2007 [1 favorite]

Well, for the sake of argument

I'm sorry, argument was disallowed. Answer must be in the form of a number.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 12:29 PM on June 7, 2007 [1 favorite]

The point was, it *is* a math question and starting up the "Unrealistic idealistic hippie commie tree huggers" engine is counterproductive, name calling, not germane to the argument, flagged, and off-topic. Can you put your math back in and try to keep the editorializing a little more in check, or spew here instead?
posted by jessamyn at 12:30 PM on June 7, 2007

ha! good one.

I totally don't get it, q.
posted by cortex at 12:33 PM on June 7, 2007

Unrealistic idealistic hippie commie tree huggers" engine is counterproductive, name calling, not germane to the argument, flagged, and off-topic.

I agree with that completely. But that wasn't the reason you gave for the deletion, or your promise of further non-obvious math answers being deleted. The reason you gave effectively killed the thread, which is what I was objecting to. But it wasn't my comment. So I have the same number of dogs in the fight as cortex.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 12:38 PM on June 7, 2007

I totally don't get it, q.

I'd guess he's insinuating that as an admin, you automatically have a dog in all admin-related debates.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 12:40 PM on June 7, 2007

Sorry, perhaps I should have said "further hippie name calling and stick poking derails" which was what I meant.
posted by jessamyn at 12:42 PM on June 7, 2007

Dogs? It's zombies vs. robots vs. Batman, try to keep up. Sheesh!

Seriously, though, going all "hippie treehugger hurf-durf libtard get a job" in the midst of an otherwise on-topic comment seems to be just asking for a derail. At the very least, it could have been phrased better.
posted by arto at 12:47 PM on June 7, 2007

YOU DON'T HAVE A DOG IN THIS ONE BECAUSE IT WAS CUR-TAILED
posted by quonsar at 12:47 PM on June 7, 2007 [1 favorite]

A grand solution.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 12:47 PM on June 7, 2007

Ouch, quonsar. That one hurt good!
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 12:49 PM on June 7, 2007

Oh! *snort*
posted by cortex at 12:50 PM on June 7, 2007

The next gruesome mismatch: Hordes of high hippies vs. hordes of hungry zombies.
posted by found missing at 12:52 PM on June 7, 2007

YOU DON'T HAVE A DOG IN THIS ONE BECAUSE IT WAS CUR-TAILED

HAHAHAHA

say it again!
posted by jessamyn at 12:56 PM on June 7, 2007

Huzzah, quonsar. Gentleman, to the King and confusion to the pope...
posted by Divine_Wino at 12:57 PM on June 7, 2007

Would the zombies get high from eating the hippies? If so, they'd probably forget to attack after awhile, but then they'd get the munchies really bad! But would the altered hippy brains even register as suitable prey to the zombie senses? So many questions, so little reefer!
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 1:00 PM on June 7, 2007 [1 favorite]

Well, at least you can't say that THIS thread has gone too far afield from the OP's question...

I was a bit disappointed the thread got cut short, though I don't know if it had much life left to it. And it is true that it was worded as a simple math problem and for that I'll take my lumps. It's also true that it was devolving into an anti/pro nuke session, which I was not too interested in, though it was throwing off some interesting info. I should have asked "what would it take to go totally electric" rather than "how many nukes would it take", but then, that's just the way the question happened to form itself in my head when I posted it. I'll be careful not to be so closed ended in the future. In the mean time, I'll just man up and call it a day.
posted by DarkForest at 1:21 PM on June 7, 2007

I'm in your thread, nukin' your comments.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:35 PM on June 7, 2007

I'm in your thread, nukin' your comments.

IM IN UR HED NUKIN UR MENTS
posted by loquacious at 2:03 PM on June 7, 2007

He said "maths" like a British person.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 12:42 PM on June 7

OMG! Are you saying that all British people are autistic? Dude, not cool. Unless you are British yourself. In which case you are free to knock them yourself. So cheers, mate. Let's throw a shrimp on the barbie.
posted by dios at 2:04 PM on June 7, 2007 [1 favorite]

The question is: If you did have a dog in this one, what would he think? In other words, in his brain, how would he classify this?
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 2:05 PM on June 7, 2007

But as the only source of brains in the fight, he'd be immediately overwhelmed by hordes of hungry zombies. Once he was dead the zombies would lose all interest, leaving the robots to win the day.

Puh-leeze. No element of surprise, remember? Batman would have a plan in place to reprogram the robots to fight the zombies for him. The rest would just be mopping up.
posted by Gamblor at 2:06 PM on June 7, 2007

Divine_Wino, would you pass the salt?
posted by The corpse in the library at 2:07 PM on June 7, 2007

IM IN UR HED NUKIN UR MENTS

You're on the internet, wastin' time.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 2:31 PM on June 7, 2007 [1 favorite]

Oh, Mr. Darcy! You're horrible! When next you come to the ball you shall ask me to take the first dance!
posted by Mayor Curley at 2:33 PM on June 7, 2007

So cheers, mate. Let's throw a shrimp on the barbie.

Oh, I see what you did there, American. Well why don't you borrow a loonie and complain aboot the hydro bill because you're on pogie, eh.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 5:27 PM on June 7, 2007

Karma police
Arrest this man
He talks in maths
posted by exlotuseater at 5:27 PM on June 7, 2007

Hey, you know who else had a hairdo that makes me feel ill?
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 5:30 PM on June 7, 2007

I can't really post in the original AskMe, but anybody interested in the future of fission nuclear energy in the US should be aware of GNEP (and it's associated bill in Congress).
posted by onalark at 5:51 PM on June 7, 2007

Sorry about that. I was still annoyed by being implicitly characterized as a greenie know-nothing here, and rather than continuing this riff

It's completely misleading to imply, as so many do, again and again and again ad nauseam, that the soft path is unrealistic tree hugging greenie commie anticapitalist ineffectual wishful crap, simply because none of its parts in isolation will fix everything.

in a followup comment, I should probably have just waited a day. It is indeed kind of disrespectful to assume, as I did, that comments like

most of nature and most of the planet doesn't care much about radiation; they simply don't notice moderate amounts of the stuff. Humans are uniquely rad-vulnerable.

could only conceivably be the opinions of wilfully ignorant fools with an ingrained tendency to dismiss anything even faintly green out of hand without actually, you know, thinking it through.

I will try to get better at remaining unprovoked by noise.
posted by flabdablet at 5:55 PM on June 7, 2007 [1 favorite]

Always bet on Batman.

ALWAYS.
posted by blue_beetle at 7:49 PM on June 7, 2007

many people say "maths" in the united states as well, including everyone who has ever studied in that field.

I have found that not to be the case at all. I don't know any American mathematician who says they studied "maths" and I do know a few.
posted by jessamyn at 8:28 PM on June 7, 2007

Cur-tailed?

So Chuck Jones is writing thread titles now. That just makes me furry-ious.
posted by sourwookie at 12:45 AM on June 8, 2007

flabdablet: You mention this quote in a derogatory way:

most of nature and most of the planet doesn't care much about radiation; they simply don't notice moderate amounts of the stuff. Humans are uniquely rad-vulnerable.

but you don't seem to say anything substantive about it. I was trying to point out that fear of nuclear power is anti-green, for the most part. Animals and plants are not generally affected by radiation in the same way we are. Radiation damage is cumulative over time, but with their short lifespans (or extreme rad-resistance in the case of long-lived plants like trees), they can tolerate far higher doses than can we. Further, given a few generations, they seem to activate dormant radiation-damage repair genes, and thrive quite happily in places they couldn't go previously. Chernobyl is green and healthy, and Bikini Atoll is a tropical paradise. Just don't eat the bananas.

All I'm trying to point out is the fear-and-doom crowd has got it all wrong from an environmental perspective; nuclear power is GOOD for the environment. If we do it right, we have carbon-neutral energy with very little impact. If we screw it up really badly, we make an area uninhabitable by humans. This is even better than just carbon-neutral energy; the simple presence of humanity is far more deleterious to the environment than that of radiation. It takes extraordinarily intense amounts of the stuff to truly kill off all animal and plant life, and pretty much by definition, those very intense areas must be very small. There will always be a much larger buffer zone around such an area that's guaranteed to be human-free, which is about as green an outcome as you can possibly get.

I'm not directly talking about the risks to humans... that's something we could definitely use a long discussion about. But from an environmental/green perspective, nuclear is such a profound win that I'm shocked any environmentalist is still arguing against it.
posted by Malor at 1:56 AM on June 8, 2007

“could only conceivably be the opinions of wilfully ignorant fools with an ingrained tendency to dismiss anything even faintly green out of hand without actually, you know, thinking it through.”

With this and a sentence at the end of one of your comments in that thread, it became obvious that your long comments were more about your anti-nuke axe-grinding than it was being helpful in answering the question.

I think that some pro-nuke folk threw some anti-nuke bashing comments out there even before your comment; but your comment escalated things.

Jessamyn was right to intervene and she should have done so earlier. People could have answered the question, focusing on answers that included or excluded nuclear energy without making their comments into advocacy and/or, worse, bashing the other side. It doesn't take a lot of common sense to realize that giving in to the temptation to do some pro-nuke or anti-nuke axe-grinding was going to derail the thread and incite a lot of argumentation—which isn't the point of AskMe.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 4:21 AM on June 8, 2007

Quite right, EB. My knee jerked, and I duly kicked myself in the head. Mea culpa.

I have yet to see anything more than handwaving and dismissive snorts in rebuttal of my main argument, which is this:

(a) We need to get greenhouse emissions down as much as possible as fast as possible, which inevitably means that we must pursue the most cost-effective options first.

(b) There is far, far more scope for rapid greenhouse emission reduction by way of improved end-use efficiency than by an increase in nuclear-sourced power; therefore, pursuit of end-use efficiency should be the primary goal of today's energy policy.

(c) Public policy designed to aggressively reward end-use efficiency improvement, while equally aggressively penalizing continued inefficiency, has the potential to limit or even reverse the present upward trend in total energy supply requirements.

(d) Responding to projections of increased total energy demand by increasing total energy supply, instead of simply allowing the price of energy to rise, will make it harder, not easier, to steer the energy economy toward the fully sustainable basis that it will ultimately need to operate upon.

(e) Nuclear fission is a fuel-consuming technology, unsustainable in the long term, and its adoption in the medium term is objectionable on the basis of point (d) alone, before we even consider its endlessly debated security, weapons proliferation and byproduct generation issues.

(f) Nuclear fusion power is also a fuel-consuming technology, though the potential amount of fuel available is possibly large enough to be considered sustainable; however, this power source is not yet commercially available.

(g) The price of sustainably sourced energy is already well within the ballpark of the price of various unsustainable fuel-based alternatives, and if public policy aggressively favours the adoption of sustainably sourced energy and fosters competition between sustainable technologies, there is every reason to believe that its price will drop substantially - perhaps even to a level below that of today's unsustainable technologies.

(h) All of the above points, considered together, make the debates we're hearing more and more often about an increase in nuclear power generation capacity at best moot, and at worst a criminal waste of time and intellectual capacity that constantly distracts public attention from what actually needs doing right now if not yesterday in energy policy.
posted by flabdablet at 5:15 AM on June 8, 2007 [1 favorite]

I think you make a lot of good points. But Dasein's main argument—though made too antagonistically—that increasing energy use efficiency has less effect than expected because demand rises to offset the savings—is very persuasive to me, even without any numbers or citations. It reflects basic human nature and I can think of a number of analogous situations where I've observed the behavior he describes.

I strongly suspect that energy consumption for an advanced industrial society is chiefly limited by affordability, with it being a relatively constant portion of GDP. I also strongly suspect that because of this, all future technological improvements and discoveries in this area will go to increasing energy consumption, not reducing its portion of the GDP. Assuming continued technological progress, and even assuming cultural progress such that energy becomes steadily more green, and barring world economic collapse and such, I think the future will hold nothing but an ever-increasing amount of energy consumption such that the real limit will be climate damage due to waste heat generation.

A government could artificially inflate energy costs by fiat, of course, and that would force less consumption. The economic effect of doing this in a world context where others do not, however, would be in the long run be economically devastating. Maybe a world government could manage to hold the line on consumption while avoiding economic stagnation, though.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 5:36 AM on June 8, 2007

"maths" isnt british.. it's short for "mathematics". many people say "maths" in the united states as well, including everyone who has ever studied in that field..

Bullshit. I used to be a math major, and I have never heard a single American say "maths."
posted by languagehat at 5:57 AM on June 8, 2007

Youall wilfully stole the s from maths to adorn your Lego.
Put it back.
posted by peacay at 6:20 AM on June 8, 2007 [1 favorite]

Dasein waves good hand. But he quotes no numbers.

Actual measures of the rebound effect for electric end-use equipment have been found to be between 0% and 40% 4 . That is, the actual decrease in demand realized can range from 100% to about 60% of the projected amount.

I strongly suspect that energy consumption for an advanced industrial society is chiefly limited by affordability, with it being a relatively constant portion of GDP

I strongly suspect so too, which is why I am so vehemently opposed to corporate welfare that makes petrol artificially cheap, and why I have absolutely no problem with the idea that we should all just agree to stop building new non-sustainable generation capacity, let demand exceed supply, and force energy consumers to find the efficiencies that will return their energy-related expenditure to a reasonable and familiar level.

Not only would this create massive amounts of economic activity in a burgeoning global consumer-oriented energy efficiency sector, but the inflating price of fossil fuel energy would kickstart the large-scale sustainable generation technology industries, making technologies like hot dry rock and solar thermal generators cost-competitive with gas and coal for baseload power; making mass-produced grid-connected rooftop solar PV or rooftop wind with reversible metering an economically feasible proposition for households; making rooftop solar heat collectors even more of a no-brainer than they are now; and making electric cars increasingly attractive compared with oil burners.

The real beauty of the soft path is that most of it could be driven by market forces, given an appropriate regulatory environment to start with.

Plus, driving the adoption of efficiencies by making them quite clearly the easiest way to keep energy expenditure somewhere near present levels, rather than making them a way to reduce present expenditure, would kill any potential rebound effect stone dead.
posted by flabdablet at 6:24 AM on June 8, 2007

Yeah. Well, regardless, increasing efficiency and reducing other waste has to be a key part of any future energy policy.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 6:27 AM on June 8, 2007

flabdablet- That report depends on single sector evaluations of energy usage. It doesn't measure the increased usage of gasoline due to space cooling efficiencies, for instance. While -you- might work less if your energy bill was smaller, markets in general find ways to absorb efficiencies into increased productivity. This is easiest to see in industrial increases in efficiency, but it's really just an effect of the way currency circulation constantly invokes energy expenditure, usually travel and transportation of goods.

(That said, I'm all for ROI-based solutions, which in most cases put energy-efficient innovation before increased production.)
posted by anotherpanacea at 7:19 AM on June 8, 2007

flabdablet: I'm a little annoyed that you called me ignorant and haven't answered me yet. What, specifically, was your problem with my post that made you quote it here in this thread?
posted by Malor at 8:06 AM on June 8, 2007

The thing about that is: most of nature and most of the planet doesn't care much about radiation; they simply don't notice moderate amounts of the stuff. Humans are uniquely rad-vulnerable. We're the ones benefiting from the power, so we should be the ones paying for mistakes, no?

I don't know.. I'm thinking that humans are more sensitive to risk, rather than to radiation. 2% of the coyote population dieing of radiation induced illness isn't likely to be noticed, but tort law and political considerations would make it a big deal if it was impacting humans.
As it should be, obviously, although it does raise some interesting anthropological questions.
posted by Chuckles at 9:02 AM on June 8, 2007

"maths" isnt british.. it's short for "mathematics". many people say "maths" in the united states as well, including everyone who has ever studied in that field..
posted by petsounds at 8:00 PM on June 7

Another BS call from someone who knows mathematicians. Did you just make this up? The use of 'maths' is a sure sign you're talking to a Brit just as sure as if they say they're "sitting" an exam at University.
posted by vacapinta at 9:27 AM on June 8, 2007

The course I favour is to put in place public policy that simply doesn't impede the natural tendency of the price of energy to rise in accordance with increased demand, so that pursuit of efficiency becomes a matter of cost containment rather than cost savings - forcing energy consumers to run after efficiency as fast as they can in order to stay in the same place, and allowing sustainable technologies to start competing fairly with extractive technologies for a share of the energy supply pie.

I cannot see how this could conceivably provoke the kind of rebound effect we seem to be arguing about.

I'm also reasonably confident that there is enough potential in present inefficiencies to let the ramping down of total energy demand meet the ramping up of sustainable energy production half way.

Yes, some organizations would suffer some short term economic pain before efficiency-driven responses kick in; but others would be making big money selling solutions. Which seems to me preferable to the kind of devastating economic shocks that would be generated by falling off the EROEI cliff for the subsidized extractive energy technology du jour.

I would much rather see people paying for energy at something like its actual cost, than paying taxes to fund subsidies designed to keep established planet-damaging businesses profitable at the expense of innovators. If we are going to distort the market, can we please distort it in a direction that makes long-term ecological sense?

On preview: Malor, I've taken that to email.
posted by flabdablet at 10:26 AM on June 8, 2007

Saying maths is as British as boarding school sodomy, bathing in cold water and warm gross beer.
posted by Divine_Wino at 12:07 PM on June 8, 2007

markets in general find ways to absorb efficiencies into increased productivity.

Increased productivity and increased fuel consumption are not the same thing:

When the U.S. last paid attention to oil efficiency, between 1977 and 1985, oil use fell 17% while GDP grew 27%. During those eight years, oil imports fell 50% and imports from the Persian Gulf fell by 87%.

Since Dasein has asserted that Lovins's numbers are wonky, let's generate our own:

Total US oil use:
1978: 18,847,000 barrels/day
1985: 15,726,000 barrels/day
Decrease: 17%

US GDP:
1Q 1978: $4,830.8 billion
4Q 1985: $6,148.6 billion
Increase: 27%

US oil imports:
1978 total: 8,363,000 barrels/day
1985 total: 5,067,000 barrels/day
Decrease: 39%

1978 Gulf: 2,219,000 barrels/day
1985 Gulf: 311,000 barrels/day
Decrease: 86%
posted by flabdablet at 12:27 PM on June 8, 2007 [1 favorite]

mathematics as maths is the Only True Word.

Same for aluminium.
posted by meehawl at 12:31 PM on June 8, 2007

Australians say "maths" too, our beer is cold and good, my solar hot water service works magnificently well, and I was not sodomized at school. Just sayin'.
posted by flabdablet at 12:31 PM on June 8, 2007

Sorry friend. Australia does not, in fact, exist.
posted by Divine_Wino at 12:43 PM on June 8, 2007

flabdablet: Wasn't that also the period when a lot of nuclear capacity came online? Some of these numbers suggest that energy expenditures increased to match GDP, but less of that energy was spent on oil.

In addition, I think you'll find that the usage/import statistics match up pretty well with oil prices, too. That period corresponds with the Iran/Iraq war, the advent of US price controls, and ends just before a major drop in oil prices in 1986. Convenient, that.

Oil price per barrel (adjusted)
1978: $14
1981: $35
1985: $17
1986: $10

In between Lovins' data points, prices spiked to $35, which was the cause of most of the reduction in oil usage, but the data points themselves are chosen to reflect a flat price. Energy efficiency would reduce prices rather than raising them, so the the 78-85 period isn't analogous to this hypothetical increase in efficiency.

(I still -want- efficiency, I just worry that it isn't enough on its own.)
posted by anotherpanacea at 1:12 PM on June 8, 2007

Metafilter: Over-nerding a simple equation.
posted by blue_beetle at 3:08 PM on June 8, 2007

Same for aluminium.

And Australialia
posted by smackfu at 3:31 PM on June 8, 2007

Wasn't that also the period when a lot of nuclear capacity came online?

"a lot" is such a useful handwaving term, isn't it?

US electricity generation
1978 total: 2,209.4 TWh
1985 total: 2,473.0 TWh
Increase: 263.6 TWh

1978 nuclear: 276.4 TWh
1985 nuclear: 383.7 TWh
Increase: 107.3 TWh

1978 renewable: 286.8 TWh
1985 renewable: 295.0 TWh
Increase: 8.2 TWh

1978 oil-fired: 365.1 TWh
1985 oil-fired: 100.2 TWh
Decrease: 264.9 TWh

1978 coal-fired: 975.7 TWh
1985 coal-fired: 1,402.1 TWh
Increase: 426.4 TWh

Total drop in oil use over that period was 3.1 million barrels/day. Using the conversion factor of 0.59 barrels/MWh found in this brochure on available US geothermal resources, that's worth 1.9 PWh/year electric. Given that the total increase in electricity generation from 1978-1985 was 0.26 PWh, it's clear that whatever was displacing oil, it wasn't nukes; it wasn't even electricity.

It was efficiency gains.

Achieving more economic output with less energy input, which is clearly what happened, is pretty much the definition of end-use efficiency improvement.

That period corresponds with the Iran/Iraq war, the advent of US price controls, and ends just before a major drop in oil prices in 1986.

Which is precisely why Lovins characterized it as the last time the US paid attention to efficiency, and which is precisely why I continue to argue that encouraging efficiency gains by allowing prices to rise works.
posted by flabdablet at 8:55 PM on June 8, 2007

encouraging efficiency gains by allowing prices to rise works.

Fair enough. Your earlier contributions indicated that you were advocating regulative efficiency gains rather than market-based ones. If the federal government requires efficient light bulbs, those gains are going to be reallocated, whereas if the price of energy rises so high as to require efficiency or else face economic consequences than efficiency gains simply get folded back into normal growth. The same holds true if the price is artificially deflated through market manipulation or imperialist subsidy. We're talking about two sides of the same problem.
posted by anotherpanacea at 5:43 AM on June 9, 2007

I guess this

(c) Public policy designed to aggressively reward end-use efficiency improvement, while equally aggressively penalizing continued inefficiency, has the potential to limit or even reverse the present upward trend in total energy supply requirements.

could read that way, though I had no specific prescription in mind while writing it. There are endless ways to promote end-use energy efficiency and punish inefficiency by means of public policy; some are more free-market than others, but all are worth debating.

Simply declaring that no more generation capacity will be built unless it's renewable would be one example of a public policy that would have this effect.

Another possibility, complementary to that, is the "feebate" scheme proposed by Lovins, where consumers who choose best-in-class goods and services get a direct gubmint payment, funded by taxes on those whose choices fall below median efficiency. Because there is, on balance, no money being added to or subtracted from any given sector of the economy by doing this, I wouldn't expect it to cause unbalanced rebounds. What it would do is make it increasingly difficult for manufacturers of energy-inefficient products to stay in business without lifting their game.

The first sectors to apply this to would be transport and HVAC, because that's where most of the oil and a hell of a lot of the coal goes.

What absolutely will not help is for governments to get into the business of smoothing the way for more nuclear power generators. Given the noises being made by the Howard government in Australia, in what I sincerely hope is their swan song, I am worried that this is in fact what they will try to do. And it's *such* a waste of time we don't have.

If nukes we must have, let them sink or swim on their own commercial and end-use-appropriate merits, and let the regulatory thinking that applies to them be similar to those for other non-renewable energy options. Nothing should get actual subsidies except the renewables we really want to end up using.
posted by flabdablet at 6:18 AM on June 9, 2007 [1 favorite]

Cut short in its prime. June 7, 2007 9:40 AM Subscribe

Cut short in its prime.
June 7, 2007 9:40 AM Subscribe