Actually, it would seem to increase energy use to save energy. The reason is what you might call the “bottleneck principle”. If you remove bottlenecks it increases the flow. The high value we put on some efficiencies is that they are bottlenecks that unleash the use of other resources when made less of a constraint.
You have to study the whole system’s constraints to see if relieving one actually unleashes expansion of the others. It’s basically the idea of a controlling variable for which removing it’s constraint shifts the whole system constraint to other variables. Continue reading Saving Energy Has The Opposite Effect →
Responding to an Archinect.com discussion:
Hi there! I haven’t read the whole thread, but gather the question is whether we can grow our way our of the impacts of growth, using crafty wind power investments to do it. I’ve been spending this week trying to find out why none of the media are aware of the vigorous discussions of why a financial meltdown happens naturally when finances need to multiply for their own stability in a world that doesn’t.
Even JM Keynes pointed out the problem. Now our whole blithering world of back scratchers seeing it happen acts as if it’s a total surprise. I pegged the beginning of it 15 months ago, as beginning “the big crunch”, when the fuel/food price war showed the whole system’s resource steering choices running into conflict with each other and fishtailing. Continue reading T. Boon Pickens plans to take over the wind? →
I think maybe we should believe our eyes rather than make excuses for some old rules that aren’t working.
Maybe what happened, in the beginning, was that God sent the scribe a text message, saying, “…and I give you all this and a wonderful mind with which you can make models to bee the world around you. Have fun! G.” As the scribe gazed into the meanings of the message, silently observing the typographical error in God’s texting, he quickly judged there was an extra ‘e’ in ‘bee’, and to not bother God by mentioning it. Continue reading A very short novel – A Small Mistake →
New systems science, how to care for natural uncontrolled systems in context
