2005 EIA figures: Per Capita Energy Consumption Hits Record, Renewable Share Remains Trivial.

[NNadir]

We hear all kinds of happy talk about how wonderful conservation is, usually from Amory Lovins types, who happily has begun taking payoffs from Bechtel. Quoth the liar Lovins once, "In God We Trust, All Others Bring Data," except that Amory Lovins has never seen a piece of data in his life that he couldn't ignore.

Bechtel, of course, is in the nuclear business - and I support the nuclear business enthusiastically - so we can expect Lovins to announce a reversal of his shit for brains anti-nuclear position soon, just as he reversed himself on arctic diamond mining when the payoffs, whoops I mean "consulting fees," started coming it, and just like he gave the "green stamp of approval" to Royal Dutch Shell when they called on him to accept bribes, whoops, I mean, "consulting fees" to give them the "Green Stamp of Approval."

Anything for a buck.

Now, we all know conservation and solar energy will save us, because we have lots and lots and lots and lots of people who oppose the world's largest climate change gas free form of energy, by far, to save us.

Still, the God in whom I trust is not the shit for brains Oracle at Snowmass. I actually trust data and I look at it all the time.

Here is the data on the world conservation program, which is simply a number corresponding to per capita energy consumption.

In 2005, world per capita energy consumption set a new record high of 75.8 gigajoules (71.8 million BTU) per person. In more familiar units, this is about 2400 watts per person, or about 3 horsepower, average.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/tablee1c.xls

Most of the increase cannot be attributed to Lovins' increased call for the corporate jet for flights from Aspen to Benton, Arkansas, but to the fact that many people around the world in places like China and India have stopped agreeing to be impoverished to subsidize the American lifestyle, the lifestyle that is essential to the anti-nuke "have our cake and eat it too" consumerist brats who typify the anti-nuke industry.

For instance, the per capita energy consumption in China, though still well below world averages, has increased by 73% in the last 5 years.

The figures for electricity are particularly telling: Between 2000 and 2005, electrical consumption rose by 19%. The percentage of world electricity that was produced by non-hydro renewables - the wind, solar, geothermal, blah, blah, blah crap foisted on the world by the anti-nuke religion in a classic bait and switch scam rose very slightly from 1.7% of world electricity in 2000 to 2.1% of world electricity in 2005. There was no increase in this percentage from 2004 to 2005. Renewable energy was flat in these terms.

Of course "percent talk" is a scam as well, as I frequently point out.

In absolute energy terms, renewable energy has not kept up with the rise in electricity demand in any year except 2001.

World electricity demand rose by 2,731 billion kilowatt-hours, and the cool, cool, cool, cool renewable industry (solar, wind, geothermal, blah, blah, blah) rose by 127 billion kilowatt-hours. Thus renewable energy has lost ground on dangerous fossil fuels by a huge amount in the last 5 years.

The data is extracted from these tables:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table17.xls

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/RecentTotalElectricGeneration.xls

In the meantime we have our anti-nukes blubbering on about how they oppose the world's largest form, by far, of global climate change free energy:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/RecentTotalElectricGeneration.xls

The increase in output by nuclear energy plants in the period described as been 175 billion kilowatt-hours.

There are zero anti-nukes who can point to a single person who has been injured in this country by nuclear energy in the period described. These same people couldn't care less about how many people died from dangerous fossil fuel waste, dangerous fossil fuel terrorism, dangerous fossil fuel war, or dangerous fossil fuel accidents in the period referenced.

[skids]

1. The solution might be economic slowdown...

...it seems to have done us some "good." Total U.S. energy consumption was down last year.

[XemaSab]

2. Probably because so many of our factories are in China.

n/t

[NNadir]

5. Yeah. Let's all root for poverty.

It's better than rooting for the Mets.

I really, really, really hope we can all conserve the wonderful per capita consumption figures demonstrated by the happy folks in Guinea-Bissau.

It is true that per capita energy consumption in the US fell slightly in 2006, by a whopping 0.9%, after rising monotonically (2001 excepted) for 20 years. It is only now roughly double what per capita consumption was in 1963.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/txt/ptb0105.html

Amory Lovins must be working overtime on his night job, the one he has when he isn't working for Royal Dutch Shell, Rio Tinto, Walmart, Bechtel or the Pentagon.

[Subdivisions]

3. Nuclear energy is a bandaid and when oil is gone, nuclear

power plants won't be sustainable anyway.

We must begin to accept an eventual population correction and afterwards a more agrarian lifestyle.

[NNadir]

6. And you, I bet, plan to be one of the survivors, no?

I very seldom meet purveyors of this kind of outlook who volunteer to commit suicide. They all think they're going to be one of the characters in the science fiction movie.

The world may choose to go the way predicted in Charleton Heston's best movie - and god if that isn't an indictment of Heston's film career, I can't imagine what would be - but it doesn't have to go that way.

[Bread and Circus]

4. That thar brazillions of exajoules is what be needin'