Re: us motorists are gas sucking whining energy pigs

[DRS]

John Henderson <[email protected]> wrote in message
[email protected]
> "gwhite" wrote:
>
>> Whenever you spend or invest money, that transfer will
>> represent an energy expenditure.
>
> This looks like the corresponding fallacy at the opposite extreme
> of your "fallacy of composition", if you're claiming that all and
> any expenditures of a certain $ value are equally environmentally
> destructive (or even equally energy-intensive) in the final
> analysis.

Entropy gets us all in the end. Every action contributes to the heat death
of the universe.

--

A: Top-posters.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet?

 

[gwhite]

"John Henderson" <[email protected]> wrote in message news:<[email protected]>...
> "gwhite" wrote:
>
> > Whenever you spend or invest money, that transfer will
> > represent an energy expenditure.
>
> This looks like the corresponding fallacy at the opposite extreme
> of your "fallacy of composition", if you're claiming that all and
> any expenditures of a certain $ value are equally environmentally
> destructive (or even equally energy-intensive) in the final
> analysis.

"If I'm claiming?" I never even hinted at any sort of equality with
regard to pollution. In truth, I made a comment to demonstrate that
there may indeed not be an even tradeoff there. It could go _either
way_ when it comes to environmental concerns, but that wasn't my prime
topic. If the shift in energy burning locality (due to conservation
efforts) went instead to a dirty coal plant, the effect may be
_negative_ when it comes to the environment. If the transfer instead
went to a clean gas-fired plant or the even cleaner nuke, the net
might be positive. IOW, it depends. Nice try though.

First things first: local energy conservation does not lead to
aggregate energy conservation, _all other things equal_. Deal with
that first, or as Dr. Phil would say: "Get f'ing real." Once you do
that, you can realistically start with "how to deal with it" when
concerning yourself with pollution. I trust you'll find it is about
tradeoffs, and not solutions.

 

[John Henderson]

"gwhite" wrote:

> "If I'm claiming?" I never even hinted at any sort of equality
> with regard to pollution.

It's the nature of this medium of debate that not every word
written gets the attention (or interpretation) it perhaps should.
Or gets distributed correctly and read at all for that matter.

I was concerned about too strong a conclusion being drawn from
the fallacy you allude to.

Because it's a /ceteris paribus/ (other things being equal)
scenario, one can't just maintain that all energy saving is
misguided, resulting in no net Earth-wide saving.

It's critically important for individuals to understand that, and
think "consequences". Perhaps we're actually in agreement on
some of the fundamentals, even if I didn't think so at first.

John