Quote:
Originally Posted by sendler
...(population, energy consumption, and world GDP have been increasing in lock step for 100's of years...
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Correlation is not causation, remember. Also, GDP is not really a good measure if the population. That is, if you keep the GDP the same and cut the population in half, the GDP
per capita has doubled, no?
Likewise, technology usually decreases the energy needed to perform any given task. Take for instance lighting a room, and consider the increase in lumens per watt going from candles to oil lamps to gas to incandescent to CFL and now to LED. It's just that now there are many more people lighting up things, and - since it's cheap - lighting things that don't need lights, and in many cases shouldn't have them.