• ladicius@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    arrow-down
    7
    ·
    edit-2
    6 hours ago

    You mean 40 years of delay for the destruction of our biosphere?

    I’d call that a win.

    • ozymandias117@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      23
      ·
      16 hours ago

      40 years of burning far more coal than necessary due to inefficient engines

      Whether the overall effect was positive or negative with respect to the biome, no clue

      • jdr@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        14 hours ago

        Yes, but also induced demand. More efficient engines means less coal per task, but more tasks, maybe so many more that total coal use increases.

        • ozymandias117@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          14 hours ago

          That’s why I said we don’t know the overall effect on the biome due to less efficient engines

          With how quickly we industrialized, my intuition is we were mining and burning it as fast as possible, but maybe more efficient engines could have let us mine and burn even more