Tag: Big Picture

All U.S. energy consumption in one giant diagram

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❝ This graphic is special type of flow chart, called a Sankey diagram…This particular one shows the total estimated energy consumption in the United States in 2015, and how energy flowed from source to the final destination. The graphic comes to us from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Department of Energy.

The beauty of a Sankey is in its simplicity and and effectiveness. No information is left out, and we can really see the full energy picture from a 10,000 foot view.


Click to enlarge — The Visual Capitalist

❝ What’s a quad? It’s equal to a quadrillion BTUs, which is roughly comparable to any of these:

8,007,000,000 gallons (US) of gasoline
293,071,000,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh)
36,000,000 tonnes of coal
970,434,000,000 cubic feet of natural gas
25,200,000 tonnes of oil
252,000,000 tonnes of TNT
13.3 tonnes of uranium-235

It’s a lot of energy – and if you look at the diagram, you’ll see most of it is actually wasted.

Thanks, Barry Ritholtz

Agnotology — Huh? Wha?

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Fascinating discussion via Wired‘s Clive Thompson, and Stanford historian of science Robert Proctor, on Agnotology:

“When it comes to many contentious subjects, our usual relationship to information is reversed: Ignorance increases.

[Proctor] has developed a word inspired by this trend: agnotology. Derived from the Greek root agnosis, it is “the study of culturally constructed ignorance.”

As Proctor argues, when society doesn’t know something, it’s often because special interests work hard to create confusion. Anti-Obama groups likely spent millions insisting he’s a Muslim; church groups have shelled out even more pushing creationism. The oil and auto industries carefully seed doubt about the causes of global warming. And when the dust settles, society knows less than it did before.

“People always assume that if someone doesn’t know something, it’s because they haven’t paid attention or haven’t yet figured it out,” Proctor says. “But ignorance also comes from people literally suppressing truth—or drowning it out—or trying to make it so confusing that people stop caring about what’s true and what’s not.” (emphasis added)

Fairly amazing, and when it comes to certain issues, it’s dead on.

What an awesome definition:

Agnotology: Culturally constructed ignorance, purposefully created by special interest groups working hard to create confusion and suppress the truth.

Most often I’d go straight to the source[s]; but, give credit where due. Though I often comb through WIRED, I check in with Barry Ritholtz’s TWITTER feed a few times every day. Which is where I found these links.

Thanks, Barry Ritholtz