• ozymandias117@lemmy.world
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    7 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
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      5 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
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        5 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