Efficiency

MidJourney art generated with the prompt efficient

In strictly scientific terms, efficiency means the percentage of energy that comes out of a system divided by the amount of energy put into the system.

That is not the way it is commonly understood.

Part of the problem is that most people don’t understand that there is always a loss of energy in a system. All life on Earth is inefficient in the sense that none of it would be possible without the energy of our local star, the Sun. And that is another system that is running down, though we still have a few million years left, depending on who you talk to. Well outside the realm of concern for humanity, most likely.

So we have all the solar energy beating down on us every day. Plants take this sunlight and use it to combine water and carbon dioxide into hydrocarbon chains, which is the basis of most energy consumed on our planet.

We, smart monkeys that we are, have figured out several other ways to use solar energy to get what we want, namely time to read Substacks on the Internet, and by the time the Sun starts to get low on fuel, hopefully we’ll have figured out how to get Wi-Fi across the galaxy.

And still, we have not touched the popular conception of efficiency.