Germany and the Energy Barnum Effect
Without context, energy facts seem more meaningful than they truly are.
“There's a sucker born every minute.” - P.T. Barnum
A few years ago, “what _____ are you?” surveys were the rage of the internet. What dog breed are you? What Kardashian are you? What type of potato are you?
Answer a few questions and bam, out pops a definitive answer replete with a full personality description.
Despite their ridiculousness, these surveys gained popularity because they were fun and… surprisingly accurate.
The secret as to why these personality descriptions hit so close to home is referred to as the Barnum effect (also known as the Forer effect).
The Barnum Effect: the tendency of people to accept vague and general personality descriptions as personally meaningful and accurate, even though the descriptions could apply to a wide range of individuals.
Horoscopes, fortune cookies, and unscientific personality tests are all guilty of using this tactic. If you’re considering going into the lucrative businesses of fortune predicting or personality describing, there are a few general principles to follow. The golden rule is to tell people what they want to hear. The Barnum effect works best when it reaffirms previously held beliefs, which is why positive affirmations are often used. Repeat customers don’t pay to hear negativity. Further, be as vague and general as possible. Let your victims fill in the blanks with meaning based on their subjective reality.
The same operating principles are used by energy transition hucksters to gaslight undiscerning people.
The Energy Barnum Effect: the tendency for people to accept a fact as a meaningful argument in support of their energy worldview, even though the fact lacks context.
Many “experts” provide general energy facts without appropriate context in order to reinforce the naive worldview that fossil fuels are unnecessary and easily replaceable. After being constantly manipulated, people have no problem supporting terrible energy policies or throwing soup at art to save the planet. Those utilizing the Energy Barnum Effect are either knowingly defrauding people or unknowingly spreading nonsense and we’re not sure which one’s worse.
For example, here’s a fact sure to have the Energy Barnum Effect:
In 2023, a record 33% of Germany’s power came from wind and solar.
If you’re convinced that renewables are the future — this fact only increases this feeling of inevitability. Let’s add much-needed context.
First, notice how increasing renewable market share is viewed as a success in and of itself. Hey, let’s focus on increasing this number with no consideration as to what might happen to other numbers. In the real world, there are tradeoffs. Some numbers go up, some numbers go down. The tradeoff here is cost.
With an economy built around energy-intensive manufacturing and industrial processes, Germany has long been considered the economic powerhouse of Europe. Now, high energy prices are wrecking Germany’s economy. To protect businesses and consumers, the government introduced a €200 billion aid package in 2022 that included price caps on gas and electricity.
What a great policy lesson. When something costs too much, make a law saying it’s not allowed to cost that much. Can’t wait for those cheap Super Bowl tickets in a few weeks…
Despite these price caps, German industry has continued to leave the country in droves. So in November, the government announced an additional €12 billion package to protect businesses. The word of the moment in Germany is “deindustrialization” which, if it helps put it in perspective, would be like the word of the moment in Nebraska being “decornification.”
Here’s
’s summary of the situation:When we’re talking about economic growth and energy costs there is a pretty obvious causal link, because energy underlies all economic activity. In industrial production, the link is especially clear: cheap energy stimulates more production.
It also stimulates more demand because people don’t need to spend half their salary on the electricity bill, which seriously compromises their capacity to afford pretty much anything else, besides food, and even that is becoming a problem.
The media likes to blame Putin for Germany’s high energy prices, but the root cause is the increasing penetration of solar and wind on the grid. It’s directly leading to high electricity prices because it’s expensive to run a reliable grid on intermittent sources of power generation. It’s indirectly leading to high energy prices through unanticipated, yet entirely predictable, second order effects. With an inflated view of wind and solar’s potential, Germany exited nuclear power, banned domestic fracking, and stupidly committed themselves to cheap Russian gas. Sure, Putin made the problem worse, but he only exploited a self-inflicted weakness. Don’t blame the man that lit the match, blame the men that poured kerosene on a field of dry hay in front of a pyromaniac.
Without additional context, it’s easy to see how “33% of our country’s electricity comes from wind and solar” reinforces the worldview that wind and solar are the undisputed energy sources of the future.
While we see the Energy Barnum Effect typically being used to support the false idea of a necessary and inevitable energy transition, it can very easily be used to push other energy-related propaganda. If you don’t want to be made into a sucker, keep these things in mind when you inevitably encounter energy charts, tables, and statistics:
Be skeptical and seek context: It’s easy to think, “that’s probably misleading bullshit” when you see a fact supporting a cause you disagree with. However, we think it’s equally important (if not more) to have this mentality when reading facts that are aligned with your worldview. What tradeoffs are being hidden? What is the broader context? If the situation sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Consider universality: Is the fact giving the false impression that it’s universally applicable to all situations? Does it apply to only one moment in time? Or to one particular country or region? The easiest lesson in test-taking is that “universals are rarely true.”
Pause and reflect: Understand your biases. Recognize that confirmation bias might influence your interpretation of general facts. Try to absorb the fact but don’t immediately jump to conclusions. Take a walk around the block, eat a carrot muffin, and then revisit the information. Sometimes, time away helps you see the forest through the trees.
So much of solving difficult energy issues isn’t about getting the facts right, it’s about getting the thinking right. Understanding how thinking errors occur and how to avoid them is critical to changing hearts and minds. The winning strategy is often changing how people think, not how many facts they know. There are plenty of energy “experts” out there spouting facts. With the right thinking, you’ll be able to separate the true experts from the fraudsters utilizing the Energy Barnum Effect.
Cheers to the facts that are totally true and totally useless! 🍻