QTRS April 17, 2025

Graphs and interesting content for the curious

As I see it…

One of the things I wonder about is how many stupid things an organization has to do to lose credibility. Outlier actions or the views of a small group can earn an organization a negative reputation even if it isn’t the majority of what they do or think. For example, do all liberals look down on the working class? I don’t think so, but enough of them do for liberals to gain that reputation. As another example, The New York Times has done more than enough to earn a reputation as elitist and continues to reinforce it with articles like To Escape the Grind, Young People Turn to ‘Mini-Retirements.’ (4/10/2025)

As I see it, articles like this reinforce the NYT's reputation as elitist and out of touch but also have the ability to warp the reality of readers. Here’s the idea and first paragraph (bold mine).

Now, many younger workers are opting not to wait until retirement, and are leaving an extended gap between jobs to invest in other parts of their life. But not everyone wants to call it a sabbatical: Some people prefer the term “mini-retirement” or “micro-retirement.”

“Many” is a really lazy word. What does that really mean—100s, 1000s, or more? The fact is the author probably has no idea whatsoever. This use of “many” can lead readers to think that “mini-retirements” are much more common than they really are.

Ms. Falls did not have significant debt, and she knew she could move in with her parents if she ran out of money.

If you have the money, sure, do whatever you want, but I find it a bit self-centered that this person is comfortable, at age 27, taking a “mini-retirement” with the idea of having parents support her if need be. I find it somewhat self-centered to quit work with the expectation that your parents will pick up the slack if necessary for support. Fall on hard times, and of course a parent would help out, if they can, but to take an extended vacation, please.

The gap between those who can take “mini-retirements” and those who can't is more troubling, and there is no acknowledgment of this. Maybe the farmers and truckers that keep you fed should all take a season off? Or maybe the police and firefighters should do the same? Take a moment and consider what working-class people that we really need—you know, the ones that couldn’t stop going to work during COVID—would think of reading this article.

Minimally, the article could provide statistics about income demonstrating how this “mini-retirement” is out of reach for well more than half of society and probably more like 90%. At least that would add some reality to the article and prevent it from being completely dismissive of the working class. Another intriguing point is that all the examples and photos feature women.

I read this article shaking my head. Why does the NYT do this to itself? They only need to do a few of these articles a year to continue to be perceived as elitist and out of touch while at the same time fueling class resentment.

What do you think? Am I overreacting?

Let’s go to some data.

Challenges for EVs

Gallup reports on the interest in owning an EV in U.S. Electric Vehicle Interest Steady at Lower 2024 Level (4/8/2025). In the table they provide, they lump Might Consider in their total on the right. I would argue that Might Consider is more of a probably not and a response someone gives because they think they shouldn’t say Would Not Buy. If we focus on the Already Own and Seriously Considering groups, the interest in owning an EV is down to 11% from 16% in the previous two years. I would not call that “steady at lower 2024 level.” The idea that the U.S. car fleet is going to become a majority of EVs anytime soon is delusional.

Another peculiar statistic in this data is the decline in the Already Own percentage from 7% last year to 3% this year. The change makes no sense. It could just be an artifact of sampling variability, or maybe last year was off. Or maybe those on the left outraged at Musk refuse to acknowledge owning a Tesla. Either way, EVs are not a popular option at the moment.

The higher ed male gap

As higher education faces a sharp and then continuing decline in high school graduates, they continue to mostly ignore a large cohort of possible students: males. Males have been underrepresented in college since the early 1980s. Here is a full overview: The male college issue (10/15/2024). Unfortunately, males don’t fit the liberal narrative of an underrepresented group, even though on college campuses it is true.

A recent Pew article, The Gender Gap in Teen Experiences (3/13/2025), provides this chart that shows the challenges higher education faces if it ever wakes up and looks to try and attract more males. Less than half of 13-17-year-old males plan to attend a 4-year college after high school. If I were a college president, on my agenda would be how to change this narrative and look at programs that males might find attractive. Here is my tip: Consider technical fields and programs that get them out of a chair and a traditional classroom. It doesn’t have to be all the time but enough (relates to my point in As I See It above).

The positive spin on renewables

Every publication has its bias. My bias is to just contradict everything. RMI is overly optimistic about anything renewable. Here is their first graph in the article Five Takeaways from the IEA’s 2024 Global Energy Review (4/16/2025), published by the IEA. I’ll just note that as long as we add fossil fuel use, we add to CO₂ emissions. Renewables, so far, are mostly adding to energy consumption and not replacing fossil fuels. I’ve written two articles about this recently: World energy production by source (4/1/2025) and Have CO2 emissions plateaued? (4/15/2025)

As an aside, I have issues with publications like RMI that don’t provide links to the sources. There isn’t a link to the IEA 2024 Global Energy Review, and there are no direct links to the pages where the graphs come from. This isn’t just poor form but gives the impression that RMI does not want readers to verify their sources. Be wary of publications that don’t link directly to their sources.

U.S. oil production

Related to the above is this from the eia. We are going to pump out every last drop of oil we can. Bet on it.

Electricity use

The iea has a monthly newsletter that arrives by email, and there isn’t a corresponding webpage to link to. The graph here shows the increase in electricity consumption. For example, in 2023 the world added about 625 TWh of electricity consumption, while in 2024 the addition was about 1100 TWh. Google tells me renewables were responsible for 858 TWh of additional electricity. Here is what we wanted electricity for (bold mine):

The jump was driven by record global temperatures, which boosted demand for cooling in many countries – as well as by rising power consumption from industry, the electrification of transport, and the growth of data centres and artificial intelligence. As a result, electricity use in advanced economies increased after years of stagnation or decline in many of them. This came on top of robust rises in electricity demand in China, India, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and other emerging and developing economies.

Graph of the week

This comes from the paper Migratory Birds Advance Spring Arrival and Egg-Laying in the Arctic, Mostly by Travelling Faster (4/9/2025). Here is part of the abstract:

We studied changes in migration and reproduction timing in 12 populations of nine migratory birds, including seabirds, shorebirds, birds of prey and waterfowl breeding at Arctic sites bordering the Greenland and Barents Sea, a region undergoing rapid climate warming. The timing of migration and reproduction was derived from tracking and field data and analysed to study (1) how timing has changed in response to the changing moment of snowmelt at the breeding grounds and (2) what adjustments in migration strategies this involved. We found that in years with early snowmelt, egg-laying in multiple populations advanced, but only two waterfowl populations also advanced arrival in the Arctic. In contrast, arrival in the Arctic generally advanced with time, even when snowmelt or egg-laying dates did not advance. Earlier arrival with time was mostly explained by populations traveling to the Arctic faster, likely spending less time at stopover sites. Inability to forecast conditions in the Arctic may limit birds to adjust migration timing to annually varying snowmelt, but we show that several species, particularly waterfowl, are able to travel faster and advance the timing of migration over the years. The question remains whether this reflects adaptations to Arctic climate change or other factors, for example, environmental changes along the migratory route.

Caption: Annual average date of arrival in the Arctic (dots) and date of egg-laying (triangles) with time, with vertical lines showing standard deviations for six Arctic populations (a-f) with data for at least 5 years. Symbol and line colours and shapes are as described in Figure 2. Lines show slopes (output from GLMMs) in the date of arrival/egg-laying with time.

Data center energy demands

Just astonishing (4/16/2025):

Electricity demand across the Texan market is set to rise to up to 218GW by 2031, according to the latest estimate from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the state's grid operator.

The projected increase represents a growth of 150GW compared to the current peak demand record of 85.5GW set during 2023's record breaking heat wave.

It is going to take “many” (yeah, my favorite word) solar panels and wind farms to manage this.

The spinning CD

Please share and like

Sharing and liking posts attracts new readers and boosts algorithm performance. I appreciate everything you do to support Briefed by Data.

Comments

Please let me know if you believe I expressed something incorrectly or misinterpreted the data. I'd rather know the truth and understand the world than be correct. I welcome comments and disagreement. We should all be forced to express our opinions and change our minds, but we should also know how to respectfully disagree and move on. Send me article ideas, feedback, or other thoughts at briefedbydata@substack.com.

Bio

I am a tenured mathematics professor at Ithaca College (PhD in Math: Stochastic Processes, MS in Applied Statistics, MS in Math, BS in Math, BS in Exercise Science), and I consider myself an accidental academic (opinions are my own). I'm a gardener, drummer, rower, runner, inline skater, 46er, and R user. I’ve written the textbooks “R for College Mathematics and Statistics” and “Applied Calculus with R.” I welcome any collaborations. I welcome any collaborations.