The reason you are being downvoted is because your argument basically boils down to having an unreasonably narrow definition of what “efficient” means. In context, it’s obvious that “efficiency” here is the ratio between the amount of heat provided and the amount of energy spent. You might call it EER, I might call it COP, but it’s irrelevant because in context the word “efficient” is unambiguous.

Narrow interpretations of definitions to support a point don’t actually provide much useful insight to the topic being discussed, and are seen as distracting. So these non-useful comments are being downvoted to make them less visible. It is not an issue of whether they are technically correct.

You could probably make an interesting point about the electrical efficiency of heat pumps, or you could make a comment about terminology and explain that “technically” the correct term is X, but instead you chose to interpret a term in a way that contradicts the contextually obvious meaning and then base an argument on top of that.

My account is rate limited. Responding here, then going away.

"arrow interpretations of definitions to support a point don’t actually provide much useful insight to the topic being discussed, and are seen as distracting. So these non-useful comments are being downvoted to make them less visible. It is not an issue of whether they are technically correct."

Except, I'm not arguing for or against a "point", only that the terminology was wrong. But it does matter, because it leads to confusion, and if you stop to think about it for longer than it takes to jab at the downvote button, the reason why it matters is interesting.

It's not that people here are thinking about the subject carefully, they're just disagreeing reflexively.

If your goal was to argue that the terminology is wrong, then you’ve made some errors in formulating that argument—both logical errors and social errors. We all like a good pedant but you have to be upfront about it and explain why using the correct terminology is important. You failed to do either, instead, your arguments appeared to be arguments about conclusions rather than arguments about definitions:

> Heating via electrical resistance is 100% efficient. All energy goes into generating heat. There is no loss.

This sounds a bit coy, doesn’t it? It’s a bit suspicious that heat pumps are completely omitted from your comment, and it’s also a bit suspicious that explicit discussion about terminology is omitted, and instead the definitions are included as a presumption. Putting the main point of your argument into a presumption of the actual text of your argument is nothing short of poor form (i.e. rude) if done purposefully, and the rest of the argument built on top of these presuppositions is boring and uninformative.

If you can imagine a better approach, consider discussing the terminology and definitions directly, and then explaining why sloppy terminology can cause confusion. You have still not explained why the terminology is so important here. Instead, you’ve made the following statements:

> …if you stop to think about it for longer than it takes to jab at the downvote button, the reason why it matters is interesting.

> It's not that people here are thinking about the subject carefully, they're just disagreeing reflexively.

Consider whether these statements make claims about the internal thought processes of people who disagree with you, and whether making claims about how other people think will further whatever goals you have commenting on this site.

> Except, I'm not arguing for or against a "point", only that the terminology was wrong.

The problem is, the terminology is only wrong if you take an extremely narrow approach of "heating" being "generating heat". But it's quite obvious that we are discussing heating of an enclosed space. And it doesn't actually matter at all whether that heat being placed into the closed space was generated from raw energy within the enclosed space, or moved from externally into the enclosed space. And if there is no difference between these two options, you can achieve greater than 100% efficiency between energy-spent and heat-provided by moving the heat.

> It's not that people here are thinking about the subject carefully, they're just disagreeing reflexively.

Voting isn't specifically for correctness/incorrectness, but encompasses many things. In this specific case, I think the voting reasoning or on your comments can be likely be summarized as "is the comment contributing usefully to the discussion, or providing useful or insightful information in some other way". I think people aren't viewing your comments in this discussion as providing that, and some people may believe they are actually the opposite.

The only reason behind that difference is because it's not generating heat, but moving heat. The difference to users is unimportant. As long as BTUs are pumped into / out of their closed environment, their needs are being met.

And the bottom line is that for the same unit of energy used to generate 1 BTU from resistance heating, we can move several BTUs.

EDIT: I'd also like to note that heat pump systems which include resistance heating systems will typically mark them as "emergency heating". Because they are less efficient, unless it's so brutally cold outside that the heat pump has dropped below 1 EER or can't even operate properly.

EDIT2: I forgot that the units in SEER are not the same on both sides of the ratio. (That is, it's not actually a ratio, since those are supposed to be unitless.) So my original "13+ BTUs" was high. Changed it to a non-descript weasel-word instead.

This one I don't agree with. Heat pumps are typically a few multiples as efficient in terms of KW in to heat BTUs out. I'm not sure what useful point you are trying to make with this particular comment.

I often find that it surprised people to realize that a heat pump is effectively >100% efficient.