Thread by @homemadeguitars

Here's how technological "progress" works:
First came the Otto Cycle - internal combustion. Heat engine.
Then they put wings under it. Heat engine.
Then they polished them all up. Cadillac Escalade, Airbus A380, so forth.
Exact same principles. Heat engines.

2. They had electric cars from the git-go, but electricity isn't able to be stored at the high densities available in fossil fuels. We wanted to go farther faster. Fossil fuels.
Still all the exact same principles we've understood since about 1700. We just got better at execution

3. None of these things have changed at all. A Tesla represents a high level of development of principles we've understood since the 18th and 19th centuries.
Those principles are sound. They work every time. You can apply them using thousands of different techniques.

4. All the promises of "innovation" and "future tech" are based on the false idea that we will suddenly discover new principles, that the laws of energy and motion that move cars, trucks, boats, and airplanes, will be magically superceded between now and <your imaginary year>

5. And therefore we will miraculously attain Net Zero by <imaginary year>.
The principles that make an A380 able to take off at OVER A MILLION POUNDS are not being superceded. They are so valid and so absolute that they enable a million pounds to fly ten miles a minute. They work

6. This guy either totally fails to understand these long known and established principles of energy and motion, or he's lying to you.
Or he really believes in out-and-out magic. He believes in Warp Speed.
Why not? It's on TV!

7. This is why nobody ever takes me up on my offer to listen to their energy budget. Why nobody ever responds with facts to my challenge.
They have no facts.

8. They have no fact. All they have is make-believe and a firm message that all the principles which made the 20th and 21st centuries possible are not absolute, are not firm. All we need is for Elon Musk to wave some money at it and there will be an ENTIRELY NEW SET OF PRINCIPLES

9. Y'all think I'm a Luddite, but what I really am is a hardboiled technician.
I have spent my whole life applying the known principles of energy and motion to machines that didn't work, thereby making them work again.
The principles are sound.

10. I officially give up.
Since they know, just like I do, that under the principles of matter and energy as we know them, they are lying, but they go right on doing it, and since they are better at lying than I am at telling the truth, I accept the following:

11. Developed societies are not going to fix climate change. They are not going to try. They refuse to apply the principles that caused / are causing it to solving it; instead, they promise you new ones.
They call this "innovation."
My advice: don't beget children.
Out.

PS I left out steam, but it's still the same principles. Heat engine.