Thread by @homemadeguitars

I got these reply from Levin of Indigo and I am grateful for them.
This is the kind of sensible question I always hope for.

2. The short answer is, I cannot point at any research which proves my case. Also cannot point at any research which disproves my case. To the best of my knowledge no researcher has done a study of how much energy, resources, and time it will require to build the system.

3. I have been asking someone to show me how much energy it's going to take. Nobody has. And I can't prove a word of what I say.
To make that worse, I have no formal education beyond high school. I do read a lot.
But - here's a story. nopackagedeals.com/2016/12/17/my-…

4. I took a moment and reread that in the Twitter context, and I still stand behind it.
So - about that math.
Right now today we have too much carbon in the atmosphere, and it's having obvious detrimental outcomes.
Right now today.
I think we need to reduce our emissions now.

5. It would be a million times more valuable to reduce our emissions tomorrow by some tiny but replicable amount, than to increase our emissions tomorrow.
That is a made-up number. A judgement call. Agree or disagree, because this is an inflection point.

6. Tomorrow, do we reduce or increase our emissions?
The only thing we can do to reduce our emissions tomorrow is slow down.
This is an empirical fact. Disprove or accept.
We know where we emit carbon.

7. The operative word is "tomorrow."
Do we increase or reduce tomorrow.
Slowing down is the only way period. This is physics. Laws of thermodynamics stuff. I know for sure some degreed scientists follow me. None will dispute that.
The renewables stuff is about reductions someday

8. It does not require a study to know that every manufactured object has what is called "embedded energy" in it. This is the energy it took to make that thing.
If you add one thing to what you manufactured yesterday you will embed more energy in that thing that otherwise

9. have had to be generated. This is foundational to every manufacturing process.
The industrial age was the invention of burning hydrocarbons and embedding the resultant heat energy in products.
Globally "industry" is 21%.
Industry is where new seas of glass and steel come from.

10. So you get this.

11. So rather than accept the challenge to prove my obvious heuristics, I return it:
I say that if we make any renewable energy capture source tomorrow we will emit carbon by that act, carbon which is in addition to all the baseline carbon if we didn't make it.
Disprove.

12. The next question is, tomorrow is too high a hill. You can't mean tomorrow.
Well, yeah, if we gave a shit, given that we know everything we need to know to get out of this, I'd say tomorrow is more like "about fucking time."
But that's me.

13. But if not tomorrow, when? When does the break-even point come?
I've seen people on here blaming it in the fossil fuel energy companies because "They won't shut their plants down."
Um. Remember last winter in Texas?
We need to build up to that kind of stuff
Or slow down to it

14 In history, major public works projects have taken decades. And no public works project anywhere has ever been as big as "Replace all the fossil fuel power plants on Earth with solar and wind."
I want somebody to stand up and say, "OK, Wiseass, here's how much energy it will

15. Take to replace all the generating plants on Earth, and all 2 billion (current global stock) cars with electric cars with big lumps of rare earth metals in them.
Then I want to know how you're powering ocean freight. Specifically.
And when.

16. I once built (for instance) an entire telephone system and computer network in an empty building which would then become a rural hospital - just that one project, almost entirely alone, helped when necessary - took a big hunk of a year. Wires inside walls and over ceilings

17. And drilling 4" holes through 8" concrete floors to run pipes through, to run cables through...
Americans just snap their fingers.
I challenge any living scientist or technologist to describe a realistic path to reduced emissions in a decade, and we have already established

17. That we are going to spend that decade emitting more CO2 than we would if we just put our hands in our pockets and did not build the renewable energy behemoths and the highways to haul them on.
All the plans are increase, increase, increase, all the while

18. And claim that we're doing it for the climate.
Emitting for the climate.
Killing for peace.
Fucking for virginity.
The reason they won't release the numbers is because they're salesmen, and the really don't believe, deep down in their hearts, that it's real.

19. We all pretend we don't know how this works.
Yes, concrete has cement in it, and yes, cement is a big emitter, but we've *absolutely got* to be able to simultaneously run six 80,000 pound trucks and 30 cars across this steel and concrete bridge at a mile a minute, so 🤷

20. There aren't two days under discussion here, there is only one.
Tomorrow. The other side is offering you never. And immediate increases.
Anyone disprove this. Making things emits carbon. Speed emits carbon. We can slow down now and reduce emissions.
Disprove.