The author of this article appears to believe that the things she demands can be built and installed without any increase in current fossil fuel generating capacity and emissions to do the work.
I'd like to see that explained. theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
2. We, as a nation, barely have enough generating capacity to serve the current demand.
This is why in various regions there are requests from electric utilities that users reduce their "peak" demand. Set the thermostat warmer to reduce A/C demand.
3. If 90% of new cars sold are electric, demand on fossil fuel generating facilities will increase.
If we launch a "Manhattan Project" scale, wind and solar powered, nationwide generating infrastructure, that construction will be powered by current technology.
It's what we have.
4. Unless there is a parallel scheduled reduction in electrical demand, current technology generation capacity will have to be increased.
Where renewables are being built now, fossil generating capacity must increase. Brand new coal powered plant in China pictured below.
5. And - none of it, none of what she demands, even if it were immaculately conceived and did not require factories, trucks, highways, or new power plants, even then - none of it reduces emissions this year, or next, or the one after that, or the next one...
By 2030, she claims.
6. Essentially nobody in the "climate activist" community knows that it takes energy to manufacture stuff, the bigger the stuff, the more energy.
Which we get from fossil fuels. Right now today.
Makes it seem easy.
It ain't.
Oh well.
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You can do all this with a four wheeler, but you can't hear the birds sing, y'know?
But they're quicker.
I'm not in a hurry.
Hitching them up took a couple minutes all told. Harnessing them takes longer. I don't have a current video.
This was a couple days ago. About 92° I think.
Those are beet pulp pellets they get, out of my cargo pocket & into their mouths. Animal feed, easy to handle. Output stream product of beet sugar production.
Peter replied to a thread I wrote yesterday. I say speed, Peter says energy.
They are two words for the same thing.
I am going to attempt to explain why I think focus on speed, particularly, as the visible expression of excess energy, and why speed offers the proper action point.
2. In the first place, I believe, and I think Peter does too, that we must intentionally, continually decrease our energy use as the only realistic means of reducing emissions. I do not believe that building so-called "renewable energy" installations can or will ever do this.
3. I explain my reasoning on the above statement elsewhere and am not going to address it here. That statement is today's starting point.
Energy causes action. Lacking an application of energy, nothing ever moves. This is the simplest physics.
I didn't take any video today. I had hard dangerous work to do, I had to do it with donkeys, a cart, and a pitchfork, out in the sun.
The reason it was dangerous is because
2. I had pretty much set myself up for this on purpose, with my eyes wide open.
To live like I live requires commitment. But I believe it to be possible, climate change and all, old age and all, within certain limits.
I bought hay this year. 200 square bales. That's not a year's
3. worth of hay for 3 standard donkeys on dry lot, or just barely.
I bought it, delivered and stacked inside my barn, from an honorable hay professional. Cost me $1075.00
I spend more than that on mower and tractor gas every year.
And now I'm safe. I do all I can, it's enough.
I invite my readers to read this article, with recommendations from some of the world's leading "climate thinkers."
In this thread I am going to specifically address their recommendations, via screenshot.
As a non-leading, totally unrespected, thinker. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
2. First, Peter Kalmus, @ClimateHuman. We follow each other. Here's all I could capture in one screenshot.
3. Taking just one clip from Peter...
Fossil Fuel must be capped and rationed. Fossil Fuel infrastructure must no longer be built.
Fossil fuels power 100% of all renewable energy infrastructure construction. If we choose to increase renewable construction we must increase fossil.
It is obvious that I view climate, the ecosystem, and humanity's options drastically differently from almost everyone else in the English speaking developed "climate aware" world.
"People won't..."
Yeah, about that.
What you're telling me is that, if someone went around all the
2. parking lots where the car-housed live, and said, "Here, if you want, I'll set you up with a tiny house, five acres, a donkey, and supervision to heal that land and sequester carbon, and enough money to live on," there wouldn't be any takers?
Is that what you mean by
3. "People won't"?
Or do you mean, "The people winning the high energy economy like it this way?"
Yeah, I know they do. They tell me so all the time.
Fictional Oval Office speech:
"My fellow Americans:
"My administration, in meetings with the leaders of France, Germany, Canada, and Mexico, has concluded that it is time to tell you, our citizens, the unvarnished truth about climate.
2. "There is not, today, any possibility that building a global renewable energy infrastructure to attain a hypothetical net zero emissions level in the foreseeable or likely future. The up-front production emissions can never be removed in the predicted emissions-free out years
3. "As you are aware, our national high speed transportation infrastructure is collapsing and can no longer safely carry the load we are putting on it.
"As you may not have been informed, building concrete based transportation infrastructure is one of the most emissions centric