Thread by @homemadeguitars

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.

https://twitter.com/ClimateHuman/status/1420833672475856896

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.

4. The more energy applied to a given object, any physical object aka "mass", the more motion will occur.
Even temperature is motion. The more energy you apply to a mass, the more something will move. Heat energy is motion internal to the mass: molecules move, faster and farther.

5. A thermometer - the old kind - literally responds to moving molecules striking it. The more molecules which strike it, and the faster they are moving / harder they hit it, the higher the column of liquid in the thermometer 🌡️ is driven.
Energy = motion.

6. We refer to the internal energy in an apparently motionless object as it's "temperature." As "thermal energy." Colloquially we call it "heat" although to a physicist it's only heat when it moves and does work (more or less.)
The other common form of energy in mass is kinetic.

7. Kinetic energy is motion. The greater the kinetic energy in an object the faster and/or farther it will move.
Horsepower, for instance, is a measure of how much mass moves how far how fast. A measure of applied energy. It means the same as "watt" but the numbers are different.

8. One horsepower is the amount of work done to life 550 pounds one foot in one second.
If you lift 550 pounds six inches in one second, that ½ horsepower.
If you lift it one foot in 2 seconds, that's ½ horsepower.
If you lift 250 pounds 1 foot in one second, ½ horsepower.

Mass, distance, time. Increase any number the required energy goes up.
Lifting 550 pounds two feet in one second is two horsepower. Horsepower is not energy, it is "work" which is energy, applied to mass, based on time.
Work requires energy. Due to inefficiencies, as work rises,

10. Energy required rises faster. There is no process in the real world which is 100% energy efficient, that is to say you can never convert all the energy in a process to work. Friction. Leakage. What makes the exhaust coming out your tailpipe hot is waste energy. Has to be.

11. When someone says, "Limit energy," the next question is, ok, by what process?
Let's say we limit how many gallons of gasoline you can buy in a week. Directly limit your access to energy.
How does that work? Well, we have to track you, individually, your purchases.

12. Some big computer has to keep track of your purchases. What if you use a different credit card? What if you use cash? Or worse, what if you're fifty miles from home when your week's allocation runs out? You can't take the bus - that's energy. Train? Energy. So,

13. presumably, either you can't go home until next week or next month, or we have to make provision to allocate you extra energy, possibly with the caveat that you have to face balancing restrictions in the future.
Complicated. Some might say Draconian.

14. Speed is energy. Speed is energy as surely as heat is. You buy fossil fuels, where solar energy, through photosynthesis, was converted to chemical energy. We put the fossil fuel energy through a chemical process (called "burning") which converts a portion

15. Of the chemical energy to heat energy.
A device technically known as a "heat engine", in turn, converts a portion of the resultant heat energy to motion. To kinetic energy.
This is, for instance, how we "make" or "generate" electricity. Usually.

16. The way you cause an electric current to flow is, you pass (move) a conductor through a magnetic field. So at the heart of (almost) every "generating plant" is a heat engine, coupled to a coil of copper wire, inside a magnetic field. The heat engine spins the wire,

17. The copper conductors cut through the magnetic lines of force, electrons flow in the wire, and Voilá! Let there be light.
And Bitcoin.
And air conditioning.
Nuclear power plants are heat engines too, exactly the same, except they cause atoms to disintegrate, freeing energy,

18. which heats water and... Same trIck.
Solar panels work all different but I'm not going there today.
Wind turbines work the same - move a coil of wire across a magnetic field. But the coil's a lot smaller so it takes way more of them.
But back to speed. As the action point.

19. Once you involve cars this all gets slightly more complex. There is a reason scientists use simplified things like "black body radiation" and "perfect gas" simulations in research: the real world is incomprehensibly complex and introduces variables beyond measure. As do cars.

20. Repairmen, unfortunately, have to fix stuff in the real world with all the incalculable variables included. Therefore we use heuristics rather than hard numbers, stuff like that. And we don't write for peer review. Does it work, yes or no? If yes, next repair. If no, try agin

21. The faster a car goes, the more resistance it meets to its motion. Air resistance in particular. We don't often think of it, as we drive 70 miles an hour down the freeway, but it you take a stationary object and move air 70 mph against it, it often blows down. 70 mph wind. 🌬️

22. So, after your car gets above some speed, usually around 35 mph but possibly as high as 45 or so, it takes additional fuel per unit of speed to increase. You have to add more heat - more gasoline or diesel - to get from 55 to 60 than to get from 25 to 30. Efficiency. Losses.

23. But at the lower end - say between 10 mph and 15 mph - other inefficiencies kick in. Most cars are more efficient at 30 mph on a given piece of road than that same car can be at 10 mph. Because of design parameters. Engine efficiencies. Rolling resistance. Friction. Variables

24. But efficiency isn't the sole measure. Let's say efficiency is measured in distance * time. Miles covered per gallon of gasoline per hour. But.
We don't live by the mile. We live by the hour.
And Earth's atmosphere doesn't fill up with crud by the mile we travel, but by time.

25. Let's say I, personally, emit 200 pounds of carbon a day. Just a number, not a statement of fact. OK, the atmosphere doesn't "care" whether I went 200 miles or 20 miles. One day, 200 pounds more carbon. Days add up. As time, not as distance.

26. Let's say you drive a Ford Expedition that gets 12 miles per gallon, regardless of speed. Pretend. Like a scientist with a "perfect gas."
Gasoline emits roughly 20 pounds of CO2 per gallon burned. (Heuristics.) 240 pounds per mile @ 12 mpg.

27. If you drive our Perfect Expedition at 50 mph, you will emit (20*12*50) 12,000 pounds of CO2 per hour. If you drive it for ten hours, you will have emitted 120,000 pounds of CO2 that day.
During that day you didn't emit any non-driving CO2 because you were busy. Driving.

28. Let's say you slow to 40. Now you're down to 9600 pounds an hour. 96,000 pounds for the day.
You reduced your day's emissions by 24,000 pounds.
You still weren't able to go emit any other carbon that day. On that day, this chart sloped up slightly less. And that day is gone.

29. Yet if, at the end of the day, you're still 50 miles from home (remember the gasoline rationing result?) it's OK. You drive another hour plus, you're home, no sweat. You're tireder than you would have been, but it's OK. Maybe you'll plan better next time.

30. Let's say we've been reducing the speed limit, annually, for several years, and you can only drive your Perfect Expedition at 12 mph. One gallon per hour.
That one's easy.
20*1 = 20. 20 pounds of CO2 per hour.
Ten hours? 200 pounds.

31. But... What if the grocery store is ten miles away?
No sweat. You got there in less than an hour.
The distances we now cover are the result of the speeds we travel. If we systematically, gradually, recursively, reduce speeds, and admit up front we're committed to it, 5 mph yr

32. We've had over a decade now to build new stores, provide services at accessible distances at the rates of speed we have planned for and accepted.
At very low energy expenditure. Very low upfront emissions.

33. There is no person alive, except those who profit from it, who think it is rational to catch salmon in Washington, ship them to China for processing, and ship them back to Washington for marketing. (Yes, we really do this.)
This in ONLY possible because of speed. Only. Period

34. Fifty years ago Richmond, where I live, was a booming community, with lots of stores, factories, farms, jobs, and money. Kansas City was two hours away and *way* too unhandy to go to often.
Now it's 45 minutes at speed limit + 10, and all the jobs are there.
Richmond = broke.

35. The speed didn't make everybody's jobs closer. It made them farther away.
Waste motion.
Waste energy.
We could break the back of the entire climate change machine by forcing it to slow down.
Absolutely.
Look at the records.

36. If we want to limit energy use, do it now, do it realistically, do it for real, the action point is speed.
Mass times distance times rate = energy consumption. Period. Disprove or accept.

37. Just quick, read my pinned tweet.

https://twitter.com/homemadeguitars/status/1419329434616619013?s=19

38. Here's how we limit fossil fuel use, by steps:
Step 1: admit the crisis and admit that the laws of thermodynamics work always everywhere.
Step 2: announce an intention to recursively reduce, and strictly enforce, speed limits in all developed societies.

39. Step 3: Reduce all speed limits by 5 mph or metric equivalent, per year, until nothing anywhere goes faster than a running horse.
No matter what powers it. Ignore that.
Step 4: figure out an equivalent means to shrink to vanishing air travel.

40. Step 5: Without the current high speed land shipping, merchandise throughput would be forced to shrink drastically and services would automatically localize.
Speed is in conflict with localization and will always win.

41. At walking speeds, all necessary transportation could be powered by food, which is roughly 50% atmospheric carbon.
Animals manufacture themselves at no carbon emissions.
Animal powered tools can easily last 100 years or more, drastically driving down necessary manufacturing.

41. OK. Step by step, that's how I do it.
How does the other system work? Step by step, specific actions?
A pound of action is worth more than a ton of talk.
Later.