I'm going to run through screenshots of a conversation I just had with a highly paid climate professional.
He started with the normal climate tweet: "Take action now."
So I asked my usual annoying question. What action?
2. As usual, his response was not what I define as "action", but was, rather, a statement of end point goals.
You can see that he knew I wasn't going to be impressed.
Who on Earth could dispute "phase out GHG emissions?"
I had asked for "how" but he didn't want to discuss that.
3. So. What was my reply?
I still wanted him to name actions. Things people could do, as averse to words to say.
What is an action which furthers this goal? What comes next? Step 1, step 2, first you get the... Nah. We don't do that in the developed world.
4. No sweat. We've got a canned set of plans all laid out, like we have for the past 40 years. No sweat.
5. OK, now we're making progress.
Price on carbon is an action. Or anyway, "Pass legislation to apply a price on carbon in all global economies" would be an action.
I don't see it happening, but at least it's a specific action.
"GHG-free power" is not an action, it's a dream.
6. For instance, we've been building "GHG-free power" for two decades, the outcome of which has been a drastic increase in fossil fuel use and emissions. And it's all publicly documented.
7. Here is another record of recent "GHG-free power" in the current economy.
But back to our conversation.
Anyway - he asked me for my solution, so I told him. He ignored it, as do almost all publicly respectable climate professionals.
9. I went on to address his list.
He said "GHG-free veh" as an action.
That's a noun.
Presumably the action is, "Build, sell, and implement the infrastructure for..." so I addressed that.
This is considered poor form. Magic makes them, STFU.
10. As it happens I had recently addressed the "GHG-free veh" issue recently as well.
These are assumed to be powered by electricity.
OK, where does the electricity come from?
As it happens, Lawrence Livermore National Lab recently told us.
11. When in doubt, accuse the other of nefarious motives. "You sound like a fossil fuel mole..."
He doesn't care what I think. Magic will do it all, all we need is nouns, no verbs necessary.
12. The entire plan is to increase energy throughput, energy demand, and fossil fuel use, drastically, today, because if we increase it fast enough, long enough, we'll reach zero. I don't believe it, and nobody offers a convincing case for it either.
PS. When all else fails, unzip your trousers, pull out your PhD, and wave it around.
There can be no defense.

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More from @homemadeguitars

11 Sep
I'm sewing on my team lines this morning, adjusting them to more ideally fit the team, to make work more comfortable for all of us.
This provides me a productive task on which to focus, to keep my mind away from the poison of 21st century industrial America.
You can see here that I have made the lines so they split too far back and tend to hang up on the girls and their harness.
Here I have sewn them further up, and they are laying better to the task, but I think there's still room for improvement.
This is what I call "progress." To most of America "progress" is more high energy machines.
I guess it depends on your objective.
Read 4 tweets
10 Sep
My theory:
If there is any possibility of humankind escaping the worst of the doom we have signed up for (not a sure thing) that possibility lies in maximizing the biological carbon cycle.
There is lots of room for growth. We've killed and paved much of it.
2. Reducing our emissions will be an inevitable output of any serious effort to restore / regenerate / reactivate the global ecosystem / biosphere / carbon cycle.
All this high energy high volume giant scale machinery everyone wants to replace fossil fuels with - that's opposite.
3. We already have too much carbon in the atmosphere. I'm not going to defend that point.
If we want to survive, we take action to reduce that carbon directly, not by machinery that we have to emit carbon to build, but by photosynthesis at every level supported by other life.
Read 28 tweets
10 Sep
Observe the orange box, and the stripes into and out of it.
The orange box is electric generation. The stripes in are what powers it, and the stripes out are where the energy from it goes.
The biggest stripe, the light gray one, is the energy wasted ("rejected") by the process.
2. Now observe the largest pink box, the one at the bottom. Transportation. Observe the bands going into it from the left, which consists of, mostly, the dark green band, petroleum. And it's a big sucker.
Observe that the light gray output, wasted energy, is about 4 times as big,
3. As the dark gray band, "energy services," i.e. "What we wanted out of this process."
Now. Every day, often five to ten times per day, I see "electric vehicles" listed as "for the climate" to "reduce emissions."
Read 15 tweets
9 Sep
I tweeted this donkey story earlier today. I'm going to spin it, a related donkey story, and some thoughts together here. I welcome y'all to come along, but it may be a bumpy ride.
Many of the gate and corner posts on our place are rotting off. Wood does that. Some woods are very resistant, but it doesn't suit our economy to grow them. We need morebiggerbetterfaster. So these were all treated posts or old railroad ties.
They rot off 6" under the ground.
3. Phone poles do too. Climbing telephone people are trained to probe a pole with a long screwdriver, downward at a slant from ground level.
If the screwdriver goes in, don't climb it.
I've climbed it, because I was self employed and needed the work, but that's another story.
Read 22 tweets
9 Sep
True donkey story: 🧵
There was a spot on the road near home that Clara was afraid of.
Some scumbag had dumped a big old overstuffed recliner in the ditch there, and the way it had fallen there was a big black hole in the middle. Scared Clara something fierce.
2. I was going to take her on a lead rope, and take a pocket full of goodies, and walk down there and spend some time looking closely at it, let her see that it wasn't a threat, but the county finally came and hauled it away. So I thought it was all done.
3. As it turned out, though, between the fencerow tree line the neighbor's row of big bales in deep shade on the other side, the general darkness of the area, and the memory, she still always shied away from the spot. It's along part of our farm, so it was a recurring problem.
Read 16 tweets
8 Sep
Do y'all remember back in 2046 when Hurricane Ida hid Louisiana then did a twofer on New York and New Jersey?
What? That wasn't 2046? In was 2021?
What the fuck does having half of something in 2050 do for real people in real life?
Nada.
2. I can't understand why the people aren't up in arms.
Actually I can.
They have been hoodwinked with the biggest pack of science fiction feel-good ever written.
3. It's against the rules to discuss this, but that process - 50% of electricity by 2050 - starts with making it.
And making it is an energy intensive process.
And it's the very first process.
During that energy intensive period, we are planning to continue our current economy,
Read 29 tweets

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