Well, my friends, Saturday afternoon. I'm in a new spot. Regarding my writing.
I've always written. Twitter is a place to put it where (so far) they don't charge me for the privilege.
Back before the internet, people used to pay me to write. Not a lot. Couple hundred bucks/year.
2. I've had a bunch of websites, blogs, essay sites, but I don't have the drive and focus to write long form anymore. I'm not sure if it's age, reefer, or Twitter. Or all three.
But.
They signed our death warrant yesterday. So, there's nothing down that road anymore.
3. I've always known it was pointless, but now it's like, it's all climate denial. All the talk about "for the climate" is the most profound and pernicious denial of all.
Nothing ever done in the United States will pay back this infrastructure project.
Kiss it goodbye.
Hang on.
4. In the first place, I know this is not obvious or widely understood, but everything we make, we make with fossil fuels.
That's where all these fucking emissions come from. It's not a different plane.
5. "Don't electric cars make up for it?"
No. Electric cars are things we make with fossil fuels. The more of them we make the more fossil fuels we use.
It takes more fossil fuels to make an electric car than a gasoline car.
Someday... All the savings are someday.
All the ⛽ now.
6. All the concrete highways ever poured, without exception, were built to enable more traffic to move faster.
If the highways didn't have the real energy costs that the do have, they would still be a net loss for the ecosystem.
The more we degrade the ecosystem the worse it gets
7. Without exception, everything in that bill that is "for the climate" is based on the permanent maintenance of business as usual.
There is no thing anywhere in that bill, not one dollar of expense, that is not based on high levels of fossil fuel energy. All of it.
Suicide.
8. The President did this because he's an old fashioned Democratic President. He wants to give all the working guys like me, the ones who chose not to go to college, good jobs they can live on. That's all this is. Make work. But it's high energy make work.
9. I could put more people to work, sooner, in more different locales, than he is, for no more dollar cost.
We've got $1.3 Trillion to piss away here.
Since 100% of all the products come from corporate America, you can figure at least $700 billion goes in executive pockets.
10. I would park every road district tractor in America, and hire people at $25.00 an hour to do the same work with hand tools.
That's fifty grand a year. Say we hire 2 million rednecks and former coal miners. I can't do the math, but - it would immediately reduce emissions.
11. As far as I can see, either almost nobody in America knows about concrete and CO2, or we all don't give a shit.
I think it's the latter.
It's "Yeah, I know, someday we're fucked, but I've gotten used to the West burning, and I'm in a hurry, and..."
12. I took my girls out and drove around the country block, two miles of gravel and two miles of 55 mph blacktop. They were good. They trotted almost the whole way, and didn't need to be pushed into it. They actually started trotting without instruction, so I told them to. 😁
13. We emptied the manure spreader first, then we went on a long tour of the east property, both sides of the creek, then I aimed them down the gravel road away from home. After walking a few thousand yards, maybe, they picked up a trot. Donkeys trot easy, no waste motion.
14. Fair amount of traffic on the blacktop on Saturday afternoon. Got passed by a couple of semis coming towards us. Semis push a lot of wind; it's significant to the girls. But they're brave. Settling in. We do the same block each time out right now, so there are fewer variables
15. except the traffic. So they can adjust to one thing at a time.
One day I'm going to come out of the gravel road and instead of turning right into the country block, I'm going to turn left and head into Richmond. I've been that way only about 2/10 of a mile, this clip.
16. So I've got them, and my biome where I live, to keep me sane.
But I swear, seeing the celebrations on Twitter this morning was just... I could weep.
And so many people have been convinced that all this manufacturing, Earth moving, mining, blasting, all this fossil power, is
17. For the climate.
Well, yes, in a way, but ... Not like you think.
I'm in a different place now. Talk of climate action fills me with the same sort of rage that getting stuck behind me in traffic gives other people.
We're not. Seriously. We've chosen our road.
Ride on.
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What I would like to see happen is for young people to form intentional communities of what I have been calling Apocalypse Amish.
I'm the founding preacher.
First came Menno Simons. Menno was a Protestant when it was still a new thing, back in old Europe.
He read the book -
2. Protestants got to read it for themselves - and he said, We Christians are too attached to the World. We are competing economically, and also for social status, with non-believers. We must focus on our Community of Believers, and not wear fancy clothes or shiny things.
3. And, Menno said, Children cannot understand baptism or belief, so only adult baptism counts.
And his followers all got Baptized again as adults.
And they took his name, and became Menno-nites.
And the neighbors burned their houses down, but that's a separate path from tonight.
She says the lower curve is the one we should take, but the upper curve is the one we are taking.
If only.
This happy upper curve implies we reduce our emissions by small amounts starting now, instead of big amounts starting now.
Yeah, like I said, if only.
Here's emissions now.
Not dropping
And yesterday the US celebrated what will be the biggest single increase in the 21st century.
Ramifications of slowing.
I write about slowing, as regular readers know. Just for fun, here's some of the outcomes one would see from slowing.
First, immediate reduction in energy throughput.
Speed is literally a form of energy. To "make" speed, we convert other forms of energy.
2. So, the less speed you make, the less energy you use.
With automobiles, moving vehicles, there is a second factor in air resistance. The resistance of air to moving vehicles is a big deal, and makes a big difference in the fuel cost of motion at varying speeds. Fast is worse.
3. So like, in my Subaru Forester, driving to Kansas City (about 40 miles of open highway) at 60 mph, I get 33.0 mph, but at 55 mph I get 34.2 mpg. By the car's calculations. About fifty miles one way, I reduced my CO2 by over 30 pounds, at 22 lbs/gallon. Not big, but... Real.
A couple of recent "Nobody will do this" replies pretty much brought me to a halt on climate tweets.
I'm pretty sure I've noticed something real, something few others have noticed. I'm not saying I'm special, or smart, but I have noticed this thing, about how life is made of C,
2. Carbon, and we've killed off almost all the life and the air is all full of carbon.
And we need to get rid of the carbon.
And the way we could approach that is by a two step process in which we immediately reduce our energy throughput / consumption / use / demand, and do life.
3. We take the same intelligence, the same cleverness, the same curiousity and creativity, and apply it to enhancing and restoring complex ecosystems worldwide. Every plant that grows, every animal that eats it, every microbe and every giant Sequoia, is made largely of carbon.
I've got a 25 minute harnessing video uploading, a different camera angle, so different things are visible. We went out around the block today, but I didn't video that.
Clara does a beautiful stance at one point to give you an opportunity to admire her beauty and see the details of her harness.
She's a really smart creature. The more in to this she gets the better she gets at it.
First we went out and emptied the manure spreader, which is an every few days task. It lives outside the stall, and I shovel manure into it until it gets full, usually 2-3 days, says 25 bushels but I don't fill it to the brim.
I've got a plan to add a drawbar to the work cart,
Not retweeting, but copy and paste:
I seriously wonder what the people participating in the COP event are thinking.
They're as full of shit as a Christmas goose. They're telling the same lies they've been telling all along.
Do they know they're not telling the truth?
I don't know
The reason I want to start here again is, theoretically we know - our leaders in government and academy, we - that climate change is already out of hand.
Didn't the IPCC tell us that a few months ago?
I mean, yeah, Donald Trump and all that shit, but -
The IPCC puts out reports.
3. And all the world leaders and their pet technocrats flew to Scotland to talk about it, and it's *all*...
Increasing emissions now.
Not by a little. By a lot.
Increasing fossil fuel use now. To make things which, we are assured, will reduce our emissions ☁️ 🌪️ someday 🌪️☁️