Thread by @homemadeguitars

I have taken a break from speaking about actions which would be available to global developed societies if they wanted to reduce their GHG emissions.
There are several. It wouldn't be hard. It's just unthinkable.

2. If the urge strikes you to tell me people won't do this, please do not hit send on the tweet. The endless repetitions of that response have nearly forced me to quit this line of discussion. I cannot express the weight of the feeling of futility I carry. I actually care.

3. I already got it.
Fuck this. Lemme go catch my breath.
Y'all are beating me to death. I know you feel all-knowing, but I can't bear the weight of your collective certainty.
YOU DO REALIZE ALMOST EVERYONE IS GOING TO FUCKING DIE, RIGHT?

4. OK, where was I.
Our problem can be expressed as a problem of our value system. At its base we live in a system of kill everything so a quarter of humanity can be comfy. That's a values choice and 100% voluntary on a societal level.
Humans are about as individual as ants.

5. Well, we have more autonomy than ants. But we don't do well alone, we're a social animal. And our societies are based on this value system which says, Gee sorry we poisoned everything but look at all the toys.
And, basically, everyone in America says, "OK, fair trade-off."

6. But in a less philosophical and strictly physical sense, the problem is energy. We have an ecological crisis going on at the side where we convert energy for our use. Reminder: I know it sounds pedantic, but energy cannot be created. All the energy we use is already out there,

7. In some form or other, and after we pass it through our machines it continues to be still out there in some form or another. If you see a car going down a gravel road in a cloud of dust, that is a cloud of kinetic energy, which picks up particles of Earth off the ground,

8. throws them into the air, and continues to be in the particles of Earth to suspend them above the ground in defiance of gravity. It's all energy. Pretty soon it soaks into the air, and there's not enough to keep the dust in the air, and the dust settles in my living room,

9. But all that energy is still out there.
When it's in the air we mostly measure it with a thermometer, and act like this thing called temperature causes all three crises, and - it's energy. It's there as wind, too, and your thermometer can't see it.
It's in your hair.

10. Human hair is not wired into the human temperature control (internal thermal energy control) system. On average, every person on Earth has more energy in their hair than their grandparents did.
That's where that "temperature" is. Everywhere.
It's excess energy.

11. What do we do about excess energy? It cannot be destroyed. How can a hot place ever get cold?
Energy dissipates. It is the nature of energy to always move from higher to lower concentration, greater or lesser pressure, temperature... Your beer gets warm and your pizza cold.

12. In the case of a planet, much of the solar energy it receives bounces off. That's why we can see them: solar energy bouncing off. But. Atmosphere figures in there.
Back before photosynthesis, Earth's atmosphere was very carbon and hydrogen heavy. Strongly reducing atmosphere

13. And it was hotter'n blue blazes.
Life came along, sucked up a bunch of that energy, wound it up in complex molecules made out of the hydrogen and the carbon, spit the oxygen out into the air, and poof! Donald Trump.
Where Poof=couple billion years.
Maybe we could do better.

14. The critical point in that above synopsis is that while the energy still existed, because energy must, it was bound up in complex molecules and too busy holding them together to do anything else. You certainly couldn't measure it with a thermometer.
We've got to do that. Life

15. Developed society contains too much kinetic energy. The excess energy drives excess activity. We're doing the wrong things. In energy terms, physics terms, global ecosystem terms, atmospheric terms, biosphere terms, we're doing the wrong things.

16. When a contained system holds a high level of energy, that is a dangerous condition. High levels of energy need to be dissipated gradually to prevent over-stressing the involved matter.
Say 👮is driving 60 mph. That speed is kinetic energy. Lots of kinetic energy.

17. Say he runs into a bridge abutment. All that matter releases all that kinetic energy virtually instantaneously. Most of that matter crumbles into unrecognizable shapes in the process. Nobody walks away.
Say, instead, he puts on the brakes, eases down,

18. Converts all that kinetic energy into heat and dissipates it into the atmosphere, and by the other end of the same bridge he's sitting still just pretty as you please, no muss, no fuss, no damage.
We need to do that.
Or we're going to do the other thing.
The energy is real.

19. As far as physics is concerned we're just blobs of matter. When we're in the car at a mile a minute the energy is in our bodies just as sure as it's in our cars.
That's why it doesn't pay to use bridges instead of brakes.
So - how do you get rid of excess kinetic energy?

20. You slow down.
I'm going to start a new thread.