Thread by @JeffAndDonkeys

This rush to villainize fossil fuel as though it's not *our* fault we did this, it's that bad old fossil fuel that did it.
If not for the evil of fossil fuels and their corporate sources, we would miraculously by now have carbon free energy enough to piss away on our every whim.

2. I find it offensive. Seriously. We have all the facts staring us in the face.
Lawrence Livermore National Labs does this analysis annually.
This thing is way more important than the new #IPCCReport

3. The boxes on the left margin are sources of the energy we use, real numbers, hard science.
The pink boxes on the right are categories of activities. How much energy, and from whence it came, is in each box.
The orange box in the top middle is a conversion point, where other

4. Prior sources of energy are converted to electricity and where that goes.
All the gray parts are energy lost in the various processes. Under the laws of thermodynamics no process can be 100% energy efficient. None are even close in the real world.

5. Up there at the top of the left hand column are the non-fossil direct sources of energy, with nuclear the largest, producing about 8½ percent of the total input energy.
Next comes wind, at 2¾%, then hydro, big dams, at about 2½.
The pink boxes are where all the lines end.

One hundred percent, all, of the energy we produce and consume, what I refer to as throughput, is to power those activities.
Almost 30% of the total energy is used for transportation.
This is US only, not global.
Slightly less of our energy goes into industry than transportation

7. So transportation and industry, those two classes of activities, consume over half the fossil fuels.
You want to halt fossil fuel use?
Which of those two pink boxes to you choose to shrink?
That's over half your fossil fuels.
That chart is all the energy we are capable

8. Of bringing to bear on our activities. There is no magic spigot we can turn on to take the place of the well over a third of our total energy throughput annually.
And don't even *think* electric. You see the big orange box? That's where a vast quantity of fossil fuels are run

through heat engines, which are between ⅔ and ¾ energy loss transactions -
Fossil Fuels.
Which pink box do you want to shrink, and how much?
That's where the fossil fuels went. Into the pink boxes.
Our homes barely break 10% of the total.
We can turn down this and turn off that

10. we've got all these people screaming INSULATION and - if we just quit heating and lighting our homes *at all* we'd still have 89% of our current fossil fuel demand.
Transportation and manufacturing.
So what are we doing?
We're building new highways and manufacturing renoobles

11. I've been screaming SLOW DOWN for years, and it's like this giant nationwide yawn 🥱
That's almost ⅓ of our total fossil fuel use, y'all.
Slowing would reduce it.
This is physics. It is incontrovertible.
A nationwide 30 mph speed limit would make *a big* difference in fossil

12. fuel use.
I find it offensive that people whose credentials and employment proclaim them to be Scientists with a capital S, screaming about fossil fuels.
We. Know. Where. It. Goes.
Pick. The. One. To. Shrink.
I've been voting for the speed one for years. Ignore me. Pick one.

13. The pink boxes are everything. They're where the fossil fuels go. The only way to keep the fossil fuels from going is to turn down or off some specific demand.
Shrink the pink boxes.
Or STFU.

14. Electrify everything.
OK, Orange box. Right now we're using 100% of the output electricity from the aggregate of fossil and other inputs to the left of the orange box.
All the new electric cars go on the orange line coming out.
It is what all the fossil fuel turned into.

15. Of the available new sources of energy to feed into the orange box - energy is the original zero sum game, TANSTAAFL. You want more out, put more in.
It's a tossup between natural methane and coal which power more new electric plants over the next few years. Renoobles ain't.

15. Presumably we're going to transfer the entire transportation pink box - well, theoretically (in somebody's dreams) *all* the pink boxes
Are going to get *all* their input energy out of the orange output line from the orange box.
The pink boxes, we are assured, will never have

16. to shrink, nay, indeed they can all grow forever, out of the magic carbon-free Pure Clean Energy flowing out of the orange box, and in this dream, all the pretty colored boxes on the left are magically gone,

17. and the trickle of warm piss coming out of purple box, and the yellow box, will through an act of Technological Prowess grow to provide all the power, going into all the pink boxes, all the Power, all the Sacred Technology,

17. That trickle will expand to replace the Sacred Green, the Mordor Black, the sky blue - the light green is a net loss and only in there for Grassley - all that wonderful, colorful Energy, to power all the pink boxes - and no fossil fuels.

18. There is never a time when someone says, "I think I'd like to use some fossil fuel today. How can I do that?"
There is one, and only one, route, or technology, or system, or step, whatever you want to call it - there is one and only one way to reduce fossil fuel use today:

19. Start at the pink boxes. Observe each box and say, "How can I accomplish the things which we need accomplished, within this box, on less energy?
In almost all cases the answer will be, slow one or more processes.
It's either that or find processes we can entirely halt.

20. As far as I can see no credentialed climate professional who is willing to get arrested for protesting fossil fuels is willing to host a public discussion on means to attain his/her stated goal of reduced fossil fuel now today.

21. We know where it's going. Which action shall we shrink?
We are not, scientists notwithstanding, going to repeal the laws of thermodynamics no matter how inconvenient they may be.
My box to shrink is transportation. What's yours?