Mastodawn

One can call it climate change, or be more inclusive like I am and call it ecosystem catastrophe, but everyone but out-and-out lunatics knows we've broken nature. We've already killed well over half of everything - yes, really, over half of all wildlife which existed on Earth on my 25th birthday is gone today, through a combination of extinction and population collapse. Same with birds. I think bugs it's worse. Go drive in the country at night and - used to be the bugs would blind you. Not now.

Jeff McFadden Jul 9, 2023

2. We are wildly out of balance with the ecosystem, with the planet where we evolved.
Yes, there are a lot of us, but if everyone disappeared except Americans and Germans and whoever makes all their shit - all of Asia, basically - we'd still kill Earth.
Temperature changes did not take away half of all life, because we did most of it before there was much measurable change.
Making the change so fast it's measurable is new.
And it's taking off like Mush's Flying Penis.

Jeff McFadden Jul 9, 2023

3. We are not burning more fossil fuels because bankers finance them. That's exactly backwards.
Bankers finance fossil fuels because we, the climate conscious people of the developed world, have signed purchase orders for all of it in advance.
Financing fossil fuels is like a license to print money.
We know what we do with all the energy. It's not a mystery.
We have charts like this one.
In this chart, Lawrence Livermore National Labs shows where, in 2019 specifically, the US got its energy.

Jeff McFadden Jul 9, 2023

We got our energy from the colored boxes along the left vertical. So much petroleum, so much coal, so much natural methane, so much nuclear heat engine, so much dead riverine ecosystem (ahem. Pardon me. Renewable Hydroelectric) and, way up in the stratosphere, wind and solar.
The theory is, we're going to build enough more of that part to replace all the rest.
I find it interesting that the number one consumer of coal in the US and worldwide is generating electricity, so we're all yelling

Jeff McFadden Jul 9, 2023

5. ELECTRIFY EVERYTHING based on the assumption that before it matters we'll have replaced all the coal and gas we currently generate electricity with with (depending on the school of thought) stationary nuclear bombs, or wind turbines, solar panels, and FM.
So, here's another chart.
This one's a little older, but the division of the pie doesn't change much. Over half of all the energy used in the world is used by industry.
All the residents in all the Earth in all the cities, towns, and

Jeff McFadden Jul 9, 2023

6. mansions, all put together, used 12.6% of all the energy.
One huge sector of #ClimateAction is cutting residential use.
Change stoves. Change space heating tech. Insulate.
If we eliminated 100% of all residential use in the whole world we would still have 87.4% of the emissions.
Almost 90% wouldn't change at all.
Because it's mostly industry, and what's left is mostly transportation.
Works the same in the US. The boxes on the right are where we use the energy.
Plus the orange fudge factor.

Jeff McFadden Jul 9, 2023

7. Almost three quarters of our total global emissions come directly from industry and transportation, where most of what is transported is inputs into, and outputs out of, industry.
The only thing that #ClimateActivists agree on is that we must immediately, drastically, increase our manufacturing and shipping. For the climate.
We have to manufacture enough giant steel towers to cover the plains and mountains of the world with giant spinning blades, each standing in a concrete base halfway

Jeff McFadden Jul 9, 2023

8. To China.
But I've talked all that to death, and tonight I'd like to call your attention to the far right hand side of this diagram, the dark and light gray.
That side of the graph indicates "away". We're all done with this energy, it doesn't matter anymore.
Of all the energy we had to obtain to do the work represented by the pink boxes and orange fudge factor, 2/3 of it - slightly over, but 2/3 is a usable number - that part fell through the cracks.
It is the nature of the universe that

Jeff McFadden Jul 9, 2023

9. No energy exchange can be perfect. There is no 100% efficiency. Obtaining 32% desired output for the energy put in is really a testimonial to our cleverness. That's good, not bad.
But - there is no away.
That energy is still there. In 2019, the United States obtained 100 quadrillion BTUs of energy
That's British Thermal Units, originally a measure of energy as heat only later given wider use - we added a hundred quadrillion of those to the global ecosystem. Just us Americans.

Jeff McFadden Jul 9, 2023

10. The way a bullet kills a person is, we turn a physically small dab of concentrated chemical potential energy into heat energy and thence into kinetic energy, contained in a compact mass, expressed as mass×velocity. When that object strikes a living body, its forward motion is stopped or drastically slowed, and all that energy, changed from it's original potential form through heat and motion, has to be absorbed - we use the term "sunk" - the body has to sink that energy.

Jeff McFadden Jul 9, 2023

11. The human body cannot sink that much energy that fast so somebody dies.
I understand this is a harsh way to teach, but this is what we're doing to Earth, to the ecosystem, all of it, atmosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, geosphere.
It is a fact: if we woke up tomorrow and we could get all the energy we wanted from unicorn farts and pixie dust, the rate of ecosystem degradation would not slow. The rate with which we kill off everything that's left wouldn't change.

Jeff McFadden Jul 9, 2023

12. It's all about energy. We evolved, and Earth evolved us, within a certain energy flow. All the creatures on Earth process energy, have evolved to harvest some energy source and live our lives. Without the energy in a dead tree there would be no morel mushroom.
We have screwed that system up beyond imagining. We're probably not going to quit it until it forces us, which appears to me to be on the horizon, but that could be a cat hair on the other side of my crystal ball.

Jeff McFadden Jul 9, 2023

13. Many of my friends are strong bicycle advocates, but bicycles by themselves exist in the middle of an energy intensive system which includes sourcing metals, plastics, and rubber, high energy high precision manufacturing, an endless manufacturing cycle of spares, repairs, replacements - why not feet?
We evolved to walk. With feet as the default, the first stage upgrade could be walking animals, donkeys, oxen, mules, horses.
They manufacture their own replacements. Self repairing.
Slow.

Jeff McFadden Jul 9, 2023

14. Speed creates distance. A bicycle system ranges about as far as a pre- freeway car system, which is considerably larger scale than a walking town.
There are 8 billion of us. We're here now, like it or not. Could we perhaps agree that technology to make each of us occupy a larger space is not an ideal use of resources?
Donkeys walk at the same speed we do, but they can carry a lot more weight, particularly with a wheeled conveyance. Speed is tons×velocity, so they're faster at the same speed.

Jeff McFadden Jul 9, 2023

15. I have a published plan to get humankind from where we are now - at a mile a minute - to a walking speed without anyone having to stop a bullet. It's over on Burdland for now, but I'll be rewriting it here one night soon, and pinning it.
Anyway - thanks for listening.

chainsaw elf Jul 9, 2023

@JeffAndDonkeys there he is. Been looking for Jeff since I bailed on the bird site.

Jeff McFadden Jul 9, 2023

@dgoldgar Good to see you.

chainsaw elf Jul 9, 2023

@JeffAndDonkeys good to see you too. Looking forward to some donkey videos.

JulieEmery Jul 9, 2023

@JeffAndDonkeys I’m so grateful now when bugs hit my windshield.

Jeff McFadden Jul 9, 2023

@JulieEmery I know. Me too. Which in itself feels weird.

RatDragonSeabird Jul 9, 2023

@JeffAndDonkeys Ecosystem catastrophe is a much more accurate and much less ignorable phrasing, which is definitely the reason we rarely see it used. They're banking on soft language and the short memory of society, and the illusion that the past and future are equally unchanging and unchangeable.

Jeff McFadden Jul 9, 2023

@RatDragonSeabird I can hardly bring myself to say climate change, because it's such a monumental understatement.

@[email protected] 1/ Very eloquently put. I have often felt an overriding despondency when it comes to individual actions to affect the climate, knowing full well that no matter my efforts it's industry that has the impact and needs to change. We keep getting fed "consumer actions drive industry!" But it's a smoke screen. 'Eco friendly' products are still PRODUCTS.

@[email protected] 2/ They still need to be made from resources and shipped, and the difference is so very small...except the almighty corporation still makes a profit, and since we keep letting that happen it's apparently what's important? I agree too, they won't stop using up our world, until there's nothing left.

Tormod Halvorsen Jul 9, 2023

@JeffAndDonkeys @constantorbit

Yeah, I recall we had "bug removal spray" in the car that we needed for headlights and generally anything front facing of the car after driving at night.

Also recall being in France one year, wanting to call my girlfriend at night. The only light that shone on was the one inside the phone booth. I could not fit in there due to the 2.000 moths who partied in there :)

Cynthia Thomas Jul 9, 2023

@JeffAndDonkeys great thread. You're breaking in the newbies, no holds barred! Be prepared for the stubborn ones like me. It will take them awhile to come around.
Hope yesterday went well. 🤠