Mastodawn

When I read #ClimateChange commentary, #ClimateAction commentary, virtually all of it is based on "we have to live exactly like we live today, so what do we #build to make that #ClimateFriendly?"
More or less in opposition to that is something called #Degrowth, except degrowth always comes down to policies and first we make a bunch of decisions about priorities and values, and - our #ValueSystem is what's killing us, by killing everything else coz it's fun to go fast.
In every way.
GigaWhoozis

Jeff McFadden Jul 9, 2023

2. By one school of thought, energy only expresses itself in two forms, potential and kinetic. Kinetic energy is mass in motion.
Temperature is molecules in motion. The faster the molecules move, the higher the temperature.
Kinetic energy can be expressed as half of (mass×velocity)² The below is from Wikipedia just now.

Jeff McFadden Jul 9, 2023

3. In energy forms, everything we do with fossil fuels is for the purpose of increasing the speed of physical motion and process motion.
If energy isn't sitting still inside the trunk of a tree or in a rock on a shelf - if not that, something is moving.
The more energy we put in it the faster it moves.
This is tenth grade science class. This is macro physics, which only works in the part of the universe we humans experience as reality, and quantum is different, but up here with us.

Jeff McFadden Jul 9, 2023

4. Speed is energy in its most measurable seeable form.
This is one of those things that is so blindingly obvious that nobody can see it.
All of our emissions - one hundred percent of all the emissions which are new since the onset of the industrial revolution, the harnessed heat engine revolution - all those emissions are in order to obtain more speed.
#Slowdown is not a slogan.
Slowing down can be done immediately.
Slowing down does not require any advance emissions to make it possible.

Jeff McFadden Jul 9, 2023

5. Most individual drivers have the option to slow down. Few Americans have an average speed much below speed limit + 5. Yes, I know you do, but none of the other folks.
I'm out there going 5 under. An endless stream of cars and trucks pours past me and off into the distance. I go days, weeks, between times when I follow another car on the highway. I drive lazily into an empty road, Highway 5 Under, while the rest of the world stands in line and gets road rage at 5 over.

Jeff McFadden Jul 9, 2023

6. I have been reading all these toots about the evils of big trucks, and - I drive one. A big humongous Dodge diesel truck that I hate to ever take into the city.
I haul my donkeys around and show people that they are possible and practical.
A couple weeks ago I moved 135 sheep for a local small farm operation.
These things are tools.
I need them because I live in a mile a minute culture. And I do large hard things, because that's the life I chose.

Jeff McFadden Jul 9, 2023

7. It's not the hotdogs with their big trucks that are the problem.
It's that hotdogs have to have big trucks instead of high-stepping buggy horses.
The pretty girls can see you a lot better at a trot, even a high stepping long legged trot. https://youtu.be/cX9xRVBq3-U

Boyd Exell does it again! | FEI Driving World Cup™ 2019/20 | Stuttgart

YouTube

Jeff McFadden Jul 9, 2023

8. In Vietnam I was able to see glimpses of a society who lived what was an "indigenous" (i.e. ecosystem based) early iron age society.
I have spent time among low energy religious groups.
This thing we do where we move faster than all the rest of life is in no way necessary.
It's not necessary because there are 8 billion of us.
In a healthy culture regardless of energy base, any given group of people can provide for themselves by their efforts.
The more people there are, the more to do things.

Jeff McFadden Jul 9, 2023

9. The toys we have do not make us, in the aggregate, any happier than we would be without them.
This thing we call standard of living doesn't measure any of what matters.
We don't need to live like this, but today we do. It is a literal fact that our entire society contains so much energy that we can't just wave a wand and make it go away.
Energy never goes away. It just moves around, and it moves back and forth between potential and kinetic.
When a tree grows it is taking kinetic energy, sun,

Jeff McFadden Jul 9, 2023

10. and tying it up in chemical bonds, turning it from kinetic to potential, locking up those BTUs in molecules and cells.
Energy can't be destroyed but it can be taken off the market.
No energy process is 100% efficient, and photosynthesis isn't even close.
In most cases everywhere the energy lost in any process escapes as heat, Solar panels, for instance, are 15-20% efficient in real life, with the rest of the energy being rejected as heat directly.
Photosynthesis is in a similar range,

Jeff McFadden Jul 9, 2023

11. I can't recall for sure off the top of my head but I think it's in the teens, but photosynthesis runs its heat waste through water and powers transpiration, moving water from the soil to the atmosphere.
I've never seen a number for transpiration energy efficiency. Can't be 100%, we know that.
Better than pavement, I'm pretty sure.
A healthy forest can alter rainfall patterns, this is clearly established.

Jeff McFadden Jul 9, 2023

12. The developed world needs to, must, and eventually will, park all the cars, all the trucks, all the airplanes, all the heat engine powered ships, all of it.
We will walk. Those of us who are fortunate may have animals who will bear our burdens for us.
Highways exist for the sole purpose of going fast.
Highways are one of the largest scale ecosystem catastrophes in world history.
Industrial agriculture is up there too.
Over half the United States by acreage is corn/soybean/cow/hog desert.

Jeff McFadden Jul 10, 2023

13. For those who object to "animal agriculture," take a step back and see where animal agriculture fits in corn-soybean industrial agriculture models.
Cows are someplace to shovel all this corn. Hogs can eat the part of the soybean that is left after the diesel fuel comes out.
These things don't exist in a vacuum.
When we run out of cows Chuck Grassley demands we put more corn ethanol in the gasoline.
There's more than a gallon of diesel in every gallon of ethanol.
More energy in the diesel.

Jeff McFadden Jul 10, 2023

14. If we starve to death in the climate we have created, it will be because we looked at an entire Earth where food grows on trees, in the grass, running loose, in the vines, the roots, and even the mushrooms, and we said, "Yep. Rice, corn, and wheat, that's the ticket. And bulldozer autonomous tractors."
Yeah right. Sure.
You know those whirligig maple seeds that everybody curses and cleans out of their gutters every year?
Yeah. Those.
You can eat those.

Jeff McFadden Jul 10, 2023

15. More than anything else, though, we just need to physically slow down.
We can't move as many tons of unnecessary bullshit and technotoys as many miles at 55 mph as we can at 60.
Or at 50 as at 55.
Want local?
Slow down.
Local went away when freeways were born.
It has already been grievously wounded by cars.
The faster, the farther.
It even works at the molecular level.
There is no such thing anywhere in time or space as fast local.

Jeff McFadden Jul 10, 2023

16. It is a physical fact than one human being cannot fuck up any more ground, personally, in one day, than s/he can reach in one day.
And one ton of materials cannot go any farther than (maximum speed × time) in one day.
We don't need to decide in advance what our priorities are.
Slow down. We'll ship the things that matter to us and let lower priority items go. Let the purchase orders decide.
And we will immediately, overnight, not in 2030 or 2050 but tomorrow, use less energy.

Artsea Jul 10, 2023

@JeffAndDonkeys I like your cart! Drove a pony cart as a kid & the seat was a wooden board. That looks much more comfortable.

Jeff McFadden Jul 10, 2023

@ArtseaGardener That's an Amish made short bed spring wagon. The back seat comes off with two pins and it's a pickup truck.
It, and my 2 wheel cart with a drawbar that I made, are primary vehicles around here.

Jeff McFadden Jul 10, 2023

@ArtseaGardener Here's a short video of how good these donkeys are with a cart. https://youtu.be/XN1NvT1_NOg

Donkeys Missy and Clara hitch & pull compact manure spreader

YouTube

Artsea Jul 10, 2023

@JeffAndDonkeys ty. Good girls there!

Jeff McFadden Jul 10, 2023

@ArtseaGardener They certainly please me.

Cynthia Thomas Jul 10, 2023

@JeffAndDonkeys same with pines.

Cynthia Thomas Jul 10, 2023

@JeffAndDonkeys i read somewhere the other day that conifers suck up more carbon than other trees. Agree?

Jeff McFadden Jul 10, 2023

@cfthomas51 I don't know. My focus is on complex native ecosystems and I think in terms of how much good the entire system can do.

Cynthia Thomas Jul 10, 2023

@JeffAndDonkeys ok