I believe, based on reasoning which I will explain, that there is only one realistic way to halt and reverse climate change, which is evolve to post-industrial, post-agricultural-revolution, stewards of all the Earth, to the absolute best of our ability as reasoning beings.

2. When (if) the last time humans took the actions, and lived in an environment, in which being stewards of the Earth was a priority to us, is subject to debate, but I think all would agree that it was a long time ago and that life at that time would currently be judged primitive

3. Many readers respond with various negative reactions to the idea of a primitive life.
The has the outcome of essentially derailing the entire conversation.

4. If you read @Stonekettle, you know he often demands that critics "Be specific. Show your work." I don't know to how many readers that phrase is meaningful. I never went to college, but I know that phrase. I share considerable background with Sk, although he always ranked hi-er

5. In the military, in navigation, in traveling through an unmarked jungle or an unmarked ocean with only a map and compass, a generation before GPS, in training, getting the right answer isn't good enough.
You have to show how you got there.
I intend to show my work here.

6. I have already shown you a bit of mine.
Do we agree that a life style in which humans walk the Earth, with their burdens carried by their bodies or willing animals, and nothing moving faster than that, anywhere on Earth, sounds primitive?
Sounds like a lower standard of life?

7. I'm going to ask that we also agree that primitive, and standard of living, are defined values and have no intrinsic meaning.
I ask that, for the duration of this conversation, we leave out entirely demands for standard of living and predictions about human future behavior.

8. Second, I define my objective as follows:
My objective is "Halt and reverse climate change."
It is my opinion that the objective underlying the majority public conversation is subtly different. I believe that the majority conversation is based on "Reduce carbon emissions."

9. To halt and reverse climate change is a high goal. I think many people today would think it impossible. I base that statement on replies to my tweets over the past two years.
I think it is the only justifiable goal. As follows:

10. I think that any lower goal tacitly accepts that in the "out years" the absolute best case would be, life is miserable for almost everybody. I think any other goal has a high likelihood of leading directly to an overshoot / dieback event.

11. To reduce carbon emissions, even to zero, is not sufficient to halt and reverse climate change. I am stating this as an accepted scientific fact. At this point any certified scientist is invited to refute my claim.
Check my work.

12. It is my opinion that the reasoning public should demand that the majority public conversation among professionals be specifically toward a goal to halt and reverse climate change, or they should explain why they disagree. This is only an opinion.

13. I have other objections as well, to the majority conversation's assumption that building renewable energy installations is even remotely "a step in the right direction." Details available on request. For the purpose of this work its failure of objective is sufficient.

14. My entire thesis stands or falls on my statement that reducing energy C02 emissions, even to zero, will not halt or reverse climate change. Once again, does anybody refute this claim?

15. In all cases of which I am aware, the majority agreed-upon built solution relies on negative emissions technology. It is a fact that negative emissions technology does not even remotely exist today.

16. I state the following as a fact: No solution which requires the implementation of non-existent technology can be referred to as "scientific" by any definition of the term.

17. A fully functional, indescribably powerful, negative emissions system encloses the entire solid globe of Earth.
We broke it.
We continue to break it.
Its ability to perform its negative emissions function is degraded every minute of every day, on purpose, by humans.

18. The above statement is another important fact point in this work.
A functioning biome has, in the past, extracted all the now-excess carbon which is in the atmosphere and sunk it harmlessly into Earth.
This is a scientific fact.
Check my work. Right here. Fact yes or no.

19. I will state the following as another fact: Every knowable unit of the biome is (was) a contributor to the stable carbon and climate regimen.
The "emissions only" action series, what I am referring to as the majority conversation, is based on an unstated assumption.

20. This unstated assumption is, "The only climatologically significant event in the past two hundred years is the introduction of fossil fuel emissions."
I don't believe a peer-reviewed publication would accept that as a thesis.

21. But *only* if that thesis is valid does building, transporting, and installing renewable energy equipment anywhere on Earth constitute a step in the right direction. It is particularly pernicious where it requires damage to the biome, which is virtually everywhere.

22. I am going to enlarge on my stated goal. As follows:
.
To halt and reverse the climate change process on Earth without any major death peaks or events.

23. I would point out that as I am writing the United States is undergoing a significant death peak event. I feel that the media is failing to inform me as to the state of the global economy and standard of living, but I believe there are challenges.

24. I am going to return to the postponed topic of standard of living.
I am literally proposing that all eight or nine billion of us can live, together, with a decent standard of living, on a healing Earth with an aggegating ecosystem and biome.

25. I define a decent standard of living as follows: Everyone, all nine billion of us, is warm enough, well fed, dressed, reasonably comfortable, safe, and lives indoors if she wants to.
Enough. Our objective must be: enough, and we must gain it from an aggregating ecosystem.

I am going to stop at this point, for the time. When I return to this thread I will address how to get from where global society is today, to where we need to be, without a crash and a major death event. I'd budget 20 years. Emissions would reduce starting day 1, buying us time.

You can stop a car from 70 mph by taking your foot off the gas pedal. More quickly if brake carefully. Or you can run into a bridge pier.
I'm advocating for the less throttle more brake system.

26. Summary to date:
Climate change cannot be halted or reversed without drastically reducing human-caused CO2 (and other molecule) emissions, and (but)
Entirely halting human-caused emissions is not sufficient to halt or reverse climate change.

27. For the sake of simplicity I have accepted the term "climate change" as sufficient to define both the problem and the goal. Obviously, the anthropogenic Holocene extinction event is itself an equal threat. As is desertification / soil loss / water unavailability.

28. I believe that the climate will continue to change until we repair all the systems which once maintained climate stability, and that therefore climate can be used as a marker / shorthand term for the entire ongoing global ecosystem catastrophe.

29. Therefore, the specific course of action which I recommend is one which immediately reduces anthropogenic carbon emissions while enhancing the ability of the natural biome to remove both excess atmospheric carbon, and excess free energy (temperature) from the system.

30. In addition, the specific course of action which I recommend begins the process of reducing carbon emissions at the start of actions.
This is relevant to the discussion, because the majority conversation system is based on actions which increase carbon emissions at the start,

31. with any planned reduction in emissions only occurring after the initial emissions increase.
This is another point on which I seek agreement from the majority scientific community.
Is this correct, yes or no?

32. I propose the following statement for agreement or refutation.
"The built environment, majority consensus solution to carbon emissions requires increasing carbon emissions significantly now. Any promised reductions cannot begin until after a period of significant increase."

33. The above statement is not an absolute make-or-break foundation to my thesis, but it is significant. I need anyone who is able to refute the statement to step forward and do so.
Thank you.

34. The first step of any official plan to halt and reverse climate change would be a nationwide announcement at all levels of government that speed limits would be strictly enforced to a "one mile per hour over" standard, at all places at all time.

35. This would be expressly introduced as the first step of a possibly endless program of slowing society to halt and reverse climate change.
Climate change is a necessary and inescapable output of a high speed high energy society and economy. None of it is necessary.

36. As an aside, at all levels at which I am personally conversant, which is the levels above quantum in the world of what is called "classical physics", adding energy to any system increases the speed of the components of that system - atoms, molecules, visible aggregations -

37. So to enforce a nationwide reduction in speed from the current "five over" norm to posted speed limits would immediately result in a reduction of carbon emissions, and indeed of all tailpipe emissions.
It would immediately reduce atmospheric particulates.
Laws of Old Physics

38. This is another "show your work" point.
I state as a fact: the laws of Classical Physics still work on things we can see and measure in the physical object scale. Technical details of how slowing cars reduces emissions more than proportionally available on request. It does.

39. Along with the enforcement of the speed limit, announce a schedule on which the speed limit will be reduced at 5 mph increments until it reaches 20 mph in, say, ten years.
Give people time to plan, to design and build businesses to operate in this speed environment.

40. Energy, speed, and scale are entirely linked and could be said to be all expressions of the same thing.
As the speed limit falls, tolerable daily distances will fall. Things will have to be closer together and smaller in scale.

41. I have been unable to find published evidence that higher speed of travel / transportation directly causes longer daily distances and larger service providers (stores, churches, entertainment venues) but I believe this to be the case. I use it in my reasoning.

42. The obverse is known to be true: when speeds were slower distance was shorter. We have records.
Our objective is to halt climate change and to reverse it. In order to do that we must reduce carbon emission and increase carbon uptake, with the two lines eventually crossing,

43. Daily / weekly / annual withdrawals greater than total emissions from all sources. Breathing and all. Withdrawals must be greater.
The only thing on Earth with the potential to withdraw that much carbon is a rapidly expanding and complexifying biosphere.
Period.
Fact.

44. Not "planting trees." Not "not eating meat." Not "some technically marvelous algae." A concentrated, global, human effort to increase biome size, coverage, and complexity over every square inch of planet under our management. On purpose.
This is science, people.
Check my work

45. The degradation of the global biome is a direct result of the excess of total energy it has been forced to absorb. Much of that energy has been imposed upon it in the form of motion, and a great deal more in the built environment the fast motion requires.

46. So, to get back to the central thesis: step one, do an organized slowdown of surface traffic.
I am aware of all the standard objections based on what people want and/or will do. I asked at the outset that we refrain from basing our discussion on projected future behavior.

47. The objective is to slow all processes simultaneously based on a template like the one above. It will also be necessary to impose pricing for fossil fuels based on their real cost to society. Step one, of course, would be to halt subsidy. But I want to address this topic.

48. It is my understanding that the Yellow Vest protests in France were triggered by a plan to impose a carbon tax. The people whose livelihoods would be taken away objected. This is taken to prove that we can't to that. Maybe if we did it different.

49. Announce that one year from today a heavy carbon tax is going to be imposed. Simultaneous with the announcement repeal all zoning ordinances against household beasts of burden, chickens, sheep, goats, maybe other.

50. Concurrently remove all zoning ordinances against household shopkeeping, home bakeries, home restaurants - livery stables - let people out of the box you've put them in and then see what they'll do.

51. Humans once lived entirely on the energy contained directly within the surface layer of our immediate environment. Our environment fed us, housed us, clothed us.
It still does.
All our food. All our houses. All our clothing. They all come from Earth.
What changed?

52. Where we used to be able to get all our needs from the surface layer of the environment and power our activities with the food we ate and/or fed to animals, now we require billions of units of energy to satisfy the same needs.
What changed?

53. We decided we "needed" to satisfy our wants.
Where our needs are limited, and once satisfied, can be permanently satisfied within a contained, non-destructive cycle, our wants are infinite, and inherently self-dissatisfying. The more wants we satisfy, the less we r satisfied

54. Humanity could, should we choose to, slow all the way to a speed where the current finite Earth became vastly huge and all-satisfying, providing for the needs of untold billions of us while she herself, Earth, the biosphere, the biome, grew ever richer and more generous to us

55. And all that biome would be built of today's problems.
Yes, I waxed poetic.
I welcome any scientist to refute my reasoning.
I welcome any scientist to show a path, using existing technology (as I have) to get to a self-reinforcing ongoing reduction in atmospheric carbon,

56. to a reasonable equal of possibility that this plan offers.
I have not yet addressed food. If we do not repair our food system, not all that I have recommended so far will be enough.
Another day.

57. Food.
Our objective:
to halt and reverse climate change with no intervening major human death events resulting from the process.

58. Standard of living consistent with our objective:
To end up with a civilization in which all people everywhere, up to currently projected population peaks, live sufficiently warm, well fed, housed, dressed, reasonably comfortable lives.

59. I would point out that today's system doesn't come within a million miles of the minimum standard of living I would shoot for, so to the extent any future society might fall short of that standard, yup, nothing's perfect. I'm not predicting perfection.

60. There is a practice in classical physics where you posit a perfect solid, liquid, or gas, to explain how processes work with no fudge factors, and then you can legitimately say, YMMV.
Black Body Radiation. Perfect Gas.
So with my simplifications.
Overall the system works.

61. Food.
The Agricultural Revolution, proper noun, was a transformation of the human diet and also of our relationship with the biome which evolved us.
It has never worked.
The reason annual grain agriculture took over the world was because they killed the land they lived on,

62. so they had to go take somebody else's.

63. Right now today the only remaining somebody else's land to take and kill is the Amazon and some stretches of Africa. Some of far northern America and Asia.
That's it.
Agricultural Revolutionaries have conquered and killed the whole world.
Game over.
Start a new one.

64. Today's science knows, with no possible grounds for dispute, how to get more total human food energy and nutrition out of a functioning perennial ecosystem, said system based on any place's naturally occurring ecosystem, managed to produce sufficient food and fiber,

65. And to do that with long term, steady, consistent reductions in energy inputs per energy output.
That's the mechanism of reaching our goal. Comfortable humans on an aggrading global ecosystem.
We can't do it by plowing and poisoning the world.
It's ridiculous.
Science. Goals

66. Well over half of all the land in the United States is agricultural land. 53% is the number I most often see.
Go read the IPCC reports. There is no method of tillage agriculture ever discovered by humans which does not lose all the soil within a few generations.
All. Of. It.

67. This thread is not the place for me to go into detail about a workable food system. The information is available all over. Here's a good primer.

68. To recap:
My goal is to lay out a big picture view of a system to address climate change.
My system's goal is to halt and reverse climate change, starting from where we are today, with no intervening major human death events.

69. The way I propose to do this is by reducing waste energy in human production and distribution systems to as close to zero as is humanly possible, which will directly reduce carbon emissions to as close to zero as possible.
The way to accomplish this is to reduce speed until

70. All necessary effort to produce and distribute enough resources to provide a specified, entirely reasonable, standard of living for more people that have it now, can be powered by food and the motions of Earth.
Human power. Animal power. Sailing ships. Current, ecosystem NRG

71. Simultaneous with this we take all our genius and all our inventiveness, and we use it to restore the ecosystems which we *absolutely know for sure* can maintain a stable climate on Earth.
As much of it as we have the parts left.
In it we grow all our food and fiber.

72. We do agree, do we not, that all the food currently eaten on Earth grows here? Correct?
We agree that we know techniques to get more total calories and nutrients per acre than we are now, correct?
We agree that annual grain row crop fields emit greenhouse gases, right?
Good.

73. The scientific facts which I present here, and for which I have not yet heard challenge or refutation, are not heard in the majority conversation on climate change anywhere on Earth.
I understand that different people have different goals, objectives, and biases. That said,

74. There is no branch, no field, in science which can dispute my use of their work.
We know people who work outside in fresh air and walk on-and-off all day are healthier.
We know breathing brake pad dust kills people.
We know this.

75. Putting beavers back in all the creeks everywhere on Earth where they used to be would drastically reduce flooding, wildfires, recharge aquifers, sequester carbon... We know this. We know it. Nobody has to "millions will die!"
We can't do this anymore. Some folks had fun.

76. I hear it all the time: "People won't do that! People won't give up their..."
I lay out the steps. RTFM
If these ideas are so repellent, why don't the scientists take the bull by the horns and start talking truth to the people?

77. And if these ideas are so repellent to "People" who won't do this, why do so many individual persons reply to my smallholding stories with "I wish I had your life,"?
My donkeys want supper.
The end.

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