I think there are enough unknowns in the average volcanic eruption that nobody wants to touch it. Pinatubo was a surprise; as I recall, the composition of its output was something no one predicted. The quantity of ash kicked out by St. Helens was also something new.

Let's talk energy tho and let's get WanderingEng in here because while I can speculate with the best of 'em, he's got the training and experience.

According to the EIA, the industrial sector uses 31e12 BTU per year. 6e12 BTU of that is straight losses. Efficiency losses for residential and commercial sectors? Frickin' 17e12 BTU.

A bright spot: our energy use has actually stayed relatively constant. What if we could make that grid ten percent more efficient? That'd be 3e12 BTU. That alone would get us back to 2010 levels. Now try and tell me that PG&E can't find 10%.

So what do we use the energy for?

Fun fact: Intalco used to brag on tours that they use more electricity than LOS ANGELES. During the Enron shenanigans they cut capacity by like 50% so that there was capacity in the US power grid. Mark Reisner makes the point in Cadillac Desert that the United States won WWII not with the atomic bomb but with the Hoover and Grand Coulee dams - the US had three times as much electricity generation capacity as it needed when Hoover went online and we turned around and used it to power smelters and centrifuges. Aircraft were aluminum and aluminum was American. Germany made 90,000 planes during WWII. America made 300,000.

That's just the 14% in "industrial." That 22% "chemical production?" How much of that do you think is fertilizer? I'll bet it's a lot.

How 'bout transportation?

That graphic is so old its EV is a Tesla roadster. Here's a companion:

WE CAN DO THIS. This is the thing that bugs me about the global warming discussion - It's ALWAYS apocalyptic. But I'm old enough to remember when Weekly Reader told me I was going to die of either acid rain or ozone depletion, assuming nuclear war didn't wipe me out first. The fact that the overwhelming increase in greenhouse gasses has occurred since then tells me that the momentum is an illusion and the inertia is a choice.

Aaron Bastani made the point that the "crisis of our time" in the 1890s was literally horse shit. Henry Ford solved that one - 1894 was the year the Times of London decried manure piles nine feet deep and the first run of the Benz Velo. Bastani also makes the point that solar panels on the roof and an electric car in the garage are basically your own microgrid and if you're running a microgrid, you're saving at least 5% in energy transmission alone. But microgrids mostly work with solar.

I think everything that can be said has been said... except the part where we can fix things. The problem is, it will involve changing incentives which involves changing industries and we've been lamenting that fucking coal miner since LBJ.

That fucking coal miner gave me a 108 degree day this week. I'm over his ass.