Technology

Sorry, I think casual air travel is one of those things that’s only possible with cheap energy provided by oil.

We're saying the same thing on this point with both our posts. You're saying "use rail instead of flying because batteries can't fly a plane". I'm saying "if we remove petroleum, the cost of jet travel will be substantially higher and consumers will seek a cheaper alternative (which may end up being rail). "

SAF is only economically approachable because nobody wants it because oil is cheaper. If we were in a situation without oil, SAF, biodiesel, etc., would immediately get smacked with a demmand curve making it unaffordable.

Sure, but you're going whole hog to the "conserve" approach, which I agree is a component, but may not be the full or best answer. My suggestion would drastically increase solar power far far beyond our current electricity needs to create liquid SAF fuels directly from electricity and basic CO2/water inputs (aka Power-to-liquids). Theres a plant in Washington state doing exactly this.

It’s like how you can run your car on fry grease scavenged from fast food dumpsters, but everyone can’t.

I see that as too short sighted. Take the longer view. Fry grease is a very easily available and low transformation source of energy. There are other sources of energy that are a level more harder to get, and a level of more transformation needed to be usable in our chosen application.

With scarcity (artificial or natural) and scale we would see switches to these other forms of non-petroleum energy. I'm not saying its an overnight thing, but I don't think you are either with your proposals.

With cheap, clean, safe magic (fusion?) power, you can turn CO2 from the atmosphere back into jet fuel.

That’s still worse than abandoning flying by and large.

edit: I don’t intend to let “perfect be the enemy of good”. It’s more like we got used to a lot of things and sometimes don’t question them radically enough.

Do you think humanity, as a whole, is going to abandon flying? I certainly don't. So the best solution is to make changes to limit the behaviors and modify the behaviors to cause less harm. Again, this is just one component of a larger solution, but its a good one to address what air travel still needs to occur.

A bit of greenwashing here and there just isn’t good enough, if we want to save what’s left of the climate we knew.

We're already beyond that. We're not getting that back.

Now pipes freeze at 32, so that is a pretty outrageous amount of manadatory wiggle room --23 degrees. I honestly don’t know enough about plumbing or insulation to suggest a fix

If the inside of your apartment is at 55, and the outside is at 9, and the insulation between the pipes and the inside/outside is equal, that puts your pipes at 32. In theory the pipes should be "closer" to the inside temperature, but plumbers don't always put pipes in with an aim to avoid future plumbing work....