Is Air Travel Really Bad For the Climate? (thebulletin.org) 171
"The best way to get oneself somewhere with the least impact on the climate is a lot more complex than it may seem at first glance," writes Slashdot reader Dan Drollette (who is also the deputy editor of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists).
Slashdot reader Lasrick also submitted their report. A few excerpts: - For a short distance taking a train may be better than flying, but there is some ambiguity for long-distance travel. But no matter what mode of travel we choose, the distance traveled strongly determines emissions.
- Trends suggest that ground transportation is increasingly being electrified (with the potential for using renewable sources). However, there is likely no such technological breakthrough on the horizon for planes. Thus, flying less is an important long-term commitment because it helps to make sure there are more alternative transportation options, and shows where we want government and industry to prioritize efforts toward efficiency and transit... [I]f you choose to drive because it is more climate-friendly than flying short-haul, you are adding an extra car on the road while the plane would have flown anyway. However, in the long run, if many people choose to drive (hopefully in a full car), it is likely there will be fewer short-haul flights.
Obviously, fewer passengers per vehicle will also increase the per-passenger carbon count, and right now short economy flights "generally have higher occupancy and lighter fuel loads," placing them just below a U.S. grid-powered electric car. And mode of transportation is still less important than distance traveled, though very short flights less than 1000 kilometres (621 miles) are more carbon intensive than longer flights "as they spend little time cruising, and are often not very direct."
Energy sources also matter, since trains in Europe are largely electrified, while North America's trains burn fossil fuels. "In Europe, trains are by far the best choice in terms of climate benefits, even if that's not as true elsewhere." Thus the three worst choices right now are a large car (getting 15 miles per gallon), followed by a long (non-economy) business flight, and a "medium" car (getting 25 miles per gallon), while the three best choices are a solar-powered electric car (#3), a crowded U.S. school bus, and Eurostar rail.
But it's important to remember that the majority of people don't fly, Dan Drollette reminds us, "And we should not be so focused on the carbon contributions of air travel (which only account for 2 percent of all carbon emissions) that we take our eyes off the causes of the other 98 percent of carbon emissions."
Slashdot reader Lasrick also submitted their report. A few excerpts: - For a short distance taking a train may be better than flying, but there is some ambiguity for long-distance travel. But no matter what mode of travel we choose, the distance traveled strongly determines emissions.
- Trends suggest that ground transportation is increasingly being electrified (with the potential for using renewable sources). However, there is likely no such technological breakthrough on the horizon for planes. Thus, flying less is an important long-term commitment because it helps to make sure there are more alternative transportation options, and shows where we want government and industry to prioritize efforts toward efficiency and transit... [I]f you choose to drive because it is more climate-friendly than flying short-haul, you are adding an extra car on the road while the plane would have flown anyway. However, in the long run, if many people choose to drive (hopefully in a full car), it is likely there will be fewer short-haul flights.
Obviously, fewer passengers per vehicle will also increase the per-passenger carbon count, and right now short economy flights "generally have higher occupancy and lighter fuel loads," placing them just below a U.S. grid-powered electric car. And mode of transportation is still less important than distance traveled, though very short flights less than 1000 kilometres (621 miles) are more carbon intensive than longer flights "as they spend little time cruising, and are often not very direct."
Energy sources also matter, since trains in Europe are largely electrified, while North America's trains burn fossil fuels. "In Europe, trains are by far the best choice in terms of climate benefits, even if that's not as true elsewhere." Thus the three worst choices right now are a large car (getting 15 miles per gallon), followed by a long (non-economy) business flight, and a "medium" car (getting 25 miles per gallon), while the three best choices are a solar-powered electric car (#3), a crowded U.S. school bus, and Eurostar rail.
But it's important to remember that the majority of people don't fly, Dan Drollette reminds us, "And we should not be so focused on the carbon contributions of air travel (which only account for 2 percent of all carbon emissions) that we take our eyes off the causes of the other 98 percent of carbon emissions."
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Re:Guilt-peddlers can fuck right off. (Score:4, Insightful)
That's why pricing you out of air travel is the only solution. If you aren't willing to alter (improve) your lifestyle then we are going to prioritize the planet and ask the other people living on it.
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My point was that if people are unable to make an effort to reduce their carbon footprint, and instead go out of their way to pollute just to "piss off the liberals" or whatever, then pricing is the only mechanism available.
The world needs a maximum of 3t of CO2/year/person to limit warming to 2C. The average American is at 17t/year. If you are willing to reduce your emissions in some other ways there can be room in your budget for flights.
Re:Guilt-peddlers can fuck right off. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Guilt-peddlers can fuck right off. (Score:5, Interesting)
That's why pricing you out of air travel is the only solution. If you aren't willing to alter (improve) your lifestyle then we are going to prioritize the planet and ask the other people living on it.
Blaming air travelers for the climate change is just a decoy. Yes, air travel consumes CO2. But traveling in general uses less than 5% of our global energy consumption. Even heating, air-conditioning and household energy use only takes a few %, around 20. In the bigger scheme of things, transport emissions are neglectable.
You know what causes massive CO2? Making concrete, steel and aluminum. Driving an old car is actually good for climate, in contrary to what many people want to let you believe. And we now have the knowledge to build constructions that could last for centuries, yet we find it normal to tear down whole buildings and complexes after 50 year because they are no longer fashionable.
We can use 50% of the energy of what we use today with a few pencil strikes. Instead we try to find scapegoats like air travelers.
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In Europe, we have constructions that have lasted for centuries.
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In Europe, we have constructions that have lasted for centuries.
The newer constructions won't. The centries old stuff did not use iron or steel; a masonry arch bridge will only fall in an earthquake. OTOH, things like 1960s motorway bridges are already falling down (like the Genoa bridge) or needing replacement or strengthening because of corrosion of the steel. The steel re-infocement of concrete is the worst problem because it is inaccessible.
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Re:Guilt-peddlers can fuck right off. (Score:5, Insightful)
Blaming air travelers for the climate change is just a decoy. Yes, air travel consumes CO2. But traveling in general uses less than 5% of our global energy consumption. Even heating, air-conditioning and household energy use only takes a few %, around 20. In the bigger scheme of things, transport emissions are neglectable.
Rather than arguing about which sorts of activities are the most and least harmful, we should simply impose a per-ton carbon tax on all activities that emit formerly-trapped carbon. The activities that emit the most will see the greatest cost increases, and the pressure to find carbon-free (or carbon-reduced) alternatives will likewise vary proportionally. Free markets are extremely good at optimizing marginal utilities. The problem is that, thus far, markets haven't factored in carbon emissions because they have been an externality [wikipedia.org], a cost borne by all. Internalize that externality and capitalism will solve the problem.
Granted that a carbon tax is politically difficult to enact, partly because the vast majority of people have zero understanding of economics and partly because of opposition from vested interests. The latter problem can be overcome if we can address the former, though.
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The problem is that, thus far, markets haven't factored in carbon emissions because they have been an externality, a cost borne by all. Internalize that externality and capitalism will solve the problem.
Have you heard of social darwinism? The way that capitalism solves market problems may imply that a significant portion of poor people are cut off from the working force (e.g. can't afford fuel for the car) or live in miserable conditions (e.g. can't heat their homes). Moreover, optimizing for marginal costs
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The biggest source of CO2 are children. Stop having them and the problem is solved. Would global warming be such a big issue if the global population were a quarter what it is now?
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To give you an idea of the problem, a London to Tokyo return flight is around 19,000km and emits about 800kg of CO2 per passenger.
To keep climate change to a manageable 2C we need to average about 3 tonnes of CO2 per year each. Ideally we want to go lower than that, but 3t is the maximum. The average Brit is somewhere around 9t IIRC. Anyway, that one trip is more than a quarter of your yearly budget.
I think realistically long haul flights will continue because there just isn't an alternative. Can't really b
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Blaming air travelers for the climate change is just a decoy. Yes, air travel consumes CO2. But traveling in general uses less than 5% of our global energy consumption. Even heating, air-conditioning and household energy use only takes a few %, around 20. In the bigger scheme of things, transport emissions are neglectable.
You are simplifying it way too much. Just tourism contributes about 10.3% to the global GDP (directly and indirectly) in 2017. Directly it is about only 3.2%. That means that people produce about 10% of CO2 just for pleasure of travelling around. You must include also indirect contributions because they would not happen without their source. If you considered only the direct contribution then you also underestimated household contribution to CO2. Notice that part of that cement/steel/aluminium production is
pricing (Score:2)
>> That's why pricing you out of air travel is the only solution.
Yep.
Tax on oil products at the gas pump : 500%
Tax on oil products at the airport : 0%
This must change NOW.
Re: pricing (Score:2)
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Fuel taxes in the US https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Dunno why this was modded troll, it's the policy of most Western governments.
Re: Guilt-peddlers can fuck right off. (Score:2)
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The Lorax, I think?
Re:Guilt-peddlers can fuck right off. (Score:4, Insightful)
Every person who is paying attention, and doesn't want their grandchildren starving in a poison-filled wasteland created by pollution and sustained rapid climate change.
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So here I am having made the choice not to have kids. I can just do whatever the hell I want, I guess. Whoooo, partay!
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Hey, I don't ask much - just don't pump known poisons into the land faster than the land can destroy them, and don't carelessly geo-engineer the planetary climate into a transition that's going to, at best, be extremely expensive to deal with for many centuries until things re-stabilize.
It's not our land or our planet - not in the way a car or a computer is. The land has been here for billions of years, and will be for billions more - we're simply the current residents, and have a responsibility to our de
Re:Guilt-peddlers can fuck right off. (Score:4, Insightful)
I've no idea what you're referring to with Lake Baikal (unless you actually meant the Aral Sea), but I think there's a strong claim that the Bhopal disaster was worse than Chernobyl.
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I will continue to enjoy my modern lifestyle, including the miracle of air transportation, no matter how much some creepy little girl scowls at me.
The air travel/climate kerfluffle is another stupid drinking straw issue from the social justice left which can't admit that the only way to fix climate is by large-scale engineering. Stand aside and let us build the damn nuclear plants!
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If only there were a free market for transportation, but the socialist right supports corporate welfare for Big Oil, they support high sales taxes in place of gas taxes and other user fees to pay for roads, they support minimum parking requirements to force businesses to provide an overabundance of free parking, and they oppose density which could help make transit (and roads!) more cost effective. So there's definitely some hypocrisy there, and put together, these market distortions enslave people to their
Fake story (Score:4, Insightful)
That idiotic trope about environmentalists "wanting power" makes zero fucking sense. Zero. We don't want to die or get sick sooner than we have to, and we want to enjoy whatever life we have left. That's what it comes down to. You, on the other hand, should wrap your lips around a tailpipe and inhale all of that wonderful freedom you love so much.
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I oppose nuclear because it's so insanely expensive. Why should I pay for that shit when it's not even that clean and there are far, far cheaper and safer alternatives?
If you want it you can pay for it yourself, and that includes the insurance. Good luck getting that on the open market.
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I'm less worried about dying and more about being forced to leave my home, having my job/business destroyed, losing my community, and then having to pay hundreds of billions in extra taxes or increased energy bills to pay for it. And that's on top of the already extremely high prices for nuclear energy, and assuming that the failure mode is only as bad as Fukushima.
Nuclear energy is now over £100/MWh in the UK, before subsidies, and rising. Wind is less than half that, without subsidies, and fal
Re: Guilt-peddlers can fuck right off. (Score:2)
Why should I pay for that shit when it's not even that clean and there are far, far cheaper and safer alternatives?
We don't expect you to pay for anything; clearly that's what other people are for.
Re:Guilt-peddlers can fuck right off. (Score:4, Interesting)
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If you believe that, you need to go to college and study accounting (actually, you can do that for free, if you really want to).
Money-wise, nuclear has to be more costly than any other solution not powered by leprechauns and unicorns in glorious matrimonial harmony - on account of the need to supervise the waste until it is safe. You may be dead before this cost is incurr
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nuclear has to be more costly than any other solution .... - on account of the need to supervise the waste until it is safe
It only needs to be supervised while it is kept on the surface. Final disposal in a deep repository would be realively cheap and require no supervision. However the greens oppose final disposal (and wind up the public to support them) because they want the nuclear industry to be expensive.
Nulear waste disposal is a political problem, not a technical one.
Re: Guilt-peddlers can fuck right off. (Score:2)
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Building nuclear plants is good, but it doesn't make the problem from air travel go away since nuclear power goes to the electric grid; planes don't get their power that way, and electric planes are not really practical beyond very short distances. Nor is it at all useful to claim that concern about air travel is part of the "social justice left" at all comparable to the issue with drinking straws. The drinking straws thing is something you can justify criticizing, but air travel is about 2% of all CO2 out
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If the burning of fossil fuels were costed so as to include the externalities, then the cost of producing kerosene from atmospheric CO2 and electrical power would be cheaper than the cost of burning fossil-derived fuel.
Electrical power can technically supply the fuel used by aeroplanes; it is uneconomic only because externalities are not accounted for. The cost of burning a CO2-emitting fuel should be made equivalent to the cost of pulling that CO2 back out of the atmosphere.
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Yes, yes, I know that's the theory, it's all the mystical, demonic "left" that's to blame for lack of nuclear.
Nothing to do with the fact that even when a wealthy nation like the UK tried to build it's most recent nuclear plant it couldn't get anyone to build it without granting them the guaranteed ability to charge more than double current record rates for electricity that we have with fossil fuels.
Nuclear isn't not happening because of some leftist conspiracy, it's not happening because no one is willing
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No investment and R&D money is being made into much smaller localised plants. There was plenty of work done in the 50s and 60s on this and then it came to a screaming halt. The Navy in the UK and the US have been using very small high power nuclear plants for many decades with an incredibly good safety record.
The technology is there to build plants at a much smaller scale with extreme levels of safety. The current political and social environment though means it's a non starter.
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FTFY
Wind and solar are both already cheaper than fossil fuels in the UK. (probably because global warming has upped the amount of wind and sunshine we get ;-}.
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Ah the nuclear stab-in-the-back myth ;-) Maybe, just maybe, nobody wants to invest money into nuclear because projects are really expensive and then also tend to go over budget? They even close existing nuclear plants down because operating cost is too high...
Re: Guilt-peddlers can fuck right off. (Score:2)
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Do you really want counties like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Russia going all in on nuclear? Russia's safety record is shit!
Re:Guilt-peddlers can fuck right off. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hear, hear. Everyone who is like-minded, get in line behind this guy.
We can and should build safer nuclear power plants, and the sooner the better.
Get over it. We learn from the mistakes of the past. Reactor and power plant design can be done better and in fact already has, we just haven't built production-level units, yet. We can, and should, and as soon as possible to save the planet from *us*.
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You enjoy air transportation? You are either a masochist or have a private jet.
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Selfish assholes can fuck right off. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: Selfish assholes can fuck right off. (Score:3)
Re: Guilt-peddlers can fuck right off. (Score:2)
I would have no problem with that if you were paying for the cost associated with your pollution.
Unfortunately, you are polluting my air too.
Does this include (Score:2)
military, other government, and private planes?
2% of total emissions seems like a lot...
Yes, air travel is bad for the environment (Score:4, Insightful)
All the calculations in this post, if correct, go to show that air travel might be better for the environment than traveling the same distance in a car or train. But that doesn't change the fact that *any* long distance travel is one of the largest sources of CO2 that an individual can create. Planes have better gas mileage than the car you use to drive to work, but just a few long-haul flights add up to more miles than a year's worth of commuting, and thus the CO2 impact quickly becomes bigger.
I am not telling people not to fly. I myself fly sometimes. But if your goal is to decrease your CO2 emissions, you have to be honest and realize that cutting long distance travel is often the most effective way of doing so.
Re:Yes, air travel is bad for the environment (Score:5, Insightful)
"Obviously, fewer passengers per vehicle will also increase the per-passenger carbon count"
This is just so dumb. Obviously the best solution is to reduce the need to move around so much. Most people would prefer not to have to spend significant proportions of their lives in traffic or on a plane.
Make meaningful journeys for good reasons, not just because the city was badly designed or your business hasn't entered the 21st century.
Re:Yes, air travel is bad for the environment (Score:5, Informative)
The Slashdot summary does not accurately reflect the content of the linked Bulletin article. It does not say "air travel might be better for the environment than traveling the same distance in a car or train". It points out a lot of nuance, and shows that the best case for air travel might be comparable to the worst case for cars or trains - or not, depending on the situation.
Also, this part of the summary - which actually does reflect something in the article (to the Bulletin's shame) - is face-palmingly bad: "I]f you choose to drive because it is more climate-friendly than flying short-haul, you are adding an extra car on the road while the plane would have flown anyway."
Does one even need to explain how stupid that claim is? You have no clue whether the plane will fly anyway, or whether your decision not to take it will cancel an entire flight. One could reverse that: your decision to fly could be responsible for an entire plane flying when it otherwise would have been cancelled! *facepalm*
The bulletin also makes an incorrect claim about electrification of air travel being impossible. While we don't currently have the tech to electrify long haul flights, short haul (less than ~1000km) is very much in the realm of current technology, and the first short-haul electric passenger plane is expected to receive certification in 2022.
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While we don't currently have the tech to electrify long haul flights, short haul (less than ~1000km) is very much in the realm of current technology, and the first short-haul electric passenger plane is expected to receive certification in 2022.
Electric airplanes are "cute" but they won't be replacing those run on kerosene any time soon. The energy density of batteries, even the best we have, are terrible compared to kerosene. While a battery powered airplane could certainly fly it's practicality will be limited not only by range the matter of recharge times. This will likely mean an electric plane will do one short hop per day, maybe two, and spend the rest of the time charging.
Maybe there could be a battery swap process, but that would involv
Re:Yes, air travel is bad for the environment (Score:4, Insightful)
This again?
Unless you're flying around in a puddle of kerosene, an airplane consists of much more than its fuel. Just like an electric airplane consists of much more than its batteries. It's whole system masses that matter, which for short-haul flights are surprisingly similar (it's long-haul flights where it becomes a problem). Namely, because of things like the fact that batteries act as a structural (compressive) element, that electric motors are lightweight, that you get some aero advantages (including not having to have intake air), etc, beyond the standard motor-vs-combustion efficiency advantages.
You see the same thing in cars. The Tesla Model 3 is basically the same weight as its performance and class equivalents from BMW with a full tank of petrol.
How are you posting from the early 20th century? Modern li-ion packs can charge in the time you spend at the gate.
The size of an airplane has nothing to do with its propellant source. Just the opposite - the larger you make an aircraft, as a general rule, the better the ratio of payload to dead mass. The first electric passenger aircraft, like the Eviation Alice, are of course small for the simple reason that nobody is going to jump straight to making A380-sized aircraft as the first step.
Electric aircraft aren't being made as a hair shirt for hippies. They're being made because they're much cheaper to operate than fossil fuel-powered aircraft, both in terms of fuel and maintenance.
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You see the same thing in cars. The Tesla Model 3 is basically the same weight as its performance and class equivalents from BMW with a full tank of petrol.
Irrelevant, a car doesn't have to fly.
Electric aircraft aren't being made as a hair shirt for hippies. They're being made because they're much cheaper to operate than fossil fuel-powered aircraft, both in terms of fuel and maintenance.
That may be true but because of the weight penalty these aircraft will be limited to very short hops with few passengers. That makes them impractical for a great many uses outside of recreational flights, and also will have effectively no impact on the CO2 emissions from human activity.
The first electric passenger aircraft, like the Eviation Alice, are of course small for the simple reason that nobody is going to jump straight to making A380-sized aircraft as the first step.
No, electric aircraft are small because they are impractical for larger aircraft. Even if an electric plane the size of an A380 was possible to get in the air there isn't any need for o
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By "Real Engineering", as opposed to "Fake Engineering"?
Mass matters to all vehicles. For cars, it determines rolling drag and acceleration-deceleration losses. For aircraft, it determines lift, which by the L/D ratio, determines drag. For ships, it determines displacement, and thus drag. Airplanes are in no way unique in being impacted by mass.
And to reiterate: practical regional electric aircraft 1) already exist, and will be entering commercial service within the next couple years, and 2) are not simpl
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But if your goal is to decrease your CO2 emissions, you have to be honest and realize that cutting long distance travel is often the most effective way of doing so.
DING DING DING... we have a winner!
Bottom line: It is rather silly of people who claim to be very concerned about our impact on the Earth to basically say “I want to save the planet, but only if I don’t have to change my lifestyle”. But that line of thinking seems to dominate most all of the discussion around this topic.
And, yes, I’m at fault for doing this as well.
Don’t get me wrong - if you’re going to do something anyway, it’s good to at least try to mitigate its
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Re: Yes, air travel is bad for the environment (Score:2)
Back Off, Peasants (Score:4, Insightful)
What about the roads themselves? (Score:3)
I've yet to hear someone address this, but laying down miles (or kilometers) of two-to-four lane blacktop seems like a process that involves tons of emissions. I mean, sure the roads are already there, just like the airplane will fly anyway, but the more we drive, the more the roads will need to be maintained, which eventually means resurfacing.
Also, is the emissions created during the manufacturing the various vehicles be significant enough to weigh in here, in a vehicle-lifetime to people-miles ratio? Has anyone seen a more comprehensive comparison of various means of transportation?
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Don't know about USA/Europe, but in Oz the tax system and other circumstances make it cheaper for corporate/government to turnover every 2 - 3 years. It fuels demand for new vehicles, and a constant supply of low-mileage vehicles into the second-hand market.
Turns out it's cheaper to turn them over every 2 - 3 years, than to pay for maintenance and absorb depreciation.
If it was more cost-effective to keep vehicles for 5 years, the car manufacturing industry would have collapsed. Oh wait, it collapsed anyway.
Curtail air travel? (Score:2)
How will the AGW clique, politicians and the rich and/or famous survive? How could they then ever be able to gather in clumps every other month at expensive shindigs on other peopleâ(TM)s dime?
That being said, a much larger number of flights are goIng over the arctic, dropping tons of particulates that both pollute and depress freezing point.
Re: Curtail air travel? (Score:2)
Or just live your life (Score:2)
If you are not a religious environmentalist, your plane ride is not a sin.
You can live your life with no artificial anxiety if you decide to.
Electric airplanes (Score:5, Interesting)
>Trends suggest that ground transportation is increasingly being electrified (with the potential for using renewable sources). However, there is likely no such technological breakthrough on the horizon for planes.
That's true for long-haul airplanes. On the other hand there are already a number of short-haul electric airplanes in various stages of design and testing - which would directly address the most wasteful end of the air-travel market.
Re: Electric airplanes (Score:2)
You are pushing very insignificant development for which there is little market
As any 'operations research' student can tell you (Score:4)
it's all about how you define the 'utility function.' "total carbon generated" is different from "carbon generated per mile traveled."
On a related note, -science journalism- is very different from -science-. How often do you see error range/confidence level/statistics reported in articles on scientific papers, versus what's in the papers themselves?
What about biofuels? (Score:3)
Once all of your power generation is a mix of solar, wind, geothermal and possibly fusion (which is only 10 years away, right?), and then you go to bio fuels for air travel, seems to me you're in much better shape.
Re:What about biofuels? (Score:4, Interesting)
No, because
1. CO2 in the upper atmostphere is 3 times as damaging as CO2 on the ground
2. In the US, but not so much elsewhere, biofuels require more fuel for the farming equipment than you get out of it.
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False. Corn ethanol has an EROEI greater than 1 but less than 2.
Bio-fuels == bad idea (Re:What about biofuels?) (Score:3)
False. Corn ethanol has an EROEI greater than 1 but less than 2.
Which means that if we take energy sources with an EROEI of about 50, like that of onshore wind, hydro, or nuclear, that even if the process to turn that electricity to liquid fuel is a loss of 5 to 1 (5 units energy in from electricity in to get 1 unit of energy in fuel out) then we'd still be ahead.
Some sources to back up my EROEI claims.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/j... [forbes.com]
https://www.world-nuclear.org/... [world-nuclear.org]
How do we turn electricity to airplane fuel? There's several ideas, "E-diesel" is just one.
https://en.w [wikipedia.org]
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Unless I'm wrong, the problem with air travel is carbon emissions. But if you fly on bio fuel, which is created by extracting carbon from the air, then aren't you carbon neutral? Can't fossil fuels be completely replaced with bio fuels?
Once all of your power generation is a mix of solar, wind, geothermal and possibly fusion (which is only 10 years away, right?), and then you go to bio fuels for air travel, seems to me you're in much better shape.
Air plane bio fuel already exists, but is produced only in small amounts due to cost (and could not currently be produced in huge amounts due to being plant based, there's not enough farm land). The last figure I've seen is that for relatively short flights (an average flight inside the EU) it adds a cost of about €30/person/flight hour. If you don't care exactly where the carbon emissions are generated and just don't want to add by flying, you could by EU carbon credits currently trading at about
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I'm thinking the same thing. The US should start moving away from subsidizing ethanol for ground vehicles and start building out infrastructure for aviation biofuels. Long distance, large passenger aircraft will need aviation fuel for the foreseeable future, there's really no substitute.
The US has plenty of arable land for the task, autos, trains and buses can be electrified. If you consider the military there is a strategic reason to pursue the bio aviation fuel route as well. We should keep our fossil
Some people fly more than others (Score:2)
Some people fly more than others.
For instance, I know some families that fly from Europe to Thailand and back, for vacation every year only to stay at a beach resort. That's halfway across the world, for a little sun. In my view, that is quite excessive.
But if you go as a once-in-a-lifetime trip, then by all means, do it!
I think the problem is private jets (Score:2)
Electricity sources matter too (Score:3)
Electricity is not a source. It has to be generated somewhere. Some countries are doing well, but others still get the majority of their electricity from fossil fuels [reneweconomy.com.au].
In the case of air travel, its energy consumption is highly sensitive to weight. Assuming you need to make the trip in such a short travel time (big assumption I know), the extra weight of the batteries for a mid- to long-haul electric plane will actually make it consume more fossil fuel energy (needed to generate the electricity) than simply burning aviation fuel.
It's probably more useful to think of energy consumption in terms of energy displacement. When you change up how you consume energy, which energy sources are you leaving, which are you adding? When you switch your ICE car for an EV, that doesn't drop your fossil fuel consumption to zero as is widely believed. You quit using gasoline so that's a plus. But charging your EV adds to the amount of electricity that the power grid needs to produce. Right now, nuclear and renewables are run flat-out to generate as much as they can. So any increase in electricity generation (any additional electricity consumption) has to come from burning more fossil fuels. That means the electricity charging your EV is actually coming 100% from fossil fuels. It's slightly more efficient than an ICE vehicle (about 35%* vs 25%, unless your ICE was diesel in which case the efficiency is about the same). But you're still causing nearly as much CO2 emissions as when it was an ICE car.
This is the same reason why contracting with a renewable power plant to supply 100% of your factory's electricity doesn't work. All you're doing is taking renewable energy which someone else used to consume, and shifting it to yourself, forcing the other person to use fossil fuels instead. i.e. Before your contract, you used x MWh of fossil fuels, Bob used x MWh of renewables. After your contract, you used x MWh of renewables, and Bob has to use x MWh of fossil fuels because you've bought up all the renewable electricity he used to use. There's no net change in emissions. The only thing you've accomplished is a meaningless PR stunt.
To truly reduce fossil fuel emissions requires changing energy production away from fossil fuels. The consumption end makes little to no difference (aside from conservation, which reduces consumption).
* Someone is bound to point out that fossil fuel coal plants are about 40% efficient, gas plants 60% efficient. That's true. But if you take the average (50%), multiply by 97% transmission efficiency, and 85% charging efficiency [teslamotorsclub.com] (some of the electricity goes into heating up the battery), and 85% discharge efficiency (the reason why ludicrous mode depletes the battery quicker), you end up with an overall 0.5*0.97*0.85*0.85 = 35% efficiency of converting energy in the coal/gas into kinetic energy of wheels to the ground.
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Just curious as to when you'd deem it reasonable to switch an ICE to an EV, by your reasoning it's seemingly when all generated electricity has been switched to non fossil fuels and there's an excess of electricity produced?
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No indeedy!
In tests, nine out of ten teenagers prefered peri-peri to electricity on their chicken! (I am a bit worried about the other one).
Thinking Outside Of The Box (Score:2)
Noise (Score:3)
Until the 5.2e12 dollars per year of global fossil fuel subsidies are curtailed, everything else the population does is little more than noise.
Blaming consumers for global warming is nothing more than a misdirection.
My Gulfstream is clean (Score:2)
It runs on condensed kitten tears.
A slight salty water vapour is all it leaves behind.
More Fear mongering (Score:2)
How many times in the past have we been told "the sky is falling" only for those predictions to be FALSE.So far the doomsdayers on climate change or 0 for 41+....
https://www.breitbart.com/envi... [breitbart.com]
No such thing as a 'solar powered electric car' (Score:2)
by 2030, the Internet will consume 20% (Score:3)
To determine the energy consumption of the internet, one must ask what the Internet is. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, the internet is âoethe large system of connected computers around the world that allows people to share information and communicate with each otherâ. A study conducted by Ericsson and TeliaSonera determined that the three most energy-hungry internet components of this âoebroad systemâ are the end-user equipment, data centres and networks.
Determining the global energy consumption of the internet is complicated. The Centre for Energy-Efficient Telecommunications (CEET) tried to do this once. It estimated that internet consumption accounts for 1.5% to 2% of the worldâ(TM)s total energy consumption in 2013. If we compare this figure with the use of other countries, the Internet would be the 5th country consuming the most energy in the world. In 2014, Jon Koomey, Professor at Stanford University and known for describing Koomeyâ(TM)s law, estimated this consumption to be at around 10%. However In 2017 Greenpeace estimated it at the lower rate of 7%.
There are a few reasons that can explain this critical difference. The main one being that when end-user equipment consumes energy, this energy is not necessarily used to connect to the internet. A laptop or computer can be used offline to play video games. Allocating the share of electricity used for the internet connection is therefore very complicated. Some experts prefer not to count the energy consumption of these devices so as not to distort the numbers. Besides, experts expect this power consumption to double every four years. The Guardian predicts that in 2020 the internet will reach 12% of global energy consumption.
100+ tons of fuel? (Score:2)
Sure, if it would be a flight over land and one would look at driving individual cars over the same distance, maybe it would be using more fuel than a plane moving the same amount of passenger - dunno though, have not checked...
One thing is for sure, for an object heavier than a
BS! (Score:2)
We're using the wrong planes. (Score:2)
Cut air travel 90% until Arctic cools (Score:4, Informative)
Reducing stratospheric air travel 90% is just blowing the foam off the top of a pitcher of beer. It is the youngest of the massive fossil fuel burning schemes that exploit the human enjoyment of speed and movement.
I am posting a really difficult point of view regarding the CO2 problem.
Humans are emitting 8 times too much fossil fuel CO2. Eight times too much.
Here is the outstanding book "Without Hot Air" by Donald MacKay presenting this difficult finding in context:
http://www.inference.org.uk/wi... [inference.org.uk]
It boils down to humans need to cut absolute fossil fuel CO2 emissions by -10% per year for about 30 years in a row.
Here is a URL to my writing on this problem. Regarding air travel. I feel a 90% reduction needs to be done until Arctic temperatures begin dropping.
https://www.lowco2america.com/ [lowco2america.com]
15-25 mpg (Score:2)
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which only account for 2 percent of all carbon emissions
I feel like I've seen statements like this a lot in recent articles about emissions and waste, and it seems silly to me. Of course you can divide either of these things into constituent pieces such that most pieces seem fairly insignificant, but all those add up.
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I am going from London to Amsterdam in a couple of weeks. I shall be driving , 3 people in the 50MPG car, a journey of about 400 miles.
I am using a car mostly because flying is such a horrendous experience because of the American inspired security theatre, and Nazi inspired identity checks, but also because, in a car, you see the places you are passing, rather than a bunch of clouds, and can take some things along without paying extra, let alone being charged