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I would be curious whether electric planes significantly reduce the carbon footprint of flying. My intuition is that you wouldn't be dumping CO2 and H2O (both f
by rflrob 11y ago
I would be curious whether electric planes significantly reduce the carbon footprint of flying. My intuition is that you wouldn't be dumping CO2 and H2O (both fairly potent greenhouse gases) directly into the upper atmosphere, so it would be a huge win, but I am neither a climate scientist nor an aerospace engineer, so maybe I'm missing something.
- ramidarigaz 11y agoLike electric cars, they have that nice abstraction layer where you don't _have_ to depend on fossil fuels. Just provide solar charging!
- anigbrowl 11y agoAnd where some of your footprint is fossil-based, industrial-scale scrubbers are a lot easier to install on the ground than loft into the air.
- toomuchtodo 11y agoOr generate your fuel at each airport (algae), convert to biodiesel, and then dump into your tanks as usual. Batteries may rule on the ground now, but we're a long way off from liquid fuel getting tossed aside in the sky.
- ThrustVectoring 11y agoFor fuel generation, we're likely better off with using thorium power to turn air and water into gasoline.
- briholt 11y agoI was wrongly under the impression contrails reflected more sunlight, creating a net cooling. But it looks to be the opposite as you suggest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrail#Contrails_and_climate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrail#Contrails_and_climate
- Shadow6363 11y agoWater is a greenhouse gas?
- T-A 11y agoYep: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/monitoring-references/faq/greenhouse-gases.php https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/monitoring-references/faq/greenhou...
- credit_guy 11y agoNot only water (vapor) is a greenhouse gas, it's by far the most important. Per wikipedia, its contribution to the greenhouse effect is 36-72%, while the next contribution, of CO2, is 9-26%. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas