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To have any chance of taking control of our collective carbon footprint we need to move away from technology like this not towards it. And until we can manifes
by worldsayshi 8y ago
To have any chance of taking control of our collective carbon footprint we need to move away from technology like this not towards it.
And until we can manifest fundamentally different technology for air travel we should collectively and rapidly scale down our dependence on long distance commute.
Fossil fuel driven flight is not viable in a sustainable future. We need to understand this.
- losteric 8y agoWhy is that an absolute? Can't biofuel sources be refined into jet fuel? I understand that subsidies currently create perverse incentives in that industry, but I struggle to see why bioengineered carbon-neutral jet fuel is fundamentally not viable. That thinking seems very closed-minded.
- CalRobert 8y agoBiofuels have been a disaster inasmuch as we've destroyed enormous amounts of rainforest to grow them, releasing quite a bit of carbon in the process (and destroying wildlife habitat, of course)
- losteric 8y agoThat'd not an argument that carbon-neutral supersonic jets are impossible and should be abandoned. Biofuels doesn't necessarily mean subsidized corn fields... for example, algae and bacteria grown under specialized LEDs powered by renewable energy are another path forward. Perfect is the enemy of the good. We can research supersonic jets in addition to better electric storage and propulsion systems.
- worldsayshi 8y ago> Perfect is the enemy of the good. This saying is not suitable here because unsustainable technology isn't good. It's simply not worth the cost and we are borrowing from the future. If the venture would be unprofitable up until the point when it would be sustainable would we still push money into it? I say we should treat any venture that is unsustainable the same way we treat those that are unprofitable. But we don't. We allow unsustainable ventures to carry on without ever becoming sustainable. Which means that it is constantly borrowing (stealing) means from everyone else.
- CalRobert 8y agoThat's great if we have the algae and bacteria. Right now we don't seem to. Maybe we should invest the money there. In theory, you can power a big car on responsibly sourced fuel. In reality, selling millions of big cars is a huge problem, because of course people will understandably put in the cheap, ubiquitous fuel for which they're not covering externalities.
- worldsayshi 8y agoIn my mind the most viable way to make air travel sustainable is to use synthetic fuels produced with commercialised fusion power and atmospheric greenhouse gases as input. It sounds very sci fi and I'm not sure it would even work on a napkin calculation produced by a thermodynamics professor.
- loeg 8y agoSure; it's not an unreasonable approach for making such travel carbon neutral; the idea being you're sequestering parity amounts of carbon via the atmospheric gases -> fuel process, and nuclear power covers the inefficiency of such a process. Downsides include: 1. It's only neutral. It doesn't remove gases we've already released. 2. The process is almost certainly extremely expensive. Until something like emissions taxes are levied, it will not be a competitive fuel.
- robotresearcher 8y agoIt's slightly better than neutral. Captured atmospheric carbon would be stored out of the atmosphere in fuel tanks until use. And we could decide to capture and sequester more than we plan to burn again, since in this scenario we have the capturing tech sorted out.
- loeg 8y agoSure, under the assumption it's cheap to sequester more than all of the oil we extract out of the ground and consume today, then some could be stored to make it neutral or even positive. There are two big steps in there that might or might not ever happen.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- aphextron 8y ago>Fossil fuel driven flight is not viable in a sustainable future. We need to understand this. But it's the reality. Electrification of individual ground transportation, and the phasing out of gasoline cars, is absolutely inevitable over the next 20 years. But jet fuel isn't going anywhere for a long, long time. It's just a matter of physics. It's foreseeable to have small scale electrified commuter aircraft shuttling people within 400 miles. But any type of long haul flight will be done with turbine engines burning kerosene. Even with a 10x increase in energy density for LiPo batteries, we still wouldn't be there.
- longerthoughts 8y agoI don't disagree with anything you've said, but not having a viable alternative to fossil fuel driven flight right now doesn't justify accelerating the damage it's doing by leaning further into it.
- ThomPete 8y agoBy that standard you shouldnt be using the internet. The “damage” is questionable to say the least. There is a whole group of poor people who need access to fossil fuels to survive, but are you going to stop them from getting it in the mame of climate change? Are you goin to stop buying computers and other products build and distributed using the internatioal supply change? If not why expect others to do what you dont?
- worldsayshi 8y agoI don't understand this logic. How does one action with unfortunate side effects excuse another? Sure perhaps we shouldn't be using the internet. Or perhaps we should do a lot more to make sure that the energy used for powering the internet is sustainable. But our deficiency in that area doesn't make this activity any better.
- ThomPete 8y agoWho are you to decide what is ok and what is not? How do you know that building a supersonic jet doesent open up for other technologies or methods that wil improve effectiveness of fuel consumtion? I dont understand with what logic you get to decide that your consumption is ok but other peoples use isnt.
- btrettel 8y agoI think slower flight might be best for long distance travel. Something like an airship. I don't know much about the technology, but my naive view is that the technology is undervalued. An airship has VTOL, is quieter, is more spacious, produces less carbon emissions, etc.
- ghaff 8y agoWeather issues are one problem for airships. Actual ships are an option for transatlantic routes but there is basically one limited alternative for that. People basically want cheap and fast. Once you get beyond driving that mostly means subsonic planes.
- btrettel 8y agoThanks, I was not aware of the weather problems. I'd be willing to take a slower option and I think at least some others would too as long as it's less cramped.
- ghaff 8y agoInternational airline travel can already be pretty much as roomy as a mass of people are willing to pay for on a route. And shifting to a slower mode of transportation that's equally or even more roomy tends to carry a big premium as well. Taking the train or a ship on a multi-thousand mile trip costs more than certainly economy flying does. You can generally travel in comfort. You just need to pay for it.
- mikepurvis 8y agoMy wife and I took our then-infant daughter on a 2800km train ride about five years ago (Toronto to Saskatoon by VIA Rail). We paid extra to have sleeping berths with meals included vs regular seats, but overall it was pretty expensive and slow: - You spend a lot (would estimate 30%+) of time waiting on sidings for freight trains to pass in the other direction because there's only a single track owned by the freight company, so their trains get priority. - There's no back up plan, and only a few trips a week. Our train happened to run on time, but I had a family member try to take it a few years later and ended up having to cancel for refund and fly instead because the train was running 24h late and she needed to be home for something. - It's priced and advertised as an "experience" comparable to going on a cruise. They serve you nice food, but obviously the cost of all that service is baked into the ticket— no one is pretending that you'd choose this option just to get to your destination. - We got our fares for around 60% off, but it was still $450 per adult, I think, which was a lot more than our return flights were (we could afford neither the time nor money required to take the train in both directions). Getting these fares required weeks of monitoring for VIA's "discount Tuesday" promotions and then building our travel plans around the specific dates offered. - No wifi or even cell reception for most of the route. The northern Ontario section of the route is extremely remote and not at all scenic— just mile after mile of unremarkable forest. Maybe there's room for an option that's slightly more comfortable and slightly slower, if that's what an airship would offer? But as far as the train goes, it's lots more comfortable and many times slower, but there's just no way to make the cost comparable to flying when you need to pay for all those hours of staff and equipment.
- nickik 8y agoI don't agree. While electric plains maybe in the future, carbon based fuels will continue to be a requirement for a long time. Eventually we can move to produced carbon based fuel but that will take a while. Until then, the old green idea of 'lets just not do it' is simply not viable to reduce carbon usage.
- firethief 8y agoIf not having commercial supersonic flight isn't viable, quodlibet.
- nickik 8y agoIts not viable to stop the world from using technology and use it just because it goes against your personal preference.
- worldsayshi 8y agoUntil we have better technology we have to scale down or reliance on unsustainable tech. The alternative is adverse degradation of our most sophisticated technology available - the biosphere.
- ericd 8y agoYeah, see, saying “let’s all stop doing this thing” where the thing has diffuse long term bad effects for everyone but short term benefits for the person that does it generally doesn’t work. People have been trying that for a long time. It has to be written into law, or the benefits (economic or otherwise) need to be tilted toward doing the right thing. I think a large carbon tax is the only shot of getting everyone on track with reducing impact.
- worldsayshi 8y agoYes. No disagreement here. We absolutely need to put it into law. Although, making such legislation happen doesn't seem to work either. But we need to make it so.
- eloff 8y agoNonsense. It's less than 1% of our carbon emissions iirc. In theory we could convert that over to biofuels and/or hydrocarbons produced using CO2 from the atmosphere, at which point it would be carbon neutral. It may be the only reasonable way to get the energy density we need for practical air travel in the near term.
- Retric 8y ago“The global aviation industry produces around 2% of all human-induced carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Aviation is responsible for 12% of CO2 emissions from all transports sources, compared to 74% from road transport.” But that’s with current aircraft supper sonic is less efficient and enables longer flights having a very outsized impact for minimal gain. You can both sleep and use high speed internet from modern jets, going 2-3x as fast adds little productivity. On top of that emerging markets are just as happy to start flying as start driving which is pushing up flying’s impact every year.
- loeg 8y ago> You can both sleep and use high speed internet from modern jets Speak for yourself — I can't sleep on planes. Nor is airplane internet anything close to high speed by any standard. It's expensive as hell and doesn't exist over oceans. At the same ticket price, for long-haul international, I'd greatly prefer an economy-sized seat in a 2.5x shorter flight to a biz-class seat in a traditional flight.
- Retric 8y agoThe cost of these things are well into first class territory* which I find much easier to sleep in vs business class. Turbulence can still occasionally be a thing, but it’s less frequent on long haul flights because they have more options. As to internet over the ocean, Gogo has quality high speed internet via satellite. If you have not flown on one of these flights or a competent competitor you will notice a real difference. *At least until a large number of aircraft are in service. Airlines make the most money per square foot with business class, but first class is still a critical revenue stream. Free up first class space via these and run fewer large aircraft with a higher percentage of business class is going to be most efficient. This also means you end up with either fewer economy seats or more expensive ones as currently first class and business class subsidizes economy.
- mlindner 8y agoMuch as you wish it were the case electric battery power does not have enough power density for mass aircraft transit yet. They're much too heavy. We're getting there but we're still a good decade away. You're certainly not going to get supersonic airliners with electric aircraft. (Elon Musk keeps talking about it but even he states that the energy density isn't there yet.) People need to realize the difference between fiction and reality.
- loeg 8y agoHow much do nuclear submarine power plants weigh? :-) Looks like on the order of 600 tons; also looks like 787s carry over 100 ton just in fuel fully loaded. So it is plausible that a scaled down nuclear sub reactor should supply plenty of energy at reasonable weight budget. Obviously you'd want it to be somewhat robust and maybe eject + parachute it for catastrophic scenarios, rather than irradiating whatever the plane runs into.
- ekianjo 8y agoThe energy requirements of moving in the water and the air are completely different so its not a good comparison point. And subs use nuclear power I am pretty sure nobody wants to have planes flying with nuclear reactors over their heads.
- loeg 8y agoIt wasn't intended to be a comparison of subs and planes; subs just have the smallest production nuclear power plants that I know of.
- taneq 8y agoIt's been tried, back in the 50s and 60s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_Nuclear_Propulsion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_Nuclear_Propulsion Never went anywhere then but I'd be interested to see whether modern tech could make it feasible.
- 8y ago
- tim333 8y agoLong term you could switch to biofuel or similar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_biofuel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_biofuel