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Can't we just stop that traveling nightmare? Now it's not only going to destroy our climate, but also bringing the Zombie Apocalypse.
by summm 7y ago
Can't we just stop that traveling nightmare? Now it's not only going to destroy our climate, but also bringing the Zombie Apocalypse.
- dzhiurgis 7y 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. First result on Google...
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoThe bigger problem with aviation is there's no known way to decarbonize it within the foreseeable future. Hopefully most people will be driving electric cars within the next few decades, but with airplanes that won't be possible absent a miraculous breakthrough.
- korantu 7y agoThe actual process already exists in electrofuels. [0] . If one has enough hear/electricity, they could generate fuel directly usable in existing jet engines with captured CO2, making overall process CO2-neutral [0] https://karmaimpact.com/jet-engine-makers-cast-an-eye-on-nuclear-power-for-help-making-cleaner-fuel/ https://karmaimpact.com/jet-engine-makers-cast-an-eye-on-nuc...
- trevyn 7y agoCO2 is fungible, so no problem just using regular fuel and sequestering an equivalent amount of CO2 from elsewhere in the atmosphere. At $100/ton CO2 sequestration cost and 90kg CO2 per passenger-hour, that’s roughly $10/passenger-hour.
- adrianN 7y agoThat is an important step, but unfortunately emissions at cruise altitude have a much higher impact than the CO2 at ground level you produce your fuel from.
- zaroth 7y agoHuman breathing produces about 2.5 billion tons of CO2 per year. Aviation is just under 1 billion tons per year. Aviation is one of the great wonders of the modern world. The carbon it produces is essentially inconsequential. Compared to the wealth, knowledge, peace, and prosperity that international travel directly supports, calls to curtail plane travel in order to reduce CO2 IMO are seriously misguided.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- cjbprime 7y agoThe tons produced by aviation are produced in higher concentration in air, and produced nearer to the atmosphere at high altitude, making them more dangerous than the tons produced by human breathing. You can't just compare the total.
- cesarb 7y ago> Human breathing produces about 2.5 billion tons of CO2 per year. The carbon emitted in human breathing came from the food, and the carbon in the food came from the atmosphere. It's a closed cycle. It doesn't matter if it's a billion or two, an identical amount of carbon had to be captured first.
- zaroth 7y ago
- chrisco255 7y agoCO2 is plant food. All organic species are made out of substantial amounts of carbon. The mild warming has not killed anyone and no, droughts are not more common than they were 100 years ago. Only 11,000 people died from natural disasters and weather related phenomenon last year, down from over 1,000,000 per year, 100 years ago.
- tinix 7y agoComparing death rates per disaster, per capita, between now and 100 years ago, is wholly nonsensical. Biomedical technology is immensely more effective now, than 100 years ago. It is not a 1:1 comparison. What that curve looks like, I don't know, but it's not a fair comparison to draw ratios like that. Don't get me wrong, I'm not supporting the hysteria here, by any means, or at least, that is not my intent... but c'mon, let's be reasonable and think about this. Diseases aside... to direct some attention to the other part of your message... Yeah CO2 fuels photosynthesis, but when most of the light is blocked by smog and smoke, what then? First of all, light is needed for photosynthesis, I'm sure we all can agree. But, when plants are in the dark, they actually release CO2. Actually, they release CO2 in the day time too, because plants also respire, they breathe oxygen, and release CO2, and when there is light, some of that CO2 can be used to make energy; they are efficient that way. Further, about half the CO2 that they consume during the day, is released at night, and the rest is converted to energy, or wasted, etc... Just dumping more and more CO2 and acting like, fuck it, man, whatever, it's plant food... knowing these facts that I expressed above... Think.
- chrisco255 7y agoCO2 is not visible. You cannot see CO2 (unless it's frozen as dry ice). Smog is caused by sulfates, not CO2. I'm all for clean burning fuel but not for smog-inducing pollution. CO2 cannot trap or reflect visible light spectrum. It can only trap a very narrow band of infrared energy. That's what causes the minimal warming effect.
- adrianN 7y agoWe're at less than 1K of warming today, but our emissions put us on a 3K+ path.
- adrianN 7y agoAviation has a relatively small global impact because almost nobody can afford to fly. For a typical person in a rich country, it is really easy to double your climate impact by taking a long distance flight per year, for example from Europe to SF.
- dzhiurgis 7y agoFuel price per mile is cheaper in economy than in a Prius. Most poor people don't drive the most efficient cars in market and surely do travel in cars much more than an exec.
- catalogia 7y agoIs it safe to assume that if people couldn't fly, they'd drive just as many miles instead? I don't think that's a safe assumption. I think people would visit family less often if it meant a 25 hour drive across the country. They'd probably not vacation on the other side of an ocean either.
- Barrin92 7y agothis is a pneumonia infection, which usually infects three million Americans per year and kills sixty thousand. And if that is scary to you don't look up the damage influenza causes every year and has since time immemorial. I have absolutely no idea what's going on with the hysteria among the press or commenters, this is not a zombie virus.
- legionof7 7y agoIsn't this more infectious and potentially deadlier?
- Barrin92 7y agoit may be possible that it is more infectious than ordinary pneumonia but it doesn't appear more deadly, in fact it appears to be less severe in the majority of patients. The mortality rate for hospitalized pneumonia patients, in general, is about 5%, for the coronavirus it appears to be about 3% right now but that number is likely too high because a lot of the less severe cases might not be diagnosed as such.
- shkkmo 7y agoFYI, pneumonia is not a really a single infectious disease, it is a condition caused by a wide variety of infections (bacterial, viral and fungal) and non-infectious causes. The bacteria that most commonly causes pneumonia is generally benign in healthy individuals, it only causes pneumonia in a limited set of cases with predisposing factors.
- MiroF 7y agobut then compare the number of typical influenza dead to the year of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic
- hyperpape 7y agoThey were within ordinary ranges, though perhaps at the high end. The US has more flu deaths in a typical year than it had H1N1 deaths. I was watching it obsessively early on, but it turned out to not be disastrous.
- lopmotr 7y agoTravelling is vital for bringing poor people out of generational poverty. Without it, they'll be stuck in their economically depressed places of birth and the whole rest of the world will also be disadvantaged by not having their labor used productively. That could easily be worse than climate change and disease.