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>No downsides expect the environmental impact of resource extraction and refinement. Sure, but those are relatively solvable problems (they extract oil right i
by RC_ITR 4y ago
>No downsides expect the environmental impact of resource extraction and refinement.
Sure, but those are relatively solvable problems (they extract oil right in the middle of America's second largest city and almost no one notices)
>A 500ml glass bottle weighs approximately 250g, which is inefficient in terms of weight contained. But it's pretty insignificant compared to the weight of the passenger and their luggage. There are also reusable plastic bottles.
Jet fuel burnt is an incremental problem (just like radiation exposure). Even if it's a tiny amount on the margin, it's still more than we otherwise have to and keep in mind, a large US airport like SFO (which does not sell any plastic bottles of any kind) will do 250k+ aircraft movements per year, so an incremental half gallon of fuel burnt per flight is still like 2.5mn tons of CO2 unnecessarily put into the atmospheric carbon well (not counting the trucks that got the heavier bottles to the airport).
>I'm not entirely convinced the plastic is inert enough to bury it in a shallow hole, but that's something that could be established if it isn't already. Burning it for power and heat also seems fine to me as long as we're still burning orders of magnitude more oil, gas and coal.
Well first and foremost, please do not support burning anything other than as a last resort. We are in a climate crisis and we need to keep as much carbon out of our atmospheric well as possible. Again, it's an incremental problem.
And sure, burying it is not perfect (most human actions have some amount of environmental consequence if you look closely enough), but recycling it literally doesn't work, so the only other option is the Ocean (which is weirdly what we've chosen.
- morsch 4y agoToo much time thinking about how to prevent a 250g bottle from flying and not enough time thinking about how to prevent the 85000g accompanying said bottle from flying. Maybe a large airport like SFO should be doing 25k aircraft movements a year instead of 250k, since we're in a climate crisis, and should not support burning anything. I guess flying is the last resort. The environmental impact of resource extraction and refinement includes its CO2 output, by the way, not just the effects it has on the immediate surroundings which you efficiently hand-waved away. And maybe LA doesn't have as good handle on things as you think[1]. [1] https://theconversation.com/los-angeles-long-troubled-history-with-urban-oil-drilling-is-nearing-an-end-after-years-of-health-concerns-175983 https://theconversation.com/los-angeles-long-troubled-histor...
- conradev 4y agoToo much time according to whom? There are plenty of people that exist and some number number of them are working on aviation biofuel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_biofuel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_biofuel We are allowed to and often have to attack problems of efficiency from both sides – in scaling up zero carbon solutions and minimizing waste in existing solutions. But note that I said "minimizing waste". It is extremely hard to get people on board with demand destruction. The fed is having a hard time raising interest rates even though it is good for the long term. Getting people to fly less isn't as simple as telling them "no" – they'll just elect someone who will say "yes" or fly more (yes, that is a thing). _You need to provide meaningful alternatives_. Like, for example, building a train. But we've proven to be pretty bad at that, so then we go look at biofuels.
- RC_ITR 4y agoAgain, these are incremental problems. You can and should do both. But yours involves changing society at a fundamental level (who decides the people who can no longer see their relatives at Christmas?) and mine involves reversing a recent law.
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- RC_ITR 4y ago>People living near Los Angeles oil wells have less lung strength and capacity than average for the region, on par with living near a freeway, researchers found Hmmm, no potential confounding factors there...