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> that doesn't involve reducing fossil emissions. You can fly an airplane on non-fossil fuels. As the original commenter also said: He'd rather focus on earni
by madsbuch 4y ago
> that doesn't involve reducing fossil emissions.
You can fly an airplane on non-fossil fuels.
As the original commenter also said: He'd rather focus on earning money than saving a bit. Maybe that opinion translates to the climate debate?
Maybe he wants to produce large amounts of energy with limited externalities instead of saving a bit.
- lazyasciiart 4y agoYou're talking about finding a different way to reduce emissions, it is still reducing emissions.
- madsbuch 4y agoSynthetic fuels do not reduce emissions. The emissions are just not from fossil fuels. Or am I missing something?
- FartyMcFarter 4y agoThere are fuels that consume CO2 from the air during production and then burn it during usage (net being close to zero depending on the energy used to generate it).
- pjc50 4y agoI put "fossil emissions" in my original comment for a reason; things which are made from atmospheric CO2 and not fossil carbon, but then release CO2 again when used, are "net zero" and should not be counted unless you want to confuse people.
- madsbuch 4y agoThe normal person add fuel to their car and expects emission from the car. The discourse on qualifying different forms of fuels is way more confusing. It is also dangerous. If we allow marketing of "net-zero" fuels, fossil fuel companies will offset their fuel with CO2 certificates.
- pjc50 4y agoAt what cost to others? The climate morality debate is complicated because it's all statistical. "Drown Bangladesh and Florida" is obviously a wrong outcome, but there's no one individual wrong action that leads there. You could come up with an approximation like "each gallon of jet fuel consumed raises the sea level by one femtometre"; each action is individually trivial, but combined they are not trivial.
- madsbuch 4y ago> At what cost to others? ... I think nobody disagrees. Your entire comment is rhetoric handcuffing. Nobody proposed to let "Bangladesh and Florida drown". We are discussing ways to avoid current path of climate change which can involve other means than reducing mobility. Unfortunately a lot of people are set on an extremely narrow path, which is a moral issue. How are you going to explain to third world countries that you do not think they have the right to prosper like the US did? In the end, it is morally wrong to be single minded on the solution to the issues. We need to consider other means. Let the means compete and pick the best way.
- TeMPOraL 4y agoThe statistical part is the easy part. You can handle the femtometres by estimating how much it'll cost to mitigate the damage, and taxing jet fuel per gallon in proportion (among with other CO₂ emitters). Put tax money to mitigation, and you'll even get a negative feedback loop that'll settle something reasonable. No, the hard part is that we just can't do the obvious, because there is no one global government that could mandate it. Instead, everyone at every level - individual, corporate, governmental - is better off short-term by not doing any climate mitigation, because those who do will lose business to those who don't.
- yanellena 4y ago>You can fly an airplane on non-fossil fuels. Not at the scale of commercial airlines though and certainly not (yet) as cheaply.
- madsbuch 4y agoIndifferent to how practical you might think it is, one can still hold the view that it is more feasible to combat climate change that way. Also, it is interesting to see, that you think it is more practical to eliminate air travel, than to employ new techniques to allow air travel while being climate neutral.