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AI to help planes avoid climate-warming 'sky graffiti'
- aaron_m04 2mo agoOr we could fly less.
- blondie9x 2mo agoThis exactly.
- immmmmm 2mo agoYes. I read somewhere that 90% of human never took a plane.
- brookst 2mo agoOk, say we somehow cut air travel by 50% overnight. Seems unlikely, but we did it. Would you advocate to not pursue this approach to mitigating the remaining 50%?
- blondie9x 2mo agoCheck out other comment. It could actually end up causing more warming in the long term depending on the net change in fuel use or extra maintenance on plane etc.
- blondie9x 2mo agoIf you shift a route to avoid making contrails and end up on a longer or more turbulent route what is the net benefit to the climate? For example if a plane ends up using more fuel on a longer route to avoid a cold area where contrails could be made or ends up on a route with more headwinds or turbulence. Is this a bit of green washing?
- brookst 2mo agoFrom TFA: > Rather than dramatically changing the route of a flight, the trial will mostly involve changing an aircraft's altitude by around 2,000ft.
- blondie9x 2mo agoWhat if there are more headwinds at that height which require increased fuel use?
- bfc1890 2mo agoIf you have any experience with the majority of airlines, you can be sure they are not planning to spend any significant amount of extra fuel on this problem. I am not a pilot, but I assume once you are at cruising altitude, small altitude changes are a rounding error
- brookst 2mo agoI mean what if there’s a mountain at that height? Will they just fly into it?
- citrin_ru 2mo agoIt's an optimization problem which could be solved if impact of contrails could be estimated. Making a long detour unlikely is good choice but if a small route / altitude changes could help - why not?
- dd8601fn 2mo agoThat’s not deep insight stuff. I promise you these people are more keenly aware of what constitutes an undesirable solution than that.
- talon8635 2mo agoThis is not what I was envisioning for major AI breakthroughs It can hack into companies and exploit anything, but beyond that, forget the medical breakthroughs and real climate solutions, we’re tackling “sky graffiti”. Here I was, an ignorant dolt, unawares that we even had a major “sky graffiti” problem.
- notarget137 2mo agoYeah, let's use a computationally heavy task that contributes to burning coal and gas releasing CO2 into the atmosphere to reduce a slight fraction in emission so we could pat ourselves on the back.
- Cribbin 2mo agoIt is not a “slight” reduction in emissions, it’s absolutely huge! About half of the aviation industry’s total impact on global warming is due to contrails! This is 1-2% of all human caused warming across all industries. (Though slight caveat for any nit-pickers. The warming isn’t related to emissions. The contrails essentially create a blanket that traps heat in the earth’s atmosphere - the BBC article linked mentions this) Source: https://youtu.be/QoOVqQ5sa08 https://youtu.be/QoOVqQ5sa08 (Or check the sources in the linked video)