4 ms·

> it’s led to poor use of land with questionable climate impact. In the short term, yes, because they were unnecessarily using carbon energy to grow the fuel.

by 317070 1mo ago

> it’s led to poor use of land with questionable climate impact. In the short term, yes, because they were unnecessarily using carbon energy to grow the fuel. But if we want to de-fossilise society in the long run, we need solutions for flying and long distance travel. Electric flying seems infeasible at the moment, and people are looking for suitable bio-fuels to make flying carbon neutral. Afaik the maximum planes were allowed to handle up to now, was a 50-50 mix kerosene-biofuel. [0] Coconuts could be a breakthrough! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_biofuel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_biofuel

the_sleaze_ 1mo ago
Saw a recent post about an electric plane - was pretty sweet let me dig it up. $5 worth of fuel! > https://www.heartaerospace.com/newsroom/heart-aerospace-completes-first-flight-of-world-s-largest-electric-aircraft https://www.heartaerospace.com/newsroom/heart-aerospace-comp...
- dredmorbius 1mo ago
  These are strictly short-haul transports, aiming for about 200km (125 mi) electric range, 800 km (500 mi) in hybrid mode with reduced passenger/payload load. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_Aerospace#ES-30 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_Aerospace#ES-30>
sixtyj 1mo ago
How many coconuts are on one tree and how many tons of coconuts would be needed to replace kerosene globally? I am 100% for decarbonization as fast as possible. BTW Law of Conservation of Energy will be applied to coconut-based energy as well. Vaclav Smil mentions in his book that we should consume less. I see so many cheap weekender air tickets… it’s almost impossible to resist the temptation. Annually 5 billions people travel by plane…
- pfdietz 1mo ago
  Vaclav Smil so wildly mispredicted the trajectory of renewables that his worldview should be taken with heavy skepticism.
  - chermi 1mo ago
    That's true of basically all economists' predictions of technology. But he does a lot more than state predictions, his numbers and breakdowns and decompositioba are valuable in themselves.
    - pfdietz 1mo ago
      Possibly, but economists can simply not make those predictions. Smil focused on them. It was a core of what he was saying, and he got it very wrong.
    - dredmorbius 1mo ago
      TBF: Smil is a technologist, not an economist.
  - dredmorbius 1mo ago
    Howso?
    - pfdietz 1mo ago
      He observed that historically energy transitions took 50-100 years and then concluded a renewable energy transition would take a similar amount of time. This is of course a non sequitur, an example of the hazards of inductive reasoning. Since he made those predictions renewables grew many times faster, and with a much shorter doubling time, than he had predicted. But even before that renewables were on an experience curve that would have rendered his predictions implausible.
      - dredmorbius 1mo ago
        Fair point, though I'd give him a bit more credit. By pointing out both the necessity of the transition and the historically slow pace of such transitions, Smil is raising the pressure on achieving such a transition rather than encouraging complaisance and/or excessive tolerance of the rate of change to date. And despite the current pace of change, we're still far from goals with impacts of failure to move off fossil fuels ever more evident.
steve1977 1mo ago
The best solution to flying and long distance travel is to reduce it as much as possible. This means no more travelling for hedonistic (touristic) purposes. I.e. measures like massive taxation (also for private jets of course).
- toomuchtodo 1mo ago
  Electrified high speed rail solves this, with flying reserved for transoceanic needs. Private jets should not exist outside of scientific, medical, or other non luxury/personal use cases. Travel and tourism will always be with us, and should be imho. Carbon taxes, laws, whatever is needed to accomplish it.
  - mdp2021 1mo ago
    > should not exist outside of Externalities can be made to bear a cost.
    - toomuchtodo 1mo ago
      Currently, there is no effective way to put carbon back in the ground, and therefore no way to make the externality bear the cost. This is an excuse to justify high emission, low efficiency use cases. It’s capitalism cope meets buying a Catholic indulgence. “I am wealthy and deserve this and so I will pay a token amount that is meaningless to continue to justify this excessive, unnecessary consumption.” If the use case does not require fossil fuels, certainly, carry on. Same if your biofuel isn’t going to cause the Amazon to be clear cut and can be economically produced at scale. But until then, have to aggressively impair the consumption of fossil fuels, because it’s only going to keep getting hotter, year after year, long after we reach net zero (which is still a decade or two away). Maybe one day we’ll have a mechanism to sequester carbon, and enough low carbon energy to suck all of the CO2 emitted since the industrial revolution started out of the atmosphere for long term, stable storage to mitigate climate change. But not today, and therefore, these are the facts that must drive policy until the facts change. Climeworks' capture fails to cover its own emissions - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44017317 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44017317 - May 2025 > Al Gore gave a TED talk in 2023 where he discussed the carbon capture and disposal industry and specifically mentioned Climeworks. He made fun of the company, calling the capture industry nothing more than a cover for oil and gas companies to keep their businesses afloat. Even if you don’t like Al Gore, the math remains the math.
Saline9515 1mo ago
I'm not sure that mass air transit has a place in a post-oil society were we try to leave at peace with the planet. Not just for the carbon impact, but also for the diversity of our species and cultures. Should every Chinese and Indian visit Venice, even though it destroys the city little by little? Should we send things as futile as watermelons by plane? Of course, the market wills it so some may think that it must happen, yet I feel that the globalisation and massification of everything made the world a less diverse and interesting place overall.
- 317070 1mo ago
  > I'm not sure that mass air transit has a place in a post-oil society were we try to leave at peace with the planet. Me neither, but that doesn't stop me from celebrating possible breakthroughs in decarbonisation.
- pudgywalsh 1mo ago
  > Should every Chinese and Indian visit Venice, even though it destroys the city little by little? Should we send things as futile as watermelons by plane Who are you to dictate where Chinese and Indians can and cannot visit or enjoy delicious watermelons? If someone wants to eat a watermelon like a dirty slave that is their business and you are not going to deny them that right. This is pure insanity. China and India are the biggest domestic aircraft markets in the world. The manufacturers literally cannot keep up with the demand. If trains were more effective they would have built them already. If California has taught us anything it's that implementation of high speed rail is a joke. I am appalled at the level of delusion and craziness in these responses, it would take a year to respond to them all. Air travel is not going anywhere and we are not setting society back 100 years on account of dubious climate histrionics. Want to save the environment? Ditch smartphones (future e-waste) and all their useless apps (and resource-sucking infra) we could all live without tomorrow. Turns out we were as effective in moving goods and services and leisure travel in 2008 as we are today. We just couldn't post to social media about how uncomfortable the airplane seat was and how the onboard Wi-Fi sucked.
  - deleted 1mo ago
    [deleted]
namibj 1mo ago
Just use any carbon monoxide source (e.g., pyrolysis of pretty much anything that'd release carbon dioxide when burned works, followed by some cleaning to get rid of some problematic catalyst poisons (notably sulfur compounds)), add hydrogen, and do Fischer-Tropsch. You get your high quality diesel fuel, often higher quality than what you can easily get from crude oil, btw. If you don't have anything to pyrolyse, use a sodium or potassium hydroxide wet scrubber to extract it from ambient air and recover it from the solution with burnt lime; it preferentially bonds to the carbonate, becomes nearly insoluble; you take the lime stone powder, heat it with a high temperature blow dryer until the carbon dioxide cooks out (you can use pure carbon dioxide atmosphere for that! Just let out excess buildup of CO2 pressure to your output cooler/storage.), have regenerated the burnt lime, take the resulting CO2 and hydrogen to perform water gas shift to turn the mix into CO and H2O, condense out the H2O, then use the CO + H2 mix for your Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. You can use incineration facilities to tap off concentrated CO2 and mine landfills until they are empty to keep the incinerators fed to get the CO2 possibly-cheaper than from the direct air capture units. Start by using more solar cell glass laminate for exterior surfaces of new construction and as roofs over whatever parking lots you do want to keep around longer-term. Synthetic non-fossil fuel is going to need plenty of electricity and probably much of that "just" to electrolyze water into hydrogen which is reasonable for seasonal energy "storage" (run them during the high-solar 25~50% of the year, use underground caverns (former natural gas wells) or liquify it to store for the winter, run the synthesis plant that consumes it year-round. Don't just burn the hydrogen in power plants, though you can keep existing fossil fuel plants around for a while to run them during the worst week or two of an average winter. But expect the power to be as expensive as each kWh you get today from a small gasoline generator fueled with fully-taxed highway gasoline...

by 317070 1mo ago

the_sleaze_ 1mo ago

Saw a recent post about an electric plane - was pretty sweet let me dig it up. $5 worth of fuel! > https://www.heartaerospace.com/newsroom/heart-aerospace-completes-first-flight-of-world-s-largest-electric-aircraft https://www.heartaerospace.com/newsroom/heart-aerospace-comp...

dredmorbius 1mo ago
These are strictly short-haul transports, aiming for about 200km (125 mi) electric range, 800 km (500 mi) in hybrid mode with reduced passenger/payload load. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_Aerospace#ES-30 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_Aerospace#ES-30>

sixtyj 1mo ago

How many coconuts are on one tree and how many tons of coconuts would be needed to replace kerosene globally? I am 100% for decarbonization as fast as possible. BTW Law of Conservation of Energy will be applied to coconut-based energy as well. Vaclav Smil mentions in his book that we should consume less. I see so many cheap weekender air tickets… it’s almost impossible to resist the temptation. Annually 5 billions people travel by plane…

pfdietz 1mo ago
Vaclav Smil so wildly mispredicted the trajectory of renewables that his worldview should be taken with heavy skepticism.
- chermi 1mo ago
  That's true of basically all economists' predictions of technology. But he does a lot more than state predictions, his numbers and breakdowns and decompositioba are valuable in themselves.
  - pfdietz 1mo ago
    Possibly, but economists can simply not make those predictions. Smil focused on them. It was a core of what he was saying, and he got it very wrong.
  - dredmorbius 1mo ago
    TBF: Smil is a technologist, not an economist.
- dredmorbius 1mo ago
  Howso?
  - pfdietz 1mo ago
    He observed that historically energy transitions took 50-100 years and then concluded a renewable energy transition would take a similar amount of time. This is of course a non sequitur, an example of the hazards of inductive reasoning. Since he made those predictions renewables grew many times faster, and with a much shorter doubling time, than he had predicted. But even before that renewables were on an experience curve that would have rendered his predictions implausible.
    - dredmorbius 1mo ago
      Fair point, though I'd give him a bit more credit. By pointing out both the necessity of the transition and the historically slow pace of such transitions, Smil is raising the pressure on achieving such a transition rather than encouraging complaisance and/or excessive tolerance of the rate of change to date. And despite the current pace of change, we're still far from goals with impacts of failure to move off fossil fuels ever more evident.

steve1977 1mo ago

The best solution to flying and long distance travel is to reduce it as much as possible. This means no more travelling for hedonistic (touristic) purposes. I.e. measures like massive taxation (also for private jets of course).

toomuchtodo 1mo ago
Electrified high speed rail solves this, with flying reserved for transoceanic needs. Private jets should not exist outside of scientific, medical, or other non luxury/personal use cases. Travel and tourism will always be with us, and should be imho. Carbon taxes, laws, whatever is needed to accomplish it.
- mdp2021 1mo ago
  > should not exist outside of Externalities can be made to bear a cost.
  - toomuchtodo 1mo ago
    Currently, there is no effective way to put carbon back in the ground, and therefore no way to make the externality bear the cost. This is an excuse to justify high emission, low efficiency use cases. It’s capitalism cope meets buying a Catholic indulgence. “I am wealthy and deserve this and so I will pay a token amount that is meaningless to continue to justify this excessive, unnecessary consumption.” If the use case does not require fossil fuels, certainly, carry on. Same if your biofuel isn’t going to cause the Amazon to be clear cut and can be economically produced at scale. But until then, have to aggressively impair the consumption of fossil fuels, because it’s only going to keep getting hotter, year after year, long after we reach net zero (which is still a decade or two away). Maybe one day we’ll have a mechanism to sequester carbon, and enough low carbon energy to suck all of the CO2 emitted since the industrial revolution started out of the atmosphere for long term, stable storage to mitigate climate change. But not today, and therefore, these are the facts that must drive policy until the facts change. Climeworks' capture fails to cover its own emissions - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44017317 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44017317 - May 2025 > Al Gore gave a TED talk in 2023 where he discussed the carbon capture and disposal industry and specifically mentioned Climeworks. He made fun of the company, calling the capture industry nothing more than a cover for oil and gas companies to keep their businesses afloat. Even if you don’t like Al Gore, the math remains the math.

Saline9515 1mo ago

I'm not sure that mass air transit has a place in a post-oil society were we try to leave at peace with the planet. Not just for the carbon impact, but also for the diversity of our species and cultures. Should every Chinese and Indian visit Venice, even though it destroys the city little by little? Should we send things as futile as watermelons by plane? Of course, the market wills it so some may think that it must happen, yet I feel that the globalisation and massification of everything made the world a less diverse and interesting place overall.

317070 1mo ago
> I'm not sure that mass air transit has a place in a post-oil society were we try to leave at peace with the planet. Me neither, but that doesn't stop me from celebrating possible breakthroughs in decarbonisation.
pudgywalsh 1mo ago
> Should every Chinese and Indian visit Venice, even though it destroys the city little by little? Should we send things as futile as watermelons by plane Who are you to dictate where Chinese and Indians can and cannot visit or enjoy delicious watermelons? If someone wants to eat a watermelon like a dirty slave that is their business and you are not going to deny them that right. This is pure insanity. China and India are the biggest domestic aircraft markets in the world. The manufacturers literally cannot keep up with the demand. If trains were more effective they would have built them already. If California has taught us anything it's that implementation of high speed rail is a joke. I am appalled at the level of delusion and craziness in these responses, it would take a year to respond to them all. Air travel is not going anywhere and we are not setting society back 100 years on account of dubious climate histrionics. Want to save the environment? Ditch smartphones (future e-waste) and all their useless apps (and resource-sucking infra) we could all live without tomorrow. Turns out we were as effective in moving goods and services and leisure travel in 2008 as we are today. We just couldn't post to social media about how uncomfortable the airplane seat was and how the onboard Wi-Fi sucked.
- deleted 1mo ago
  [deleted]

namibj 1mo ago

Just use any carbon monoxide source (e.g., pyrolysis of pretty much anything that'd release carbon dioxide when burned works, followed by some cleaning to get rid of some problematic catalyst poisons (notably sulfur compounds)), add hydrogen, and do Fischer-Tropsch. You get your high quality diesel fuel, often higher quality than what you can easily get from crude oil, btw. If you don't have anything to pyrolyse, use a sodium or potassium hydroxide wet scrubber to extract it from ambient air and recover it from the solution with burnt lime; it preferentially bonds to the carbonate, becomes nearly insoluble; you take the lime stone powder, heat it with a high temperature blow dryer until the carbon dioxide cooks out (you can use pure carbon dioxide atmosphere for that! Just let out excess buildup of CO2 pressure to your output cooler/storage.), have regenerated the burnt lime, take the resulting CO2 and hydrogen to perform water gas shift to turn the mix into CO and H2O, condense out the H2O, then use the CO + H2 mix for your Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. You can use incineration facilities to tap off concentrated CO2 and mine landfills until they are empty to keep the incinerators fed to get the CO2 possibly-cheaper than from the direct air capture units. Start by using more solar cell glass laminate for exterior surfaces of new construction and as roofs over whatever parking lots you do want to keep around longer-term. Synthetic non-fossil fuel is going to need plenty of electricity and probably much of that "just" to electrolyze water into hydrogen which is reasonable for seasonal energy "storage" (run them during the high-solar 25~50% of the year, use underground caverns (former natural gas wells) or liquify it to store for the winter, run the synthesis plant that consumes it year-round. Don't just burn the hydrogen in power plants, though you can keep existing fossil fuel plants around for a while to run them during the worst week or two of an average winter. But expect the power to be as expensive as each kWh you get today from a small gasoline generator fueled with fully-taxed highway gasoline...