[HN Gopher] Airbus and Climate Change
___________________________________________________________________
Airbus and Climate Change
Author : timlod
Score : 77 points
Date : 2022-11-20 15:11 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (qchenevier.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (qchenevier.github.io)
| dkarl wrote:
| > And it has been quite surprising to discover that, behind the
| curtains, Airbus employees are much less corporate than we might
| think.
|
| It's depressing that this is surprising, and even more depressing
| that it gives him optimism about the behavior of Airbus as a
| whole. The behavior of corporations doesn't reflect the morality
| of the people in them. The myth that it does is consistently used
| to argue against the necessity of regulations and enforcement.
| "Hey, look at all these people working in the ____ industry, they
| aren't evil. Bad behavior is the exception, a rare perfect storm
| when a handful of morally bankrupt individuals randomly
| converge." No, indifference to good and evil is the rule,
| regardless of the morality of the individuals involved.
| Destructive strategies that result in profit will be pursued to
| the hilt, and individuals inside a corporation are helpless to
| prevent this without laws and aggressive enforcement to support
| them.
| pjerem wrote:
| Airbus have always been a beloved company in Europe. It's the
| company we are proud of. It's the demonstration of the European
| countries working together. I'm not trying to get romantic, it's
| a big company with a lot of issues of course. But it's a symbol.
| It's a company you are proud to say you work for.
|
| And I truly hope they will be smart enough to transition or to to
| help in the energetic transition because if they don't, they'll
| die. And it would be a shame when you are employing so much good
| engineers.
|
| But I'm not sure they will.
| cowpig wrote:
| I find myself oscillating between bargaining, depression, and
| acceptance on this topic.
|
| Something will happen in the world, like Bolsonaro losing his
| election and Lula making some promises, and I will gain hope.
| Then I'll look at the IPCC again and feel depressed. Then I'll
| make some commitment to change my life habits in some way that's
| a bit greener and accept that I can't do much more.
|
| But there's still some cognitive dissonance when I reach
| acceptance. I don't really accept it deep down. I live in fear,
| especially fear for my kids' generation.
| quonn wrote:
| Fear is the problem, not the solution. I recently talked to a
| friend and he's so much in fear that he just gave up on all the
| good ways to improve the situation.
| tito wrote:
| For you and others reading this, here's some ways to put your
| skills to work on solutions:
|
| https://workonclimate.org/
|
| https://www.mcjcollective.com/
|
| https://bootup.airminers.org/
| abyssin wrote:
| What's helped me is changing my opinion about what I, my kids
| and the rest of humanity deserve in the grand scheme of things.
| I used to think we deserve to live in comfort and safety, with
| the hope of reaching an old age. I thought technology,
| knowledge and progress where the reason for all that luxury.
| Now I believe it's got more to do with a sudden rise in
| available energy. The trend is going down. Life is becoming
| more tragic again. I won't lie to my children and let them
| believe war happens to others. I know the world has never been
| as safe and rich as it's been recently. But I think the peak is
| around in my part of the world, and the environmental crisis is
| going to cause many peaks everywhere.
|
| I often wonder about refugee camps and wonder how I'd fare in
| one of them. Is it possible to organise theater courses? How
| difficult is it to find a space to meditate? Would people still
| care to have intellectual discussions?
|
| A difficult life is still one worth living.
| quonn wrote:
| What's your point? Climate change will lead to war?
|
| > Now I believe
|
| Exactly. You believe. Old age has very little to do with
| energy and far more with knowledge and progress in medicine.
| abyssin wrote:
| It has to do with both, but the rate of growth of knowledge
| and progress have been made possible by the abundance of
| energy. If you remove energy even in a developed society,
| people go back to surviving.
| mozman wrote:
| I volunteered at a Ukranian refugee camp in Warsaw. You don't
| want to go there, see the despair, the frightened children.
|
| I hope you're trolling.
| abyssin wrote:
| Of course I don't want to go there. I don't want the
| consequences of global warming, war, peak oil, and the
| likes.
| quonn wrote:
| It's not a consequence but your imagination. Peak oil and
| global warming are actually opposites. You can't fix
| climate change and hope to find more oil.
|
| There's a big difference between perhaps not doing
| holidays in a place far away or even not buying a smart
| TV or new phone and what you describe.
| abyssin wrote:
| They aren't opposites, they're different things. My
| energy hungry lifestyle contributes to global warming and
| it is comfortable in the short term. What's good now and
| has been good for me in the past causes something bad in
| the future. The decline of easy energy is bad for my
| current lifestyle, and I don't think it can be avoided.
|
| But what would be even worse is trying to avoid the
| decline of easy energy. Because even if there's petrol
| and coal and gas left in the ground, we should stop
| burning it, because we have to mitigate climate change.
| That's the tragedy.
|
| We're faced with a choice: maximizing short-term comfort
| by putting back the consequences of reducing available
| energy, or minimizing long-term discomfort (might be a
| euphemism) by deliberately cutting down on still
| available energy.
| nativecoinc wrote:
| I resent this comment.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| If you don't want to navigate a link to understand what rate 70
| means, it refers to a A320 Family production rate of 70 aircraft
| per month by Q1 2024. Up from 45 aircraft per month in Q4 2021.
| Mesopropithecus wrote:
| Thank you! I found that hard to dig up even on the linked page.
| martythemaniak wrote:
| One of the biggest mental blocks people have in regards to
| climate change, is not being able to separate carbon emissions
| from general environmental angst. In short there's nothing
| stopping us from converting our civilization to being carbon
| neutral, but our very existence will always have some
| environmental impact there is no getting past that.
|
| Aviation in particular will be carbon neutral either through
| synthetic hydrocarbon fuel (Prometheus Terraform), new hydrogen
| engines, or a network of shorter hop flights with battery powered
| aircraft (Eviation). In fact it may turn out to be one of the
| easier industries convert to carbon neutral. If you're really
| worried, you can work on one of these. If you don't have the
| skills or the time there's always politics, since you approaches
| like this will face regulatory and political hurdles that are at
| least as big as the technical hurdles.
| goethes_kind wrote:
| I find this sort of discussion a bit too shallow and simple
| minded. What is Airbus supposed to do exactly? The author sort of
| implies that Airbus is somehow refusing to adapt or something.
| But this is just not a good representation of reality. There are
| only two options to reduce carbon from aviation: 1. don't fly, 2.
| use synthetic fuels. The use of synthetic fuels is not really up
| to Airbus. They are not in the fuel business and they do not even
| build their own engines. So it's really not up to them at all as
| far as I can see.
| jnsaff2 wrote:
| Even Airbus themselves have powerpoint slides about how they
| are going to do hydrogen planes etc.
|
| Please don't be with a limited imagination.
| goethes_kind wrote:
| That is exactly what I am referring to with "synthetic
| fuels". But this is actually not up to Airbus at all. Airbus
| cannot, by themselves, create a whole synthetic fuel supply
| chain. This would be an undertaking that the whole of Europe
| needs to do together. And Airbus do not produce their engines
| either. And there is no point in creating an aircraft that
| cannot be flown because no fuel for it is available.
| jnsaff2 wrote:
| Synthetic fuels is usually referring to synthetic kerosene
| which you can just feed into the existing jets as JET-1A.
|
| Hydrogen is very-very different and needs complete redesign
| of the plane.
|
| Hydrogen availability is pretty good, I mean most of the
| availability is not much better in CO2 emissions but with
| the time it would take Airbus to get the plane into
| commercial service getting the supply chain there would be
| pretty easy.
|
| I still don't buy your argument that poor airbus has
| nothing it can do. If it wants to stay relevant in the
| 20-40 year horizon it needs to go at these hard problems
| now. If it doesn't then it has made a decision and might
| die, so what?
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The last time that Airbus made a plane that needed
| modification to existing airfields (the A380), few
| airports or airlines did it and bought the plane. And
| that was a lot simpler than changing the fundamental
| fueling infrastructure.
|
| It has taken, what, two decades and counting to even get
| unleaded avgas approved, let alone banning the leaded
| version? Why would a more complex change be a feasible
| one-company effort?
| mcculley wrote:
| While I am completely convinced that humans are changing the
| climate, I am not convinced that air travel is the big
| contributor claimed by many. We are only now getting satellite
| evidence of the amount of methane venting being done
| industrially, which seems to be a bigger contributor per unit of
| mass emitted.
|
| I live in the U.S., which has many big automobiles transporting
| just one person. They are a much bigger emitter of carbon per
| person per unit of distance traveled. I don't see why we should
| be discouraging commercial air travel while allowing individual
| automobiles to emit so much.
|
| Those of you who are against air travel for climate reasons, can
| you share a source that has convinced you that it is a real
| problem?
| abyssin wrote:
| All sources of emission are real problems, because the
| consequences of emissions are catastrophic. The issue is to
| prioritize which ones to work on first. Flying is nice, but
| less necessary than many other human activities. Living at a
| continental or planetary scale is completely unnecessary.
| mozman wrote:
| Air travel is a necessity for many, and has quite significant
| benefits.
|
| Goong abroad and learning about people, cultures, and
| yourself is a difficult thing to quantify but it absolutely
| pays dividends later in life.
| abyssin wrote:
| Sure it pays dividends, but how much, to what cost, and to
| whom?
| DocTomoe wrote:
| Given the countries that travel the least also often are
| the countries most likely to trigger a war, I'd say we
| might want to leave that one alone for now and focus on
| other creators of CO2.
| mcculley wrote:
| Incentivizing the development of suburbs and lots of driving
| is unnecessary.
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| deschutes wrote:
| Personal emissions are framed as a moral issue by environmental
| activists. Those allied with the activists are perceived to be
| outsized users of air travel. And most air travel is non-
| essential.
|
| Amongst users of air travel, it is a significant source of
| emissions. A single round-trip across an ocean is on the same
| magnitude as driving emissions for the average american.
|
| The hypocrisy is obvious. Morality and personal responsibility
| are a terrible foundation for environmentalism.
| vegetablepotpie wrote:
| Not claiming I am against air travel, but the point often made
| is that the growth rate of aviation means that it will consume
| ever higher slices of the "carbon budget".
|
| > His [Dr Joeri Rogelj] calculations suggest aviation emissions
| between 2015 to 2050 will consume 27% of the remaining carbon
| budget to have a decent chance of keeping global temperature
| rise below 1.5C above preindustrial levels.
|
| https://www.carbonbrief.org/aviation-consume-quarter-carbon-...
| artonge wrote:
| The issue with aviation should not be framed by its share in
| total carbon emissions, which appears to be not that much. It's
| the fact that, in a world where the individual target of CO2
| emissions is 2T, there is no room for aviation. Same thing for
| eating meat more than once a week, or using a personal car.
|
| To evaluate your individual CO2 emissions, you can use this
| simulator: https://nosgestesclimat.fr
| eastbound wrote:
| Why is the goal 2T/person? Why do I have the same goal as an
| Indian or Nepalese person?
| artonge wrote:
| What the planet can absorb divided by the number of people.
|
| > Why do I have the same goal as an Indian or Nepalese
| person?
|
| I do not understand, why not ?
| eastbound wrote:
| > what the planet can absorb divided by the number of
| people.
|
| > why not ?
|
| How do you incentive people to work if, in the end,
| everyone can consume and therefore emit exactly as much?
|
| What's the goal of studying hard if I'm not getting more
| consumption rights; Why wouldn't we all coast school,
| since we'll all get the same results; How would the
| society get any work done if no-one is incentived to work
| hard (That's the neat part: You don't, and you're all
| poor as peons); Isn't it always the same communist dream
| entering the main door after being kicked out for
| criminal activity by the back door for being at minimum
| the least efficient way to organize a society; If you're
| going to react to the communist trope as being "not so
| bad", doesn't it confirm that it was what you intended
| all along.
|
| Why would my consumption rights be exactly 1/8-billionth
| of the Earth capacity, independently on my work?
| mcculley wrote:
| Most of the people who have the option of "studying hard"
| do not work as hard as the blue collar workers in rural
| India or rural China. I'm not sure there is a valid
| argument that consumption should be based on who "works
| hardest".
|
| Emissions taxes are the fairest way to balance
| consumption. That works even for the privileged who
| consume without hard work.
| artonge wrote:
| Sadly, emissions taxes impact the poorest first while
| being almost pain free for the richest.
| artonge wrote:
| You seem to think that you work more, or harder than
| other people, hence you are given more "consumption
| rights". Please consider that:
|
| - A lot of people are not working to consume more, and it
| does not prevent them to work hard. They just aren't
| fulfilling themselves through consumerism. - A lot of
| people are working harder than you, for less. Should we
| take parts of your share a give it to them ? Spoiler
| alert, you will be constrained below 2T of CO2 emission,
| that's for sure, because you are not working harder than
| others. - In a finite world, emitting more than your
| share means stepping on somebody else's share. But why
| would have that privilege if you are not working more? -
| In a finite world, stepping on someone else's share that
| you are not permitted to take leads to a conflict.
| Conflict means war in a planetary context.
|
| If I may suggest, if what's blocking you from emitting
| less, is your desire to consume more, you should try to
| change that, as your consumption capability will reduce
| in the future, whether you want it or not. This is
| because our energy sources are becoming less abundant,
| which means less consumption capability for the same
| amount of work.
| artonge wrote:
| I've just seen your other comment:
|
| > 1. Fear of meritocracy 2. Fear of countries not
| negotiating an equalitarian deal 3. Fear of the awful
| science of "that camp" (and I know exactly what 3
| arguments you'll oppose, so, don't bother with the direct
| answer, please assume everything you want to answer is
| already understood and incorrect, and go straight to a
| second level of answers).
|
| 1. Meritocracy is a way to make you feel better for
| having more than others. In a finite world, having more
| than other means stealing from them. Nobody merits more
| than somebody else. At least not at the scale it is
| happening now. And don't assume that you work more than
| others.
|
| 2. I don't understand what you mean.
|
| 3. What is "that camp" ? What scientific studies are you
| talking about ?
| maigret wrote:
| People fear their living standards will have to be
| degraded to that level. It's not true though.
|
| Those country comparisons are totally idiotic because
| they produce the wrong fears. Example: look at that table
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon
| _di... , Switzerland is 4.8 tons and a third of the US. I
| like the US but Switzerland is another scale for quality
| of life on most metrics.
|
| Air travel is one of the few things that's hard to fix,
| but for example I can't understand why everyone won't buy
| an EV, that's basically 99% the same as an ICE car and
| even better in many aspects. Probably less meat, that
| will make food cheaper and people will live longer. Else
| all pretty much the same. Hell, nothing can beat
| renewables at the moment. They are 4-5x cheaper than
| fossil fuels. So we'll be richer with renewables, well
| save trillions in insurance and I have no clue how people
| can still thing fossil fuels are the way. Inform
| yourselves and start to think about the near future, not
| the past. Stop being a passive fossil fuel lobby
| repeater.
| eastbound wrote:
| I don't fear QoL being degraded (If it's necessary, it's
| cool for our children); I fear the loss of _meritocracy_
| , as I have never seen any other model work. I also fear
| it's competing countries that fuel the climate fight in
| my country to persuade us of consuming less, while we'll
| never be able to have an impact on them, even through
| international agreements.
|
| So basically, the "China is just dis-industrializing
| Europe, by convincing us to self-sabotage our industries"
| argument.
|
| Last point, I've never seen scientific studies used in
| politics that were not massively forged.
|
| 1. Fear of meritocracy 2. Fear of countries not
| negotiating an equalitarian deal 3. Fear of the awful
| science of "that camp" (and I know exactly what 3
| arguments you'll oppose, so, don't bother with the direct
| answer, please assume everything you want to answer is
| already understood and incorrect, and go straight to a
| second level of answers).
| artonge wrote:
| You might have posted on the wrong comment because I
| don't think anything I wrote could have led you to
| believe that I am a "a passive fossil fuel lobby
| repeater." ;).
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Everything is only a small amount of the problem:
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector
|
| That's why putting a price on emissions helps.
| mcculley wrote:
| While I think this is useful, I am skeptical of the numbers
| given the recent satellite measurements.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| it can be twice more or twice less, it doesn't change the
| answer you got above "Everything is only a small amount of
| the problem" or
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox
| mcculley wrote:
| How do we know anything is only a small amount of the
| problem without good measurements?
|
| https://phys.org/news/2022-10-nasa-tool-super-emitters-
| metha...
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| Sure, animal farming is another large emitter (more
| concentrated of course, so it's more visible in such
| pictures than a global trafic of airplanes or cars spread
| around the whole planet surface), another bucket of sand
| to consider. It's a global optimisation problem, and
| everything has to be reduced
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| I am going to disagree,
|
| You are looking at those pie charts graphs by
| sector/application and indeed it looks fragmented.
|
| However once you look at each sector the biggest contributors
| can be lumped:
|
| 1. Energy generation from Coal/Gas
|
| 2. Road transport with ICEs.
|
| However my gut feeling is that Oil&Gas refinery and
| extraction are grossly under reporting Methane emissions. So
| it could be that the chart doesn't show the full picture of
| GHG.
| counters wrote:
| > However my gut feeling is that Oil&Gas refinery and
| extraction are grossly under reporting Methane emissions.
| So it could be that the chart doesn't show the full picture
| of GHG.
|
| There's been a fair amount of focus on this in the past ~5
| years. We can constrain methane emissions both from a
| "bottoms-up" (measuring direct-from-source emissions or
| tallying up expected emissions given natural gas production
| and leakage rates) and "top-down" (measuring atmospheric
| CH4 over time and constraining the year-to-year emissions
| required to drive observed changes). Work like Rutherford
| et al (2021;
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-25017-4)
| definitely leave room for some unaccounted leakages arising
| from O&NG production, but there likely is not room for much
| more "grossly under reported" emissions.
| sorenjan wrote:
| Do you happen to fly a lot, and thereby might have a personal
| reason to not want flying to be as bad as reported?
| mcculley wrote:
| I don't think my frequency of air travel is exceptional for
| my demographic.
|
| (Though I did charter a private jet two years ago for a
| business need. I took a small team to a place without
| regularly scheduled service. It is not clear to me if it was
| a net win or loss for carbon emissions given the other routes
| available.)
|
| While I personally choose to live in a walkable downtown for
| many reasons, including climate impact, I end up having to
| travel in an automobile often. I think the taxes for this are
| misaligned to the impact.
|
| Personally, I am a proponent of global travel. I think more
| travel means fewer wars and more benefits for humanity.
| ant6n wrote:
| Air travel is a way for an individual to blow through a
| significant chunk of their individual annual carbon budget in a
| couple of hours - and it's emitted high in the atmosphere where
| the warning effect is amplified. Globally it doesn't look so
| bad because overall, few people use air planes. Among those who
| use air planes, it looks pretty bad.
|
| Also consider that those who advocate against excessive air
| travel also argue for the use of public transportation, walking
| and bicycling as a means to replace car travel. For long
| distance travel, the alternatives aren't so obvious, that's why
| aviation is such a concern.
| paulcole wrote:
| > Those of you who are against air travel for climate reasons,
| can you share a source that has convinced you that it is a real
| problem?
|
| No, because it is obvious that flying less is better for the
| planet. Replace "flying" with "eating meat", "driving", etc.
|
| The problem is that all the research in the world won't get
| people to change their behavior. The incentives are too strong
| (it's fun to go on vacation, meat tastes good, I can make money
| by selling cars) and the disincentives are too weak (some fish
| I've never seen goes extinct, 50 years from now Miami will be
| fucked, some people halfway around the world will die, etc.).
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Both things are bad. Reducing one doesn't mean you can't reduce
| the other and vice versa. We will need to curtain emissions in
| all sectors to avoid more warming.
|
| Also electric cars are coming but electric passenger and cargo
| planes are very far away or even impossible due to the physics
| of battery power density.
|
| https://tinyurl.com/4uf7v3wm
| cmurf wrote:
| What's "very far away?" Looks like BETA Technologies has a
| real airplane, ALIA, that'll potentially be certified next
| year. They're currently building a manufacturing facility to
| mass produce it.
|
| I think what's very far away is autonomous flight. But IMO
| farther is autonomous automobiles, because as both pilot and
| driver, aviation has rules, standards, predictability,
| integration of a wide assortment of vehicles of flight,
| training, and thus a far better prepared environment for
| autonomous. The automobile environment is so haphazard humans
| make way more mistakes driving than flying.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| The cargo and passenger part. No one doubts an electric
| plane can be made, it's the ability to lift lots of weight
| and the batteries.
|
| https://www.flightglobal.com/airframers/what-would-it-
| take-t...
| mcculley wrote:
| Obviously. What I don't understand is why those who claim to
| be concerned are focused on one and ignoring the other,
| bigger problem. We should be prioritizing efficiency in
| emissions.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I tend to agree. Air travel contributes around 4% to increased
| global warming. That is substantial for a single industry. That
| said, of all industries, it feels like the practical
| difficulties of reducing that footprint are enormously more
| difficult than other industries. Air travel is just enormously
| energy intensive and has unique difficulties in switching to
| carbon-free energy that other industries do not.
|
| I think some regulations are great, like the prohibition
| against short haul flights in France that the article mentions.
| But I think overall efforts to reduce global warming should be
| targeted in ways that give the "biggest bang for the buck", and
| aviation-specific changes ain't it.
| WanderPanda wrote:
| 4% for only 10-15% of the world population, while most other
| industries distribute more uniformly. I don't subscribe to
| the alarmism but the hubris of frequent flyers telling
| everyone else to cut down emissions triggers me. Most idiotic
| are the people virtue signalling by not eating meat to offset
| their air travel as if one category cancels the other while
| the co2 emissions of one transatlantic round-trip flight are
| about a lifetime of meat consumption (pork and chicken)...
| mcculley wrote:
| Which frequent flyers are telling everyone else to cut down
| emissions?
|
| Do you mean just those rich enough to use private jets?
| dkarl wrote:
| Hypocrites. Like a friend of mine who drives an electric
| car and takes 30+ flights per year including multiple
| trips across the Atlantic, entirely for pleasure, since
| selling his business and entering partial retirement.
| He's a bit of a prig about everything, politics included,
| so he's a constant source of judgment about people's
| politics and emissions. I don't doubt he buys carbon
| offsets for every flight he takes and blames lack of
| regulation of the carbon offset market for any harm he's
| causing.
| cagenut wrote:
| I think it's closer to a year than a lifetime but the point
| still stands. Vegetarians who fly are not prioritizing GHG
| emissions (they usually have other well-weighted decision
| factors like the agricultural/nitrogen/pesticide pollution
| and cruelty).
| [deleted]
| vaylian wrote:
| > Those of you who are against air travel for climate reasons,
| can you share a source that has convinced you that it is a real
| problem?
|
| 1. As others have said: Many things contribute some non-trivial
| percentage to climate change. And anything that is above 1% on
| a global scale is non-trivial.
|
| 2. Personal carbon budgets are very quickly exhausted by flying
|
| 3. You have to start somewhere to avoid emissions. Some things
| are harder to avoid than others. I am convinced that 99% of
| flights are not needed to maintain a good standard of living.
| It is a low-hanging fruit that we need to pick. The same thing
| applies to cruise ships.
| it_citizen wrote:
| Aviation currently represents ~2% of total emissions according
| to our world in data. So yeah, not that much.
|
| On the long tun though, we have to reach net zero. And if
| possible even go into negative carbon emissions. 2% isn't much
| but there are probably activities much more critical than
| flying which we could use our carbon offset capabilities.
|
| My biggest concern with aviation today are people flying
| private. It is symbolic but I don't think we will be able to
| ask people to sacrifice some of their comfort if the wealthiest
| people are not in the same boat.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| "~2% of total emissions" .. "not that much"
|
| Do you have an idea of how many giga tonnes of CO2/year we're
| talking about here?
| cagenut wrote:
| https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/09/Emissions-by-
| sect...
|
| the short answer is "1"
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| Ok, my own lifestyle is a half tonne per year, so all
| flights in a year emit 2 billion times more than me, so
| virtually 25% increase of the world population with my
| lifestyle as reference
| it_citizen wrote:
| What would you do with a number of giga tons in a vacuum? I
| can't picture what a giga is, nor a ton of CO2. You
| probably cannot either.
|
| What matters is how much it represents in relation with our
| total emissions (2%) or with other activities we also have
| to tackle to decide where to put our efforts first. (Or all
| at once whenever possible)
|
| Therefore, I maintain what I say. 2% of the pie doesn't
| represent that much if we want to achieve net zero. But at
| some point we will have to tackle it.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I agree with the other comment but I also believe in
| answering the question asked: global aviation peaked at
| just over 1 gigaton in 2019, before COVID-19 nuked the
| industry. It's trivial to figure out the carbon emissions
| because every kilo of aviation fuel sold emits a definite
| amount of CO2.
| mercutio2 wrote:
| True on the simple chemistry of combustion, but it's also
| true that upper atmosphere combustion products may have a
| different climate forcing than sea level combustion.
|
| There's an argument I haven't evaluated myself that even
| if the fuel was carbon neutral, high altitude combustion
| might have a residual forcing.
|
| I think transoceanic travel is critical to human
| flourishing, so I definitely hope we can minimize that
| residual.
| danhor wrote:
| Car carbon emission are usually around the level of aviation
| emissions with typical occupancy levels [1]. But Air travel
| encourages flying much larger distances as opposed to e.g.
| driving. Without air travel, no sane person would travel to
| e.g. Asia from Europe a few times per year. Flights over 4000km
| are 6% of flights but around 52% of emission in europe [1]. Few
| people will drive 4000km with a car.
|
| In my opinion, simply comparing the averages is also not
| useful. I expect that car occupancy will be higher for
| distances where flying becomes reasonable, reducing the average
| emission levels. For example vacation travel most often happens
| in a group not alone. I also think that the economic benefit of
| car emissions is higher than plane emissions.
|
| Emissions of air travel are commonly often given as CO2
| Emissions (around 2% of emissions worldwide), while the
| complete warming effects are likely around 4% of warming
| worldwide [2].
|
| Air travel is very unevenly distributed, with most of the
| population never flying as opposed to e.g. cars (in germany 2/3
| of people fly less than once per year with half of them never
| flying [3], 12% of adults in the US account for 68% for flights
| takes [5]. In general look at [6] figure 4). Thus a small
| portion of the population benefits from air travel as opposed
| to e.g. car travel.
|
| The increase in flying for developed countries and the further
| economic growth in developing countries means that without any
| intervention flying is expected to increase a lot in the next
| decades and threathen the paris goal.
|
| It's very unlikely that air travel can meaningfully decarbonise
| in the next decades as opposed to car travel where a broad
| adoption of electric vehicles is expected in the next decade.
| The adoption of SAF has been pretty much non-existent up 'till
| now, contrary to industry promises (and fraught with issues
| both financial and energy usage) and battery-based solutions
| are only an option for ultra-short distance flights. Hydrogen
| based solutions are also very much in the early development
| phase and IMHO also unlikely to succeed.
|
| Long-distance air travel is also without real alternative and
| can't be rolled back. For example, as air travel gets adopted
| more broadly, more people live in other countries a longer
| distance away and regularly visit their families at home.
| Trying to revert this is basically impossible (people can't see
| friends and family anymore), so higher adoption is hard to
| revert. If the population broadly becomes used to international
| vacations, reducing them in a large way also becomes unpopular.
| This is continually increases, so social solutions continually
| get harder.
|
| Thus we expect to increase flights (but still with uneven
| distribution), have little hope for technical solutions for
| eliminating emissions in the next decades and social solutions
| will get harder as time goes on.
|
| [1]: https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint [2]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_effects_of_aviat...
| [3]:
| https://www.eurocontrol.int/sites/default/files/2021-02/euro...
| [4]: http://www.mobilitaet-in-
| deutschland.de/pdf/MiD2017_Tabellen... page 74 [5]:
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095937802...
| [6]: https://theicct.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/global-
| aviati...
| [deleted]
| perfunctory wrote:
| > I don't see why we should be discouraging commercial air
| travel while allowing individual automobiles to emit so much.
|
| How fortunate that nobody is actually suggesting that.
| janef0421 wrote:
| The issues with aviation are two-fold: First, the amounts of
| emissions are very high relative to total passenger throughput.
| Second, the issue is very difficult to address meaningfully,
| because heavier-than-air aircraft have inherently high energy
| requirements that must be fulfilled by very dense, high-quality
| fuel, which we have no way to sustainably produce in sufficient
| quantities.
|
| This video series explains the issues well:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k50qD40p3WU&list=PL_AaC0duf8...
| nawgz wrote:
| By official stats, aviation is something like 3% of global
| emissions. Global emissions seem wildly underestimated while
| aviation emissions are pretty hard to obfuscate.
|
| I also couldn't believe when I found out a Learjet 7 seater
| might get 4MPG while an average US-sized SUV pulls about 12mpg.
| I thought it would be an order-of-magnitude or two different,
| not a factor of 3. Trucks are even closer. Americans drive
| trucks that never go off road or haul or tow.
|
| And I think industry is far worse than individuals about
| emissions.
|
| Overall, would I say planes are good for the world? No, not
| really. But I don't think they're anywhere near the first or
| most valuable place to focus efforts on
| zemvpferreira wrote:
| You raise good points, but let's also consider that:
|
| -planes travel a lot of miles very quickly. MPG is a fine
| number, but we should also look at something like total
| emissions per year of average use.
|
| -planes emit around 3% of the global carbon total but serve
| only around 15% of the global population, unlike most
| industries.
|
| I'm not going to stop flying anytime soon, but let's not kid
| ourselves about the impact our collective lifestyle has on
| the rest of the world.
|
| Also worth mentioning that measures like carbon taxes, while
| having many problems, neatly solve what to optimize for when
| fighting carbon emission. Scale is automatically baked in.
| dottedmag wrote:
| I'm not against air travel for climate reasons, so I can only
| venture a guess that this is the result of the same
| psychological mechanism that rivets people attention to air
| crashes and terrorism, not to car deaths and heart attacks:
| saliency of former and familiarity of latter.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| I have taken a plane less than 10 times in my whole life (I'm 35)
| and that'll stay like that for the rest, I already declined
| travels for work. My CO2 impact is around 400kg/year, so just 2
| flights would double it. The average person CO2 impact in my
| country is around 9tonnes/year
| cagenut wrote:
| its the single most impactful marginal decision a person can
| make, thank you.
| quonn wrote:
| No it isn't. The single most impactful one would be to not
| have kids. And let me make it clear that I'm not saying to
| not have them. I'm just saying that there are different
| factors that contribute and how one person chooses to cut is
| their and only their decision.
|
| Going a long distance by car is about 4x better than flying,
| but if you drive 4x as far you have emitted more than on that
| flight.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| It's an optimisation problem, with no binary answers, so
| everything has to be optimised. Personally: no cars, no
| plane travels, no kids, no meat/fish, no consumerism, but
| people don't have to go that far like 1 kid, a light fuel-
| efficient or light electric vehicle, local food, eggs, and
| an optimised consumerism, this already cuts down by at
| least 2 the average CO2 impact by person which is around
| 9t/y in developed countries
| josephcsible wrote:
| Refusing to have children to stop global warming
| completely defeats the purpose. Global warming isn't
| going to destroy the Earth within our lifetime, so our
| future generations are the only reason we should worry
| about it at all.
| gardenfelder wrote:
| I'm reading these comments and I'm remembering Ted Nelson's
| famous quote:
|
| "Everything is intertwingled"
|
| google it.
|
| The point being that everything is connected, meaning: (In my
| view) trying to argue distinct components in some massively
| connected universe may not be all that helpful.
|
| It's true that reductionism gets us some grand theories, but,
| what are the ways we could structure vastly more holistic
| conversations on these matters?
| gsatic wrote:
| Cant tell what level of the hierarchy this is coming from.
|
| Coming out of the chaos of Brexit and Covid and now with Ukraine,
| I am not surprised. Seems to be the mood in most large corps in
| the EU.
| renewiltord wrote:
| We're going to out-tech this disaster, or we're going to lose a
| few hundred million. This is not an existential risk. I reckon
| we'll be fine.
|
| We might even arrive at novel regulatory technology involving
| carbon provenance. We shall see.
| zokier wrote:
| I'm kinda confused why the rate 70 is negative thing. They are an
| aircraft company, obviously they are going to try to sell as many
| aircraft as possible? What else are they going to do? Having a
| "green aircraft program" is all nice and dandy, but you need
| money to do so and money comes from sales.
| jmcgough wrote:
| These aircrafts are going to be flying for 30 years, continuing
| to add to emissions. We have a lot of passenger planes from the
| 1980s.
|
| Producing as many as we possibly can right now is a step in the
| wrong direction.
| goethes_kind wrote:
| They are presumably more fuel efficient than previous
| generations of aircraft the are replacing, no?
|
| Why is it a step in the wrong direction?
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| They're a killing company, obviously they are going to kill as
| many people as possible. What else are they going to do?
| Killing less people is nice and dandy, but you need money to do
| so and that comes from sales.
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