Yesterday was the busiest day for commercial aviation that we’ve ever tracked. We tracked 134,386 commercial flights on 6 July and today is shaping up to be another busy day. More than 20,000 flights are in the air right now. pic.twitter.com/E7wheAo86B
It would appear to me that hydrocarbon-powered aircraft as we know them will be flying for about another 50 years before their fuel becomes geologically as good as exhausted. And where solar-powered land vehicles are already a (somewhat tenuous) reality…
the output from the solar cells is not sufficient to sustain flight. Before flight they are used to charge the batteries. The batteries then provide power for takeoff and initial climb. The installed batteries provide for a climb of eight minutes plus a two-minute cruise allowance.
That takes us back to the Wright brothers for solar-electric aircraft.
As for me, I’m investing in camels: both capture in the wild and breeding. What can possibly go wrong.?
We’re not going to stop people traveling, and we’re not going to get people to stop cruising. Those are bells that can’t be unrung, but there are realistic things that we can do to slow down the climb of CO2 and methane into the atmosphere. One is to encourage the development of more efficient aircraft, including battery-powered jets and planes. Yes, that’s in the future, but it’s worth doing. Another is to look at how ships are constructed, and what propels them. This may be an area where nuclear propulsion could potentially be adopted, as it is with submarines.. But I think that cruising is a small portion of the amount of fuel that is used on the oceans. Shipping goods and commodities is likely proportionately much larger than pleasure cruising.
But, more practical, and more doable now than in waiting for future propulsion technologies are things that we have more control over. And, we need to look at the problem from a gestalt perspective, of how are we going to reduce the carbon load in the atmosphere and the oceans? We can reduce them in our personal transportation by switching to EV and Hybrid vehicles. Yes, we are aware that there is a carbon footprint in manufacturing the vehicles, and that much of the electricity for the batteries is sourced from carbon fuels. But, how does that compare to our current gasoline and diesel cars and trucks? If it takes years to offset the carbon load of manufacturing a Tesla, noted. But the carbon load of manufacturing a gasoline engine car is never offset. And yes, the cobalt in the batteries is a problem for sourcing, but keep in mind that cobalt is essential for catalytic converters in gasoline cars. Waiting for the perfect, no cost, solution before we start reducing our load would mean waiting forever.
There is no free lunch in maintaining an economy that depends on transportation of goods and people, but if we even set a goal of reducing the cost environmentally by a small percentage every year then those small percentages add up.
Face it, the only way to truly end climate change is for humans to go extinct tomorrow. That’s not realistic. It’s also not realistic to expect that 8 billion people can suddenly change our ways tomorrow. We need to look at what we can do and do it.
We can change our mode of agriculture to plant cover crops and rotate rather than plow and disk and turn the soil every year. That reduces the load while feeding more people, and also reduces the number of times that tractors have to drag implements across the fields, reducing the demand for energy and fuel. And it doesn’t require us to wait for new technology to be able to make this change. It requires a change in the way that agriculture is financed, but that’s much easier to do than converting all the tractors to be battery powered.
Solving the climate problem is daunting for several reasons, the first one being that denialists believe its a hoax and they have too much political power. But their fear is also that they will have to change their lifestyle completely in order to cut emissions. So they resist and keep on chanting “I can’t hear you” while plugging their ears.
We need to reduce the carbon load by 100 ppm. Even if we can’t do that tomorrow, we should be looking at ways that we can reduce by 1 ppm here, and 2 ppm there. So, EV’s are not perfectly carbon-neutral to produce and power. But, they are better than petrol cars by a long shot. And their energy is not dependent on a single source of power. Electricity is electricity is electricity, whether it comes from a wind turbine, a solar array, or a belching coal plant. If I buy an EV today, it will still run tomorrow and ten years from now. It doesn’t matter what the source of the electricity in the grid is. Texas is now generating 45% of their electricity from wind and solar, and it is saving their asses from brownouts in this deadly heat wave (and their are legislators who are trying to limit renewable energy sources just to spite the libs and protect their gas and oil donors.)
No, it’s not perfect yet. There are environmental costs, but those can be addressed as part of the solution, but the fact that they are there should not be reason to put the brakes completely on them. You know, if we have to climb a Jacob’s Ladder, we can etiher go to the next rung, or we can look at all the rungs that we have to climb and decide that it’s just too much and we should stop.
There’s no free lunch, but the reducing the cost of the lunch makes it more edible than the expensive lunch and is more realistic than pretending we can stop eating.
Well, I didn’t say we were going to stop people traveling, or that we were going to get people to stop cruising, but I can refrain from saying that and still point out how grotesque it is that new cruise ships (and luxury yachts) are being built and people are rushing to use them.
For battery powered vehicles, I hope lithium-air batteries can be made to work, they have the highest *potential* energy density of any battery, approaching the energy density of hydrocarbon fuels. Another possibility is making hydrocarbon fuels from CO2 extracted from seawater combined with H2 from splitting water. Can that be done for a non-exorbitant price?
Meanwhile let’s expand & electrify the rail system. I have also seen there is an experiment with putting paired electric cables over a highway lane to power electric transport trucks.
I think anyone who has read earlier comments by me knows that I think the electricity to run all this should mostly come from nuclear.
I didn’t mean to make it seem like I was directing a disagreement with you, Ophelia. It is frustrating that so many people are going on with business as usual and denying that there is any need for changing the status quo on energy. We are who we are, and my point is that there are ways to accommodate human nature (and economics are subject to hundreds of years of momentum,) and since technology got us into this mess technology will have to get us out.
It would appear to me that hydrocarbon-powered aircraft as we know them will be flying for about another 50 years before their fuel becomes geologically as good as exhausted. And where solar-powered land vehicles are already a (somewhat tenuous) reality…
That takes us back to the Wright brothers for solar-electric aircraft.
As for me, I’m investing in camels: both capture in the wild and breeding. What can possibly go wrong.?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar-Powered_Aircraft_Developments_Solar_One
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Solar_Challenge
We’re not going to stop people traveling, and we’re not going to get people to stop cruising. Those are bells that can’t be unrung, but there are realistic things that we can do to slow down the climb of CO2 and methane into the atmosphere. One is to encourage the development of more efficient aircraft, including battery-powered jets and planes. Yes, that’s in the future, but it’s worth doing. Another is to look at how ships are constructed, and what propels them. This may be an area where nuclear propulsion could potentially be adopted, as it is with submarines.. But I think that cruising is a small portion of the amount of fuel that is used on the oceans. Shipping goods and commodities is likely proportionately much larger than pleasure cruising.
But, more practical, and more doable now than in waiting for future propulsion technologies are things that we have more control over. And, we need to look at the problem from a gestalt perspective, of how are we going to reduce the carbon load in the atmosphere and the oceans? We can reduce them in our personal transportation by switching to EV and Hybrid vehicles. Yes, we are aware that there is a carbon footprint in manufacturing the vehicles, and that much of the electricity for the batteries is sourced from carbon fuels. But, how does that compare to our current gasoline and diesel cars and trucks? If it takes years to offset the carbon load of manufacturing a Tesla, noted. But the carbon load of manufacturing a gasoline engine car is never offset. And yes, the cobalt in the batteries is a problem for sourcing, but keep in mind that cobalt is essential for catalytic converters in gasoline cars. Waiting for the perfect, no cost, solution before we start reducing our load would mean waiting forever.
There is no free lunch in maintaining an economy that depends on transportation of goods and people, but if we even set a goal of reducing the cost environmentally by a small percentage every year then those small percentages add up.
Face it, the only way to truly end climate change is for humans to go extinct tomorrow. That’s not realistic. It’s also not realistic to expect that 8 billion people can suddenly change our ways tomorrow. We need to look at what we can do and do it.
We can change our mode of agriculture to plant cover crops and rotate rather than plow and disk and turn the soil every year. That reduces the load while feeding more people, and also reduces the number of times that tractors have to drag implements across the fields, reducing the demand for energy and fuel. And it doesn’t require us to wait for new technology to be able to make this change. It requires a change in the way that agriculture is financed, but that’s much easier to do than converting all the tractors to be battery powered.
Solving the climate problem is daunting for several reasons, the first one being that denialists believe its a hoax and they have too much political power. But their fear is also that they will have to change their lifestyle completely in order to cut emissions. So they resist and keep on chanting “I can’t hear you” while plugging their ears.
We need to reduce the carbon load by 100 ppm. Even if we can’t do that tomorrow, we should be looking at ways that we can reduce by 1 ppm here, and 2 ppm there. So, EV’s are not perfectly carbon-neutral to produce and power. But, they are better than petrol cars by a long shot. And their energy is not dependent on a single source of power. Electricity is electricity is electricity, whether it comes from a wind turbine, a solar array, or a belching coal plant. If I buy an EV today, it will still run tomorrow and ten years from now. It doesn’t matter what the source of the electricity in the grid is. Texas is now generating 45% of their electricity from wind and solar, and it is saving their asses from brownouts in this deadly heat wave (and their are legislators who are trying to limit renewable energy sources just to spite the libs and protect their gas and oil donors.)
No, it’s not perfect yet. There are environmental costs, but those can be addressed as part of the solution, but the fact that they are there should not be reason to put the brakes completely on them. You know, if we have to climb a Jacob’s Ladder, we can etiher go to the next rung, or we can look at all the rungs that we have to climb and decide that it’s just too much and we should stop.
There’s no free lunch, but the reducing the cost of the lunch makes it more edible than the expensive lunch and is more realistic than pretending we can stop eating.
Well, I didn’t say we were going to stop people traveling, or that we were going to get people to stop cruising, but I can refrain from saying that and still point out how grotesque it is that new cruise ships (and luxury yachts) are being built and people are rushing to use them.
Omar #1
Re: Camels. This might interest you.
A book on why the Middle East gave up wheeled vehicles for well over a millenium
https://www.amazon.ca/Camel-Wheel-Richard-Bulliet/dp/023107235X
A short article summarizing the book
https://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/197303/why.they.lost.the.wheel.htm
For battery powered vehicles, I hope lithium-air batteries can be made to work, they have the highest *potential* energy density of any battery, approaching the energy density of hydrocarbon fuels. Another possibility is making hydrocarbon fuels from CO2 extracted from seawater combined with H2 from splitting water. Can that be done for a non-exorbitant price?
Meanwhile let’s expand & electrify the rail system. I have also seen there is an experiment with putting paired electric cables over a highway lane to power electric transport trucks.
I think anyone who has read earlier comments by me knows that I think the electricity to run all this should mostly come from nuclear.
I didn’t mean to make it seem like I was directing a disagreement with you, Ophelia. It is frustrating that so many people are going on with business as usual and denying that there is any need for changing the status quo on energy. We are who we are, and my point is that there are ways to accommodate human nature (and economics are subject to hundreds of years of momentum,) and since technology got us into this mess technology will have to get us out.
Dear technology: Please work faster!
@Ophelia –
Something I haven’t said in years:
AMEN!