blockski wrote:

No one - absolutely no one - is saying that CO2 is the only reason the world is warming. However, this chart (from a 2010 paper - https://agbjarn.blog.is/users/fa/agbjar ... -years.pdf ) is not claiming that the temperatures in the past were the same, so everything is fine. It's also a paper focused solely on the historical record. We know how much we've changed the atmosphere since we started burning fossil fuels. CO2 in the atmosphere over the last 800,000 years (homo sapiens has only been around for the last 300,000 years, btw) was never more than 300 parts per million, and we just shot through 407 ppm.

There's no evidence that the cooling will just happen. Saying 'yes most likely' is a statement completely without evidence.

The broad outlines are all there: we know CO2 is a greenhouse gas; we know we're emitting lots of it; we know this will warm the planet. We expect to see all of these things, and that's exactly what the instrument observations show.

Sorry but Homo Erectus lived in 650 ppm, and there's no evidence to say we'll be in trouble if we reach that point, as long as O2 remains within +/- 10% of where it is today (though, with obesity rates rising we may very well see boatloads of unhealthy people die of asphyxiation at the extreme end of that, which isn't necessarily a bad thing from the evolutionary standpoint). What we really need to watch is where the O2 is going, along with NOx.

There's outstanding evidence that the cooling will "just happen" as readable from my previous sources, directly from the 1999 paper the IPCC keeps trying to bury without counter evidence.

patrickjp93 wrote:

blockski wrote:

No one - absolutely no one - is saying that CO2 is the only reason the world is warming. However, this chart (from a 2010 paper - https://agbjarn.blog.is/users/fa/agbjar ... -years.pdf ) is not claiming that the temperatures in the past were the same, so everything is fine. It's also a paper focused solely on the historical record. We know how much we've changed the atmosphere since we started burning fossil fuels. CO2 in the atmosphere over the last 800,000 years (homo sapiens has only been around for the last 300,000 years, btw) was never more than 300 parts per million, and we just shot through 407 ppm.

There's no evidence that the cooling will just happen. Saying 'yes most likely' is a statement completely without evidence.

The broad outlines are all there: we know CO2 is a greenhouse gas; we know we're emitting lots of it; we know this will warm the planet. We expect to see all of these things, and that's exactly what the instrument observations show.

Sorry but Homo Erectus lived in 650 ppm, and there's no evidence to say we'll be in trouble if we reach that point, as long as O2 remains within +/- 10% of where it is today (though, with obesity rates rising we may very well see boatloads of unhealthy people die of asphyxiation at the extreme end of that, which isn't necessarily a bad thing from the evolutionary standpoint). What we really need to watch is where the O2 is going, along with NOx.

There's outstanding evidence that the cooling will "just happen" as readable from my previous sources, directly from the 1999 paper the IPCC keeps trying to bury without counter evidence.

No one is concerned about CO2 impacting the breath-ability of the air; they're concerned about the greenhouse effect.

I'm not sure how the lifespan of homo erectus is relevant. We're talking about threats to human civilization, not the idea of supporting life. Homo erectus used rocks as stone tools.

If we hit 650 ppm CO2, we're on track for 4.5 deg C of warming (and this is where we are headed today), the risks of substantial sea level rise, mass extinctions, crop failures, mass migrations from climate refugees - all of these factors will be immensely destabilizing. The US's own National Climate Assessment pegs the economic loss at $280 billion a year in that scenario - that's the Great Recession each and every year.

blockski wrote:

patrickjp93 wrote:

blockski wrote:

No one - absolutely no one - is saying that CO2 is the only reason the world is warming. However, this chart (from a 2010 paper - https://agbjarn.blog.is/users/fa/agbjar ... -years.pdf ) is not claiming that the temperatures in the past were the same, so everything is fine. It's also a paper focused solely on the historical record. We know how much we've changed the atmosphere since we started burning fossil fuels. CO2 in the atmosphere over the last 800,000 years (homo sapiens has only been around for the last 300,000 years, btw) was never more than 300 parts per million, and we just shot through 407 ppm.

There's no evidence that the cooling will just happen. Saying 'yes most likely' is a statement completely without evidence.

The broad outlines are all there: we know CO2 is a greenhouse gas; we know we're emitting lots of it; we know this will warm the planet. We expect to see all of these things, and that's exactly what the instrument observations show.

Sorry but Homo Erectus lived in 650 ppm, and there's no evidence to say we'll be in trouble if we reach that point, as long as O2 remains within +/- 10% of where it is today (though, with obesity rates rising we may very well see boatloads of unhealthy people die of asphyxiation at the extreme end of that, which isn't necessarily a bad thing from the evolutionary standpoint). What we really need to watch is where the O2 is going, along with NOx.

There's outstanding evidence that the cooling will "just happen" as readable from my previous sources, directly from the 1999 paper the IPCC keeps trying to bury without counter evidence.

No one is concerned about CO2 impacting the breath-ability of the air; they're concerned about the greenhouse effect.

I'm not sure how the lifespan of homo erectus is relevant. We're talking about threats to human civilization, not the idea of supporting life. Homo erectus used rocks as stone tools.

If we hit 650 ppm CO2, we're on track for 4.5 deg C of warming (and this is where we are headed today), the risks of substantial sea level rise, mass extinctions, crop failures, mass migrations from climate refugees - all of these factors will be immensely destabilizing. The US's own National Climate Assessment pegs the economic loss at $280 billion a year in that scenario - that's the Great Recession each and every year.

The widely cited sea level rise paper that USED to be in Nature (the famous journal, not the magazine) was debunked by a casual mathematician just two weeks after the paper was published and it took Nature a whole year to pull the paper. It was taken out just a couple days ago with a largely muted retraction. It was based on shoddy mathematical work and invalid assumptions.

The two studies being held up as holy grails for the global warming/climate change alarmists have had plenty of evidence surface that their data was tampered with to fit an agenda too. The 20+ climate models we are actively using are woefully inadequate and haven't yet lined up with the data being gathered, not even close.

No one has yet found this supposed warming effect from CO2. 20+ years of satellite imaging and they have found just 0.1*C of warming across the globe, entirely attributed to increased solar activity that is now starting to lull into a 5000-year cooling cycle.

You keep citing the satellite imaging data, except... it's not true.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/ene ... e-problem/

The data is also premised on starting in 1998, one of the strongest El Nino years on record, to demonstrate that there's no warming. That's a textbook case of cherrypicking your comparison, when the obvious trend is clear. Same idea as in this graphic:

[quote="blockski"]You keep citing the satellite imaging data, except... it's not true.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/ene ... e-problem/

The data is also premised on starting in 1998, one of the strongest El Nino years on record, to demonstrate that there's no warming. That's a textbook case of cherrypicking your comparison, when the obvious trend is clear. Same idea as in this graphic:

However many years we have. Whether it's 20, 30, 40, the data does not find any warming.

The data you're citing is based on ground level temperature probes, not satellites.

patrickjp93 wrote:

blockski wrote:

You keep citing the satellite imaging data, except... it's not true.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/ene ... e-problem/

The data is also premised on starting in 1998, one of the strongest El Nino years on record, to demonstrate that there's no warming. That's a textbook case of cherrypicking your comparison, when the obvious trend is clear. Same idea as in this graphic:

However many years we have. Whether it's 20, 30, 40, the data does not find any warming.

The data you're citing is based on ground level temperature probes, not satellites.

I'm not posting that image to cite the data, I'm posting the image to show how you're cherrypicking data to deny the truth of what's happening. You can also click the link I posted, which notes: "But if you take the entire record, then the trend is 0.123 degrees Celsius per decade."

But, since the image is of ground temperature probes, they clearly show warming. You have to consider all the data - and all of the data sources we have show that the warming is happening.

I honestly don't understand why you (or anyone) is questioning whether the warming is actually happening. It clearly is. The only reason to doubt the instrument record is some kind of denial or motivated reasoning.

blockski wrote:

patrickjp93 wrote:

blockski wrote:

You keep citing the satellite imaging data, except... it's not true.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/ene ... e-problem/

The data is also premised on starting in 1998, one of the strongest El Nino years on record, to demonstrate that there's no warming. That's a textbook case of cherrypicking your comparison, when the obvious trend is clear. Same idea as in this graphic:

However many years we have. Whether it's 20, 30, 40, the data does not find any warming.

The data you're citing is based on ground level temperature probes, not satellites.

I'm not posting that image to cite the data, I'm posting the image to show how you're cherrypicking data to deny the truth of what's happening. You can also click the link I posted, which notes: "But if you take the entire record, then the trend is 0.123 degrees Celsius per decade."

But, since the image is of ground temperature probes, they clearly show warming. You have to consider all the data - and all of the data sources we have show that the warming is happening.

I honestly don't understand why you (or anyone) is questioning whether the warming is actually happening. It clearly is. The only reason to doubt the instrument record is some kind of denial or motivated reasoning.

You don't have to consider data sources that have known inaccuracies. Satellite imaging is much more accurate and has found bupkis. Ground temp probe data is biased to the Heat Island Effect and will effectively be over-sampled. Sure, it's good data to inform state, city, and federal governments when planning for city expansion and making sure enough greenery is around to mitigate it, but as for informing global policy on carbon emissions, no, just no.

The warming is not clearly happening. One pole is melting while the other is expanding. The Troposphere is cooling. The oceans have not gotten one iota warmer. The only thing getting warmer is air near cities, and as the Sun becomes less and less active over the next few thousand years, even that won't be a problem. Heck if we enter another mini ice age as we cyclically should in the next hundred years, those hot and bothered cities will become refuges for the freezing suburbans and rural dwellers.

patrickjp93 wrote:

blockski wrote:

patrickjp93 wrote:

However many years we have. Whether it's 20, 30, 40, the data does not find any warming.

The data you're citing is based on ground level temperature probes, not satellites.

I'm not posting that image to cite the data, I'm posting the image to show how you're cherrypicking data to deny the truth of what's happening. You can also click the link I posted, which notes: "But if you take the entire record, then the trend is 0.123 degrees Celsius per decade."

But, since the image is of ground temperature probes, they clearly show warming. You have to consider all the data - and all of the data sources we have show that the warming is happening.

I honestly don't understand why you (or anyone) is questioning whether the warming is actually happening. It clearly is. The only reason to doubt the instrument record is some kind of denial or motivated reasoning.

You don't have to consider data sources that have known inaccuracies. Satellite imaging is much more accurate and has found bupkis. Ground temp probe data is biased to the Heat Island Effect and will effectively be over-sampled. Sure, it's good data to inform state, city, and federal governments when planning for city expansion and making sure enough greenery is around to mitigate it, but as for informing global policy on carbon emissions, no, just no.

The warming is not clearly happening. One pole is melting while the other is expanding. The Troposphere is cooling. The oceans have not gotten one iota warmer. The only thing getting warmer is air near cities, and as the Sun becomes less and less active over the next few thousand years, even that won't be a problem. Heck if we enter another mini ice age as we cyclically should in the next hundred years, those hot and bothered cities will become refuges for the freezing suburbans and rural dwellers.

Satellite imaging is not more accurate when measuring either surface or atmospheric temperatures. From that same Washington Post article I posted:

Mears and Benjamin Santer, a climate scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, recently co-authored a strong critique of Cruz’s “Data or Dogma” hearing. “Satellites are not a thermometer in space, they’re not making direct measurements of atmospheric temperature, they’re measuring the microwave emissions from oxygen molecules,” Santer said. He cites numerous types of uncertainty associated with satellite temperature data and numerous corrections to it required — such as due to satellites’ orbital drifts — making the entire endeavor a “tough job.”

“There’s over a dozen satellites that you need to string together and each of them have calibration and drift issues that need to be dealt with,” added Gavin Schmidt, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at NASA. “If there’s an issue with any particular satellite or any particular calibration it affects all the temperatures, so it’s much easier to have systematic issues that affect the whole record.”

Likewise, the idea that warming is only found in cities from urban heat islands is also untrue. We have temperature records from non-urban surface locations. We have them from weather balloons. We have them from ocean buoys.

Every comprehensive analysis of all the data shows the warming is clearly happening. Even increased snow/ice at one of the poles is actually consistent with warmer temperatures - you don't get snow accumulation when it's too cold!

blockski wrote:

patrickjp93 wrote:

blockski wrote:

I'm not posting that image to cite the data, I'm posting the image to show how you're cherrypicking data to deny the truth of what's happening. You can also click the link I posted, which notes: "But if you take the entire record, then the trend is 0.123 degrees Celsius per decade."

But, since the image is of ground temperature probes, they clearly show warming. You have to consider all the data - and all of the data sources we have show that the warming is happening.

I honestly don't understand why you (or anyone) is questioning whether the warming is actually happening. It clearly is. The only reason to doubt the instrument record is some kind of denial or motivated reasoning.

You don't have to consider data sources that have known inaccuracies. Satellite imaging is much more accurate and has found bupkis. Ground temp probe data is biased to the Heat Island Effect and will effectively be over-sampled. Sure, it's good data to inform state, city, and federal governments when planning for city expansion and making sure enough greenery is around to mitigate it, but as for informing global policy on carbon emissions, no, just no.

The warming is not clearly happening. One pole is melting while the other is expanding. The Troposphere is cooling. The oceans have not gotten one iota warmer. The only thing getting warmer is air near cities, and as the Sun becomes less and less active over the next few thousand years, even that won't be a problem. Heck if we enter another mini ice age as we cyclically should in the next hundred years, those hot and bothered cities will become refuges for the freezing suburbans and rural dwellers.

Satellite imaging is not more accurate when measuring either surface or atmospheric temperatures. From that same Washington Post article I posted:

Mears and Benjamin Santer, a climate scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, recently co-authored a strong critique of Cruz’s “Data or Dogma” hearing. “Satellites are not a thermometer in space, they’re not making direct measurements of atmospheric temperature, they’re measuring the microwave emissions from oxygen molecules,” Santer said. He cites numerous types of uncertainty associated with satellite temperature data and numerous corrections to it required — such as due to satellites’ orbital drifts — making the entire endeavor a “tough job.”

“There’s over a dozen satellites that you need to string together and each of them have calibration and drift issues that need to be dealt with,” added Gavin Schmidt, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at NASA. “If there’s an issue with any particular satellite or any particular calibration it affects all the temperatures, so it’s much easier to have systematic issues that affect the whole record.”

Likewise, the idea that warming is only found in cities from urban heat islands is also untrue. We have temperature records from non-urban surface locations. We have them from weather balloons. We have them from ocean buoys.

Every comprehensive analysis of all the data shows the warming is clearly happening. Even increased snow/ice at one of the poles is actually consistent with warmer temperatures - you don't get snow accumulation when it's too cold!

It IS more accurate. We have long-established mathematics to deal with this, and the satellites work with higher orbit GPS to ensure they're measuring correctly. The data is self-correcting. Lawrence Livermore is also a huge alarmist nest getting tens of billions just to build computers to analyze biased data, so...

The weather balloon records don't back you up either. The only data being used by the IPCC declarations has been surface temp probes, reason being they're incredibly convenient and easy to bias.

The costs are only going to rise from here: SFO to spend $587m to raise the sea wall around the airport.

http://www.mercurynews.com/sfo-plans-to ... bay-waters

blockski wrote:

The costs are only going to rise from here: SFO to spend $587m to raise the sea wall around the airport.

http://www.mercurynews.com/sfo-plans-to ... bay-waters

A likely unnecessary effort for another 5000 years, but oh well.

If people were serious about controlling Carbon OR the sea levels rising, they'd be investing in nuclear energy and planting hectares of Carbon Sink plants in desserts and investing in drip irrigation and desalination to supply water from the sea while selling the salt for all sorts of purposes. That keeps the greenery out of the way of construction all while cooling down the surface, taking CO2 out of the air, adding O2 back, and withdrawing water from the oceans just as fast as it's melting into it from the glaciers.

The solutions are obvious, simple, and easily achievable. Proof? Israel's orchards.

patrickjp93 wrote:

blockski wrote:

The costs are only going to rise from here: SFO to spend $587m to raise the sea wall around the airport.

http://www.mercurynews.com/sfo-plans-to ... bay-waters

A likely unnecessary effort for another 5000 years, but oh well.

If people were serious about controlling Carbon OR the sea levels rising, they'd be investing in nuclear energy and planting hectares of Carbon Sink plants in desserts and investing in drip irrigation and desalination to supply water from the sea while selling the salt for all sorts of purposes. That keeps the greenery out of the way of construction all while cooling down the surface, taking CO2 out of the air, adding O2 back, and withdrawing water from the oceans just as fast as it's melting into it from the glaciers.

The solutions are obvious, simple, and easily achievable. Proof? Israel's orchards.

Don’t we only have about 80 years or so worth of proven uranium reserves? The rest is inaccessible. That’s based on current consumption. If the entire world were start investing in many more nuclear projects, the 80yrs supply would go a lot faster. We really should concentrate on the suns energy it’s just radiating it away for free.

In other news, we’ve been running out of oil for a century. Disregard all predictions of imminent catastrophe—they’ve been done before.


Gf

Not sure where you got 80 years of Uranium reserves, but you can always make Plutonium.

How aviation can tackle climate change could be done by a program to plant billions of trees. I came a cross a Swiss study that was released this summer. They have studied how it is possible to reduce CO2 from atmosphere by investing 330 billion dollars into planting trees. The study have found available land for planting trees. Aviation contributes to 2-4% of all CO2 emotion. If airlines make sure they support planting trees in a capacity that surpasses their pollution that can instantly make aviation green. Being CO2 neutral in 2050 does not mean we will stop polluting, but that we need to offset more than we pollute. For aviation I believe this could be a step in the right direction. Get IATA onboard with a scheme to plant billions of trees. Read more in the Guardian.

https://amp.theguardian.com/environment ... -emissions

Oykie wrote:

How aviation can tackle climate change could be done by a program to plant billions of trees. I came a cross a Swiss study that was released this summer. They have studied how it is possible to reduce CO2 from atmosphere by investing 330 billion dollars into planting trees. The study have found available land for planting trees. Aviation contributes to 2-4% of all CO2 emotion. If airlines make sure they support planting trees in a capacity that surpasses their pollution that can instantly make aviation green. Being CO2 neutral in 2050 does not mean we will stop polluting, but that we need to offset more than we pollute. For aviation I believe this could be a step in the right direction. Get IATA onboard with a scheme to plant billions of trees. Read more in the Guardian.

https://amp.theguardian.com/environment ... -emissions

Why sacrifice valuable arable land to wait decades for nature to do its thing when technology to capture carbon dioxide to turn to fuel has been around for quite a while? It requires an energy input of course, but the sun ain't gonna run out any time soon and there's no shortage of places which have tons of sunlight in places that aren't desirable for other uses.

Australia itself has more than enough sun-baked, venomous, dry desert, that it can become a major oil exporter through this method (if made economical) while not impeding on its own efforts to increase reliance on renewables.

JustSomeDood wrote:

Oykie wrote:

How aviation can tackle climate change could be done by a program to plant billions of trees. I came a cross a Swiss study that was released this summer. They have studied how it is possible to reduce CO2 from atmosphere by investing 330 billion dollars into planting trees. The study have found available land for planting trees. Aviation contributes to 2-4% of all CO2 emotion. If airlines make sure they support planting trees in a capacity that surpasses their pollution that can instantly make aviation green. Being CO2 neutral in 2050 does not mean we will stop polluting, but that we need to offset more than we pollute. For aviation I believe this could be a step in the right direction. Get IATA onboard with a scheme to plant billions of trees. Read more in the Guardian.

https://amp.theguardian.com/environment ... -emissions

Why sacrifice valuable arable land to wait decades for nature to do its thing when technology to capture carbon dioxide to turn to fuel has been around for quite a while? It requires an energy input of course, but the sun ain't gonna run out any time soon and there's no shortage of places which have tons of sunlight in places that aren't desirable for other uses.

Australia itself has more than enough sun-baked, venomous, dry desert, that it can become a major oil exporter through this method (if made economical) while not impeding on its own efforts to increase reliance on renewables.

This can also be done, but from what I have read it is much more expensive than to just plant trees. But I believe for aviation to be sustainable, they need to show how they competnsate. Either paying for carbon capture, or planting trees. I believe you could stop Swedish flight shame if people knew their flight improved the reduction of CO2 globally.

I miss the old “straight jets engines” trailing thick black smoke in the morning.......

With JetBlue announcing that they will carbon offset all their domestic flights and easyJet having done the same a few months ago, what are other airlines to limit their carbon impact?

I know that a large number of airlines have programs for their passengers to pay for carbon offsets and some airlines are trialing alternate fuels, but what else is being done around the world?

Link to JetBlue news:
https://onemileatatime.com/jetblue-carb ... t-flights/

Also, has anyone found a list that compiles what different airlines are doing? Would be really curious to see.

Flying in a fully loaded 737 is like traveling with two people in a Prius.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424 ... 1677748380

And those numbers are 10 (TEN) years old with a CAGR of just 2% fuel burn decrease...you do the math...

Airline travel is not the reason for climate change and should stop being attacked.

The real problem is electricity generation from coal in China and India. Followed closely by personal (inefficient) vehicular transportation.

And also another huge cause of climate impact is land clearance and land use.

/Rant off

WorldFlier wrote:

Flying in a fully loaded 737 is like traveling with two people in a Prius.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424 ... 1677748380

And those numbers are 10 (TEN) years old with a CAGR of just 2% fuel burn decrease...you do the math...

Airline travel is not the reason for climate change and should stop being attacked.

The real problem is electricity generation from coal in China and India. Followed closely by personal (inefficient) vehicular transportation.

And also another huge cause of climate impact is land clearance and land use.

/Rant off

I agree. But aviation can’t impact electricity generation. But it can impact that 2%. Just because it’s small doesn’t mean that it can’t be proactive on this issue. Every little helps. Plus, it may be a selling point for an airline... a PR issue. Consumers may drive their consumption based on the carbon impact of their travel. Aviation can’t ignore that.

Cess, tax, surcharge..cess, tax, surcharge.
Atleast that's what european airlines think of when looking for ways to offset/mitigate impact of flying on environment.

Turboprops are great. I just don't understand why there isn't any new design/engines coming for turboprops. Like say an ATR/Q400neo. Would work well for many short haul ops.

airlines are offering passengers to pay the airline extra money to make them feel better about pretending to cover the environmental impact of them flying.

WorldFlier wrote:

Flying in a fully loaded 737 is like traveling with two people in a Prius.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424 ... 1677748380

And those numbers are 10 (TEN) years old with a CAGR of just 2% fuel burn decrease...you do the math...

Airline travel is not the reason for climate change and should stop being attacked.

The real problem is electricity generation from coal in China and India. Followed closely by personal (inefficient) vehicular transportation.

And also another huge cause of climate impact is land clearance and land use.

/Rant off

Precisely, the newest narrowbodies are approaching 100 available seat-miles per gallon, the same as a Prius with 2 people in it. It's also AFAIK far more efficient than currently deployed rail such as Amtrak.

However, the argument goes that certain people do 10 coast-to-coast trips a year on airlines. Certain people do 40. These are things they wouldn't do with a car or a train. So the point is that convenient jet travel is inducing a ton of unnecessary travel that would not otherwise happen. Some of that fuel burn is very gratuitous, myself included.

IMO the only consistent way of doing things is a carbon tax throughout the global economy. Passenger jet travel is a small percentage of manmade carbon emissions. IMO it is among the more efficient uses of carbon. Building heat is a huge percentage of carbon. Industrial application is a huge percentage. Deforestation. Jet travel should not have some extreme restriction that other types of carbon emission do not have. That would be a farce.

Animal agriculture is the number one cause of climate change, so if airlines really cared about the environment, the first move to make would be to cut meat from inflight menus.

I agree that airlines are always victimized for their CO2 impact despite being far from the biggest contributors.

If we want to tackle greenhouse gas emissions, let's start with the low hanging fruits of land transportation and design a regulatory and tax structure which accelerates the transition to an electrified transport architecture.
Then we need to transition power generation away from fossil fuels as much as possible, although this is unfortunately harder due to the large political leverage that the industry has over politicians Worldwide. Fortunately, as renewables become cost efficient on their own, the shift will happen anyway, albeit slowly. Nuclear is actually a great, emission free, power source and safe if properly designed regulated. It's a shame the population at large has developed an irrational fear of it.
Hopefully, fusion will eventually come along and solve pretty much everything... it's only about 30 years away, as it has been for the last 60.

There is no easy technological solution to clean up air travel. You only develop more efficient engines and aircraft, which manufacturers are very much already doing as best as they possibly can, or you deter people from flying, which curtails entire industries, from the entire aerospace industry to the airlines and all their supporting businesses, along with the tourism industry, and a myriad other businesses which depend on moving people around the World.
That said, if oil became expensive enough, it might help move the industry towards biofuels or other carbon neutral fuels, but those have an associated environmental cost as well.

Airlines should be motivated to build electric HSR lines from their billions of profits

patrickjp93 wrote:

blockski wrote:

No one - absolutely no one - is saying that CO2 is the only reason the world is warming. However, this chart (from a 2010 paper - https://agbjarn.blog.is/users/fa/agbjar ... -years.pdf ) is not claiming that the temperatures in the past were the same, so everything is fine. It's also a paper focused solely on the historical record. We know how much we've changed the atmosphere since we started burning fossil fuels. CO2 in the atmosphere over the last 800,000 years (homo sapiens has only been around for the last 300,000 years, btw) was never more than 300 parts per million, and we just shot through 407 ppm.

There's no evidence that the cooling will just happen. Saying 'yes most likely' is a statement completely without evidence.

The broad outlines are all there: we know CO2 is a greenhouse gas; we know we're emitting lots of it; we know this will warm the planet. We expect to see all of these things, and that's exactly what the instrument observations show.

Sorry but Homo Erectus lived in 650 ppm, and there's no evidence to say we'll be in trouble if we reach that point, as long as O2 remains within +/- 10% of where it is today (though, with obesity rates rising we may very well see boatloads of unhealthy people die of asphyxiation at the extreme end of that, which isn't necessarily a bad thing from the evolutionary standpoint). What we really need to watch is where the O2 is going, along with NOx.

There's outstanding evidence that the cooling will "just happen" as readable from my previous sources, directly from the 1999 paper the IPCC keeps trying to bury without counter evidence.

Homo Erectus did live, perhaps in 650 ppm, but the difference is those numbers were temporary, and the majority of the population were engaged in subsistence farming. Now with a global population of 8bn, 7bn vehicles, 20,000 plus commercial airliners, the numbers are forever numbers, unless there is a drastic reduction in the global population and standard of living.

Pollution is the single biggest threat to the human race, but I think nothing of putting my 70kg body into a 1500kg car to travel short distances. I think it's my right to get into an aircraft, and fly thousands of miles for business, sun, history or family. I think nothing of buying cheap goods from high polluting nations, because I can save money.

The UN is frustrated with the aviation (and shipping) industry. Even IATA realises CORSIA goals are too soft, and won't be achieved. Only taxes and hard financial penalties will change behaviour, because at the end of the day it's all about money.

The cargo sector and corporate jets are the major offenders in my opinion. These generally use older and less efficient planes.
For cargo, do we really need an overnight delivery of general volumes of general consumer goods, toys and gadgets when a more efficient truck would deliver those a day or two later?
Is the comfort of a two hour private jet trip really justifiable over a somewhat less comfortable business class?
I can understand there are always exception, but many of these behaviors are normalised and should be priced more appropriately to cover the contribution to the climate change. This way the behavior would change in line with business priorities.

eaa3 wrote:

With JetBlue announcing that they will carbon offset all their domestic flights and easyJet having done the same a few months ago, what are other airlines to limit their carbon impact?

I know that a large number of airlines have programs for their passengers to pay for carbon offsets and some airlines are trialing alternate fuels, but what else is being done around the world?

Link to JetBlue news:
https://onemileatatime.com/jetblue-carb ... t-flights/

Also, has anyone found a list that compiles what different airlines are doing? Would be really curious to see.

Carbon offset fees are basically a scam to extra more profit from passengers. I haven't booked an Aussie airline in a while, but either Qantas or Virgin Aus. had the option to pay a carbon offset when I last booked.

It's kinda pointless to put these offsets in. Aviation is such a tiny part of the big picture, and in an era where global cooperation is so strained, you WANT people to travel and see the world. I myself am glad I'm no longer paying $1500-2000 AUD to fly from Brisbane back to my family in the U.S. once a year, but penalizing economy fliers is ridiculous anyway. Business class travel is frivolous more often than not in the era of remote meetings. Foist the offset on them.

DolphinAir747 wrote:

Animal agriculture is the number one cause of climate change, so if airlines really cared about the environment, the first move to make would be to cut meat from inflight menus.

Actually a much better strategy would be to make some investment money available to Beyond Meat and Impossible Meat. It would not be necessary to offer it in flight, but it might be a nice idea.

And per Franco, electrifying ground transportation (all infrastructure which is expected to serve for decades or scores of years), and at the same time pushing renewable energy. And it seems to be happening despite Anglo right wing politicians.

These climate change ideas are hilarious. Where I sit typing this, “scientists” tell us 10,000 years ago, was a Mille deep in snow and ice. How did human-caused global warming melt this snow and ice?

UpNAWAy wrote:

If it was about the environment air travel wouldn't even be mentioned its insignificant in the grand scheme of things. But if it is about money, taxes and control well yes lets shame air travelers into giving us more of each.

Bingo. Follow the money.

Since when has ‘consensus’ been a substitute for the scientific method of questioning and testing theories? Consensus is, “agree with us, or never get funding again.”

Here's an idea I came across recently: have the airlines directly sell sustainable fuels: https://medium.com/@merlinwoodman/why-a ... cdcd6c22f7