Air Travel Emissions Vastly Outpace Predictions • Hacker News Board

Re: Air Travel Emissions Vastly Outpace Predictions

#311

Post by jandrewrogers » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 4:11 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #124

_Microft wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's two questions for you which are not hard to answer but, frankly, I do not expect to read the answers here. Why? Because it would show how utterly wrong the suggestion of carbon sequestration for solving this problem was. First: how much mass (i.e. kg or tons) of C0_2 is emitted per year? Second: what is the total mass of concrete produced per year worldwide? (This is only an exercise to give parent poster an i…

Re your first question, quick googling suggests some 37 billion tons of CO₂ per year. So sure, that's a lot. But then again, not that lot. Instead of asking questions, why don't you tell us why we couldn't possibly sequester that much carbon annually? How big is the divide between what we could do and what needs to be done? (I must say the idea of sequestering carbon seems emotionally appealing to me because it turns…

In principle, with extreme heroic effort, we could sequester 37 billion tons of CO2 per year, but we should be clear on just how extreme “extreme” is. Remember, every single part of the logistical supply chain would need to be scalable a million-fold the same way that the actual sequestration plant would need to be. There are two big practical engineering problems that have to be solved first, that have not been realistically addressed.

First, we would need to double global electricity generation to a first approximation. The laws of thermodynamics make this non-negotiable. Very few power generation technologies not based on fossil fuels can scale like that. Nuclear power plants, realistically, and thousands of them in very short order.

Second, the chemicals used in industrial sequestration produce hazardous byproducts on a scale similar to the CO2 being sequestered, byproducts like hydrochloric acid. Today, this is easy to handle because we produce truly trivial quantities of the chemicals required for sequestration. Not only is there no industrial capacity to produce the required chemicals, nor an obvious way to scale them, there is also no plan for disposing of the billions of tons of caustic chemicals that would be thrown off as a side-effect of their manufacture. It doesn’t do us any good to remove the CO2 from the atmosphere if we end up turning the planet into a superfund site. Nobody accounts for hazardous byproducts of the proposed technology supply chains, which will be produced on similar scales.

As I’ve noted previously, we can reduce this to a much simpler sub-problem that is easy to reason about: what would be required to produce enough potassium hydroxide to sequester 37 billion tons of CO2 per year? All the required facts and figures are public knowledge and relatively basic science. The amount of electricity required per ton is widely documented, as are the chemical inputs and byproducts. And then, once you’ve realized the extent to which that asymptotically approaches impossible, do the same kinds of calculations on the upstream supply chain for the inputs to that process, which is also public information. It falls apart very, very quickly.

Re: Air Travel Emissions Vastly Outpace Predictions

#312

Post by Robotbeat » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 5:13 AM UTC

notJim wrote: post #293

Robotbeat wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Low hanging fruit assuming you can afford a decent used car. I bought both of my EVs used for $10k apiece (and will save about half of those amounts in gas and maintenance costs...). I see lots of people driving around very large vehicles which, new or used, they probably don't absolutely require and which have both high upfront costs and high operating costs. I think you'd have more of a point if most people were dr…

Electric cars come with a number of tradeoffs that make them harder to incorporate than skipping a few flights, IMO. If you're single, you don't have a road-trip car anymore (because you only own one car, and a $10k EV is not great for road trips). If you live in an apartment, there's often nowhere to charge the electric car, or you have to buy a parking spot in your building which is expensive AF and limited. A lot…

My Volt is $10k (actually you can get them for as low as $6k now) and is great for road trips. It doesn’t feel cheap.

There are already fantastic options for EVs. Almost anyone who buys new could get one. At very least a nice plug in hybrid.

Re: Air Travel Emissions Vastly Outpace Predictions

#313

Post by Robotbeat » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 5:14 AM UTC

henryfjordan wrote: post #298

Robotbeat wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're paying for pulling the carbon back out. The cheapest way to do this is to pay someone to plant trees for you.

You've only succeeded if that tree eventually gets sucked into the earth and turned back into oil eventually. If it gets cut down for fuel you've done nothing.

The tree merely existing helps, although imperfect.

There’s only so much room to plant trees, though. It’s effectively a limited carbon sink.

Re: Air Travel Emissions Vastly Outpace Predictions

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Post by arbol » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 7:03 AM UTC

chadlavi wrote: post #177

mehrdadn wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely tax it, but I actually view a lot of the business travel as unnecessary compared to consumer travel, and that's what I'd want to get rid of first with a tax. I'm far more sympathetic to people trying to see their dying uncles or attend their sister's wedding or visiting their parents once a year than, say, professionals "needing" to attend conferences or whatever. Heck, come to think of it, if I ever saw a…

I agree with you there big time. You can virtually attend a conference. FaceTime with grandma from her deathbed is not an acceptable alternative. Kicking the price of this kind of policy down to individual consumers is a great way to just make everyone really mad and get more money from business customers who will still go on not-strictly-necessary trips.

There are individual consumers that commute via plane in the UK. This shouldn't be the case and these aren't most people.

Re: Air Travel Emissions Vastly Outpace Predictions

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Post by ukoki » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 7:52 AM UTC

notJim wrote: post #294

flavor8 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On what timescale? I.e. trees take time to grow and accumulate carbon. As I understand it, the climate clock is ticking - there's a threshold beyond which some runaway effects kick in.

> trees take time to grow and accumulate carbon They also burn down or are harvested quite regularly.

Harvesting can be good because it provides space for more trees to grow and store yet more carbon. As long the timber is used for long-term purposes such as housing, then the carbon in the timber kept stored. It's not 100% efficient because when felled the roots and leaves rot and return carbon back to the atmosphere, but AFAIK it's better than not harvesting.

Re: Air Travel Emissions Vastly Outpace Predictions

#316

Post by romwell » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 8:24 AM UTC

the_gastropod wrote: post #303

romwell wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah right, because nobody who travels to a country reads up on the history, culture and traditions. Traveling and reading, after all, are mutually exclusive. /s Let me tell you of a night in Mardid. I headed out to see the night Madrid around midnight. Going along a crowded street, I heard someone singing. I was carrying a portable synthesizer, so I played along. Three people, carrying two guitars and a saxophone we…

That's, no doubt, an amazing experience. And there's likely countless wonderful experiences you have had / could have right in your home city. The suggestion of the comment I responded to was about learning . Traveling, on its own, doesn't do anything to help people learn anything substantial. It's still ultimately a consumerism-centric activity. The travel industry has done an amazing job of convincing people otherw…

> And there's likely countless wonderful experiences you have had / could have right in your home city.

Nothing of this sort. Most of the US shuts down at 2AM, people don't walk the streets in most cities which makes bumping into people impossible, and so on. The life and the environment is totally different here.

(I say this as someone who drove through all states West of Iowa, with the exception of North Dakota, lived in NYC, TX, CA each for years, and moved to the US from another country).

Most importantly, interacting with people from another country in their environment gives you a unique perspective both on their culture and your own. It's not about "having and experience", it's that your understanding of the world around you changes substantially.

>doesn't do anything to help people learn anything substantial

You learn how another country works. You learn what a day in life of another person is like in that country. It's the countless little things that are different that you see. It's the everyday lives that shape everyday thinking, and that's what matters the most.

In short, you learn to be in a different way, by observing people who are in a different way.

Textbooks simply won't answer the question "What is it like to be a Parisian, in 2019?".

I mean, you are making a very strong statement, with not much to back it up with. I provided a single counter-example, but I really don't know where to even start.

The logic of your argument applies verbatim to pretty much anything: "There's no point in venturing outdoors. If you really want to learn about nature, hit the library. You're just enjoying yourselves out there."

Well, no. Maybe that's what you do, but perhaps you aren't getting as much out of it.

I'll also make a strong statement: you have no idea what another country is like until you travel there. You won't have a single shared experience that will make it possible for you to relate to someone living there. Until you go there, all your knowledge is just an abstraction that you built up in your head.

To make an analogy again: you can read up on Beethoven all your life, but from hearing his music once you learn more than from reading about it.

Re: Air Travel Emissions Vastly Outpace Predictions

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Post by freeone3000 » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 8:45 AM UTC

CalRobert wrote: post #276

mehrdadn wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it'd be great, until your clients stop viewing it as a noble thing and start seeing it as a disgusting and wasteful thing. Then your competition will be happier than you. People's expectations are malleable. It's not easy to change them, but it's necessary and it's possible. And once that happens, the game will change, and it will force you to change your tune accordingly.

It needs to be viewed as distasteful as holding sales meetings in a strip club.

I have friends who have done this this year. Good luck with that.

Re: Air Travel Emissions Vastly Outpace Predictions

#318

Post by marsokod » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 10:57 AM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #180

Lramseyer wrote: post #168

One thing that's very important to keep in mind when looking at air travel emissions is how fuel efficient planes actually are. The math works out to around 100 miles per gallon per passenger. And at an underwhelming 2.5% of global emissions, I can't really put it in the category of "low hanging fruit." That's not to say that we shouldn't invest in things like high speed rail, (because we absolutely will see quality…

The math works out to around 100 miles per gallon per passenger. That assumes maximum passenger load, I assume. At maximum passenger load, my car gets 170 miles per gallon per passenger. A giant, gas-guzzling Chevy Suburban gets 198 miles per gallon per passenger. I don't think "per gallon per passenger" is a useful measure.

That is the value with something close to capacity, but most importantly assuming worse case for weight. And weight has a bigger effect on the consumption on a plane than on a car. So if your plane has less passengers, the MPG of the plane increases, though the MPG/passenger decreases. And it is also mainly for cruise - the longer the travel, the better the efficiency. Taking off and climbing is not that efficient so short haul trip are quite bad.

To me the point is that an airplane MPG/passenger is of the same magnitude as the MPG/passenger for an individual car. What is bad is not necessarily the plane itself, but the fact we do very long distance trips. Trains and buses can be more efficient, carbone-wise, but requires a traffic big enough to offset the carbone cost of the infrastructure needed.

Re: Air Travel Emissions Vastly Outpace Predictions

#319

Post by the_gastropod » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 12:07 PM UTC

romwell wrote: post #316

the_gastropod wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's, no doubt, an amazing experience. And there's likely countless wonderful experiences you have had / could have right in your home city. The suggestion of the comment I responded to was about learning . Traveling, on its own, doesn't do anything to help people learn anything substantial. It's still ultimately a consumerism-centric activity. The travel industry has done an amazing job of convincing people otherw…

> And there's likely countless wonderful experiences you have had / could have right in your home city. Nothing of this sort. Most of the US shuts down at 2AM, people don't walk the streets in most cities which makes bumping into people impossible, and so on. The life and the environment is totally different here. (I say this as someone who drove through all states West of Iowa, with the exception of North Dakota, li…

Beethoven? You mean the deaf man who couldn’t hear many of his own greatest hits? The man who died in the early 1800’s, before audio recording, and whose music we can listen to because it was written down? Good analogy ;-)

Re: Air Travel Emissions Vastly Outpace Predictions

#320

Post by dTal » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 5:13 PM UTC

bluejellybean wrote: post #48

funklute wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any time someone actually does the math on sucking carbon out of the atmosphere, it seemingly becomes clear that it is simply not scalable to suck the carbon out of the atmosphere. Have you done the math, and if so, why is everyone who comes to the aforementioned conclusion wrong?

I like the idea of getting to net neutral with carbon capture. I even did some napkin math about a month ago. I tried calculating the energy requirements to break the CO2 bond as to determine the number of solar panels you would need. To get net neutral with CO2 emissions you would need to spend something around $8.5 trillion and obtain around 84,584,490,753.28 of 300 watt, $100 panels! Note I did not calculate the c…

If you have enough green energy to unburn CO2, why not just... use that energy directly? Digging up carbon, burning it, and polluting it, only to spend the effort to capture it, unburn it, and rebury it would be absurd and inefficient.

That being said, I believe carbon capture proposals don't typically involve unburning the carbon - just capturing it and storing it. So the energy situation isn't as bad as your calculations.