Zero carbon emissions for major airline -- Do you think this is achievable? If so, how?

David Megginson said:
And there's really no such thing as an avalanche, because the frozen water is simply returning closer to the elevation it evaporated from earlier …
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I like this analogy. But, if a three-fold increase in burned fossil fuel doesn't make a dent in atmospheric CO2 (see article I linked to in post #152), how are we gonna plug enough volcanoes and bovine rectums to stem "climate change"?
 
dtuuri said:
I like this analogy. But, if a three-fold increase in burned fossil fuel doesn't make a dent in atmospheric CO2 (see article I linked to in post #152), how are we gonna plug enough volcanoes and bovine rectums to stem "climate change"?
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Just read the replies in the link you provided. Just looking at them, I would say that book missed a lot of fundamental aspects of CO2.
As for H2O; yes it is even a larger factor in extremely short term greenhouse issues. However, as long as temperatures do not rise to much, it tends to have a natural filtering process called precipitation and as a result does not stay airborne as long so it has less total effect on the temp rise we have expierenced.

Tim
 
dtuuri said:
United will probably lose less money by making sure elections are vulnerable to cheating, if this article is correct (quote from the article):

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The best method for "making sure elections are vulnerable to cheating" is to permit Gerrymandering to continue. As for that article, this one presents more accurate information:


Since the byproducts of combustion produce more water vapor (a greenhouse gas) than CO2, maybe United should catch the water vapor instead of CO2?

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"...water is evaporated from the land and sea and falls as rain or snow all the time. Thus the amount held in the atmosphere as water vapour varies greatly in just hours and days as result of the prevailing weather in any location. So even though water vapour is the greatest greenhouse gas, it is relatively short-lived. On the other hand, CO2 is removed from the air by natural geological-scale processes and these take a long time to work. Consequently CO2 stays in our atmosphere for years and even centuries. A small additional amount has a much more long-term effect.

So skeptics are right in saying that water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas. What they don't mention is that the water vapor feedback loop actually makes temperature changes caused by CO2 even bigger."​

https://skepticalscience.com/water-vapor-greenhouse-gas.htm
 
Palmpilot said:
On the other hand, CO2 is removed from the air by natural geological-scale processes and these take a long time to work. Consequently CO2 stays in our atmosphere for years and even centuries. A small additional amount has a much more long-term effect.

​
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​
Not sure I believe that. Every plant on this planet consumes CO2, turning it into vegetation of many sorts. I wonder just how long the CO2 would last if all emissions of it stopped entirely: no volcanoes, people, animals or rotting stuff. Not very long, I bet. The oceans would be much slower to lose it than the atmosphere would.

Satellite imagery shows the planet definitely greening due to the increase in CO2. Plants love it.
 
It is interesting how this thread has primarily discussed many ways United can become carbon neutral. Certainly possible by several means including reforesting Brazil.

Few have observed that the statement made by the Chief Executive Officer is completely BS. Propelling an airliner across the USA or Transoceanic and “reducing our carbon emissions 100% by 2050” is as likely as mass producing Star Trek Transporter stations.

Cheers
 
X3 Skier said:
It is interesting how this thread has primarily discussed many ways United can become carbon neutral. Certainly possible by several means including reforesting Brazil.

Few have observed that the statement made by the Chief Executive Officer is completely BS. Propelling an airliner across the USA or Transoceanic and “reducing our carbon emissions 100% by 2050” is as likely as mass producing Star Trek Transporter stations.

Cheers
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Exactly, unless huge breakthroughs are made in battery technologies, or some other form of energy storage/generation is developed, the CEO is blowing smoke.

I was going to make a post about an energy density calculation for the amount of fuel required to propel a 737 5,000 or so miles (about 10,000 gallons or 60,000 lbs of jet A) versus the mass of current battery technology to do the same distance. I'm guessing it would require something on the order of 500,000 to 800,000 pounds of batteries, but I'm just guessing and too lazy to try to figure it out.
 
Dan Thomas said:
​
Not sure I believe that. Every plant on this planet consumes CO2, turning it into vegetation of many sorts. I wonder just how long the CO2 would last if all emissions of it stopped entirely: no volcanoes, people, animals or rotting stuff. Not very long, I bet. The oceans would be much slower to lose it than the atmosphere would.

Satellite imagery shows the planet definitely greening due to the increase in CO2. Plants love it.
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That's far from a thorough examination of the issue.

In any case, the plants and the oceans don't appear to be keeping up:

co2_data_mlo.png


https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
 
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PaulS said:
It's truly amazing how you can tell a story by scaling a graph.
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The scale doesn't change the direction of the trend, and based on the numbers, it's about a 30% increase in 60 years.
 
tspear said:
Just read the replies in the link you provided. Just looking at them, I would say that book missed a lot of fundamental aspects of CO2.
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Well, if I'm understanding Quora correctly, the answers you mention to the posed question, "Do volcanoes produce more greenhouse gases than humans?", got less than half the "Up" votes, combined, than the top answer which I cited (13 as of now). So, I seem to be in the majority for whatever that's worth.
 
dtuuri said:
Well, if I'm understanding Quora correctly, the answers you mention to the posed question, "Do volcanoes produce more greenhouse gases than humans?", got less than half the "Up" votes, combined, than the top answer which I cited (13 as of now). So, I seem to be in the majority for whatever that's worth.
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Pilots who think that "flying is safer than driving" seem to be in the majority too.
 
Palmpilot said:
"...water is evaporated from the land and sea and falls as rain or snow all the time. Thus the amount held in the atmosphere as water vapour varies greatly in just hours and days as result of the prevailing weather in any location. So even though water vapour is the greatest greenhouse gas, it is relatively short-lived. On the other hand, CO2 is removed from the air by natural geological-scale processes and these take a long time to work. Consequently CO2 stays in our atmosphere for years and even centuries. A small additional amount has a much more long-term effect.

So skeptics are right in saying that water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas. What they don't mention is that the water vapor feedback loop actually makes temperature changes caused by CO2 even bigger."​

https://skepticalscience.com/water-vapor-greenhouse-gas.htm
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I'm sorry, that quote is not logical. If you write CO2 on a phonograph record near the spindle and water vapor near the outside edge and spin the turntable one complete turn you can see that the rate of return to the beginning is the same for each, yet the "water vapor" cycles at a faster speed.
 
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Palmpilot said:
What makes you think it succeeded?
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It got you thinking... and posting. It succeeded for me, but is it true? More true to me than volcanoes and other natural CO2 is less than puny ol' mankind.
 
I'm going all-electric at home. Not for enviro reasons, but for convenience, practicality, and reliability. Electric car, lawnmower, weedeater, chainsaw, blower, etc. Plug it in, charge up and go. Haven't been to the gas station in a year, except for coffee and donuts. Haven't had my Telsa M3 serviced in 18 months, other than tire rotation.

Electrical infrastructure is cheap and simple to expand. As battery tech continues to improve, electrical applications will continue to replace things formerly done by ICE. Generation is still a limitation, but hopefully we get over our heebie jeebies about nuclear and learn to shoot waste into space or something.

OT admittedly, as aviation will be one of the last things to go electric.
 
Ed Haywood said:
...hopefully we get over our heebie jeebies about nuclear and learn to shoot waste into space or something.
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I notice that you live upwind of Cape Canaveral. How about if Mexico shoots theirs over Tampa?
 
Ed Haywood said:
Top 4 countries for EV's per person:
  1. Norway
  2. USA
  3. Iceland
  4. Sweden
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That only addresses the EV portion. You said ALL electric, and there's a major difference between just having car and having everything electric.
 
Doug Reid said:
Plant more trees...
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That would be helpful. I was listening to an interview on NPR day before yesterday about this topic. Trees are natural CO2 sinks. According to the scientist being interviewed, however, we cannot plant enough to solve the problem.
 
write-stuff said:
That would be helpful. I was listening to an interview on NPR day before yesterday about this topic. Trees are natural CO2 sinks. According to the scientist being interviewed, however, we cannot plant enough to solve the problem.
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Have to figure out a way to sequester it artificially and then dump it into a subduction zone where it will take a looooong time to get back into the atmo.
 
dtuuri said:
I'm sorry, that quote is not logical. If you write CO2 on a phonograph record near the spindle and water vapor near the outside edge and spin the turntable one complete turn you can see that the rate of return to the beginning is the same for each, yet the "water vapor" cycles at a faster speed.
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I don't think the truth of the matter can be found through the brief quotes and analogies that you and I have time to post. Here is a much more complete analysis of the subject:

https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/04/water-vapour-feedback-or-forcing/
 
The interesting part of these discussions is they only revolve around fossil fuels. Like if we remove use of all fossil fuels the climate change will miraculously reverse course... and drive us deeper into the current Ice Age period we reside now. Unfortunately, there are other causes that don't get as much coverage as carbon units are the easiest to understand, count, and tax. One term mentioned above, CO2 sinks, is part of that other side where studies are finding the largest CO2 sinks on the planet, the oceans, have become saturated but not all from fossil fuel emissions. One factoid rarely mentioned in the "past 150 years" catch all is that in that same 150 years the total population increased by 6 fold. And the requirement to support that added population, e.g., land clearing, concrete production, food production, animal husbandry, etc, is actually driving the CO2 sink imbalance more so than fossil fuels. One study found that during a period in the 1600s there was a large decline in indigenous populations that aided in dropping the global temp. So will be interesting when more of these studies come out and the narrative shifts from going green to who is going to take one for the gipper. :rolleyes:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379118307261
 
Bell206 said:
The interesting part of these discussions is they only revolve around fossil fuels. Like if we remove use of all fossil fuels the climate change will miraculously reverse course... and drive us deeper into the current Ice Age period we reside now. Unfortunately, there are other causes that don't get as much coverage as carbon units are the easiest to understand, count, and tax. One term mentioned above, CO2 sinks, is part of that other side where studies are finding the largest CO2 sinks on the planet, the oceans, have become saturated but not all from fossil fuel emissions. One factoid rarely mentioned in the "past 150 years" catch all is that in that same 150 years the total population increased by 6 fold. And the requirement to support that added population, e.g., land clearing, concrete production, food production, animal husbandry, etc, is actually driving the CO2 sink imbalance more so than fossil fuels. One study found that during a period in the 1600s there was a large decline in indigenous populations that aided in dropping the global temp. So will be interesting when more of these studies come out and the narrative shifts from going green to who is going to take one for the gipper. :rolleyes:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379118307261
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Not to mention the solar minima that many researchers believe we are in/headed for during the next few decades which will reportedly have a greater impact on the average global temp than any carbon sequestration. However, that would mean we (humans) can't control mother nature as much as we thought and that ruins the entire narrative.
 
CEOs will say any words in the current Kool Aid song that is WOKE, then it will be something else that will be in the song, 2nd verse , 3rd verse
 
strangebird said:
CEOs will say any words in the current Kool Aid song that is WOKE, then it will be something else that will be in the song, 2nd verse , 3rd verse
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next verse, same as the first... a little bit louder, a little bit worse
 
The easiest way to have zero emissions is to use synthetic jet fuel from algae. Carbon is removed from the atmosphere and returned to the atmosphere.
The technology exists to day. The product is quite expensive.
 
According to a friend in the Merchant Marine, super tankers are the single biggest man made polluter. They create more pollution than all the worlds cars, combined.
HMMMM says I, so I went looking.
He was right. And we are talking 15 ships. That's all. Just 15 ships.
Here is just one article.
https://www.industrytap.com/worlds-...pollution-than-all-the-cars-in-the-world/8182

Let's go after the worst case, tankers.

Interesting that when you search aviation pollution it's (almost) always combined with chemical pollution from de-icing, washing and other activities.
With all that, aviation is only 2.65% of pollution, worldwide.
 
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SoonerAviator said:
Not to mention the solar minima that many researchers believe we are in/headed for during the next few decades which will reportedly have a greater impact on the average global temp than any carbon sequestration. However, that would mean we (humans) can't control mother nature as much as we thought and that ruins the entire narrative.
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Do you have a reference for this solar minima that you just mentioned?
Thanks in advance!
 
SoonerAviator said:
Here's one article. However, I've only read a handful of articles about it since they first started talking about the sun spot activity last year. Lots of references to the 1600s and mini ice ages, but I'm sure a lot of that is hyperbole.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7575229/
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That's in interesting journal for such an article. They usually carry articles about physiology, body temperature, and thermo-biology. Sometimes, important papers are appear in strange places.
She should have made a better connection of ozone and jet stream variation with this statement:
"Since during the Maunder Minimum the Sun emitted less radiation, in total, including strong ultraviolet emission, less ozone was formed affecting planetary atmosphere waves, the giant wiggles in the jet stream." but that is a small detail. She may have expected the reader to go to the reference she cited, but that is paywalled for me.

The next few years will prove or disprove her hypothesis.

SoonerAviator said:
However, that would mean we (humans) can't control mother nature as much as we thought and that ruins the entire narrative.
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I don't know what narrative that you are referring to.
 
Cap'n Jack said:
That's in interesting journal for such an article. They usually carry articles about physiology, body temperature, and thermo-biology. Sometimes, important papers are appear in strange places.
She should have made a better connection of ozone and jet stream variation with this statement:
"Since during the Maunder Minimum the Sun emitted less radiation, in total, including strong ultraviolet emission, less ozone was formed affecting planetary atmosphere waves, the giant wiggles in the jet stream." but that is a small detail. She may have expected the reader to go to the reference she cited, but that is paywalled for me.

The next few years will prove or disprove her hypothesis.

I don't know what narrative that you are referring to.
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I agree, I also thought it was an odd journal for that subject to fall into. I know I've seen a few other solar activity research papers being discussed in more traditional venues, but I didn't bookmark them at the time so I don't have a bunch of peer reviewed reference material. As far as "the narrative", I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek about the level of impact humans can have on climate change/weather phenomena when that giant ball of gas/plasma likely exerts more influence which is out of our control.
 
David Megginson said:
Whenever a CEO or politician sets a goal for a time after they'll be retired (or dead), be very, very suspicious.
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You mean like this?

"First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth."
 
Sluggo63 said:
You mean like this?

"First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth."
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In his defense, he didn't know he was going to be shot, and had he won a 2nd term, and depending on how much of a push was given, could have still been in office when the landing was made.

Now had he said by the end of the 70's...
 
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