I know I’m a bit off topic, but in 2023 are we still saying “why not” when someone comes up with another cool way to burn hydrocarbons?
This is solvable with synthetic fuels and offsets.
> work on ways to reduce travel altogether
Good luck forcing quality of life reduction as an explicit policy goal. Or betting on less contact widening of our circles of empathy in the way we must to address global, long-term problems like climate change.
https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/50689/carbon-...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/18/revealed...
https://www.zeit.de/zustimmung?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zeit.de...
https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/the-era-of-the-great-...
> Good luck forcing quality of life reduction as an explicit policy goal.
Either we chose to do it willingly or we'll be forced to do it.
One is chose frugality, the other is forced poverty, either way we'll eventually get there
> we chose to do it willingly or we'll be forced to do it
These outcomes are distributed differently.
That's not very convincing. In a perfect world with perfect people and infinite money we could indeed do a lot of crazy things, but then again we have to deal with reality
Your problem is based on a Mach 9 proposal and technology we don’t really have yet. We’re both necessarily speculating.
Because I'm funding their actions since 20 years now, and I wonder if I should switch to something else, like Exxon maybe.
Or... I should stop giving indirectly any €€€ to Exxon and alike, and give all the gains to Greenpeace instead.
Well, until it is solved (and it clearly isn’t- carbon offsets are basically bullshit), maybe we should work on that rather than making the amount of stuff to offset even bigger?
Forcing quality of life reduction is going to be hard enough without the world’s 1% (i.e. us) finding new ways to spew out carbon by jetting around at Mach9
False economy. Developing e.g. rotating detonation engines requires solving flame front, detonation mechanics, additive manufacturing and materials science problems. (Off the top of my head.) Do you really not see any interdisciplinary applications for any of those?
This is the failure of top-down industry planning and scientific regulation: you miss unexpected gains.
This is the failure of lack of scientific regulation: you go head first in the wall.
Do both. Does this investment in hypersonic transportation somehow prevent others from pursuing carbon reduction and cheaper transport technologies?
I wish. But unfortunately, both synthetic fuels (e-fuels) and offsets are severely lacking in terms of actually contributing to solving the problem. We do not have enough energy to produce enough synthetic fuels to cover the same amount of oil and gas that we use today. And carbon offsets are in most cases not a reliable way to actually keep carbon out of the atmosphere long-term.
> Good luck forcing quality of life reduction as an explicit policy goal
Climate change will be the greatest quality of life reduction that humanity has ever faced.
Part of the problem is that people consider being able to travel that much as "quality of life". There is nothing in human psychology that requires us to be as mobile as we are today. In fact, it is harmful that this degree of mobility is deemed "normal" by our western culture. This has to change.
We’re not jetting around at Mach 9 today. Or tomorrow. Rotating detonation engines [1] are closer to basic research than commerce. The earliest this could be technologically viable is in the 2030s; commercially, the 2050s. (That is ambitious.)
At the point we might consider scaling such kit, our options will be less limited (or we’ll have consigned ourselves to doom). If they aren’t, we can choose not to use it for passenger travel.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotating_detonation_engine
2% of emissions.
Coal power plants 25% of emissions.
So many people going after aviation, it explains how we got this far into the problem.
Carl Sagan warned everyone about coal 40 years ago.
So, instead we talk about aviation
The people who plug something into the wall won’t know the difference if the electricity is generated from something other than coal.
And please don’t wait 40 years to fix the problem.
That delay likely increased climate change by a decade or so.
Those 25% from coal are themselves composed of several smaller percentages from different sources. The tricky part about climate change is that you have to start basically everywhere and look for opportunities to optimize, reduce, or completely eliminate emissions.
Sure, kicking the can down the road requires more miracles now. That “we need to do everything at once” is what people say after spending half a century off basically ignoring the problem.
I assure you the people who suggest flying should be limited to reduce carbon emissions are not the same people "kicking the can down the road" for half a century.
Instead, work to change the regulatory environment so that a non-eco business plan isn't profitable.
That most likely means carbon taxes, carbon caps, or carbon trading.
If slave labour is legal in North Korea that doesn’t mean we can’t criticise someone posting in hacker news about their new startup that will offshore UI testing to Pyongyang slave workshops
Carbon caps maybe but it might cripple industry as opposed to taxes which just become priced in. Maybe start with carbon caps 20% higher than today’s levels and bring them down over time. Still, unclear how to enact it. Is it per industry? How do you define that industry? What about companies in multiple industries? Is it for a single country? The price of carbon might sky rocket and you’ll get weird secondary effects like making oil companies richer yet.
Carbon trading no. I used to think it was an interesting idea to explore but it’s extremely difficult to avoid scams: well I was going to clear cut a forest, but I didn’t so now I get carbon credits. Or “donate $X while flying to offset your emissions” and it’s completely unclear where that $X actually goes (not to mention you’ve still emitted carbon and that $x hasn’t necessarily lowered carbon utilization somewhere else nor led to extra carbon sequestration.
I think ultimately we need a carbon tax that subsidizes creation of more green energy capacity from sources like solar, wind, nuclear (~30%) + long distance power distribution (HVDC) and investment in startups doing sequestration or making nuclear even cheaper (~70%).
> Instead, work to change the regulatory environment so that a non-eco business plan isn't profitable.
Huh? But the first step in identifying which regulations to put in is to apply "eco-morals," as you call them.
Countries like the U.K. already charge poor tax on airlines - fly 20 people from london to paris in a 747 and you pay far less tax than than flying 100 people on an a319, despite causing far more pollution.
Instead charge based on the length of flight the the efficiency of the plane, regardless of how many people are actually on.
You’ll probably have to cap the tax on longer flights east otherwise everyone would transfer via Istanbul or ME3, but it wouldn’t require taxing fuel, or having airlines fuel up at the other end
There are big benefits to being global transit hubs. Cheaper fuel is one way to become that.
We say we care about the environment, but none of our actions (again, as a society) recently back that up in a real way.
Until the effects of climate change are felt in a very real way by people currently alive with something meaningful to lose, then there’s not much hope for people to do anything but look for another cool way to burn hydrocarbons.
People like to have recycling bins and eco friendly water bottles, but they don't think twice about driving a few hundred miles in a gas guzzling truck, producing as much CO2 as tens of thousands of water bottles.
Nor do they worry about firing up the AC or heating, burning loads of natural gas, far outweighing the little solar panels they put on the roof to look eco friendly.
It's all for show.
This is a strange complaint to levy while the world’s largest economies aggressively electrify their transportation systems.
Heat pumps [1]?
Sounds implausible. Fuel usage increases drastically with speed.
All in all, I'd be extremely surprised if this technology reduces fuel consumption.
The only mention in the text about fuel usage is that they need to use a special engine with lower fuel consumption to even be able to put people and equipment on the plane. Why don't regular jets have that problem? Because they don't consume that much fuel.
Commercial airlines have an extremely strong incentive to reduce carbon emissions, more so than virtually any other industry. I wouldn't worry too much about aviation tech moving in the less efficient direction.