Primarily for general aviation discussion, but other aviation topics are also welcome.
By G-JWTP
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#1655286
ArthurG wrote:I have had no kids, planted 8 acres of new woodland and kms of hedge, so I hope that's some carbon offsetting done, BUT, if human population continues growing exponentially, then it will all have been a waste of time.

Fun fact folks, world population has more or less doubled in 50 years. That's our real problem, not hobby aviation.


As unpalleteable as it is, global population control is the realistic long term solution to about 99% of human created problems.

G-JWTP
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By TheFarmer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1655287
Well, it’s 7:15, and in 15 minutes I’ll be making my daily earth-killing aerial commute to another farm 55 miles away.

Follow me and swear at me scooting along just north of the Sailisbury Plain on planecheck all you like, but it’s a damn site more responsible from a carbon perspective than 90 minutes doing 25 mpg, mostly going the wrong direction...
#1655305
It's the (political) response to climate change that I have most issue with. Governments should fundamentally be concerned with improving the lives of the people on the planet. However when objectively judged, climate change responses are amongst the least effective ways in terms of cost/benefit to improve the lives of people on the planet (addressing availability of clean water is regularly judged the best).

The UK climate change act is conservatively expected to cost the UK well in excess of £300bn by 2030, which in no small part is predicated on preventing harm from climate change to the world's poorest populations.

Whilst well intentioned, there's something very perverse about spending immense sums of money to protect the poorest from anticipated harm in the long term in preference to spending trivial amounts to protect them from guaranteed harm in the very short term.
By johnm
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1655324
Those who believe we can stop climate change are a bit like the followers of Cnut. However there is a need to try and mitigate the impact of fossil fuels and husband them as a finite resource. There is also a need to adapt living conditions and locations, invest heavily in suitable forestry, look at farming methods and lots of similar things. If we ignore it there's a good chance a great many of us (or rather our great grandchildren) will go the way of the dinosaurs.
#1655337
https://www.mediatheque.lindau-nobel.org/videos/34729/ivar-giaever-global-warming-revisited/laureate-giaever

Science, climate change, global warming and "incontrovertible" fact are all excellent topics for us to properly digest in todays society. Arguments from both sides get very heated (waaaahey). I enjoyed the video above. If for nothing else seeing the backlash this man got for forming his own views goes a long way to understanding the weight of the debate. Coming from a vaguely scientific background I can only realise that to come to an opinion would require some weeks/months of real research (and who has the time...?). However in the mean time we should all spend less time listening to politicians, industry and campaigners and try to establish a baseline from by listening to intelligent people before acting all doom and gloom.

And if someone :-x (I'm talking to you mother ) presents me another graph proofing one thing or another, without axes, units or labels I'm gonna do a nut...
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#1655342
What I do not understand is why all these climate change negotiators need to fly around the world emitting thousands of tons of CO2 to have a conference.

If they are so worried about climate change why not have an on line conference?

Suppose that would mean missing out on a free junket and expenses....eh?
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By Genghis the Engineer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1655349
Thoughts from somebody who is currently paid to think about this question quite a lot (but is also currently sat in the passenger seat of a car, so may have to be a bit vague on a few facts).

Climate change is very real, all credible scientific evidence says that it's happening, it's significant, and it's predominantly man made. We are not emerging from an ice age - we're actually supposed to be (slowly) heading into one, but ACC is taking us in the opposite direction.

Aviation is currently estimated to contribute about 2-3% of global greenhouse gas emissions. However, our industry is approximately doubling in size every 15 years, and also there's massive uncertainty over the impact of contrail cirrus - which nobody properly understands yet.

CO2 is not the only GHG, there are numerous others, including NOx compounds, water (when it's above the tropopause), Methane, the CFCs we have actually largely eliminated from the global economy - arguably the most effective piece of international collaboration in history. So concentration on *only* CO2 is misleading.

I calculate (and put quite a lot of effort into this) that we could turn the GA fleet all electric and shave about 2/3rds off our collective carbon footprint by doing so. However in doing so, we'd also massively reduce our range and endurance (by around 50%), payload, have to spend in the order of £50-£100k per aeroplane, per battery set, per hour's endurance we want out of our aeroplanes, *and* the non-climate environmental impact of extracting all the rare earth metals we need to do it would also be horrible. In the long run, it might nonetheless be cost effective IF you can get at least 2000 recharge cycles per battery set, which is far from clear at the moment either (other ways of making it cost effective are tacking the technology of recycling lithium batteries, or simply making them a lot cheaper).

Not unlike the petrol .v. Diselel argument. Diesel engines emit less GHGs, but more health-damaging particulates. Which is the right answer?

Time for us to stop for lunch, I'll say more later.

G
Last edited by Genghis the Engineer on Tue Dec 04, 2018 1:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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#1655352
Genghis the Engineer wrote:
Climate change is very real, all credible scientific evidence says that it's happening, it's significant, and it's predominantly man made.


30 minutes listening to a Nobel laureate who has a differing opinions. I haven't formed my own opinion yet but I equally haven't had a light bulb :scratch: moment yet clarifying any the incontrovertible evidence proving the hypothesis (which is presumably man-made climate change will kill us all/make world worse/ruin humankind future/....?).

We live on a rock encapsulating high temperature molten liquid (with a presumably finite lifespan) spinning in gargantuan universe that we don't fully understand. I would expect some change in our climate to be continuing over the Earth's lifespan. Whether it is bad, whether it is all man-made (which is obviously going to have a some influence) and whether the evidence is scientifically significant is the kicker.

For me the question is that fossil fuels must run out (timelines though....?). We need a reasonable strategy to produce power for a long term future to do all the things that make mankinds existence possible. I think electric power is a good thing (we should generate, distribute and use power in the most efficient manner - micro vs macro generation) for aviation and welcome any technology that makes it viable for eternity. If in the mean time we want to keep internal combustion engines then liquid hydrogen works just fine (bong bong ....safety? :) ).
#1655357
romille wrote:What I do not understand is why all these climate change negotiators need to fly around the world emitting thousands of tons of CO2 to have a conference.

If they are so worried about climate change why not have an on line conference?

Suppose that would mean missing out on a free junket and expenses....eh?


Exactly, you've hit the nail squarely on the head. They should bloody well practice what they preach.
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By Genghis the Engineer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1655365
yappmeister wrote:
Genghis the Engineer wrote:
Climate change is very real, all credible scientific evidence says that it's happening, it's significant, and it's predominantly man made.


30 minutes listening to a Nobel laureate who has a differing opinions. I haven't formed my own opinion yet but I equally haven't had a light bulb :scratch: moment yet clarifying any the incontrovertible evidence proving the hypothesis (which is presumably man-made climate change will kill us all/make world worse/ruin humankind future/....?).

We live on a rock encapsulating high temperature molten liquid (with a presumably finite lifespan) spinning in gargantuan universe that we don't fully understand. I would expect some change in our climate to be continuing over the Earth's lifespan. Whether it is bad, whether it is all man-made (which is obviously going to have a some influence) and whether the evidence is scientifically significant is the kicker.

For me the question is that fossil fuels must run out (timelines though....?). We need a reasonable strategy to produce power for a long term future to do all the things that make mankinds existence possible. I think electric power is a good thing (we should generate, distribute and use power in the most efficient manner - micro vs macro generation) for aviation and welcome any technology that makes it viable for eternity. If in the mean time we want to keep internal combustion engines then liquid hydrogen works just fine (bong bong ....safety? :) ).


I'm guessing that's Ivar Giaever, 89 years old, Nobel Prize in Physics from 1973, working part time for the American conservative think tank The Heartland Institute, who also have people regularly arguing that smoking bans provide no health benefits.

Electric power is definitely a more efficient way of using energy than most. Electric power generation *can* reduce climate impact if the electricity going into it is produced adequately well. Nuclear is the obvious mechanism, but we have an under-supply, unfortunately, of nuclear power generation capacity - not helped by a proportion of the green community (Greenpeace in particular, whose grasp of science is often rather tenuous) incapable of understanding the difference between a nuclear power station and a nuclear weapon, nor that the worst nuclear disaster in history - Chernobyl, still killed less people than an average week in the coal industry.

Hydrogen looks lovely as a solution - if you only look at part of the equation. Putting H2 into a suitable motor (or more likely a fuel cell) generates energy and water - brilliant! Except that to store H2 takes around 4 times the volume of conventional fuels, AND in gaseous form it's extremely explosive, AND it needs to be stored either very cold or at very high pressure or both, AND it needs prohibitive amounts of energy (most likely at the moment created burning fossil fuels) to create it.

There's no easy solution out there. Some clever people are proposing ethanol or methanol - but frankly hydrogen doesn't look particularly good when you consider the whole cycle. Most hydrogen gas at the moment, incidentally, is produced from gassified coal!

My money is on there never being an easy solution which'll solve everything - we will probably end up with an ever more complex mix of energy generation and storage solutions. Who knows hydrogen may end up in there - but I doubt it'll ever be a major player. I quite like ethanol myself - produceable much more easily from biomass, only about a third less efficient as an energy storage medium than petrol - but still has issues, particularly how much it likes absorbing water.

G
By johnm
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1655368
Humans are a remarkably successful species but also a remarkably profligate one and that's the bit that makes us vulnerable. The focus on trying to stop climate change is just silly by itself. However, reducing emissions of greenhouse gasses, seeking ways to capture carbon and other gasses from the atmosphere, (forests eat a lot of CO2) looking at mitigating the likely impacts all make perfect sense and most of these things are going on somewhere, but with a total lack of the co-ordination needed to make them effective thus far. We need a CFC style project on all these elements and then we might start to get somewhere.

Ignoring it is just too high a risk for our progeny IMHO.
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By Genghis the Engineer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1655374
Robin500 wrote:
Exactly, you've hit the nail squarely on the head. They should bloody well practice what they preach.


Oh they agonise about it, pay for carbon offsets, set themselves budgets.

I can say that the climate research group I'm a part of has *never* all met at the same time, save by teleconference, and offhand the most we've ever had in a room together is about four people. Big conferences happen - but they genuinely are a tiny part of the overall meeting and discussion structure.

G
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