Climate change/oblivion: breaking point or slow death spiral?

Although it’s a weird inversion that the two biggest self-proclaimed greens on the thread are both firmly in the “resigned to it” category, while more or less everybody else is in the “lets do everything we still can” category.

The two are not mutually exclusive.  However I have not advocated doing nothing – I have advocated a realistic assessment of the situation.  I have done my best for 30 years and have had a much smaller impact on the planet than most in the west.  I welcome any steps taken by anyone.

I’m just being realistic.

Right – so you’re talking about DACC, not about capture at source?  Yes, DACC is highly inefficient, it actually takes more energy to remove than it does to create from burning, but If you were to apply ASCC onto current power infrastructure, a significant proportion of that energy is provided by waste heat. This would significantly reduce the amount of extra CO2 we emit.  Running DACC during leaner times would then allow us to more rapidly move toward neutrality.  As for turning it back…we’d need SBSP or fusion to make that work.

The national grid is currently 30-35Gw, but there’s usually around 10gW of free capacity in teh early house of the morning and this will rise as Dogger bank expands.  But like I said, it’s a start and it’s doable – what should we be doing (as a nation) instead?

Reduce Reuse and Recycle are key, but there’s more than can and should be done.

Currently – only around $4-6bn has been invested in research into CO2 capture.  In context Microsoft will buy Activision Blizzard for $69bn.

Daffy, you need to link your sources because the numbers in you last post don’t correspond with anything I can find on the Net.

“If we presume that… ” is not helpful.

The first Google result I clincked says that in miles flown half are short haul, a quarter medium haul and a Quarter long haul.

In terms of flight bumbers the first Google result says 86% are short haul, 10% medium haul and 4% long haul.

I find it disappointing that in a thread on which you’ve got three geologists telling you what happens next you can attempt to greenwash flying with numbers that you provide no links to and fly in the face of anything in the public domaine.

I you think the difference between business class and economy is the problem you’ve failed to comprehend what’s coming.

Just stop flying.

dazh maybe my friend would see your kids as a pointless burden to the planet to satisfy your own desires same as flying to New York to buy a shirt.

This is a pertinent point – individuals doing all they can to minimise their impact on the planet is a very honourable thing but we know that it is going to take much, much more than that.

For centuries in other part of the world the culture is to have large families (slight shift to having less recently due to economy pressure) as safety net for old age. Having large a family means that the chances of someone being looked after in their old age is much higher than those with small family. This trend is not going to reverse anytime soon. The more they are imposed on the more they will oppose.

Adversity has caused massive changes in human responses throughout our history, I refuse to believe that there is no hope and fully believe that solutions both known and unknown will be found and implemented.

It is part of the cycle as nature will deal with mankind accordingly.

A convenient combination which doesn’t require anyone to change anything. Resignation is no different to denial, actually IMO it’s worse because people who are now resigned to catastrophe are essentially abandoning their/other people’s kids to a life of misery so that they can continue with their noses in the trough safe in the knowledge that they won’t be around to experience it. It’s f***** pathetic quite frankly.

Resignation or denial etc makes no difference to me. People just have to adjust their lifestyle as they see fit.
However, I do oppose to over fishing or destroying the fish stock all over the world.
As for leaving the mess to the kids, once you have educated them the way of life (whatever that is), the rest is up to them. You don’t live their lives for them and they cannot blame you for the world. Everyone walks their own path.

Shell and National Grid have both recently quit carbon capture North Sea projects, Daffy.

Putting my geologist hat on again there just aren’t number of suitable wells available, it’s energy intensive and technically  challenging. BP gave up on a projest in the North Sean a few years back. They failed. Wells often leak, a lot of North sea wells are currently leaking methane, a major greenhouse gas contributor. If you think that trying to store CO2 under pressure in those wells will improve matters think again.

Carbon capture on a large scale = unrealistic greewashing

Fusion = pie in the sky, the scientists are less confident now than 40 years back because each bigger better accelerator takes them further from an energy positive power station than their previous knowledge. The Cern website recently had to dramatically change the wording on its web site.

Really interesting this, and some very interesting comments so far. Some real insights from industry experts and others that think everything is everyone else’s fault.

My viewpoint is I work in oil and gas. Not one of the big players at all. We are seeing this industry decline. A few years to go yet but its future is certainly mapped out. Im currently investigating a move into hydrogen and CCS (carbon capture and storage). Heres my opinion.

This technology exists. Its proven and we are currently seeing companies roll it out. Especially in the UK. There are already companies using this tech to produce aviation fuels and we will shortly (few years yet) see the hydrogen economy take off. This will (imo) be the next industrial revolution.

Could this all be produced by renewables? Yes is it cheap to do so? No. So while its proven and possible the real issue is funding. And this is where it all stops. The government / treasury will let the world burn before having to spend their (our) hard earned. I envisage a future where by the countries all look to develop as much “in country” resources as possible now. Especially after the Ukraine debacle. i know that at least 50% of spend for the uk infrastructure now must be UK supply, which means we wont be cost competitive so we either have to come up with some other ideas or end up with nothing.

dazh maybe my friend would see your kids as a pointless burden to the planet to satisfy your own desires same as flying to New York to buy a shirt.

This is the other side of the denial/resignation position. The nihilistic ‘we all need to die’ argument. Anything to prevent reasonable constraints on the behaviour and consumption of those who have enough money to do whatever the f*** they want. It’s very revealing that those who aren’t willing to change their lifestyles are the ones who think billions of people dying is a price worth paying. 🙄

dazh maybe my friend would see your kids as a pointless burden to the planet to satisfy your own desires same as flying to New York to buy a shirt

Hopefully not. I mean that would be weird, wouldn’t it? Prioritising flying to buy shirts over having another generations of humans to carry on after us (with what little we leave them).

If we all stopped having kids it’s not going to be happy existence for those that are left either unless they are all planning to work until they drop dead. Feel sorry for whoever would be last!

People have all but said this but a key issue here is rebound effects.

Daffy, you clearly know your stuff here. I’m all for getting big of business class. What happens then though? Airlines convert that space to economy. Price per seat drops, more people fly.

Rebound effects are pretty limited with something like food (you can only eat so much, even after a long ride), but with flying, driving, computing, etc. they are huge

Similarly, a sobering fact about aviation I’ve read is that the efficiency of the (propeller-driven) planes of the 1950s was only matched by jet-planes in the early 2000s
https://www.transportenvironment.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/2005-12_nlr_aviation_fuel_efficiency.pdf

Buildings are not dissimilar — I think commercial buildings of the 1970s were about as efficient as those of the 2000s (took 30 years to offset the extra energy of AC)

So, what will follow the next efficiency improvements for planes? The return of supersonic flights? Commercial space tourism?

The government / treasury will let the world burn before having to spend their (our) hard earned.

@rone to the thread please 😂

Seriously, the idea that we don’t have the money to do this, whilst at the same time possessing the means to create that money is nonsensical.

No – business class pays for almost 70% of the cost with less than 20% of the seats. Get rid of business class and seat prices RISE. Less people on fewer planes, but you still have the air freight network for perishables and a moving economy.

So airlines would need more flights to achieve the same profit? Or would they just absorb the losses?

Daffy, you need to link your sources because the numbers in you last post don’t correspond with anything I can find on the Net.

“If we presume that… ” is not helpful.

The first Google result I clincked says that in miles flown half are short haul, a quarter medium haul and a Quarter long haul.

In terms of flight bumbers the first Google result says 86% are short haul, 10% medium haul and 4% long haul.

The latter is Wilkerson’s paper and is utterly irrelevant.  it’s the flight miles that’s important as it dramatically scales the weight if the aircraft.  MTOW of an A320 is 78t and an A350 is 320t+  Which means that over the first 3000 miles of a journey the A350 will use almost 4* the fuel.  This is why long haul matters and why business class matters more.  It’s highly wasteful.  An A320 burns less fuel than a very efficient car.  0.69.0.81l/100km.  An A330 (the only data I have to hand) is closer to 2.7l/100km.  That’s a medium sized aircraft.

I find it disappointing that in a thread on which you’ve got three geologists telling you what happens next you can attempt to greenwash flying with numbers that you provide no links to and fly in the face of anything in the public domaine.

What exactly have you told me?  All the reasons it won’t work?  All the things I’m doing wrong?  You’ve provided no links.  In each case it goes something like “a quick Google search suggests”, “a tour of an aircraft factory suggests”

you think the difference between business class and economy is the problem you’ve failed to comprehend what’s coming.

No – I’m trying to suggest a better means of getting people to REDUCE the impact of aviation.  Your suggestion is to aviation what Leave was to Brexit.  Simple, stupid and ill thought out.

Just stop flying.-

  What about driving?  More emissions – should we all just stop that?  What about shipping?  Faaaar more emissions – stop that too?  Why aviation?  Why the smallest contributing global transport sector?

Now you mention it, I think I even looked this up before (price per m2 of plane for different tickets) and have the numbers hidden in some spreadsheet

So airlines would need more flights to achieve the same profit? Or would they just absorb the losses?

They’d have to raise prices, which would further reduce demand until a more stable aviation level was achieved.

Anyone have a timescale for when things suddenly go south?

Maybe I won’t need a pension after all…

“Price per seat drops, more people fly.”

” Get rid of business class and seat prices RISE.”

Both can be true depending on route, aircraft type and client profile. Budget airlines rely on high load factors and premium on people paying for a higher level of service. Airlines very often have both, for example Air France KLM with Transavia.

France has recently introduced a law banning short haul internal flights where there are TGV alternatives. It doesn’t go far enough IMO.

The aviation industry benefits from very low fuel cost because there are no internationally agreed taxes. On a 2000km journey (Pau Berlin) junior does regularly the cheapest is nearly always the plane, then the bus, then the train. The train is about 14 hours and 150e (360e for departure tomorrow), the bus about 30 hours and 150e (300e for departure tomorrow) and the planeabout 2h from 10-50e (273e dparture tomorrow)

The CO2 impact in the inverse of the price you pay and time time taken. That’s bad news for climatic change.

We desperately need an international air fuel and air miles tax to discourage the use of the most polluting means of transport.

That paper on engine/aircraft efficiency is a little bit misleading as it focuses primarily on the engines and their efficiency, less on the aircraft/engine/mission package.  Overall, it’s not wrong, but in terms of overall efficiency, last gen piston aircraft were non-pressurised, low altitude, aircraft, comparing them to a 707 is a little unfair.

I’d have said it wasn’t until we go mid bypass fans in the 80s that efficiency was similar, but that it wasn’t until the 90s that the fleet replacement caught up and it was better.  Today, in the 2020s, aircraft emissions are almost 50% less than they were in the 50s despite flying 3* higher and almost twice as fast.

I used to take the ferry back home to NI. It’s now too expensive. As in, more than twice the cost of flying and renting a car for a few days. It also takes up a lot more time (that doesn’t bother me that much).

I’ve looked at travelling as a foot passenger. Train to either Holyhead or Liverpool, ferry across, and then bus to home (multiple buses). A brief look says that is slightly cheaper than flying an getting a car. The reality is that it hinders my short trips home by taking up an entire day of travelling and relying on everything being on time.

“Price per seat drops, more people fly.”

” Get rid of business class and seat prices RISE.”

Both can be true depending on route, aircraft type and client profile. Budget airlines rely on high load factors and premium on people paying for a higher level of service. Airlines very often have both, for example Air France KLM with Transavia.

France has recently introduced a law banning short haul internal flights where there are TGV alternatives. It doesn’t go far enough IMO.

The aviation industry benefits from very low fuel cost because there are no internationally agreed taxes. On a 2000km journey (Pau Berlin) junior does regularly the cheapest is nearly always the plane, then the bus, then the train. The train is about 14 hours and 150e (360e for departure tomorrow), the bus about 30 hours and 150e (300e for departure tomorrow) and the planeabout 2h from 10-50e (273e dparture tomorrow)

The CO2 impact in the inverse of the price you pay and time time taken. That’s bad news for climatic change.

We desperately need an international air fuel and air miles tax to discourage

I agree with all of that.

the most polluting means of transport.

But this is just untrue.  It’s worse than rail and bus so long as time is removed from the equation.  It’s not worse than cars and cars consume far more and are used more recklessly.

And even with all that being said, it’s still a tiny fraction of home energy use.  My argument isn’t that aviaiton shouldn’t have to reduce or eliminate its emissions, just that there are better more immediate targets that have a much higher impact and that give aviation time to develop safe, reliable technology to do what you demand.  In the mean time, either tax emissions or disincentivise flight by cost.

Overall emissions from aviation would have reduced by 20+% in recent years had aviation not grown as a sector.

@daffy I’m big into aviation, so find your comments very interesting. These ‘new’ high bypass engines, are there more developments to be made here? Airlines often quote 15-20% fuel saving, is that an assumed 90%+ LF or more? What about improving taxiing and time on the ground? I know it is common to taxi on one engine, but that’s been common place for a while. It only takes a few hours at somewhere like LHR to see how much time is spent on the ground engines running.

Operations (in cruise, while descending on the ground) are the biggest easy win for reducing emissions.  Airbus has had eTaxi (motorised front landing gear for taxi) ready to go for some time, but Airlines don’t want it.

A320neo is around 22% more efficient on an average mission than the CEO that came before it.  The 737 max is 15-17% better than the NG it replaced which itself is better than the classics or so I’m told (Jet 2).

Truthfully, we’re reacing the limit of turbofan development – the next stages will need to be open rotor unless some wizzardry can happen with the cowling materials.  The weight of the cowling is now starting to constrain further development.  the new GE Engine for the 777 is actually bigger in diameter than the 320Neo’s fuselage.

The next evolution will be very high aspect ratio wings with UHBR open rotors, then multiprop fuel cells for regional, then…maybe LH2 in some form, perhaps hybrid cycle.

They’d have to raise prices, which would further reduce demand until a more stable aviation level was achieved.

That would be interesting. I wonder if there are other case studies with anything like that as an outcome. I study this stuff too (not aviation specifically, bigger picture energy, climate change stuff) and rebound is the norm — certainly economy wide

@thisisnotaspoon – have you looked at combined cycle reactors and seawater CO2 extraction rather than DACC?  What pressure are you considering for C02 movement/storage?

That would be interesting. I wonder if there are other case studies with anything like that as an outcome. I study this stuff too (not aviation specifically, bigger picture energy, climate change stuff) and rebound is the norm — certainly economy wide

This is part of what we’re studying using systems engineering techniques supported by machine reinforcement learning at the moment.

A Clio is almost identical to an Airbus in terms of CO2 with one person in the car and a 60% load factor in the airbus at 115gm/100km per passenger.

With two people in the Clio it’s better than the plane and with four much better. I run an EV, a Zoé, so with the electricity generation mix of the areas I drive it beats both plane and bus and gets close to the train. And even the Zoé is bad news given the embedded CO2.

We had a chance a couple of years ago to eliminate a couple of percentage points of the global population. We (quite understandably) didn’t take it.

We could acheive similar, but slower, by slightly restricting global birth rates. That creates problems both economically and socially down the line that are solvable, but sadly make it politically unviable.

If “just stop flying” is an answer – 1.9% of emissions – neglecting that much of those people and goods would still need transporting somehow; then both of the answers above are also possible solutions.

I dont think any of them, alone, are.

On a different matter – anyone know how much potential there is for UK offshore wind? could we become self sufficient (cost and NIMBYs not withstanding)

This reminded me of a comedy’s show by Robert Newman A history of oil. I have no idea how accurate it was but was entering.

No way out

Can’t believe it was so long ago

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=a+history+of+oil+comdy+Rob+Newman&va=b&t=hc&iar=videos&iax=videos&ia=videos&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D2DCwafIntj0

@daffy Sorry, thought you were referring to DACC in you post.

have you looked at combined cycle reactors and seawater CO2 extraction rather than DACC? What pressure are you considering for C02 movement/storage?

In this particular case it’s an amine solvent, the acid gas then goes for Sulphur recovery and then goes for compression.

The amine unit like most extraction systems works on pressure so the absorption column is at a nominal high pressure, and the regeneration is <1.5bar. After that it’s compressed to the dense phase which is <200bar as that’s the only practical option, lower pressure (gas phase) means higher volumetric flows and more pressure drop which means booster stations to move it long distances. You then put it through several stages of wet gas compression, aftercooling and coalescing/knock out drums before removing the residual moisture in a molecular sieve, then it needs filtering down to 1um to remove any dust and black powder residue.

I presume by combined cycle reactor you mean post combustion capture on CCGT? If so, then yes it’s been done, but also has technological issues. All the downstream issues are still there, but you also have issues with the solvent as amine systems are sensitive to any residual oxygen.

Sea water has been proposed in a few different ways, if you produce H2 by electrolysis you’re left with an alkaline solution which can be used to make carbonates. Which makes it sound great, CO2 extraction as a byproduct. Until you remember that the main process is only about 20% efficient, so it takes 5kWh of electricity to produce 1kWh equivalent of Hydrogen.

Currently – only around $4-6bn has been invested in research into CO2 capture. In context Microsoft will buy Activision Blizzard for $69bn.

Which really tells you all you need to know about the economic and practical realities of it.

For example Aramco committed to it in a big way a COP in Egypt, they’ll sequester huge amounts of CO2, and to their credit have followed through with it. But it won’t do anything to solve the fact that an order of magnitude more CO2 is released by the consumer than by Aramco’s processing. And Aramco’s stated aim in all this is to get in before the market goes crazy, there’s not the capacity to implement all these projects at once, and they want to be ahead of the rush.

I’m not being defeatist when I say the easiest option to stop climate change are to convince 7 billion people not to drive, eat meat, fly, over consume, or heat/cool their houses. The science/technology isn’t going to save us. To draw an a analogy, that’s like drowning, and believing that someone will setup a rescue organization, build and commission a boat, train it’s operators and rescue you. When the reality is it’s already a bit late, you should have learnt to swim a decade ago and you really should at least attempt some doggy paddle to stave off the worst affects.

Thanks being so engaged here @daffy and sorry for all the gloomy reponses (including the below…)

No – business class pays for almost 70% of the cost with less than 20% of the seats.

20% of seats, or of cabin space? If 20% of seats I’d have thought that’d be a lot of cabin space?

Do you know the CO2/£ for different flight classes?

To be honest though, if scrapping business and/or first class would cut airlines revenues so much and increase the price of standard tickets, that’s no more realistic that drastic social change

I’d have said it wasn’t until we go mid bypass fans in the 80s that efficiency was similar, but that it wasn’t until the 90s that the fleet replacement caught up and it was better. Today, in the 2020s, aircraft emissions are almost 50% less than they were in the 50s despite flying 3* higher and almost twice as fast.

OK, but this is what rebound is, right? Better, more efficient tech, but at a larger scale such that overall impacts grow

All that said, I do agree with you that flights sometimes become too central a focus. I also can’t imagine a world with much less flying, now everything is so socially churned up (globally). And if planes could be electrified, at least the network infrastructure is free (i.e. air)

OK, but this is what rebound is, right? Better, more efficient tech, but at a larger scale such that overall impacts grow

Yep. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

Lovelock said that humanity was in the last 1% of it’s lifespan just before his death.

But I always liked this interview with him:

https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2008/mar/01/scienceofclimatechange.climatechange

We is f00ked.   And the only meaningful actions we must to take to avoid catastrophe are “never going to happen” – as some on this forum have already said.

Hey ho.

Overall emissions from aviation would have reduced by 20+% in recent years had aviation not grown as a sector.

Which does kinda back up the don’t fly argument….

Also, we could stop building so much with concrete and then ripping the structures down after 30-40 years.

Oddly, even though I don’t have kids, it is usually those with kids that seem to carry on as if everything was fine. Usually down to the convenience of carrying on with their lives.

 And controversially I’m not sold on electric cars yet, personally I think its much more environmental to stop keep creating yet more vehicles and run the ones we have until no longer viable.

This used to be pretty widely accepted didn’t it? I wonder what changed. Probably (tinfoil hat on) car companies getting control of the narrative.

But I suppose you do still hear it said that electric cars better at saving car companies than saving the planet.

Thank you to everyone who has been contributing to this thread. I have been active in climate action for a few years now and despite the general gloomy feeling in the thread it still feels positive to me that there is debate and thinking alive.

One of the real things that I think we need are more stories of positive change. As humans our ways of life have always changed with time and that is OK. What we need to figure out is a different way of living that as a society we are happy and believe in, but which has less impact on the planet and the nature we share it with. This does have to be different to what we know now, but this doesn’t need to be worse. Even better would be to find a way of living which works with the natural systems that we are part of rather than simply using them as commodities. Perhaps, finding positive things to do which help our natural environment can provide a positive feeling alongside the reductions in emissions which can sometimes still feel disheartening.

For anyone keen to think about how they can meaningfully contribute to climate action, I have find this web page and video really helpful – https://www.ayanaelizabeth.com/climatevenn

I also enjoyed this podcast recently which isn’t directly targeted at climate action, but does explore some of the way our current society works and impact on climate change  – https://fromwhatiftowhatnext.libsyn.com/episode-49.

I’m another who made a conscious decision many years ago to not have children, for environmental reasons. That’s not to try to be holier than thou, it’s to demonstrate that we as a society knew 30+ years ago that we were spiralling into trouble. And it is definitely a steepening descent.

I really am frightened for what may face our friends’ kids in 40-50 years. Please, don’t argue over the details, do as much as you can.  For those in relevant fields, please keep working and advising, shout from some rooftops…

As I always say on these threads – international governmental action is all that will work, through direct investment, grants, regulation and taxation.   What we can do as individuals is campaign for those policies and vote for political parties that will delivery them.

No harm in eating less meat/dairy, consuming less, driving less, flying much less – all of which I do –  but societal change will not happen without governmental intervention

+1 olddog

I suspect it will be like covid, where warnings are ignored until it’s basically too late and they have to take much more severe action. Most people just don’t understand risk, uncertainty, probability and I think it makes them less trusting of predictions.

My guess is it will take some a prolonged drought, flooding, large disruption to food chain due to extreme weather or something else that basically stops the economy functioning properly. It’s already happening, but not enough.

It doesn’t help that this is a long term problem, and governments are only elected for 4-5 year stints.