Planet-saving, global warming etc

[PatB]

12 hours ago, The White Rabbit said:

 We may be up the creek, can we prioritise getting ourselves out before having rows about who got us there in the first place? 

 

Based on the results of my brother's studies of the cockpit voice recorders of doomed aircraft (he's a moderately eminent psychologist), no we probably can't. 

[Ozexpatriate]

21 hours ago, Nick C said:

... telling you that you mustn't fly, which seems very hypocritical,

This was the point of my post. Air transportation isn't the problem.  It might represent as little as 2% of CO2 emissions.

 

I assume that getting worked up about air transport CO2 is a British thing. it is hardly even on the radar, even from ardent proponents of addressing climate change advocates in the US.

 

"Fixing" 2% of the problem does nothing. What needs to change is power generation and industrial emissions.

[Ozexpatriate]

21 hours ago, APOLLO said:

... rapid expansion especially in the far east together with seemingly uncaring America, Brazil etc will take us past the point soon.

Don't form your impressions based on the current administration. CO2 emissions in the US are not increasing and are certainly not increasing rapidly. US coal-fired power generation is on the decline despite what you might hear in political reporting. It's largely being replaced by natural gas, which still produces CO2, but I'm led to believe it is slightly more efficient.

 

Nuclear power generation in the US is declining but wind power continues to grow.

 

Adoption of hybrid and electric vehicles is rapidly increasing. Charging points may not be ubiquitous but nor are they hard to find. I don't own an EV, but if I did, I could charge it at work, the airport, my local grocery, pharmacy and a restaurant that I often stop at on the way home from work.

 

You cannot drive anywhere in West Coast cities without seeing EVs every time you are on the road. I regularly travel to Northern California. Teslas are thick on the ground the closer you get to the Tesla factory in the East Bay.

 

The awareness of climate change is very strong in the US. It remains a political topic and can be polarizing but I would recommend against making sweeping generalizations.

[APOLLO]

Yes the USA is doing a lot of change for the good but is still a top emitter (per person). At least some (many?) there recognise the problem more than others. But will it be enough ? - Honestly I doubt it.

 

Getting the far east (or even all of Asia) on board having seen the mega transport developments (road & rail) there recently is, in my mind, not going to happen. Brazil seems to have serious deforestation problems. poor old Africa is being raped of resources by the Chinese (as is Australia - coal & iron ore). 

 

Time will tell, and perhaps time is running out.

 

Brit15

[Ozexpatriate]

22 hours ago, APOLLO said:

 Brazil seems to have serious deforestation problems.

You don't need to word it softly. Brazil is a climate change nightmare. Burning forests in deforestation is a force multiplier of climate problems.

 

It converts sequestered Carbon to CO2. Fewer Amazonian trees reduces the planet's ability to consume CO2. The current Brazilian administration is very supportive of deforestation projects.

 

22 hours ago, APOLLO said:

... poor old Africa is being raped of resources by the Chinese (as is Australia - coal & iron ore). 

Yes, much of Australia's coal goes to China. Depending on which year and data source, per capita, Australia emits more CO2 than the US. (They are pretty comparable in magnitude.)

 

In total volumes China is ~2x the US. The worst per capita emitters are in the Middle East. They are about 3x the per capita emissions of Australia or the US.

 

Edited August 5, 2019 by Ozexpatriate

[monkeysarefun]

Yes, coal has become  Australias biggest export earner this year - around 50billion US, so added to our domestic green house emissions should be the emissions caused by our exports.

 

In reality though,  our Trump-style (in climate change action and political leanings) Federal and NSW governments have embraced this,  giving Adani a greenlight run to open up the Gallilee basin to build the worlds largest  mine for coal extraction and export to India while the NSW RWNJ's have prioritised revenue from coal mining as being more important than  safe drinking water supplies for Sydney:

 

https://www.smh.com.au/environment/sustainability/shocking-mining-damage-in-sydney-s-catchment-prompts-calls-for-halt-20190726-p52azm.html

[PatB]

Although Australia is a fairly high profile case at the moment, I think we might see a general rush amongst countries with significant coal reserves to get as much of it as possible out of the ground and sold before inevitable commercial progress renders it worthless.

 

Australia's overall performance on per-capita emissions is, I suspect, a legacy of its relative affluence, since WW2 at least, and historically cheap energy. I know there's a lot of current whingeing about power prices, but when I first moved here 23 years ago electricity cost ~50% of the equivalent in the UK. Petrol was about the same (and still is). Historically there's been very little incentive to use energy efficiently. On a domestic scale, double glazing is still unusual in new builds and almost unknown in anything more than ~10 years old. Roof insulation is by no means universal, although it did become more widespread under the, politically much maligned but practically very successful, scheme of 10 years ago. The vehicle fleet is still much more extravagant than it needs to be. In industry, very few of the projects I worked on had energy efficiency high on their priority list. In short, we're bad at energy because we've never needed to be better at it.

 

And then there's land clearing, in which we could give the Brazilians lessons, and a host of other staggeringly wasteful agricultural practices which are only now starting to be regarded as maybe not sustainable in the long term.

 

Australia seriously needs to lift its game, but seems to often wilfully refuse to do so, even when there might be a quid in it, which is a bit disappointing.

[The Stationmaster]

On 04/08/2019 at 07:09, Ozexpatriate said:

This was the point of my post. Air transportation isn't the problem.  It might represent as little as 2% of CO2 emissions.

 

I assume that getting worked up about air transport CO2 is a British thing. it is hardly even on the radar, even from ardent proponents of addressing climate change advocates in the US.

 

"Fixing" 2% of the problem does nothing. What needs to change is power generation and industrial emissions.

Ah but it all depends which numbers you use,  In the UK aviation produces c.7% of CO2 emissions so there is clearly room to reduce that especially as that includes shorthaul (where emissions tend to be higher per sector) which competes with other, less polluting, transport modes.  In the USA aviation has in recent years been the second largest (next to trucking) growth area of CO2 emissions).  According to one source (seemingly a pressure group in favour of aviation) overall across the world aviation is responsible for 12% of transport CO2 emissions (presumably worldwide and compared with 74% coming from 'road transport').

 

However you care to look at any of the numbers the most obvious conclusion has to be that population growth is probably the biggest driver in CO2 emissions for the simple reason that more people means more food production, means more transport, uses more electricity.  Yet is the one most govts are afraid to tackle.   So everybody then has to go to the easy targets - and aviation inevitably has to be one of them as it is just another transport mode pumping CO2 into the atmosphere and anything (sensible) to reduce it - such as using less polluting alternatives where they exist - is going to be a no-brainer.

 

An interesting philosophical question is whether or not fixing 2% does anything?  Successive  UK Govts, and other H Govts in Europe clearly think it does as evidenced by the steps they are taking to reduce pollution from electricity generation and road vehicles but in 2017 we produced a little over 1% of the world's total fossil fuel emission and our emissions per capita were little more than one third of the US per capita figure.  In 2017 Germany produced just over that 'magic' 2% but is chasing renewables as hard or hard than Britain.  China is the world's worst produced of fossil fuel emissions but its per capita figure is less than 50% of the USA's and it is working hard to develop renewable and cleaner sources.

 

It seems the simple answer to the philosophical question is that it doesn't matter where you stand in the league tables or in absolute terms of CO2 generated - you need to be seriously tackling it.  So fixing 2% could indeed make a difference

[Mike Storey]

There are two particular things being missed, regarding the effects of air transport on climate change:

 

1. The number of flights globally has doubled in the last twenty years, and such growth appears likely for the next twenty or more. Projections suggest aviation's contribution to CO2 emissions will become somewhere between 10% and 15% within the next 20-30 years (depending on how much other sources reduced their contributions). So it is definitely becoming more significant.

 

2. High altitude emissions have a particular effect on the Troposphere and the Stratosphere, which ground emissions tend to affect far less (since CFC's were largely banned anyway). Alongside CO2 effects, planes cause an increase in Ozone in the Troposphere (due to oxides of nitrogen emissions), which is not where you want it, and which causes global warming, but also cause a depletion of Ozone in the Stratosphere, due to sulphur and water particles, which is where you do want it. So much so, that modelling that, in the 2000's, suggested the Ozone layer was now healing to the extent that it would return to pre-1980 levels by 2050, has now been revised (due to the better understanding of aviation growth and its effects) by a further c.75 years - and that is curtailed only by the assumption that fossil fuels will not be used beyond a given period. No other source of pollution is known to have any significant effect in this way, these days.

 

I believe it is highly misleading to downplay aviation pollution.

[Ozexpatriate]

3 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

It seems the simple answer to the philosophical question is that it doesn't matter where you stand in the league tables or in absolute terms of CO2 generated - you need to be seriously tackling it.  So fixing 2% could indeed make a difference

Mike, I think it is certainly a good thing to reduce emissions from air transportation. My point was that at the global level, it is not the most relevant contributor and it matters not whether we are talking about 2% or 7%. The single biggest offenders continue to be power and industrial usage which combined are well over 50%.

 

By itself, the CO2 generated by the manufacturing of cement for concrete (2.2Gt), is 8% of the total global total. This is more than all air transport. (Massive amounts of heat are required for the kilns and what better for kilns than burners.) From a numerical standpoint we should be more worried about cement manufacturing than air transport.

 

Changes in processes that create larger volumes of emission are more effective than even large changes in smaller volumes of emissions.  At the end of the day it is important to do everything we can but some things are more effective than others. All of them are hard or expensive, but this is largely a matter of technology and cost.

 

Your argument regarding population increase is compelling, but it is not just population increase, it is also the lifting of masses of people from rural poverty into something more approximating Western middle classes. It's not just China or India either. This is happening in places like Africa and the middle east as well. It is particularly evident in the very high per-capita CO2 emissions in the middle east where desalinization plants and air-conditioning create a huge additional demand for oil-fueled electricity that was never present historically. I suspect that this quality of living change is a bigger driver of energy use increase than the population increase alone. Naturally the two reinforce each other.

[Tony Davis]

On 09/05/2019 at 22:00, jjb1970 said:

I'm waiting to be told that chunky sweaters and real ale emit more CO2 than burning coal.

Or that the wearers of chunky sweaters and drinkers of real ale emit more C02 than burning coal :-)

[Classsix T]

33 minutes ago, Tony Davis said:

Or that the wearers of chunky sweaters and drinkers of real ale emit more C02 than burning coal :-)

Methane is the problem exhaust gas wrt those gentlemen, in my experience...

 

C6T.

[Classsix T]

54 minutes ago, Ozexpatriate said:

From a numerical standpoint we should be more worried about cement manufacturing than air transport.

There in lies a human condition problem.

Politicised hip-hop group Public Enemy said of racism that if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. A phrase perhaps more relevant today in terms of not ruining where we have no other choice but to live.

 

If one industry/country fails to take action because they finger point to another which statistically is "worse", well we're all stuffed.

 

C6T. 

[Ozexpatriate]

4 hours ago, Mike Storey said:

I believe it is highly misleading to downplay aviation pollution.

I'm not really trying to downplay it. It is a good thing to work on reducing all forms of CO2 emission.

 

I'm trying to disconnect what I perceive as a non-proportional emotional response around air transport as a source of CO2 (apparently fueled in some measure by a passionate Swedish teenager who seems to be a lightning rod for this) from a numerical assessment of where investment in CO2 is more impactful on a global scale.

 

Personally I'd love to see electric aircraft. I believe they will happen. It might be a long time before they move the needle on reducing air transport CO2 emissions - the majority of which come from long haul flights.

 

This (industry) source says: (paraphrased)

Quote

Around 80% of aviation CO2 emissions are emitted from flights over 1,500km.

 

[Nearholmer]

One possible reason  to target aviation for -energy and emissions savings is that such a very high proportion of flights taken are completely pointless - we first-worlders largely fly because  we can, not because we need to. And, the entire edifice of air travel gobbles energy and other resources well beyond those used to sling the plane through the air.

 

Of course, there is a great deal of other pointless consumption going-on, absolutely stacks of it, but flying has got to be up there among the greatest wastes, and highlighting that fact might help to highlight some other cases.

 

(typed by a chap who is currently on a flight-facilitated foreign holiday, and who struggles to convince even his nearest and dearest that it’s a profligate waste of resources, so holds no hope of convincing anyone else!)

Edited August 7, 2019 by Nearholmer

[Andy Hayter]

4 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

 

 

By itself, the CO2 generated by the manufacturing of cement for concrete (2.2Gt), is 8% of the total global total. This is more than all air transport. (Massive amounts of heat are required for the kilns and what better for kilns than burners.) From a numerical standpoint we should be more worried about cement manufacturing than air transport.

 

 

 

 

The energy used to create cement is not the main issue.  Cement production creates CO2 as part of the chemical process.

 

Limestone + heat = CO2 +cement

 

CaCO3 = CO2 + CaO

 

Of course there is the opportunity to fit a modern plant with carbon capture equipment for both the chemical reaction and the combustion gases.  Maybe one day it will happen.  Most plants are not so fitted.

Edited August 7, 2019 by Andy Hayter

[Classsix T]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

One possible reason  to target aviation for -energy and emissions savings is that such a very high proportion of flights taken are completely pointless - we first-worlders largely fly because  we can, not because we need to. And, the entire edifice of air travel gobbles energy and other resources well beyond those used to sling the plane through the air.

 

Of course, there is a great deal of other pointless consumption going-on, absolutely stacks of it, but flying has got to be up there among the greatest wastes, and highlighting that fact might help to highlight some other cases.

 

(typed by a chap who is currently on a flight-facilitated foreign holiday, and who struggles to convince even his nearest and dearest that it’s a profligate waste of resources, so holds no hope of convincing anyone else!)

You're absolutely right of course Kevin and whilst I've never flown, owned a car or begat offspring, my own guilty pleasure is not so much enjoyment of meat consumption but online gaming.

For those unaware, various corporations use incredibly power hungry servers (stacks of computers and the need to refrigerate them). Some such as Google/Microsoft are keen to point out their green credentials on these, but I suspect only give figures on the hubs that are eco friendly. 

 

Not to mention a lot of the 'stuff' I like has an incredibly high carbon footprint. Sony recently announced it shipped its 100 millionth PlayStation 4 console for example.

 

C6T. 

[Ozexpatriate]

1 hour ago, Classsix T said:

Some such as Google/Microsoft are keen to point out their green credentials on these, but I suspect only give figures on the hubs that are eco friendly. 

They are not necessarily always the 'bad actors' that we might assume, given a certain level of healthy skepticism.

 

They certainly want cheap electricity for data centres. This has an obvious operational cost benefit. Having said that they also factor in what the source of that electricity is. Unsurprisingly renewable energy (like hydro-power) can also be cheap. There are large data centers in the Western US sited specifically to take advantage of cheap, but renewable, hydro-power.

[monkeysarefun]

4 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

I'm not really trying to downplay it. It is a good thing to work on reducing all forms of CO2 emission.

 

I'm trying to disconnect what I perceive as a non-proportional emotional response around air transport as a source of CO2 (apparently fueled in some measure by a passionate Swedish teenager who seems to be a lightning rod for this) from a numerical assessment of where investment in CO2 is more impactful on a global scale.

 

Personally I'd love to see electric aircraft. I believe they will happen. It might be a long time before they move the needle on reducing air transport CO2 emissions - the majority of which come from long haul flights.

 

This (industry) source says: (paraphrased)

 

 

 

The forecast growth in airborne freight is another issue on top of passenger travel. An excerpt from an Australian Govt report on infrasctructure priorities states - 

 

The capacity for air freight should grow considerably in coming years. IATA predicts the world freighter aircraft fleet will grow by 70 per cent in the next 20 years. The global air passenger network, which is equally important for air freight, is also undergoing rapid growth. The International Civil Aviation Authority (ICAO) reports global international passenger numbers have increased by between 5.2 per cent and 10.6 per cent each year from 2010-15.  In Australia, annual air passenger growth has been averaging 3.4 per cent over the past 10 years.  Melbourne Airport has forecast its international air freight will grow from 250,000 tonnes to 393,000 tonnes by 2033.

 

Overseas shopping via the internet is producing expectations that when you order something you'll have it in a week - even something ordered here from the UK.  Even though the cost of airfreighting an item is up to 70 times the cost of shipping it by sea (from the same above report) the charges for shipping things here by air   no longer reflect that difference or the cost to the environment. Many items I've ordered from Chinese Ebay suppliers have free shipping (by air).  Long gone are the days when my dad would order an item from Hattons (order typed ontranslucent  lightweight paper to reduce the cost of the airmail) and then a 12 week wait for it to arrive, or getting the Christmas issue of the Railway Modeller in March...

Edited August 7, 2019 by monkeysarefun

[Ozexpatriate]

7 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

Long gone are the days when my dad would order an item from Hattons (order typed ontranslucent  lightweight paper to reduce the cost of the airmail) and then a 12 week wait for it to arrive

I still have some of that onion skin paper and matching envelopes. It is not exactly worthless, if you want to write a long personal letter and have it weigh less than an ounce, it's great. For transactions an email is vastly more efficient.

 

The US Postal Service stopped requiring (and issuing) "PAR AVION" / "AIR MAIL"  stickers years ago. No international first class mail travels by anything but air transport and has done for many a year.

[PatB]

Over here in WA we still don't get the Christmas issue of RM until March :D.

 

Oddly enough, high levels of domestic air travel is one area where I'll give Australia and, to an extent, the USA (and, I suppose, Europe taken as a whole, rather than individual countries) a partial pass. The distances and, consequently, the times involved for any other means of travel make it the only practical option for many purposes. From where I live on the eastern fringes of Perth in WA, the next major city, Adelaide in SA, is 2 long days away by road. Melbourne is 2.5, Sydney 3, Canberra, the national capital 2.5-3. Yes, you can take the bus or train rather than driving yourself, and they're a bit quicker thanks to drivers working in shifts, but the train journey is either very expensive or horrible, and the bus is cheaper but horrible.Until we restructure our society so that travel between our major cities, for various reasons, becomes less necessary, some level of domestic air travel is pretty much inevitable. Whilst I accept that a fair chunk of current travel is unnecessary, even now, I would also argue that, at the very least, in a modern democracy it is important that the national capital should be within practical reach of any ordinary citizen of modest means, in terms of both time and cost, for example.

[Reorte]

4 hours ago, PatB said:

Until we restructure our society so that travel between our major cities, for various reasons, becomes less necessary, some level of domestic air travel is pretty much inevitable.

 

Good luck with that, the pressure is entirely in the other direction. The same argument can be made at all scales, with people constantly clamouring for faster travel and the economic pressures that result in large-scale centralisation.

[jonny777]

I'm not sure how much exaggeration is involved, but my fishmonger mate tells me that it is cheaper to send low grade fish, (caught in the northern Atlantic), to China where it is defrosted, processed (cleaned, filleted, etc.) then re-frozen to be sent back to the UK to be coated in batter and breadcrumbs for supermarkets to sell; than it is to do it entirely in the UK. 

 

How much more this generates in carbon emissions, wasteful food miles, can only be guessed at. 

[APOLLO]

Some good ideas in this article.

 

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/comment/article-7334391/Ditch-Nimby-label-wise-look-backyard-says-SIMON-LAMBERT.html

 

Brit15

 

 

 

 

[Nick C]

One key thing that doesn't seem to be getting anywhere near as much publicity as it should, is the issue of food waste. Food accounts for a quarter of all CO2 emissions, and various studies reckon that about a third of all the food produced is wasted - that's ~9% of our total emissions for absolutely no gain whatsoever.