This is a bit of a smokescreen--pretending like aviation will soon be sustainable is a way of hiding just how unsustainable it is right now. Of course, this is an upper-middle-class strategy, as it is the wealthy who mainly do all the flying, such as Lloyd. All those folks like to fly without accounting or paying for their excess polluti…
This is a bit of a smokescreen--pretending like aviation will soon be sustainable is a way of hiding just how unsustainable it is right now. Of course, this is an upper-middle-class strategy, as it is the wealthy who mainly do all the flying, such as Lloyd. All those folks like to fly without accounting or paying for their excess pollution, such as with valid offsets. Indeed, the science world doesn't spend much time figuring out the added warming from high-altitude emissions, which may be very significant. Those same scientists also love to fly frequently with no penalties for their pollution. It's a big blind spot, or an intentional looking away.
Some useful statistics to include in this subject would be: the energy cost of energy for making those sustainable fuels (i.e. the "energy returned for energy invested. For ethanol, this might be negative but there are some studies that have a 1.3:1 energy return. These studies rely on a lot of assumptions). Also, simply stating the cost of this fuel would show its problems. I've read it's 3-5x the cost of jet fuel, which would raise the cost of flying a similar amount.
But Lloyd is right in showing the system implications of trying to grow and process this type of fuel.
This is a bit of a smokescreen--pretending like aviation will soon be sustainable is a way of hiding just how unsustainable it is right now. Of course, this is an upper-middle-class strategy, as it is the wealthy who mainly do all the flying, such as Lloyd. All those folks like to fly without accounting or paying for their excess pollution, such as with valid offsets. Indeed, the science world doesn't spend much time figuring out the added warming from high-altitude emissions, which may be very significant. Those same scientists also love to fly frequently with no penalties for their pollution. It's a big blind spot, or an intentional looking away.
Some useful statistics to include in this subject would be: the energy cost of energy for making those sustainable fuels (i.e. the "energy returned for energy invested. For ethanol, this might be negative but there are some studies that have a 1.3:1 energy return. These studies rely on a lot of assumptions). Also, simply stating the cost of this fuel would show its problems. I've read it's 3-5x the cost of jet fuel, which would raise the cost of flying a similar amount.
But Lloyd is right in showing the system implications of trying to grow and process this type of fuel.