this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2024
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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world. About 1C of total warming. Second chart: about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability. Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases. About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

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A hydrogen-powered air taxi flew 523 miles emitting only water vapor (www.popsci.com)
submitted 5 months ago by kalkulat@lemmy.world to c/climate
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"Joby took a pre-production prototype of one of its battery-electric aircraft and outfitted it with a liquid hydrogen fuel tank and fuel system. The modified, hydrogen-powered VTOL was able to complete a 523 mile flight above Marina, California..."

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[–] Allero@lemmy.today 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Nah, not very fine. I wonder if it could be less eco-friendly to run something like this over an ICE car simply due to the massive energy demands of such a vehicle and the losses on energy to hydrogen to energy conversion.

Flying transportation is only reasonable at a large scale and high speeds, which is not a characteristic of an air taxi.

Also, better use hydrogen-powered car then.

[–] Mihies@programming.dev 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

While hydrogen is expensive to produce, it can be produced from reusable sources or surplus energy which makes it way cheaper and way cleaner. Also solves energy storage. A side note: ICE is around 20% efficient. I'm also sure that flying in choppers and private jets is not that clean and efficient. And yes, cars would be better, but both can coexist.

[–] Allero@lemmy.today 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

True, but that would require building expensive infrastructure that would sit idle for most of the time while we wait for the surplus - assuming we talk intermittent renewables.

Sure enough, hydrogen fuel cell is cleaner than ICE, my objection was to the form of transportation that might require so much power an ICE car would be a better alternative (but not an ICE air taxi, to be clear)

Cars would be better, but both can coexist

From an ecological perspective, they can not, and that's what this "invention" pretends to be about. Also, cars too are far from perfect, but at least better than this monstrosity