Melting

No, Teo Fabi and Richard Petty are raceist. Miata drivers simply dream they are Teo or Richard with the top down and the Beach Boys up loud.
Biden wants an electric miata, more torque I guess.........


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BrazilBusDriver

You guys are both hysterical and hysterically funny sometimes. Harris/AOC running things? Racist for flying? Give me a break. We’ll see what McConnell has to say about all that.

Anyway, back on topic - there is a *foreign* school of thought that commercial and especially private aviation is an outsized contributor to carbon emissions, and should be curtailed, which as previously mentioned is *not actually* specifically stated in the linked article and is not, as far as I know, a policy advanced by any prominent democrat (I don’t count AOC or her eternal right wing bogey women as prominent, if you do, then agree to disagree and maybe think about turning off cable news).

The corollary is that instead of coming up with technical solutions, such as that nifty Airbus hydrogen jet, people need to stop traveling by air tomorrow - that way we can save the world and if you don’t agree your a big greedy world destroying pig...or something. It raises a lot of blood pressure on this forum because that attitude would cause a lot of job loss if turned into policy. But again, there’s no serious movement to turn that into policy. Do you really think a California senator is going to want to drive to DC?

And here’s the thing: It’s primarily a European idea because Europe has an alternative to continental aviation that America never will - continent-spanning high speed rail. The truth of the matter is it would take the US decades to roll out a viable alternative to commercial aviation if we decided to start tomorrow. And if you were serious about reducing carbon emissions in the US and Canada, there’s lower-hanging fruit - you’d tilt policy and incentives towards battery powered vehicles and push for investments in ever cheaper renewables, with a nuclear base load.

I know some people just wanna be mad, but I’d save your stress for something worth worrying about. This isn’t going to come to pass in any meaningful way in the US in the next several decades.

Knobcrk1

Exactly. They’re all career politicians. Lots of promises to get elected and all the corporations that bought and paid for them will shape their ideas after. They won’t do anything next 4 years, at least anything radical.

rickair7777

What he said.

But hydrogen has a LOT of associated technical challenges and would need radically new aiframe shapes and designs, so it's not happening any time soon. SAF (Sustainable Aviation Fuel) is a real thing, and more airlines are starting to use it. It's currently costly and only available in limited quantities due to existing infrastructure, but that will come down with economy of scale.

Either the government or the industry could do more to drive increased production and use.

SAF has about an 80% lower (total) carbon footprint than Jet A, and is already certified for use in a 50/50 SAF/Jet A mixture as a "drop in" fuel, with no modifications required. So the available technology could reduce airline carbon footprint by 40%; with large-scale production it will cost more than Jet A (which has been cheap for a few years now) but not much more, and isn't subject to OPEC-induced price swings.

Right now it's growth limited by production infrastructure, the mfgs have to make a profit to pay for more and larger facilities, which takes time. Gov and industry could help with that, although maybe the oil lobby is applying pressure to fend off the competition... that behavior has been observed with other alternative energy sources, in fact it's known within nuclear power circles that all of the "environmentalist" eco-freal anti-nukes have been quietly funded by big oil for decades.

With some minor design mods, our engines could use 100% SAF. The modifications are probably more in the fuel storage and delivery systems than in the engines themselves, the seals are designed to stay fresh and pliable while immersed in kerosene, but SAF doesn't always provide the same effect so they would need some different sealing materials. Easy for a new-build aircraft, not sure how costly to retro-fit older planes.

Excargodog

This. Biden was nominated primarily because he was a known quality after having first been elected 50 years ago as a New Castle County Councilor. He doesn’t have an original idea in his brain, which has gotten him in trouble at least twice with multiple plagiarism scandals.

https://www.nytimes.com/1987/09/18/u...alevolent.html

And even if Ms. Harris should succeed him in an untimely fashion, she’s no LBJ with decades of leadership in the Senate knowing where the bodies were buried to call upon, merely a first term senator elected from a reliably Democrat state.

Washington DC will simply go back to Pre-Trump, or very nearly so.

Excargodog

Like buying indulgences from the Church of Climate Change.

Just renouncing their long term resistance to nuclear fission power and speeding the development of fusion power would be so much more effective...

rickair7777

Likely. A bit more polarized, but the incensed MAGA voters will probably balance out the squad extremists. The new administration knows that if they pizz off enough people early on they might not last. And recall that Trump has only served four of his allowable eight years, so there's always that hanging out there... both parties would be wise to keep that in mind

firefighterplt

Preach. I don’t understand the whole NUCLEAR BAD bit.

rickair7777

No option now, the inquisition is here in force.

Yes fission is the obvious near-term green power source and even some of the eco's are starting to come around. The extremists never understand that they will never get most Americans (or most of the rest of the world) to stop doing things they like to do, so they need to enable technical solutions to make those activities green.

Fission waste can be considered a temporary problem, since fusion *should* be viable soon enough, and essentially waste free. It doesn't even have to be very efficient, the fuel is free so the hardware is the only cost.

Speed Select

Let’s revisit this post in nine months, specifically the AOC/Harris dynamic. (not all that train stuff-that’ll never happen)

I hope you’re right and I’m wrong.