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Using sustainable aviation fuels could reduce emissions by up to 80%, scientists find
(www.manchester.ac.uk)
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this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2023
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This is a huuuge load of crap. Nowhere does this clearly say that CO2 emissions are cut by 80%, just "ultrafine black carbon" which is a pollutant more than a greenhouse gas. Aviations worst impact is by far the greenhouse gases.
The "sustainable fuel" that is so mysteriously alluded to, turns out to be made from "renewable biomass". Plant-basid fuels have been around for a while, usually as a greenwashing stunt by industries that consume a lot of fossil fuels. The amount of farmland needed to produce even a small fraction of what's needed in aviation is astronomical. Approaching 9 billion eaters, we can't afford to make food vs fuel a debate (again).
This whole article reads like it was written by the aviation company that paid for the research in the first place. This isn't science, it's propaganda.
The whole aviation industry is coping imo.
There is no way it will be an energy efficient or remotely green mean of transportation in the near future so a lot of people in this industry are quite worried they will be the next target for people attempting to fight climate change.
A good example is this video of a large YouTube channel on aviation:
https://youtu.be/dXdvZCT8sIg?si=rVfdyelHQHVHxrXE
It's a whole lithany of bullshit excuse while pointing the finger at these silly french people trying to reduce completely unnecessary emissions (short flights with an high speed train underneath their paths).
It's like the coal industry, they feel it's the end of an era for the aviation industry and they don't like it.
I say that acknowledging that some planes are absolutely necessary but nowhere near as much as we currently have.
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It's part of the reason why we are far too late to change course. So many industries will fight progress tooth and nail, some violently I imagine.
The use of biomass rather than fossil fuels, if it can be scaled up is carbon neutral. The biomass grows from CO2 in the atmosphere.
Yes this will take about 60% of our crop land to completely replace fossil fuels (including cars), but this is completely doable if we reduce grain production for livestock. Source: https://esa.org/biofuels/presentations/Auyeung_poster.pdf
More to the point, it's much more easily doable if we quit wasting hydrocarbon fuels on ground transportation by making our cities walkable and moving longer-range travel to electrified rail.
Additionally tons of the bio fuel industry is based on corn and the United States' extremely stubborn subsidization of it. Without the funding the corn industry gets bio fuel is financially impossible. Additionally it increases food costs for everyone substantially as there's only so much farmland that exists. Already ordinary people pay millions more for food directly because of bio fuel production and the reduction of farmland for crops that actually feed people.
This video has the whole rundown of why bio fuel is actually extremely unsustainable. https://youtu.be/OpEB6hCpIGM?si=nQm8fft5JHmLw-Ri
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/OpEB6hCpIGM?si=nQm8fft5JHmLw-Ri
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Even if this was true, that wouldn't lead to less emissions but just more flights.
As we can see, every time the efficiency increases, the flight price drops, and the number of flights increases. So, it just allows us to fly more for the same amount of C02.