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:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.
US air travel can be decarbonized by replacing it with electrified passenger rail. Trains with a pantograph don't need to store energy. Nearly all of the challenges of electrifying transportation are already solved and just require the infrastructure to be built.
Air travel should only be used for routes that cannot be serviced by electrified rail.
The problem isnt r ex ally about pollution, its about how to increase corn production for America.
America has many problems. A lack of corn isn't one of them.
E85 was the first big push after "corn fed beef" was everywhere. Then it became sanitizer due to COVID.
Now that all of those are waning, something new IS needed for the industry to maintain its revenue expectations.
Its not about "lack of corn" its more akin to "how much more money can we make off the current volume of corn we push"
Guh. Can't I go one day without being reminded that Capitalism is killing us?
Corn monoculture is at the heart of so many environmental problems, I very much doubt this is a sustainable route forward.
No. It can help in transition by lowering carbon emissions and reliance upon fossil fuels, but a product of burning ethanol is still CO2.
Bluntly: no.
Burning fuel puts CO2 into the atmosphere. Yes, you might be at close to net zero if it's a biofuel (e.g., the carbon in the atmosphere goes into the corn, when then goes into the airplane and back into the atmosphere), but we need to be at negative carbon, not net zero.
If the fuel you were burning was liquid hydrogen, then we'd be okay. But any kind of hydrocarbon, regardless of the source, not so much.
Ah, I think there’s a spelling mistake in the title - let me see if I can fix it for you:
Please give more money to the corn lobby
Remember, every time you use cropland for not-food, you're worsening food security.
It's not enough that you feeding food to food, and feeding food to cars, now it's about feeding food to airplanes.
But corn subsidies must flow
BTW, can rapeseed oil be used for aviation fuel?
Probably, but soy is the one that's being most converted into hydrocarbons in the US
Yeah, my thought was because of rapeseed oil being used for cars in some parts of the USSR in 70s and 80s.