this post was submitted on 27 Jun 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.

Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:

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How water could be the future of fuel | A new generation of fuels could power planes and ships without warming the planet. (wapo.st)
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What's missing from this discussion is the cost; synthetic hydrocarbons are incredibly expensive — think $45/gallon.

That may come down some, but people are going to electrify whenever possible instead of using e-fuels like this for cost reasons.

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[–] Delta_V@lemmy.world 8 points 4 months ago (2 children)

If there's enough excess capacity of clean, renewable energy sources like wind and solar, that it can be converted into portable fuel . . . why hydrogen?

Its hard to contain, embrittles everything it touches, in gaseous form its density is low so its tanks need to be huge but in liquid form it needs to be kept unreasonably cold and is still low density and requires oversize fuel tanks, and its explosive when it mixes with air - not just flammable, but explosive.

Why not use that clean energy to pull CO2 out of the air and use it to build new hydrocarbon liquid fuels that are compatible with existing infrastructure?

[–] MalReynolds@slrpnk.net 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Totally, if you need it use the century old, high density, well understood fuel, it's just good engineering. Doesn't need to be carbon negative. Even rockets are using methane these days...

There are probably use cases for hydrogen, but they're likely large installations, either fixed or trains / ships. Toyota spent a decade trying to make it smaller and failed.

[–] Delta_V@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago

It could be a little carbon negative, in the way planting trees is a little carbon negative.

Sourcing carbon from atmosphere and hydrogen from water to make liquid fuel would pull carbon out of the air and put it into your gas tank.

Methane is easier to work with than hydrogen, but it still needs to be kept colder than what's practical. If it turns out that propane is much cheaper to make from (renewable energy + atmosphere + water), relative to the cost of making liquids like diesel, kerosene, or gasoline, then propane might be a winning choice for renewable transportation fuel.

[–] souperk@reddthat.com 1 points 4 months ago

Batteries have an environmental impact too. I am no expert, but I can see why researchers are trying to find alternatives.