this post was submitted on 07 Aug 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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Modern aircraft emit less carbon than older aircraft, but their contrails may do more environmental harm (phys.org)
submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Led by scientists at Imperial College London, the study highlights the immense challenges the aviation industry faces to reduce its impact on the climate. The new study also found that private jets produce more contrails than previously thought, potentially leading to outsized impacts on climate warming.

Contrails, or condensation trails, are thin streaks of cloud created by aircraft exhaust fumes that contribute to global warming by trapping heat in the atmosphere.

While the exact warming effect of contrails is uncertain, scientists believe it is greater than warming caused by carbon emissions from jet fuel.

Published in Environmental Research Letters, the study used machine learning to analyze satellite data on more than 64,000 contrails from a range of aircraft flying over the North Atlantic Ocean.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Sure the title is not the best, and what you reference is what this 2018 study says.

What I got from the article itself, which is based on a new study published today (7 August 2024), could be summed up, perhaps, by the following:

The new study also found that private jets produce more contrails than previously thought, potentially leading to outsized impacts on climate warming.

This means these higher-flying aircraft create less carbon emissions per passenger. However, it also means they create contrails that take longer to dissipate—creating a warming effect for longer and a complicated trade-off for the aviation industry.

"This doesn't mean that more efficient aircraft are a bad thing—far from it, as they have lower carbon emissions per passenger-mile. However, our finding reflects the challenges the aviation industry faces when reducing its climate impact."

The study did confirm a simple step that can be taken to shorten the lifetime of contrails: (...)