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This post, probably without intending it, gets to the heart of the problem.
"Electric jet planes" are like "self-driving (or flying) cars" -- a pretty piece of science-fantasy aimed at the young, the impressionable, and the "tech-indisposed", these dreams are (in the short-run, anyway) stymied by hard science, and some of those obstacles may never be overcome.
I wouldn't call 2050 the short-term. It's not the far distant future but we're talking 30 years. It may be there in 30 years.
Short-term I'd say is more the 5-10 years period. I woul say it's farfetched that we'll see electric jet planes in 5-10 years. Could happen. The big breakthrough in solid state batteries could happen tomorrow. It just isn't likely to. I think we'll see a sizeable percentage of new car sales, but not a majority, be electric in that 5-10 year period. Electric jet planes won't be a thing until gasoline cars aren't. They kind of go hand in hand. When batteries are light enough and cheap enough that gasoline cars are more expensive, they'll be light enough to make electric jet planes viable. As long as you're talking about the equivelant of 20 gallons of gasoline weighing 1,000 or 2,000 pounds of batteries though there's no way that's getting off the ground. Maybe private jets or something for Al Gore to fly around in but not commercial ones which need to fly from LA to NY let alone intercontinental flights.
We're still a ways out from any battery chemistry with high enough energy density. Not gonna be an overnight transition but yeah, we're phasing out fossil fuels. Maybe the 2035 ban goes through on gasoline cars. I'm not sure about that one yet and whether battery tech will need to be where it needs to be. Let's hypothetically say that it does though and then that by 2040 its not just the CARB states but all states either by mandate or just because it doesn't make sense to keep making cars for the Alabama market which can't be sold elsewhere as Tesla turned Texas blue. Then the average car on the road is 12 years old so you're looking at around 2050 where transportaiton may have mostly shifted from gasoline to electric. By 2050 batteries could very well be at a point where electric jetplanes are viable.
How to we replace all the plastic, carbon fiber, and other composites utilizing petrochemicals , in these industries ? Last time I was in a plane, there where a lot of plastic components. Same with vehicles. With weight being a huge factor, we need light weight materials...mostly using petrochemicals. What new materials will be used to make wind turbine blades that don't use petrochemicals ? And lubricate their gearboxes ?
We have a Green Party here in New Zealand. They have managed to get laws passed to replace ICE cars with electric. Great plan. Now instead of producing CO2 emissions along with mostly H2O emissions, we will produce mainly CO2 emissions in order to power our electric vehicles. Great plan. We can't go nuclear because we are a clean green country and nuclear is banned here.
And yet, in our clean green country, we are felling mature trees at a rate of knots. Makes sense. Fell carbon absorbing trees and increase coal power to charge our electric vehicles. Tree felling is purely for 'development' reasons. Goodbye gasoline, hello coal. Oh yes, we have to remove indigenous forest to get to the coal, as in forest park reserves. Good one lefty loons!
But fear not, all is well, our new gender diverse schooling program and new apartheid politics will save the day.
Al Gore has a long history of saying things that appeal to low-information, science-impaired morons. Stupid people embrace simplistic solutions for extremely complex problems without thinking about it. Ban fossil fuel powered vehicles? What could possibly go wrong? And we could make the change for free! And there's no negative impacts!. Gore is either an idiot or thinks the general public is comprised of a bunch of idiots. You know who you are.
Al has been warning about climate change for 20 years. If "low-information, science-impaired morons" would have listened to him, we could be well on our way to being rid of fossil fuels by now. Even without greenhouse effects, fossil fuels would be on their way out because they are dirty, inefficient and finite.
We have a Green Party here in New Zealand. They have managed to get laws passed to replace ICE cars with electric. Great plan. Now instead of producing CO2 emissions along with mostly H2O emissions, we will produce mainly CO2 emissions in order to power our electric vehicles. Great plan. We can't go nuclear because we are a clean green country and nuclear is banned here.
And yet, in our clean green country, we are felling mature trees at a rate of knots. Makes sense. Fell carbon absorbing trees and increase coal power to charge our electric vehicles. Tree felling is purely for 'development' reasons. Goodbye gasoline, hello coal. Oh yes, we have to remove indigenous forest to get to the coal, as in forest park reserves. Good one lefty loons!
But fear not, all is well, our new gender diverse schooling program and new apartheid politics will save the day.
Wow, you don't know much about your own country! New Zealand get 81% of its electricity from renewable sources. 55% is from hydroelectric. Coal only makes up 5% of electricity generation.
Al has been warning about climate change for 20 years. If "low-information, science-impaired morons" would have listened to him, we could be well on our way to being rid of fossil fuels by now. Even without greenhouse effects, fossil fuels would be on their way out because they are dirty, inefficient and finite.
Someone forgot to tell the "low-information, science-impaired morons" in the shipping industry. They've upped the orders for those huge bunker oil burning, air polluting, ocean polluting , marine wildlife killing ships from 23 to 201 in the last year.
“It has been estimated that just one of these container ships, the length of around six football pitches, can produce the same amount of pollution as 50 million cars. The emissions from 15 of these mega-ships match those from all the cars in the world."
I'm sure this is the lifetime of the vessel, which, at the moment is only 10.6 years. While I believe climate change is real, I just can't take the climate change cheerleader/activists seriously when they balk at ICE vehicles, farting cows, and Chad with his two stroke leaf blower when entire pollution contributing industries never get talked about. Where is Greta ?!?
Wow, you don't know much about your own country! New Zealand get 81% of its electricity from renewable sources. 55% is from hydroelectric. Coal only makes up 5% of electricity generation.
Aah yes but. See here's the thing. That 5% coal powered power is what will need to be increased to supply the electric power to charge the electric car batteries. Our hydro schemes are basically saturated.
Now if we instead aimed to reduce our population, we could become completely renewable energy sufficient. We could also move to smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles. Hybrids are great at reducing fossil fuel consumption.
But we don't. We remove forests and mature tree stands for the purpose of increasing our population. Makes sense doesn't it? And something else that has been going on since we began going green, like carbon taxes and carbon credits stuff (we even contemplated cow fart taxes - I kid you not), but we went hell bent to INCREASE vehicle sizes! Go figure.
That was not the fault of the lefty loons though to be fair. We have the capacity to plant billions of trees which go a long way to make us carbon neutral. We have a wet and warm climate. But we don't. And the lefties have had six years to do something about it and they haven't.
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