Target True Zero is an initiative designed to identify avenues to speed up efforts to attain zero emissions from aviation. Initiated by the World Economic Forum, Target True Zero is expected to lean heavily toward electric and hydrogen power to wean aviation from traditional fossil fuels.
Sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) is another technology that airlines, in particular, have committed to. In fact, European legislation introduced recently mandates SAF requirements along with other ways of working toward zero-emissions aircraft.
Currently, global aviation accounts for some 2.5 percent of CO2 emissions, overall, but its effect on global warming can be as much as 3.5 percent when taking into account other gases and pollutants, said the WEF. And according to one study cited in the announcement, the aviation market is on track to expand by 7.6 percent in the next five years.
Target True Zero will look at technology, industry dynamics, infrastructure, supply chain, regulation and public acceptance in its quest to move toward its namesake goal. Later this year, the program will present its research results and lay out a pathway for industry at the UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland.
I have two alternatives that may be better:
Choice A is the Spock approach, for those familiar with the episode “The City On The Edge Of Forever’, we can return to stone knives and bearskins. No need for mobility, upward or otherwise if it saves the planet.
Choice B, the other approach, which I embrace, disregard the alarmists and get on with our lives. Prosper and live life to the fullest. Screw Chicken Little. The sky is not falling, and even if it does I don’t care.
I’m with you William, all the way with choice B. There is no other viable alternative. Let the fools chase the smoke and mirrors. It is very entertaining.
+1
A world economic council and a group of political appointees in the UN are two of the most UNTRUSTWORTHY and biased groups on the planet. I can’t wait to research their presentation at COP26. My guess is that it will be akin to the Al Gore laugh fest movie.
The actual climate data trends do not support their positions nor their proposed “solutions”.
They’re FAR worse than untrustworthy and biased.
Anybody on the “Target True Zero” staff have anything to do with aviation activity? Not including Issuing Edicts From On High?
Well, guys, the science seems to suggest that global warming is a direct result of the past 200 or so years of burning coal and oil. The raging forest fires, the record heat waves, the melting of polar ice caps, the loss of insect populations, and other “ecological” phenomena, all sort of seem like evidence.
This is either some sort of world wide “plot” brought on by “alarmists” across the world, regardless of political persuasion or agenda, or as Al Gore noted fifteen years ago, in an “inconvenient truth”, really real.
We seem to be at the cusp of some significant global environmental changes. Sort of like the dawning awareness that cigarettes really do kill people, despite the “evidence” to the contrary proposed by tobacco companies “research”.
To put this in an aeronautical perspective, this is a serious oil leak. It’s not an engine loss of power, yet. It’s just an oil leak. We either note that the oil pressure is declining and CHT are slowly climbing, land and correct it, or continue on our merry way. Except that our merry way is over high mountains that lack airports or even meadows to land. We either accept the “inconvenience” or end up as casualties in NTSB and “Kathryn’s Report” pages.
Another “oh s#%t” moment, huh?
The theory that a warming atmosphere by co2 will drive warming on the surface has already been disproven by the last 30 years of upper atmospheric satellite data.
What is interesting is that the global warming industry is acting “unscientific” in that they have a goal and and the spend all their research monies to SUPPORT THEIR END CONCLUSION. That is against science and a huge conflict of interest
Who has disproven this?
It’s not a “who”. The theory that the atmosphere warms first and then the land has yet to be proven right; either in modern observations or interpreted historical records.
To stay on topic, aviation emissions have zero MEASURABLE effect on global climate.
Disproven what? Aviation requires clarity.
As well as the satellite sensor data, traditional weather balloons are still used.
And there’s the historical record – Vikings farmed southwest Greenland during the Medieval Warm Period, when climate was warmer than today but stable. Oh, and there are remains in trees in northern Canada north of the present tree line – how did that happen? Plenty of geological evidence of warmer in the past, but beware that the catastrophist mentality deliberately misleads.
The physics of greenhouse gas molecules limits the amount of temperature rise that CO2 can cause to a small amount, most of which has already been realized. That’s because of the ‘saturation’ effect of energy flow from overlap of absorption-emission spectra of carbon dioxide and the most common greenhouse gas, dihydrogen monoxide (water vapour).
Reality is that the climate is not warming at an alarming rate, and sea level is not rising at a rate significantly faster than it has been since the end of the long cool period around 1750AD. (See PSMSL.org for government databases.) Records of surface temperatures are incomplete and contain unexplained ‘adjustments.’ I’ll instead go with traditional weather balloon thermometers and satellite sensors. Climate was stable during the Mycean, Roman, and Medieval warm periods (during which Vikings farmed southwest Greenland).
Climate has always been changing, warm is better for us and our food source (which also benefits from more CO2). Hopefully Earth won’t slide into another ice age.
Petroleum products and coal support health, in many ways from plastics to medicines. Fossil fuels provide affordable portable energy to poor people, in daily life and in case of disaster – why do you want to take it away from them?
I recommend the readable book I Love Fossil Fuels, which has many references to real data.
I don’t understand the religion of people who attack aviation – which brings aid to people after disaster, or extricates them from pending disaster. A major advance for human life.
Oh, right, rabid eco-activists are actually against human life – they preach population control. (Check David Sleazuki – after he sired five children who are begatting grandchildren.)
Good comments, Keith.
I don’t deny the climate is changing. It always has been and always will.
I’m not convinced that we have anything to do with it, and/or if we do it’s enough to matter, and even if that’s the case if there is anything we could or should do about it.
The Earth was created before we were. It will continue after God’s return. It is not something we need to worry about.
Frankly it worries me not at all. Very little if anything truly worries me.
A problem is how you define ‘science’.
Some people define it as digging and learning, testing hypotheses against reality, and turfing any that fail.
Some people define it as what their emotions want the result to be. The claim to use logic but are just rationalizing to appear to prove what they wish to be so.
Some stoop to politicking and lying, as exposed by the leak of documents from the CRU.
And of course COVID is a myth touted by the same alarmists.
What I’d like to see in these comments are things like ‘maybe’ or ‘perhaps’. Everybody is so sure of their positions and speaking as if they’re experts when they don’t know sh*t.
For example: I DON’T know if the science supports climate change as a reality. I haven’t done the research as I’m sure most commenters on this site haven’t either. So don’t post as if you’re an expert, unless you are one
Climate change has always been a reality. Look at the glacier scars in the rocks in upstate New York. Thank God we are coming out of a colder era.
Amen.
Some people are concerned about low solar activity now, but I think it is very difficult to predict climate.
Other than ‘it will change, is usually stable within bounds, but ice ages have occurred’.
I suggest reading the WattsUpWithThat blog for leads to serious research and for debunking of alarmism, renowned climate scientist Judith Currie’s Climate Etc. blog, and Stephen McIntyre’s Climate Audit blog.
(The latter for an education in how to do statistical analysis – or not. Such as the research claiming Antarctica warmed, when in fact only a peninsula did – the peninsula that sticks way north, is exposed to ocean currents, and has hot activity under it.
There’s much GetHomeItis among alarmists – shallow ‘research’, and fraud – read the leak of documents from the CRU to learn of conniving including to block questioners from publication.)
It’s hard to imagine today’s turbofan engines can be matched by electric. A pipe dream.
0 aviation emissions would be tantamount to eliminating most airline travel.
You climate deniers must reside in one of the gray third-world countries on the map on this page: https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/net-zero-coalition . Perhaps you’d prefer to breathe the air in Beijing.
Have a look at the clean, unbelievably clear air over Los Angeles during the April, 2020 lock down: https://youtu.be/AzD5u_fLo70?t=1234 . When peoples’ automobiles are in their garages, the air is clear.
Chopping down and burning all the trees (the California central valley was once an oak forest) that replenish the atmosphere, and filling the air we breathe with heat trapping CO2 by burning sixty million years of sequestered fossil fuels (not to mention cement production) is as stupid as believing in ‘Q.’ We are smarter than that. We are more responsible and enlightened than that.
Pollution is wrong. It’s time mankind used his enlightenment to follow a sustainable course, rather than destroying the garden of Eden the Earth once was. Please.
First off, no one “denies climate”.
Next, atmospheric co2 is not “pollution”.
Next, the trees in CA (or anywhere else) are not 60 million years old,
Unless you can use language correctly, understand context, and apply rationally thought, you might be best not expressing your “opinions” on complicated systems.
How long have petroleum products like oil and coal, ostensibly ancient forests, been sequestered in the ground? Here’s a clue: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/carboniferous
First off, no one “denies climate”.
Haha!
Don’t worry about it!
God’s plan is to burn this current Earth and create a new one. It will be called Heaven. The current state of affairs in the Big Picture is irrelevant in the long run.
Just make sure you are on the right side of the fence. It’s better to know your Maker before you meet Him.
“Irrational beliefs ultimately lead to irrational acts.”
–LDighera
Misleading alert!
Your LA example is of a _local_ area, the climate debate is about the entire planet of which such local areas are a tiny fraction.
Here’s a good explanation of problems with estimating past temperatures: https://climateaudit.org/2020/07/08/a-good-proxy-on-the-antarctic-peninsula/
Generally similar problems arise with recent temperatures, including:
– time scale, catastrophists use only recent decades despite known fluctuations (they often begin in the 1950s which was well into the cooling trend that led to catastrophists claiming agricultural doom from global cooling). When the temperature trend turned around circa 1980 they switched their cries, like the boy who cried wolf.
– undocumented adjustments to popular databases
– failure to fully account for urban heating effect (note that temperature increase is greatest in the Northern Hemisphere where heading of buildings is required, though there may also be an inherent difference between polar areas).
– failure to read history, such as the dry hot times of the 1930s
– conveniently short memories, so they claim one extreme weather is a trend (an example of the variability of weather is that one year in the 1930s had both an unusually cold winter and an unusually hot summer)
– failure to observe changes in water vapour in the atmosphere, in contrast with their incomplete theories called ‘models’ which assume constant water vapour (which contradicts their claim that increased evaporation from higher temperatures will stay in the air thus create a negative feedback).
There’s an mentality at work, whose predictions are about as accurate as the preachers who cry doom then slide the timing endlessly.
I hope that the WEF guys understand that switching from jet fuel to hydrogen may reduce carbon emissions, but it would increase the release of that other greenhouse gas – water vapor. No free lunch there. Also, sustainable aviation fuels don’t reduce carbon emissions in the upper atmosphere. They just emit carbon from a different source. They may help reduce waste materials on the ground, but the atmosphere doesn’t notice the change.
The other thing that they seem to overlook is that tier 1 countries (Australia, Japan, Canada, US and European nations) have successfully reduced their carbon emissions over the past 20 years, while tier 2 and 3 nations (China, India, African and South American countries) have more than doubled their emissions. Tier 2 and 3 countries now account for over 60% of total greenhouse gas emissions. And, that amount is increasing instead of leveling off. So why beat aviation black and blue when there is much larger issues to address? Mainly because it is highly visible and perceived as a perk of rich nations, when in reality, the largest growth in air travel is in the third world. Both Boeing and Airbus now build aircraft that are far more fuel efficient and have lower emissions than in the past. If the WEF is really serious about net-zero carbon emissions, they should tackle the other “inconvenient truth” and address where the problem really is.
Because it is the ideology of catastrophists to attack people near them, they know how far they’d get in Communist China or even India.
And a UN official admitted the real agenda is wealth transfer, which is consistent with Marxism’s fixed-pie drive-to-the-bottom ethics which concludes that anyone with wealth stole it from someone else. Along the way there is Marxism’s praise of contradictions and its blessing of lying for the cause.
Poor people want affordable portable energy.
There’s a huge amount of coal, natural gas, and oil in the world. Brazil is now in ‘drill baby drill’ mode with its huge offshore oil field.
People should also look into the foundations of outfits with impressive sounding names, like the WEF which infers universality.
Often you’d find they are Marxist in economic beliefs, which comes from denial of the effectiveness of the mind for life. Shameful that supposed aviation persons would believe that given that aviation is a great example of human creativity and productivity.
Our planet is moving to the Left. It’s not just Third World nations anymore but England, France, Germany, Canada, USA, and Lord help them even Israel.
I believe this is the final downward spiral and cannot be mitigated.
Global Warming is a diversion. A shell game, or more aptly in this context of Marx, the true opiate of the masses.
Agreed, there is an active, ongoing effort to eradicate democratic (small ‘d’) governments worldwide. Here is the source of that effort in our nation: https://youtu.be/mAplGu1RxPg
“Religion began when the first scoundrel met the first fool” –Voltaire
Haha. Yeah, you and your leftist pals will fix everything.
Good grief, get current. After the Chosen One’s reign of “I alone can fix it”, there’s nothing left to fix. Left, Right, Independent and all others are relaxing stress-free in that profundity. Why aren’t you?
No. You and I will move toward fixing what we can by taking responsibility for our destiny and voting-in honest, intelligent, legislators that represent our views, and not those of greedy bankers and rapacious corporate thieves.
We solemnly entrust our personal franchise in worthy representatives by voting. If we fail to vote, we place our franchise in the hands of amoral bastards who spread lies in the attempt to dupe the gullible into supporting their destructive ends.
Those able to believe in an imaginary deity, are by definition irrational, and thus susceptible to embracing “alternate facts” that lack the support of empirical evidence, and are easily inculcated through fear. It’s time humanity rose from primitive superstition and marched clear-eyed into the future of their choice, instead of kneeling at the alter of pedophile priests and degenerate Pied Pipers who seek to perpetuate their own personal gain.
Please take a minute to better understand the scientific basis for the differences between liberal and conservative physiology that result in opposing points of view, and watch this objective, non-partisan video: https://youtu.be/kI-un8rHP14 . It will help heal the nation. You will feel better. Honestly.
I don’t have any children, so I literally have no horse in this race as I will be long gone before the final results are in.
However, I can say this. The retirement savings that will power my future kit plane and airport community home wouldn’t exist without some prescient investments in numerous things related to batteries and an electric automotive future. Sometimes it is better to adapt and prosper instead of getting caught up in the fundamentals behind the change.
I agree Michael.
When in was profitable to bet against and short Tesla stocks I made money doing that.
When it appeared inevitable that they would grift the system enough to be profitable I stopped shorting and bought and held stock.
Definitely a small part of my portfolio but enough to buy Avgas with.
The fact that I don’t believe electricity is the best or correct future the current political atmosphere makes it inevitable. I accept this but do not embrace it.