Following guidance for ‘truth sandwiches’, a simple truth upfront:
- Scientists have concluded, based on multiple strands of evidence, that carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels (including in aviation operations) “damages the climate” system. This is NOT about belief.
On the morning of New Year’s day, my heart went with excitement on turning to page A16 of The Washington Post print edition and seeing the article “Team develops process to turn CO2 into jet fuel“. As an energy/climate geek and activist, paths to net zero aviation are critically important for humanity’s future. In addition, in disclosure, this is a domain where I have had some professional exposure and thus awareness of the challenges and opportunities. My excitement quickly turned to frustration and dismay.
Beyond the absurdity of discussing a university study team’s work in (essentially) breathless tones in a field where significant resources have been spent over the past decade+ with multiple paths forward, let’s take a look at just one paragraph sentence by sentence:
[1] Environmentalists have long believed that commercial flying damages the climate with the massive amount of CO2 that passenger jets emit globally; air travel accounts for about 2.5 percent of worldwide carbon dioxide emissions.
As per the opening ‘truth’, climate science isn’t about “belief” but about scientific conclusions based on significant analysis of numerous data streams and elements. To write “environmentalists have long believed” is to downplay the science and foster an opening for doubt since “environmentalists” are biased advocates and what they have “long believed” can be discounted as advocacy positions.
For a context of the absurdity, when discussing the use of barriers on a skyscraper to inhibit suicide attempts, perhaps Post reporters should write “anti-suicide advocates have long believed that gravity contributes to health risks from jumping off high buildings.”
This sentence also has provides a good example of the article’s basic and sloppy errors: slipping from “passenger jets” to “air travel contributes”. When it comes to the 2.5% figure, that is all aviation of which passenger aviation is a (major) portion — not the entirety. Also,
[2] The problem is rooted in the burning of fossil fuels, a process that essentially takes carbon buried beneath the Earth’s surface and releases it into the atmosphere.
Seriously, are we in 1970 or an elementary school classroom with a need to explain in such basic terms that burning fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere? Sadly, this isn’t the sole example of such shallowly pedantic material in the article. Either/or Post editors and journalists are themselves or think their readership so ignorant that they think “news” worth reporting.
And, by the way, it isn’t that “the problem is rooted in the burning of fossil fuels” but is the impact that burning fossil fuels has on the climate system.
[3] The process is thought to contribute to global warming.
Even worse than belief, here is a passive voice (who thinks this?) statement of uncertainty — that burning fossil fuels is “thought to contribute” rather than the truthful statement that burning fossil fuels does contribute to (even drive — perhaps 80% of CO2 emissions in past 50 years) global warming.
Sadly, the article’s faults aren’t limited to one abysmal paragraph:
- This article is about an interesting published academic paper about a path for leveraging renewable power and CO2 captured from the atmosphere to make synthetic fuel for aviation and thus displace fossil fuels (and enable ‘net zero’ aviation operations). Interesting and potentially even a serious breakthrough path, but an academic paper from “an experimental process” that is many steps from commercial application — if it ever gets there. As written awhile ago about the MIT press team’s skill at getting attention for press release’s about lab activity, “overhyping of items that might be years or decades from deployment (if ever to deploy) helps foster a ‘technology will solve everything’ (or ‘solution is just around the corner’) mentality (subconsciously, if not consciously) that undermines the ability to understand that we have things, in hand, to run with to help solve problems.”
- In terms of ‘breathless’, the article doesn’t provide any indication that there are many working on such CO2-to-fuel efforts and that they have been for quite awhile. As just a taste of what is out there, here are two U.S. government funded efforts: the Department of Energy’s Solar Fuels program and the Congressionally funded SEA FUELS (Securing Energy for our Armed Forces Using Engineering Leadership) program in the Department of Defense. Hype without context.
- In seeking to summarize the process, the article implies (even states) that the CO2 capture-to-fuel production would occur on aircraft. (“Essentially, a jet would extract the gas from the air while on the ground and reemit it via combustion while in flight.”) This Back-to-the-Future like concept might make a great science fiction device but isn’t in anyone’s playbook for the coming decades (if not centuries). Actually, it appears that the intent would be to have fuel manufacturing co-located with carbon capture activities at high-polluting facilities (such as steel plants).
- And, well, sigh …
Painful and problematic with a blockbuster finish:
The Oxford team wants within three years to complete a transatlantic trip based on its artificial fuel.
Wow, three years from producing a few vials in the laboratory to having fuel certified for aviation usage and producing (let’s say) 30,000 gallons for a single transatlantic flight. While it would be wonderful if such crash efforts were part and parcel of humanity’s efforts to address climate change, sadly this doesn’t comport with how governments, science, and business work. While it is a hopeful vision that the Oxford team is able to have clean fuel in production and certified for a 2024 flight, and that this lays the basis for displacing all fossil fuels from commercial aviation within a decade, that hopeful vision seems beyond far-fetched and ending with such a mistaken Silver Bullet suggestion caps off a highly problematic Washington Post commencement of its 2021 climate, energy, and technology reporting.