this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2023
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Also, if its in human poo it's already in the carbon cycle and so really less of an issue. The problem is bringing up carbon that's been removed from the cycle (subterranean oil or gas pockets) and putting that back into circulation. Granted it would be better to pull carbon out of the atmosphere (somehow), but at least using poo wouldn't be adding NEW carbon. That's my understanding anyway.
Carbon can exist in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, (CH4), or as a lot of bigger organic molecules like ethane. Over years, methane you release will eventually decay into CO2. But until that happens, the methane has 20 times the greenhouse effect that CO2 does. So processes like this can take CO2 from the air and turn it into methane, which is bad.
We need less flying, but if we're going to have flying, it should use technologies like this which have 1/10th the lifecycle emissions of fossil jet fuel.