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by frouge 1156 days ago
In case you missed it, there is a global climate emergency on planet Earth. Governments and agencies are letting it happen. So you can argue that they are doing their jobs and solving the problem as it's their job, but it's also possible that they're not doing it. And do you think Elon Musk will throw away millions in investments because of birds?
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How does launching rockets into space prevent climate change?
The Starship is worst-case carbon neutral (burning methane generated from CO2 in the atmosphere) and best-case carbon negative. It can be carbon negative because methane is a potent greenhouse gas that is expensive to recover, with little economic value, and largely brought up to the surface from underground oil wells. Thus, this methane is often vented right to atmosphere. Actually burning it in Starship converts it into CO2, which has about 1/20 the long-term climate effect as would the otherwise-vented methane.