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Show HN: Find the most climate friendly meeting location

meetinglocationcalculator.com

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Re: Show HN: Find the most climate friendly meeting location

#31

Post by Jolter »

jsharf wrote: post #10
wolrah wrote: post #7

This is a really neat tool, but I'm having a hard time imagining situations where it'd be all that useful, where people from substantially different locations all need to meet in person, but don't care where they're meeting. How often does that happen? Am I missing something?

I think for academic conferences, they typically choose a venue that changes every year. This could be used to aid in selecting a venue.

They won’t know who’s attending then they book the venue. It works the other way around, usually.

And of course, if you don’t know who’s attending…

Re: Show HN: Find the most climate friendly meeting location

#33

Post by wolrah »

cagenut wrote: post #17
wolrah wrote: post #7

This is a really neat tool, but I'm having a hard time imagining situations where it'd be all that useful, where people from substantially different locations all need to meet in person, but don't care where they're meeting. How often does that happen? Am I missing something?

there is a small but growing cohort of people who both a.) work in all or predominantly remote orgs and b.) understand the carbon cost of flying. if your team meets those critera then this is the only way to make these decisions. even if your team doesn't entirely agree on b, those of us who do can use this to inform our votes on where to meet.

My emphasis for that sort of scenario would be on the *need* to meet in person aspect. I've been working remote exclusive for over a decade at this point and even though we're all in the same part of a single US state the last time more than two of us occupied the same building at the same time was years ago.

The more people or travel groups you add to the equation the less likely it is in my mind that you actually needed to physically meet unless you're meeting to do something in the real world which usually can't be done absolutely anywhere. If you're not meeting somewhere specific to do a thing in that place why couldn't the meeting have been done virtually?

Someone else suggested conferences, and I guess that could make sense in the case of small conferences where any random major airport hotel can handle their needs and a substantial portion of the attendees can be expected to vote, but it doesn't scale.

Re: Show HN: Find the most climate friendly meeting location

#34

Post by jamilton »

bagels wrote: post #30
iso8859-1 wrote: post #6

Isn't it better to meet in a place where one of the people is already located? Then one less person has to fly, and they can use their saved time to work and offset the CO2 spent by the additional time traveled by the others.

If you enter two locations, it picks one of the two as the meeting place.

Not necessarily. San Francisco and New York give me Chicago.

Re: Show HN: Find the most climate friendly meeting location

#35

Post by outside1234 »

Strange that it doesn't choose one of the locations people are in.

For example, for me it chose Toronto for an international meeting even tho one of the folks attending was from New York City. Why not NYC to prevent one person from traveling.

Also, you need weighting, as often there are multiple people from a location.

Re: Show HN: Find the most climate friendly meeting location

#36

Post by melx »

tbabej wrote: post #26

Europe has quite a few high-quality, high-speed rail connections. If I may suggest a feature, in order for the tool is to be faithful to its mission, alternative mods of transport could be supported as well. Personally, I am more than happy to take an overnight train than a short-flight, given the additional overhead of travelling to/from the airport. An overnight train can take you pretty far within continental Euro…

That's what I'm going to do this August with my 3yr old as we'll be visiting friends and family etc.

I'd be taking a train to London (about 3h), then EuroStar to Paris (2h 15), then to Berlin (about 8h). Total time ~13 hours.

Flight time for me to Berlin is ~4h, but to get to Airport and the wait for boarding brings it probably close to 8h, but then I can't visit the relatives in Paris that easy.

Actually I don't like flying that much these days (the eco reasons aside).

Re: Show HN: Find the most climate friendly meeting location

#37

Post by wiml »

jameshart wrote: post #20
wolrah wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't it better to meet in a place where one of the people is already located? Then one less person has to fly, and they can use their saved time to work and offset the CO2 spent by the additional time traveled by the others. I'm not sure if the tool specifically accounts for that or if the math just ends up working out, but I was testing with various combinations of my family and it always ended up at someone's ho…

It's certainly not always the case. In planar Euclidean geometry, for any three points, if the triangle formed by those three points has all its angles less than 120 degrees, then the sum of the distances from the three points to certain points inside the triangle will be smaller than the sum of the shortest two sides. Only if one of the angles exceeds 120 degrees will one of the three points always have the shortest…

The carbon cost of a flight isn't a linear function of its distance, though — takeoff is much more expensive than cruise, and on long flights there's the cost of hauling the fuel itself, rocket-equation style. (Presumably the data underlying this website accounts for all that.)

Re: Show HN: Find the most climate friendly meeting location

#38

Post by jamilton »

kortilla wrote: post #24
capableweb wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure if the tool specifically accounts for that or if the math just ends up working out, but I was testing with various combinations of my family and it always ended up at someone's home airport. Not sure. But if you put the two locations of Caracas, VE and San Francisco, US, they suggest meeting in Houston, US. Does it make sense? Is it more environmental friendly for two people to meet in the middle rathe…

Better for one to travel. A disproportionate amount of a flight’s fuel is in takeoff and climb. Meeting in Houston is far worse because you’ve doubled the required takeoff rolls.

The tool claims to take that into account, it breaks it down in the "show report" button. Liftoff is 3 tons of CO2.

Re: Show HN: Find the most climate friendly meeting location

#39

Post by abdullahkhalids »

jameshart wrote: post #20
wolrah wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't it better to meet in a place where one of the people is already located? Then one less person has to fly, and they can use their saved time to work and offset the CO2 spent by the additional time traveled by the others. I'm not sure if the tool specifically accounts for that or if the math just ends up working out, but I was testing with various combinations of my family and it always ended up at someone's ho…

It's certainly not always the case. In planar Euclidean geometry, for any three points, if the triangle formed by those three points has all its angles less than 120 degrees, then the sum of the distances from the three points to certain points inside the triangle will be smaller than the sum of the shortest two sides. Only if one of the angles exceeds 120 degrees will one of the three points always have the shortest…

I would expect that aircraft emissions have a fixed cost + a distance dependent variable cost. Coupled with the fact that we are optimizing over a discrete set of locations, it is very possible that the optimal location is at one of the corners of the triangle.

Re: Show HN: Find the most climate friendly meeting location

#40

Post by jameshart »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #39
jameshart wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's certainly not always the case. In planar Euclidean geometry, for any three points, if the triangle formed by those three points has all its angles less than 120 degrees, then the sum of the distances from the three points to certain points inside the triangle will be smaller than the sum of the shortest two sides. Only if one of the angles exceeds 120 degrees will one of the three points always have the shortest…

I would expect that aircraft emissions have a fixed cost + a distance dependent variable cost. Coupled with the fact that we are optimizing over a discrete set of locations, it is very possible that the optimal location is at one of the corners of the triangle.

… sure, but also possible that it won’t always be.
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