Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Air Travel Emissions Vastly Outpace Predictions

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 325 posts

Re: Air Travel Emissions Vastly Outpace Predictions

#101

Post by j-pb »

If I take the train, which is the most green transport (CO2 neutral) from one edge of europe to the other (e.g. Berlin to Sicily), the amount I pay is 500 euros and it takes me 35 hours.

If I fly the same distance it takes me 3 hours, and I pay 100 euros.

Heres the kicker, it costs me 100 euro to buy CO2 compensation and make the flight CO2 neutral, and whenever me and my spouse fly we always pay twice that so that we are actually carbon negative.

So everytime we fly we reduce the earths CO2 by one flight and still have 200 euros more in our bank account.

Re: Air Travel Emissions Vastly Outpace Predictions

#102

Post by sp332 »

misiti3780 wrote: post #2

"Over all, air travel accounts for about 2.5 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions — a far smaller share than emissions from passenger cars or power plants." 2.5% means we should focus on reducing somewhere else in the near term.

On the other hand, air travel is relatively difficult to de-carbonize due to fuel density requirements. So it's going to need lots of R&D investment now so we have something ready to go once we've addressed the cheaper stuff.

Re: Air Travel Emissions Vastly Outpace Predictions

#103

Post by WhompingWindows »

misiti3780 wrote: post #2

"Over all, air travel accounts for about 2.5 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions — a far smaller share than emissions from passenger cars or power plants." 2.5% means we should focus on reducing somewhere else in the near term.

Near term, we should be slamming money into batteries and energy density of said batteries, if we want to decarbonize air-travel. Electric planes have numerous advantages, but jet fuel is just so much more energy dense than a battery at the current juncture. Hopefully by 2050, we will be able to scale up from smaller electric airplanes in the 2020-2030 timeframe, such that jet liners will be decarbonized too.

Re: Air Travel Emissions Vastly Outpace Predictions

#105

Post by andreasley »

wmf wrote: post #95
Maximus9000 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The week following 9/11 was dramatically different. NASA recorded the change in daily temperature range. Less significantly, we had crystal clear skys where I live - for a week!" Do you have links for this?

https://web.archive.org/web/20160411094048/http://www.atmos.... https://www.nature.com/news/2008/081231/full/news.2008.1335....

The second link actually states the opposite: "A new analysis now claims that altered US temperature patterns during the three flight-free days can be explained by natural variations in cloud cover, rather than the absence of planes."

Re: Air Travel Emissions Vastly Outpace Predictions

#106

Post by goldcd »

usaar333 wrote: post #55
misiti3780 wrote: post #2

"Over all, air travel accounts for about 2.5 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions — a far smaller share than emissions from passenger cars or power plants." 2.5% means we should focus on reducing somewhere else in the near term.

It's the high growth rate that is the issue, not the existing amount.

And also the difficulty replacing the fuel in the increasing number of flights.

On the ground, we're starting to have "entirely green days" for electricity - and say new cars that use it.

Re: Air Travel Emissions Vastly Outpace Predictions

#107

Post by ddxxdd »

funklute wrote: post #21
martamoreno2 wrote: post #8

2.5% eh? We should all immediately stop flying... This is outrageous. Just imagine, 2.5%!! But on a more serious note, this article is again wrong, like so many others about climate change. Being a combination of clickbait and false assumptions, it fails to miss the point entirely that first, 2.5% are irrelevant, but also that it makes no sense whatsoever to tackle this now. The technology is just not there yet. What…

Any time someone actually does the math on sucking carbon out of the atmosphere, it seemingly becomes clear that it is simply not scalable to suck the carbon out of the atmosphere. Have you done the math, and if so, why is everyone who comes to the aforementioned conclusion wrong?

I have repeatedly heard scientists say that planting 1 trillion trees will singlehandedly set climate change back 10 years. I've done the math on that myself and found that such a plan is about 5000 times more cost-effective than driving Tesla vehicles: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19714034

Anytime anybody says anything about the social cost of carbon being greater than $0.50 per ton, I just tune them out.

Re: Air Travel Emissions Vastly Outpace Predictions

#108

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #82
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if said super batteries and efficient sequestration never develop? Why isn't creating lower emission power supplies on your list? I understand that the batteries save green power for when it can't be produced, but if we could find other, better, low or zero emission power sources, wouldn't that be just as good? I'm just confused why those are the two must have technologies, which don't yet exist, and not others,…

Find other low or zero emission power sources is the same as "innovation is required to combat client change" as OP. Technically nuclear would be perfect but practically I fear that ship already sailed nothing else up an coming except maybe fusion has any potential as a real baseload powersource. Without another breakthrough in battery technology solar and wind will never be more than the token effort they are today.

I'm not laying that out as the better option, just that if we're going to create arbitrary lists of things that was solve climate change, I don't understand what the criteria was to make the cut or not, outside of one's own personal preference.

Re: Air Travel Emissions Vastly Outpace Predictions

#109

Post by bjelkeman-again »

tombert wrote: post #86

I fly fairly frequently to California from NY for work, lately after reading a few articles like this, I wonder if I should put my foot down to my manager and tell them that I'm not going to anymore until flying is less terrible for the atmosphere. I don't think I'll be fired for that, and even if I were I'd probably be able to find another job without too much trouble at this point, but I feel a bit bad for people d…

I did change. I dropped from 35-40 flights in 12 months (really not good, in more ways than one) to 3-4. Still too many. But getting there.

Re: Air Travel Emissions Vastly Outpace Predictions

#110

Post by sp332 »

tempsy wrote: post #87

Can we start by banning the cruise ship industry first? I cannot think of a mode of transportation and form of leisure that is as useless and ecologically damaging.

Well there's a new low-sulphur fuel regulation coming into effect in a few months. http://www.imo.org/en/MediaCentre/PressBriefings/Pages/MEPC-... That will help with some of the pollution anyway.
Post reply on HN