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Air Travel Emissions Vastly Outpace Predictions

nytimes.com

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Re: Air Travel Emissions Vastly Outpace Predictions

#291

Post by triceratops »

opportune wrote: post #165
blunte wrote: post #136

If you need to travel long distances, there's little substitute for an airplane. If air travel accounts for less emissions than passenger cars, and if the top 15 polluting large container ships produce as much (noxious oxides of nitrogen and sulphur) pollution as all cars, then we need to fix shipping first. And if you look at a lot of the crap that is being shipped, it's stuff we just don't need. A lot of things are…

All of these can be fixed with carbon taxes going towards a carbon offset program. At the end of the day we still need cheap plastic shit so just fully price in the externalities

> At the end of the day we still need cheap plastic shit

Do we though? Especially in the quantities that we currently consume?

Re: Air Travel Emissions Vastly Outpace Predictions

#292

Post by triceratops »

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…

Ask if your manager if you can expense carbon offsets for all your business flying.

Re: Air Travel Emissions Vastly Outpace Predictions

#293

Post by notJim »

Robotbeat wrote: post #265
abootstrapper wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Low hanging fruit, assuming you can afford to purchase a new car. Soooo, not so low hanging for a lot of people.

Low hanging fruit assuming you can afford a decent used car. I bought both of my EVs used for $10k apiece (and will save about half of those amounts in gas and maintenance costs...). I see lots of people driving around very large vehicles which, new or used, they probably don't absolutely require and which have both high upfront costs and high operating costs. I think you'd have more of a point if most people were dr…

Electric cars come with a number of tradeoffs that make them harder to incorporate than skipping a few flights, IMO. If you're single, you don't have a road-trip car anymore (because you only own one car, and a $10k EV is not great for road trips). If you live in an apartment, there's often nowhere to charge the electric car, or you have to buy a parking spot in your building which is expensive AF and limited. A lot of the cheaper EVs feel cheap, which is another sacrifice.

Re: Air Travel Emissions Vastly Outpace Predictions

#294

Post by notJim »

flavor8 wrote: post #132
ddxxdd wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

On what timescale? I.e. trees take time to grow and accumulate carbon. As I understand it, the climate clock is ticking - there's a threshold beyond which some runaway effects kick in.

> trees take time to grow and accumulate carbon

They also burn down or are harvested quite regularly.

Re: Air Travel Emissions Vastly Outpace Predictions

#296

Post by IanCal »

nateburke wrote: post #193
Lramseyer wrote: post #168

One thing that's very important to keep in mind when looking at air travel emissions is how fuel efficient planes actually are. The math works out to around 100 miles per gallon per passenger. And at an underwhelming 2.5% of global emissions, I can't really put it in the category of "low hanging fruit." That's not to say that we shouldn't invest in things like high speed rail, (because we absolutely will see quality…

Yes, while 100 mpg per passenger is roughly 2x the best hybrid car, the presence of air travel as an option, especially in a business context allows individuals to accrue many orders of magnitude _more miles_. MPG per passenger is the wrong unit. Gallons per person per hour of active transport seems like a better unit to measure. For example, say your non-hybrid car gets 30 mpg, and you average 30 miles per hour betw…

That's a very odd measure. That would put driving the car at 15mph getting 20mpg as better than 30mph getting 30mpg.

Re: Air Travel Emissions Vastly Outpace Predictions

#297

Post by henryfjordan »

triceratops wrote: post #291
opportune wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of these can be fixed with carbon taxes going towards a carbon offset program. At the end of the day we still need cheap plastic shit so just fully price in the externalities

> At the end of the day we still need cheap plastic shit Do we though? Especially in the quantities that we currently consume?

we'll find that out once it is correctly priced with a carbon tax

Re: Air Travel Emissions Vastly Outpace Predictions

#298

Post by henryfjordan »

Robotbeat wrote: post #235
alex_young wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds great, but how do you manage to offset 2 flights? I don't really understand how money can undo putting a bunch of carbon in the atmosphere.

You're paying for pulling the carbon back out. The cheapest way to do this is to pay someone to plant trees for you.

You've only succeeded if that tree eventually gets sucked into the earth and turned back into oil eventually. If it gets cut down for fuel you've done nothing.

Re: Air Travel Emissions Vastly Outpace Predictions

#299

Post by abathur »

henrikschroder wrote: post #281
esotericn wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. 7 billion people is an unfathomable amount. You don't understand what it means. I don't understand what it means. A person can tackle a bug in a tracker. A company can tackle a bug tracker. A few cities' worth can tackle manufacturing the computer. The world? We got this. All in. If we're enough to fuck it up, we're enough to sort it out.

> If we're enough to fuck it up, we're enough to sort it out. That's the one thought that gives me comfort around the whole climate crisis problem. We humans have screwed up the climate through absolute mountains of labour. It didn't just happen, it happened as an emergent property of all the various economic activities that humans have been doing for hundreds of years. We don't lack labour to tackle the problem, we…

To be fair, we didn't have to understand the climate to break it.

Re: Air Travel Emissions Vastly Outpace Predictions

#300

Post by megaremote »

blunte wrote: post #136

If you need to travel long distances, there's little substitute for an airplane. If air travel accounts for less emissions than passenger cars, and if the top 15 polluting large container ships produce as much (noxious oxides of nitrogen and sulphur) pollution as all cars, then we need to fix shipping first. And if you look at a lot of the crap that is being shipped, it's stuff we just don't need. A lot of things are…

> when we need to fix shipping first.

Yes, lets only focus on one problem at a time, right? We are only one person after all.

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