31–40 of 220 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Air travel is not a problem because the emissions per kilometer are that bad but because one can easily travel one or two orders of magnitude farther than one usually would.
So your preferred solution is to restrict the allowed travel radius of people, a bit like with medieval serfs?
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All overland passenger transport should be rail. Over the oceans I suppose we should strive for ships and dirigibles. That said, I find it hard to believe that plane travel can be eradicated for e.g. diplomacy. And frankly, if frequent contract between the powerful different countries is needed to avoid e.g. world wars, it's is worth it. In the short term, any carbon we can capture needs to go in back in ground and s…
Unless we dramatically increase vacation time or dramatically increase rail speeds, that would mean that many people would not be able to see their families and friends or travel to events.
If you make it a fast train, at 350km/h, it will beat the plane on any trip up to 1700km.
Most trips are short, so no, most trips can be done by train and people still spend less time on them than by plane.
> These studies, along with tens of thousands of claims against the Air Force for property damage—horses and turkeys had supposedly died or gone insane—led the F.A.A. to ban civil overland supersonic flight, in 1973. There was also a political part involved. The Concorde was a British-French creation, not a Boeing. Had there been a Boeing supersonic passenger plane first there would probably have been different FAA r…
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... and fast fashion is probably worse than both if what I read is correct. FTR: Years go by between everytime I travel by plane so I don't feel I have anything to defend, I just think it is good to keep the big picture in mind.
Agree, and the airlines absolutely need to keep working to become more climate friendly just like we need to make road travel better. But climate-shaming specifically air travel while at the same time driving a non-electric car or using air conditioning without having solar panels is very hypocritical because both of those and many other things are a far bigger part of the total emissions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
All overland passenger transport should be rail. Over the oceans I suppose we should strive for ships and dirigibles. That said, I find it hard to believe that plane travel can be eradicated for e.g. diplomacy. And frankly, if frequent contract between the powerful different countries is needed to avoid e.g. world wars, it's is worth it. In the short term, any carbon we can capture needs to go in back in ground and s…
Unless we dramatically increase vacation time or dramatically increase rail speeds, that would mean that many people would not be able to see their families and friends or travel to events.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Air travel has a big PR problem, because somehow a lot of people think it's the absolute worst for the environment. While on many routes a car is worse in terms of CO2 emission per trip than a small to mid sized airliner if there are less than 3 people in the car. Similar for your suggestion that we should take ships over the ocean, because cruise ships are much more polluting per passenger mile than modern airliners…
Air travel is not a problem because the emissions per kilometer are that bad but because one can easily travel one or two orders of magnitude farther than one usually would.
They will still use an enormous amount of fuel, carry fewer passengers, and heavily pollute the environment. I'm not too excited about the prospects.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless we dramatically increase vacation time or dramatically increase rail speeds, that would mean that many people would not be able to see their families and friends or travel to events.
Well, in a plane trip you have 3 lost hours before it starts and after it ends, so a normal train, running at 130km/h will be faster than a plane at 850km/h for any trip of less than ~460km. If you make it a fast train, at 350km/h, it will beat the plane on any trip up to 1700km. Most trips are short, so no, most trips can be done by train and people still spend less time on them than by plane.
Even more than just the distance, though, is the fact that there would be no practical way to have direct rail lines to every major city in the US.
Trains are useful, but there is no way they could replace air travel in the US.
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Unless we dramatically increase vacation time or dramatically increase rail speeds, that would mean that many people would not be able to see their families and friends or travel to events.
Absolutely not. 300 kph HSR rail exists in developed countries. (2680 miles) / (300 kilometers per hour) = 14.3768064 hours That's coast to coast in ~ 1/2 day. Ships and blimps represent a much larger decrease in travel time over airplanes than rail. They perhaps pose a to be solved, but rail doesn't.
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If we had high-speed rail everywhere at 300km/h you can cross almost any country overnight, that radius of 3600km would give you 80% of all plane travel.
At energy and cost levels that exceed airline travel, per passenger-mile.
Quick Googling doesn't reveal any obvious authoritative answers (but a ton of guessing and unsubstantiated claims). The most authoritative/unbiased source seems to be this Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transport
But the head-to-head comparisons are mostly gaps when it comes to trains, and the sections on trains and planes are in completely different families of units that makes comparison extremely non-trivial. :(