Over 150k Flights: Airlines Just Flew the Busiest Day in Recorded History

Post by julosflb » Wed, Jul 29, 2026, 6:46 AM UTC

Tarsul wrote: post #61

K0nserv wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you are correct, in practice there's no way to put this particularly genie back in the bottle. It's the same as trying to argue that we should solve our energy problems by asking people to consume less energy. Outside of some climate dictatorship, it's not happening. Also, on travel, I think there's a lot to be said for the value of travel and being exposed to other cultures and societies. "Travel is fatal to…

I believe climate dictatorship will come already this century if our decarbonisation efforts stay as weak as they are. It won't be under that name though. One sufficient policy would be to price everything in money + co2 equivalent currency. Every person in a country gets a certain co2 currency budget per year. Pretty simple actually (yeah yeah, the small print will still be long but the gist is simple).

Post by rienbdj » Wed, Jul 29, 2026, 7:59 AM UTC

megablast wrote: post #11

K0nserv wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flying is a bit unique in that there aren't really viable alternatives. It also accounts for a fairly small portion of emissions. Land transport (cars and trucks), power generation, and heating are where the big wins exist with viable alternatives.

What?? In Europe there are lots of viable alternatives. Same as Asia!!

Post by londons_explore » Wed, Jul 29, 2026, 8:41 AM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #95

londons_explore wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trains are expensive because the track is 99.9% empty. If you could fill a train track as much as a road is filled, it would be very cheap

Track utilisation is limited by a number of factors, including headways, much of which is governed by stopping distance. I believe a general minimum practical headway allows about 10--12 trainsets per hour on a given track. At 400 passengers/trainset, that's roughly 4,000 to 4,800 passengers/hour, per track. That compares with about 1,500 vehicles/hour per highway lane, or about 2,550 passengers/hour at the U.S. aver…

Post by iso1631 » Wed, Jul 29, 2026, 10:07 AM UTC

greggoB wrote: post #71

melling wrote: post #55

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It’s 2.5-3% of all global emissions. People who complain about aviation do more harm than good. We would accomplish more by closing a few coal power plants and replacing them with renewables or nuclear. And no one would even notice. Can you believe it’s almost 2030 and we still haven’t reached peak coal.

> People who complain about aviation do more harm than good. I find this a bit hard to swallow. It speaks to a sense of impunity wrt emissions for a demographic that very arguably drives much of the rest of the way energy is consumed. It is one of many choice this demographic has the privelage of making, in contrast to much of the rest of the population. Have you ever met a coal or oil exec who was shy about flying?…

Post by bluGill » Wed, Jul 29, 2026, 10:56 AM UTC

rickydroll wrote: post #102

dredmorbius wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OTOH, there's a lot of stuff that is far more feasibly moved on the Earth's surface rather than in flight. So some sort of surface-level infrastructure will be required: highways, railroads, canals, rivers, oceans. Some of those are amenable to high-speed variants, some less so. And once you've established transport corridors, much of the hard part (rights-of-way acquisition) is accomplished, so that adding a high-sp…

Good points. I think that running rail parallel to highways, especially if the rail can travel twice to three times as fast as road traffic, is a good plan. I think increasing the viability of travel between smaller airports is a good thing for those times when you don't want to spend a lot of time traveling or waiting for a transit vehicle. If the equivalent of micromobility air travel comes to fruition, you'll see…