Aircraft Responsible For 2.5% of Global Carbon Dioxide Emissions 232
jIyajbe writes: Christie Aschwanden of FiveThirtyEight.com reports that the world's aircraft are responsible for roughly 2.5% of global carbon dioxide emissions. The industry as a whole puts out more CO2 than most countries, and emissions are expected to grow significantly over the next few decades. She writes, "Planes don't just release carbon dioxide, they also emit nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides and black carbon, as well as water vapor that can form heat-trapping clouds... These emissions take place in the upper troposphere, where their effects are magnified. When this so-called radiative forcing effect is taken into account, aviation emissions produce about 2.7 times the warming effects of CO2 alone." A related article breaks down how much each airline pollutes, relative to the others. Alaska, Spirit, and Frontier are tied for the highest fuel efficiency score, while American beats out Allegiant Air and Sun Country for the lowest spot.
Vs Driving? (Score:2, Insightful)
How much greenhouse gas would be emitted if everybody drove their car, or took a boat vs. flying? Me thinks much more.
Most people who take planes aren't going to take buses either. The main advantage is the speed.
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How much greenhouse gas would be emitted if everybody drove their car, or took a boat vs. flying? Me thinks much more.
Most people who take planes aren't going to take buses either. The main advantage is the speed.
The point isn't to just stop flying. The point is, focusing all of your efficiency standards on automobiles is stupid.
Those that support "Green" energy often have a very naive view of what exactly "Green" is. Solar panels are the answer to all of our problems... but they never consider the effects of silver mining and glass production of the panels. Hydroelectric is carbon neutral! But destroys vast swaths of the ecosystem in the process. Electric cars don't produce CO2! Yet 67% of our electricity comes fro
Re:Vs Driving? (Score:4, Interesting)
Green fanboys and fangirls often suck at math, or at least lack the critical thinking to apply it. Often it undermines their arguments, often in laughable ways. My favorite forehead slapping example is of fanboys doing "green" remodels who rip out perfectly good counter tops and back splashes so they can install something that is "sustainable" or recycled. Boggles the mind. Driving to the local farm or farmer's market to "buy local" often is self defeating when you realize the modest amount of produce at a stand was driven maybe 100 miles that morning by a pickup truck that morning. Efficiencies of scale at large operations don't look like a warm fuzzy good thing, but often they are vastly less energy intensive per veggie than your backyard garden or even your farmer's market veggie.
However, please don't assume that all those pushing for "green" solutions are unthinking green drones.
Also, please include the costs of sticking to the course on fossil fuels. Currently our middle east policies, and their war costs, are usually not included in the cost of a gallon of gas. Should we have an Isreal foreign aid surcharge on a gallon of gas? How about a despot welfare fund surcharge?
Solar is a good niche that fills a real need at a real time. Summer AC usage causes a peak in power usage in summer, in the afternoon, which lines up well (not perfectly) with solar's output. Solar looks to be a good 10-20% solution that complements new or existing power sources. Hydro is not perfect, having a lot of side impacts on the streams and rivers, but in the PNW it accounts for over half the power supply to my house. It has a huge advantage of being adjustable and can be the counter point to solar and wind, picking up the slack when the wind doesn't blow or the sun isn't shining, and saving its stored energy when those are cranking. We can also do a lot on the load side to move energy intensive activities to line up with power availability, but we need new standards and incentives to make the "smart" grid start living up to the hype.
We can do better, and I would be all for trying to doing better at capturing the externalities to all energy sources. Petroleum should foot the bill for our middle east adventures, coal should better foot the bill for their extra high C02 emissions, nuclear should better shoulder the burden of waste disposal, etc. There are many sources of energy that would be more economically viable if the true costs were imposed on each source. I don't expect a single energy source to be the one true solution (thorium fixes everything!!! Not.). I do expect that we will be better remembered by history if we try harder before things get to any more of a crisis level.
Hydroelectric and the environment (Score:2)
Yes, hydro dams can and do destroy vast tracts of river ecosystem but they also create a vast ecosystem of lake, which while different cannot be ignored when discussing environmental impact. My hometown has a large area of swamps and wetlands that are over 100 years old directly attributable to an old dam that produced power for a long defunct mill. Remove the dam, restore the river and eliminate several thousands of acres of wetlands. Not a win in my book.
Not saying that dams are all good but dams and h
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You got it. Airline travel is more efficient per mile traveled than all other forms of transportation practically available in North America. In Europe train is an alternative and people massively use trains over short haul flights i.e. less than 1,000km.
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If the oceans put about 70 gigatonnes of co2 and land puts about 70 giga tonnes wouldn't aviation's 500 mt (according to TFA) be less than 1%?
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How much greenhouse gas would be emitted if everybody drove their car, or took a boat vs. flying? Me thinks much more.
That may be what you thinks, but have you checked?
http://environment.about.com/o... [about.com]
That says no, cars would be worse. I'd expect boats would be too, if everyone took their own.
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Commercial air travel runs roughly 50 mpg per passenger. It also has the advantage of flying mostly as the crow flies, so there are a few more percent advantage if include the jogs and winding nature of roadways.
Traveling solo is more "green" on a plane, while a packed mini-van can readily beat a plane on a purely mpg basis. Trains and buses should be best, but they are also the slowest option. So unless fuel prices exploded, I don't see them ever being the wave of the future.
My interest is very much pea
This is why we don't have flying cars. (Score:2)
In the past visions of an utopian future, is based on having a Portable, Safe and Affordable Energy source.
While CO2 causing global warming was know back in these future prediction, the scope wasn't really understood. Oil Was very cheap, and the Idea of Nuclear being good for everyone was still popular.
Flying takes a lot of energy. We never solved the problem of Portable, Safe, Clean (A new modern condition), and Affordable Energy. Back to the Future had Mr. Fusion, If we had Mr. Fusion today I could see
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Flying isn't too bad. I once did a quick calculation that put flying a small Cessna at using about 2x the fuel of a regular car for the same point-to-point distance. Most flights are typically hundreds of people so I wouldn't be surprised if it broke even well before having 100 people on a flight. If this were not the case, it wouldn't be so cheap to fly (look at ticket prices. Most of that is services and taxes).
Re:This is why we don't have flying cars. (Score:5, Informative)
From some website:
A plane like a Boeing 747 uses approximately 1 gallon of fuel (about 4 liters) every second. Over the course of a 10-hour flight, it might burn 36,000 gallons (150,000 liters). According to Boeing's Web site, the 747 burns approximately 5 gallons of fuel per mile (12 liters per kilometer).
This sounds like a tremendously poor miles-per-gallon rating! But consider that a 747 can carry as many as 568 people. Let's call it 500 people to take into account the fact that not all seats on most flights are occupied. A 747 is transporting 500 people 1 mile using 5 gallons of fuel. That means the plane is burning 0.01 gallons per person per mile. In other words, the plane is getting 100 miles per gallon per person! The typical car gets about 25 miles per gallon, so the 747 is much better than a car carrying one person, and compares favorably even if there are four people in the car. Not bad when you consider that the 747 is flying at 550 miles per hour (900 km/h)!
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Yep. And like I say, we're talking point-to-point. In many cases, a plane will significantly less distance to get from point A to point B as a car would.
Re:This is why we don't have flying cars. (Score:4, Insightful)
Additionally, as mentioned in these Slashdot comments, the pollutants are more damaging when released at 35,000 feet than at ground level.
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Funny how things turn out, isn't it? Instead of having flying cars to make it easier for you to reach the world, we got the internet to make it easier for the world to come to you. No contest which strategy uses less energy.
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Actually, we have both flying buses and cars. Ever hear of private jets?
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I have not seen a single private jet on the freeway this week.
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Here in Portland our MAX light rail has a pretty good cross section of the population. I only have pause riding it during the commuting rush hour when it is overpacked.
CO2 per passenger mile (Score:4, Insightful)
Figure it that way (even with the multiplier for altitude effects). Then get back to me.
Atmosfair, a German organization that sells "offsets"
I thought I disabled ads.
P.S. In my day, we called them indulgences [wikipedia.org], not offsets.
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P.S. In my day, we called them indulgences [wikipedia.org], not offsets
Brilliant!
Refrigerator (Score:2)
in other words, completely negligible (Score:2)
Clearly not one more minute should be spent worrying about the polluting effects of aviation, but rather ground transport, industry and power generation are where the focus should be.
Author can't comprehend math and magnitudes..
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If AA, one of the largest airlines with one of the worst scores could achieve the number that Spirit (one of the smallest airlines with the best numbers) could, perhaps 2.5% of global emissions could become 2.25% or 2%.
If a half percent of all global CO emissions could be eliminated, that'd be noteworthy, and a good start.
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No. Wrong.
Know this, Spirit airlines has all of 65 airplanes. AA has a thousand.
Think again.
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You've got 1,000 airplanes, and they're the lest CO efficient ones in all the skies. If you can operate them with the CO efficiency of the company with only 65 planes (who does nearly the best), then you stand to make a huge impact in the pool.
All planes together average 1 .9, the best 65 from Spirit only produce .8
There's, say, 1,000 AA planes all averaging 1.2 "bad CO's" per year, because they're the worst
There's, say, 2,000 other planes together averaging
As such, you all come together to produce 3000 ba
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This part is more interesting
" they also emit nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides "
Those actually reflect light and lower the effects of greenhouse gases. Of course jets are actively reducing those emissions.
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If you want to talk about sulfur that would be the cargo ships doing that. Airplanes are a distraction, the polluters in this world are surface transport, power and industry.
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Mainly power production thanks to coal.
Time to end it (Score:3)
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Sure... and have a substantially poorer quality of living because you can't get nutrition you need during the part of the year that your part of the world is too cold to farm.
Aviation only seems to cause way too much pollution if you don't consider the alternatives.
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Yup. Something like 4.5% of all direct CO2 emissions, give or take. So about twice as bad as air travel, but probably 10 times simpler to fix than for aircraft because of easier constraints on weight and much less stringent safety requirements, etc.
Of course, aircraft are basically going to be switching to carbon-neutral* bio-kerosene in the next two decades or so anyway, so the argument against air travel is kind of moot.
*Assuming the energy used t
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...as well as attacking all of our immune systems due to the ability to transport bacteria and virii all over the world at high speeds....
Thereby also transporting both resistance to those same bateria and effective community procedures, helping to improve world health in the long run. Note that the black plague propagated quite effectively around the world at walking speed.
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The Unabomber cabin is that way ---->
Quick, emergency... (Score:4, Interesting)
Let's have a conference about how to address this issue and fly in all the delegates. And their entourages. Don't forget them limos.
Not Surprising (Score:2)
The mode of transportation that is chosen when travelling very long distances. The article even gives an example where Flying from Denver to NYC results in a net gain over choosing to travel the same route in a Toyota Prius.
The summary seems to suggest that you should not fly if you want to be environmentally friendly, but the opposite is true.
The important figure would be CO2 / passenger mile (Score:2)
Sigh really this headline and story really indicates why this issue has fallen into the realm of the slogan repeating idiots.
If you are actually worried about CO2 emissions and not about controlling people's lives, the concern is how much CO2 is emitted moving a person from place to place, not the bulk number for any given industry or industry segment. You might as well try to rile people up by publishing comparisons of CO2 emissions of buses vs cars. That however wouldn't gain any traction because people w
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planes & cars have similar CO2 per passenger m (Score:4, Informative)
planes about
However its a lot easier to rack up miles in an airplane.
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Airplane CO2 (Score:2)
This article only takes into account direct emissions. It neglects the CO2 emissions due to the energy used in the manufacture of said airplanes, which is proportional to their cost.
Numbers for this are heavily cherry-picked (Score:2, Insightful)
So having read the articles, a couple things are clear:
1. Their comparison metric includes "flight frequency per unit of fuel burned", which I think causes their comparison to be backwards. Modern jet engines are most efficient at high altitude and cruising speed, lowest efficiency at low altitude and low speed. Maximum thrust (fuel burn) occurs on takeoff, so more flights=more takeoffs=more fuel burned.
The list favors airlines with short hops and appears to penalize long-haul airlines. Long haul airlines
Fossil free jet fuel (Score:2)
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I guess you didn't read the reference you posted;
Experts have been working on the idea for almost a decade, Discover notes; it could be commercially viable within 10 years, the Navy says. Right now, however, researchers are showing off the technique using a model plane.
That technology is not available yet.
Trucking industry responsible for 30% of emissions (Score:2)
Why are we obsessing over an industry that
Sorry folks, but all this attention to airline emissions has astr
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Why are we obsessing over an industry
Because TFA is shilling for outfits selling "offsets". The aviation industry has money. Al Gore Inc wants a cut. But the only way to create demand is by generating guilt.
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First, my statement was that brand new airplanes today are 30% more efficient than they were a decade ago.
But second, here is the data you want: traffic has grown 50% over the last 15 years, fuel usage has grown 3%.
There is nothing extraordinary about my claim unless you are particularly ill informed about fuel improvements in aviation.
That's because people travel LONG distances by air (Score:2)
Long distances == lots of CO2.
I've crunched the numbers for various trips I commonly take. My share of CO2 emissions on a trip from my home in Boston to Sacramento California is going to be around 750 kg +/- 50 kg whether I (hypothetically!) drive (in my 34MPG highway car) or fly. Airplane CO2/distance figures overlap automobile considerably (185 - 277 grams/mile for air travel). Air travel CO2/mile is higher for short trips, but lower for longer trips because you amortize the CO2 emitted in takeoff over
The last to go (Score:3)
In our efforts to decarbonize our society, aircraft should be the last to go. There's no renewable technology that's likely to match what a passenger jet can do (try to design a battery-powered Airbus. You won't get far.) Also, the amount of carbon dioxide they emit is pretty minor, relatively speaking. I'm a pretty big global warming doomsayer, but even I want to live in a world where I can fly to the other side of the planet in 24 hours if I really have to.
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I'm a vegeterian, but I want to eat meat whenever I want.
PROTIP : Nobody really *needs* to be on the other side of the planet in 24 hours.
There's something to cheer about. (Score:2)
Alaska, Spirit, and Frontier are tied for the highest fuel efficiency score, while American beats out Allegiant Air and Sun Country for the lowest spot.
So American has beaten every other airline by producing more pollution than anyone? You know what this means...
We're number one! We're number one! You! Ess! Ey! You! Ess! Ey! You! Ess! Ey!
wow 2.5% (Score:2)
2.5%, huh -- I'm not impressed. So basically if we all stopped flying it would have just a tiny effect on net anthropogenic CO2 production. Sounds like we should concentrate our efforts on other more profligate industries first and worry about building electric airliners in 50 years.
Time for nuclear powered electric airliners? (Score:2)
The concrete industry creates twice that (Score:5, Informative)
Industrial processes are something we can improve without unbearable cost increases in the foreseeable future.
In the transportation sector, marine shipping accounts for 14% of man made CO2 and mostly through the combustion of the dirtiest bunker fuel. Nuclear powered ships are an obvious solution.
Its hard to imagine any technology that we can realistically apply in the next decade to reduce CO2 from aircraft in any meaningful amounts. Why bother with aircraft when there is so much other obvious low hanging fruit?
Mod parent up (Score:3)
Bingo.
Nitpicking over aviation CO2 is like arguing over US budget balancing but not touching the military, Medicare/aid, and SS.
Only 2.5 percent? So nothing then? (Score:2)
Re:Don't mess with my jetset lifestyle (Score:5, Insightful)
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A not so cool thing about economics, is that there are a lot of complexities to a system. If the Tax is too high, you would put an industry at a standstill, as well many other industries dependant on it.
If it is too low they will just charge the customers a little more and factor it in as cost of doing business, as the cost to improve would be greater than the tax penalty.
Good intentions aside when you try to tinker with that supply and demand curve unexpected consequences can happen.
Right now there is a l
Re:Don't mess with my jetset lifestyle (Score:4, Insightful)
It is my belief that the government has the right to impose taxes to compensate for negative externalities [wikiwand.com]. Pollution and emissions are prime examples of this.
I strongly agree with Milton Friedman on this issue [youtube.com]. Primarily, that it isn't simple or easy to solve, but also that when the government intervenes it shouldn't be through regulation or standards, it should be through a straightforward tax to pay for the costs. That's why if you had an emissions tax it would have to follow a number of basic guidelines:
1. It cannot be transferable or creditable. The entity is taxed only for its emissions, and only based upon the quantity of emissions.
2. It must be used for one of two purposes: either mechanisms to clean up the pollution and emissions, or research into more efficient and cleaner sources of energy.
3. The tax should slightly outweigh the cost for companies to reduce their emissions themselves. When a CFO looks at a balance sheet, he should see he can either fork out $50,000 for a much better engine or $51,000 for taxes on the emissions from the worse engine.
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There are already a lot of projects to try to improve efficiency of ships, including things like high-altitude kites delivering torque directly to the impellers. The motivation isn't environmental (although that gives good PR), it's that oil is expensive and lowering costs increases profits. If you can reduce the amount of oil a ship of a particular size has to carry, then that provides more cargo space, which is even better.
The problem in both cases is the capital investment. Ships and planes are both
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The cool thing about economics, however, is that there is enormous economic demand to do so. This means if we can put an emissions tax on airlines, there is an incredible incentive to make technological advances that significantly decrease emissions. When that happens, we will still be able to meet demand for relatively low cost.
The cool thing about governments is that they can post emissions standards or face fines, non-renewal of licenses. Then, there is an incredible incentive to make technological advances that significantly decrease emissions.
Anyways, with cars, manufacturers are required to meet emissions standards. Then, in some states, owners are also required to maintain the vehicle to the emissions standards.
When the oil prices went up, it was effectively a tax on emissions. However, did we see "technological advances
Cool things about economics (Score:2)
The cool thing about economics, however, is that there is enormous economic demand to do so.
Another cool thing is that it embraces many different viewpoints in a single discipline.
If you have doubts about the economic "school of thought" [wikipedia.org] you happen to be studying, you can easily find another to believe.
Keynesian, French liberal, Lausanne, Neoclassical, Distributism - economics has something for everyone!
Sort of like Starbucks.
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a tax which will then simply be passed on to ... the customers.
In a competitive market (and aviation is very competitive) companies cannot just pass on the cost to customers. Ticket prices will likely go up somewhat, but much of the cost will be in lower profits, and reduced wages or employment. This is especially true when different airlines are affected differently. Those with newer fleets will pay less tax because their aircraft are much more efficient, so they can keep ticket prices relatively lower.
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Please explain how I take a train, bus, or car from Seattle to London. .... ...metrovite myopia strikes again.
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Please explain how I take a train, bus, or car from Seattle to London
Please explain why you really need to. Let me guess : to attend a conference on organising conferences? A conference on designing aircraft for taking people to conferences on designing aircraft? A conference on marketing holiday flights?
In my work I see others who make careers out of travelling to meetings all over the place, then writing reports on the meetings they had. No-one ever reads the reports. It is all bullshit.
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The trans-Pacific bridge isn't quite done yet, so in Hawai`i we have limited options.
Of course, we could just use bigger ships burning Bunker 1, basically liquid lignite. That'll clean up the air...
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Yet these alternatives produce much more CO2 to get from certain point A to B ... Imagine 200 cars driving from Finland to Sweden
Flying is, for most common routes, VERY efficient after you also consider how much cargo the planes carry..
He mentioned "train car bus". You picked cars, which are the worst for efficiency, but only slightly worse than aircraft. Trains and buses are far better. [mnn.com]
As for aircraft carrying freight, that is so inefficient that it is only used for premium freight, such as mail and high value stuff.
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Yet these alternatives produce much more CO2 to get from certain point A to B ... Imagine 200 cars driving from Finland to Sweden + requiring 20 hour boat trip too with 200 cars loaded... that, compared to 55min hop flight which also carries a lot fo cargo.
Flying is, for most common routes, VERY efficient after you also consider how much cargo the planes carry..
I dont have to imagine it, the WSJ already released the figures. The most fuel efficient airline got around 75 passenger miles per gallon of fuel, so if you put 2 people in a Prius, or 4 in an SUV, they'll get better gas mileage without all of the high-altitude effects. Fill the trunk and unused passenger space with Cargo, and that takes care of the cargo. Replace those 200 cars with a few buses and cargo trucks and the balance tips even further toward ground travel.
http://www.wsj.com/news/articl... [wsj.com]
Jet engi
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Southwest only has 737s.
Quite true. However, I should point out that the 737 has a large number of models and available engines. The 737-200 has passenger configurations of 110-120 people and a range of 2600 nautical miles, while the 737-900ER has seating for 180-205 people, and a range of 3200 nautical miles. Although the 737 is conceived as a medium range jet, some models are able to be used on mainland to Hawaii trips. Some are approved for ETOPS ( Extended range Twin Operations), joining the ranks of larger aircraft, such as
Re:Don't mess with my jetset lifestyle (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with the idea, but it's not a "simple fact"; coming to that conclusion requires a long argument involving a lot of scientific reasoning, experience, the particulars of our status quo of technology, population, and environmental inputs, and a certain (if reasonable) valuation of the potential trade-offs.
Proper environmentalism isn't "simple facts" - because it's not a religion of Earth purity. It's about legitimately complicated choices and consequences, and evaluating those choices over a longer term.
Re:Don't mess with my jetset lifestyle (Score:5, Insightful)
The simple fact is Globalism is bad for the globe.
In the end it really does not matter what you are moving, the people, the goods, or both. It does not much matter how you are moving it, planes, trains, autos, freighters, or sail boats.
Fundamentally transportation is overhead. If your goal is to maximize the sustainable population (and I am not sure that actually is noble pursuit) than the solution will always be to find ways people can get things they need without having to move, and created out of local resources. Which does not mean you start growing rice in the desert, it means your find a substitute for rice that can be produced efficiently locally.
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It really depends.
The cost of transportation must be weighed against how production is done locally.
I grew up in the developing world. We used a coal stove to cook. Now I was a kid back then, but I imagine it didn't have any kind of filters or anything.
A lot of factories and other local industries were equally as bad.
If that is how things are produced locally, it's not exactly 'better' than globalization. Maybe the global supply chain filled with airlines, freight, trucks, walmart... is ultimately more effi
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The simple fact is Globalism is bad for the globe.
It's amazing what bullshit is being spun as fact these days. Globalism, which really is global trade, has improved the lot of humanity collectively (though at the expense of some dinosaurs in the developed world). Rich people pollute less than poor people. Rich people have less kids than poor people. True story.
For example, take a gander at the first chart in this link [voxeu.org]. It shows a 60+% increase in global median wages over the period of 1988-2008, adjusted for inflation, and a substantial increase in wage
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Globalism hasn't worked out so well for the U.S. Corporations have transferred a lot of skilled manufacturing jobs to low wage countries with fewer pollution controls and then ship finished goods back to the U.S. (creating more pollution). The result has been that the well paying manufacturing jobs have disappeared and everybody is working at Walmart for minimum wage selling cheap shit from China.
Globalization increases pollution and lowers living standards in developed countries. In low wage countries, the
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Always with the calls to lower our standard of living (by which I mean, lower your standard of living, of course). Screw that. You go live in a cave if that makes you happy - I fully support your right to do so. But the rest of us will be finding ways for technology to make life better.
Air travel has had a couple of really significant improvements in fuel efficiency in my lifetime. And since fuel cost is a big part of the cost of air travel (the biggest cost?), research is ongoing and well funded.
Mean
Re:Don't mess with my jetset lifestyle (Score:5, Interesting)
Today's newest, most fuel-efficient jetliners achieve about 100 passenger-miles per gallon, while electric bullet trains run at the equivalent of 300-500 passenger-miles per gallon. So air travel has a long way to go before it's as fuel-efficient as ground transportation.
Also, bullet trains are faster, curb-to-curb, for distances up to about 400-500 miles. And you can add intermediate stops at a cost of only a few minutes each.
So there's great potential to reduce air travel at no cost to our standard of living.
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That's just it: terrorists don't hate airplanes. But not only does the TSA do nothing to make air travel safer, even if it did it would be doing nothing to reduce the threat of terrorism. But even in some fantasy land where the TSA was actually helping it's not worth it. Dignity matters. Training people to put up with government strip searches even when there's no apparent threat is appalling. It's a fucking totalitarian nightmare, and every year it kills a large number of people because they drive ins
Airports in Israel vs. USA (Score:2)
Perhaps the suggestion that in terms of lives saved per dollar spent, procedures used in Israel's airports are more effective than those of the U.S. TSA.
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Overstate much?
I agree with your sentiments and some of your points, but the above is preposterous. You really think if there were no security at airports we wouldn't have more shit go down on planes?
I honestly doubt we would. Not much shit goes down on busses or trains and they have a lower cost of entry (allowing the riffraff onboard).
But he didn't suggest getting rid of airport security. He suggested getting rid of the TSA and going back to the airport security we had before: walk-though metal detectors and luggage x-ray machines. Any shit that would go down on planes would likely be caused by hotheads with guns or knives (even though shit rarely went down on planes before they had any security at al
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But not only does the TSA do nothing to make air travel safer
Overstate much?
I agree with your sentiments and some of your points, but the above is preposterous. You really think if there were no security at airports we wouldn't have more shit go down on planes?
Read the thread you're replying to?
The TSA has not made air travel safer compared to what we had before 9/11! C'mon man! I'm really tired of heard "totalitarian state control is better than anarchy, so it's our only option." Do you realize there are non-extreme options? Do you realize moderation is better?
Do you realize the American Revolution was itself a rejection of Hobbes's ideas (he's not just a cartoon tiger, you know) that since tyranny beats anarchy, tyranny is our only rational choice? The Dec
Re:Don't mess with my jetset lifestyle (Score:4, Interesting)
No it isn't. Flying is probably among the most carbon intensive thing you could possible do. I have heard that from multiple sources.
this [about.com] ( I don't how great a source it is), says
"Flying from San Francisco to Boston, for example, would generate some 1,300 kilograms of greenhouse gases per passenger each way, while driving would account for only 930 kilograms per vehicle.
That is comparing a flight on airline to a passenger car. My guess can get the per person carbon down much lower than that if you use loaded buses.
The fact is all the pols screaming for us all to slit our throats to cut carbon while they jet all over the place for this summit and that, are the worst hypocrites of them all. If they really gave a damn they'd just have conference call.
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Part of this is due to the high altitude flights of modern turbofans. Low altitude turboprops are better but don't scale well.
Maybe dirigibles again..... I think that came up in Diamond Age. Certainly other Sci Fi authors have explored this.
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I don't how great a source it is
Apparently not a very good one. Google maps says that the optimal driving distance from SF to BOS is about 3000 miles, which, on a 30mpg car, results in 100 gallons of fuel burn. Gasoline is typically around 0.75kg/L, so that comes to 284kg of fuel. Unless your vehicle manages to break the laws of physics somehow, you're never going to emit 930 kg of just greenhouse gases per vehicle. Now the same trip using a plane is about 2700 miles (from a real flight plan [flightaware.com]). A typical Airbus A320 or Boeing 737 comes to
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Anyway, even if we eliminate all air traffic, we'd still cut emissions by 2.5% only. It makes a lot more sense to focus on the other 97.5%
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The point isn't making the average standard of living decline, actually that continues to go up dramatically... the point is that you're used to a standard of living which is disproportionate to what is sustainable for the average human
So the poster you're replying to is actually correct.
You want HIS standard of living to go down, because it isn't sustainable in your opinion.
Well, go frack off, that isn't your call. If you think it is, there are a whole bunch of people in his shoes who also happen to have money who will go to great lengths to stop you.
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Oh cool, good luck getting the rich to drop their private planes.
Oh wait, you mean poor people should stop binge flying.
LMAFO.
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Re:Volcanoes (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Volcanoes (Score:4, Funny)
Breathing produces no net CO2, ...
It does, however, cause death -- 100% of all dead people were habitual breathers.
Re:Volcanoes (Score:5, Informative)
But then where would you get your red herrings from?
1) Europe alone produces 10x CO2 emissions/year than all volcanic activity on the earth combined. Europe is only the 3rd biggest emitter behind China and the US
2) Volcanos are part of a balanced system. Their relatively constant CO2 contribution over the last few million years is easily handled by the earth's natural CO2 sinks
3) The CO2 you exhale was originally captured out of the atmosphere by plants, who will again capture what you're exhaling now (see: balanced system)
Side note: All the coal we are mining now is coming from 50 Million Years worth of carbon sequestration from a time when trees had evolved but no species had yet been able to digest them (wiki: Carboniferous). If nothing changes we can probably burn through all of that in a few centuries. You really think reversing a natural process at a rate 100,000 times faster isn't cause for concern?
Re:what with all this global warming crap (Score:5, Funny)
I want nerd news back.
Okay. It's Friday afternoon, you still don't have a date, and knowing the names and histories of all of the Transformers doesn't seem to be helping with that.
Conservatives are proponents of science too (Score:2)
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Mod parent up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G... [wikipedia.org]
After 2001-09-11 when the entire aircraft fleet was grounded, we saw a rise in sunlight (and temperatures).
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Routes matter too. Regional carriers have a lot more short hops with smaller planes that are less efficient per mile. Certain city pairs are awful on a net mpg per passenger basis if a hub system causes a lot of out and back flying, even in the gross mpg per passenger looks better compared to a direct regional flight.
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...and not have air travel. Shall we return to the world where no one knows anything about any other country except what others tell them? That's worked out great throughout history--fear of the unknown and distrust of "that hostile foreign nation over there" has probably lead to half the wars we've had.
So it's strange that most wars have been between people and nations that have known each other only too well. The medieval wars between England and France, such as the Hundred Years War, were basically family disputes. Until about 1400 the English kings and their courts were culturally French, considered themselves French, and even spoke French - but they still fought the French. The foot soldiers of course didn't give a shit and were there for the plunder - nothing has changed there then.
Then there a