5 ms·

God, what a waste. Airplanes are bad enough for climate change when they actually carry people.

by ForHackernews 7y ago

googlexa1 7y ago
Now's not the time for thunberging..
- ForHackernews 7y ago
  I don't know what that means. Honestly, it seems like a great time to reconsider our impact on the planet: All the things the naysayers claimed were impossible and could never be stopped or changed have been shut down in the span of less than a month.
  - ehnto 7y ago
    Well. Not everything is shut down without consequence. Many things have definitely surfaced as not being so hard after all, like killing the commute and working from home.
    - iso1631 7y ago
      Perhaps in software, it's not clear what productivity impact there is. However many people are furloughed and laid off. Sales aren't being made, which means money isn't coming in. To pretend that the current situation is "not so hard" betrays your privilege.
      - ehnto 7y ago
        There are many jobs outside of software that have had resistance to working from home for really no good reason. I was really just trying to balance my comment anyway, working from home was the first example that came to mind. My main point that there will be consequences to shutting many things down, even if it seems like it was quite easy.
- dagss 7y ago
  It's an excellent time -- climate change is a much greater danger to us all than covid19 has been or will be. The economical consequences of climate change will also be much bigger than covid19 on the longer haul. And many of the results of covid19 on society are the same as what must be done to combat climate change. Covid19 has shown that extreme measures are possible if people actually believe in the consequences. It is also a good case that early prevention could have saved a lot of economical loss later on when the issue has grown too large to be ignored any longer, just like with climate change.
iso1631 7y ago
Many flights around the world that are continuing to carry cargo For example "The number of cargo-only flights at Heathrow has surged to five times normal levels, with the airport now saying it is prioritising medical supplies as passenger travel grinds to a halt." https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/apr/14/heathrow-passenger-demand-expected-to-plunge-by-90-per-cent-in-april-covid-19 https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/apr/14/heathrow-pas...
- ForHackernews 7y ago
  This article is about empty passenger flights, not cargo flights carrying vital medical supplies.
  - afterburner 7y ago
    Passenger flights also carry cargo.
    - ForHackernews 7y ago
      According to the article, these flights are running empty for legal and regulatory reasons, not because they are carrying cargo.
      - iso1631 7y ago
        So you're saying "flights running empty for legal and regulatory reasons are running empty for legal and regulatory reasons" There may be some that are, although this article says the flights are upto 10% full. Given the average car is only 20% full that doesn't sound a terribly low amount. The article also says * One reason to keep so many flights going is to help the airlines implement their policies that promote social distancing * Some travel is essential and it’s important that people who truly need to travel by air retain a way to do it. It then goes on to say that many of the "13 Washignton-Boston flights" will be cancelled. Indeed of the 10 arrivals currently listed on [0], 5 have been cancelled. [0] https://www.massport.com/logan-airport/flights/flight-status/ https://www.massport.com/logan-airport/flights/flight-status...
t0mas88 7y ago
Airplanes are not as bad for the climate as the activists want you to believe. Overall they're only a few percent of emissions. Much much more is from other transport (shipping, cars), industry and residential use. Somehow there is an overly large focus on airplane pollution, but mathematically that focus really doesn't make much sense.
- ForHackernews 7y ago
  My understanding is that research suggests airplane emissions make a disproportionate contribution to the climate crisis because they are released at high altitude, but I'm not an expert. Also, it seems intuitively obvious that moving N kg by plane is vastly less efficient than other forms of transport like rail or ocean shipping. We should be doing fewer energy-inefficient things and more efficient things.
  - makerofspoons 7y ago
    Also, only the world's richest (who have by far the largest carbon footprints) fly today. The comparatively small sliver of emissions it is today will balloon as the world gets richer.
  - t0mas88 7y ago
    Rail is more environmentally friendly than air, but it lacks capacity and it's not very fast. Ocean is much worse for the environment than air, because emissions from shipping aren't regulated and they burn the worst of the worst while happily dumping waste overboard once in international waters. At least air has global rules on clean operation set by IATA since a few years.
- yongjik 7y ago
  "A few percent" of global emissions is positively massive. According to wikipedia, Germany's economy (GDP $3.863T) is only about 4% of global economy (GDP $87.265T). Would you call Germany's economy insignificant? More interestingly, there are only three nations (the US, China, Japan) with higher GDP. So, by the same criterion, we could argue that only these three countries have any significant economy (total $40.733T), and the rest can be ignored. But then we will be ignoring more than half of global economy! It's clearly a logical fallacy. * Numbers taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...

God, what a waste. Airplanes are bad enough for climate change when they actually carry people.

googlexa1 7y ago

Now's not the time for thunberging..

ForHackernews 7y ago
I don't know what that means. Honestly, it seems like a great time to reconsider our impact on the planet: All the things the naysayers claimed were impossible and could never be stopped or changed have been shut down in the span of less than a month.
- ehnto 7y ago
  Well. Not everything is shut down without consequence. Many things have definitely surfaced as not being so hard after all, like killing the commute and working from home.
  - iso1631 7y ago
    Perhaps in software, it's not clear what productivity impact there is. However many people are furloughed and laid off. Sales aren't being made, which means money isn't coming in. To pretend that the current situation is "not so hard" betrays your privilege.
    - ehnto 7y ago
      There are many jobs outside of software that have had resistance to working from home for really no good reason. I was really just trying to balance my comment anyway, working from home was the first example that came to mind. My main point that there will be consequences to shutting many things down, even if it seems like it was quite easy.
dagss 7y ago
It's an excellent time -- climate change is a much greater danger to us all than covid19 has been or will be. The economical consequences of climate change will also be much bigger than covid19 on the longer haul. And many of the results of covid19 on society are the same as what must be done to combat climate change. Covid19 has shown that extreme measures are possible if people actually believe in the consequences. It is also a good case that early prevention could have saved a lot of economical loss later on when the issue has grown too large to be ignored any longer, just like with climate change.

iso1631 7y ago

Many flights around the world that are continuing to carry cargo For example "The number of cargo-only flights at Heathrow has surged to five times normal levels, with the airport now saying it is prioritising medical supplies as passenger travel grinds to a halt." https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/apr/14/heathrow-passenger-demand-expected-to-plunge-by-90-per-cent-in-april-covid-19 https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/apr/14/heathrow-pas...

ForHackernews 7y ago
This article is about empty passenger flights, not cargo flights carrying vital medical supplies.
- afterburner 7y ago
  Passenger flights also carry cargo.
  - ForHackernews 7y ago
    According to the article, these flights are running empty for legal and regulatory reasons, not because they are carrying cargo.
    - iso1631 7y ago
      So you're saying "flights running empty for legal and regulatory reasons are running empty for legal and regulatory reasons" There may be some that are, although this article says the flights are upto 10% full. Given the average car is only 20% full that doesn't sound a terribly low amount. The article also says * One reason to keep so many flights going is to help the airlines implement their policies that promote social distancing * Some travel is essential and it’s important that people who truly need to travel by air retain a way to do it. It then goes on to say that many of the "13 Washignton-Boston flights" will be cancelled. Indeed of the 10 arrivals currently listed on [0], 5 have been cancelled. [0] https://www.massport.com/logan-airport/flights/flight-status/ https://www.massport.com/logan-airport/flights/flight-status...

t0mas88 7y ago

Airplanes are not as bad for the climate as the activists want you to believe. Overall they're only a few percent of emissions. Much much more is from other transport (shipping, cars), industry and residential use. Somehow there is an overly large focus on airplane pollution, but mathematically that focus really doesn't make much sense.

ForHackernews 7y ago
My understanding is that research suggests airplane emissions make a disproportionate contribution to the climate crisis because they are released at high altitude, but I'm not an expert. Also, it seems intuitively obvious that moving N kg by plane is vastly less efficient than other forms of transport like rail or ocean shipping. We should be doing fewer energy-inefficient things and more efficient things.
- makerofspoons 7y ago
  Also, only the world's richest (who have by far the largest carbon footprints) fly today. The comparatively small sliver of emissions it is today will balloon as the world gets richer.
- t0mas88 7y ago
  Rail is more environmentally friendly than air, but it lacks capacity and it's not very fast. Ocean is much worse for the environment than air, because emissions from shipping aren't regulated and they burn the worst of the worst while happily dumping waste overboard once in international waters. At least air has global rules on clean operation set by IATA since a few years.
yongjik 7y ago
"A few percent" of global emissions is positively massive. According to wikipedia, Germany's economy (GDP $3.863T) is only about 4% of global economy (GDP $87.265T). Would you call Germany's economy insignificant? More interestingly, there are only three nations (the US, China, Japan) with higher GDP. So, by the same criterion, we could argue that only these three countries have any significant economy (total $40.733T), and the rest can be ignored. But then we will be ignoring more than half of global economy! It's clearly a logical fallacy. * Numbers taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...