10 ms·

The emissions of trains are always many times less. For a quantitative comparison: https://www.seat61.com/CO2flights.htm https://www.seat61.com/CO2flights.htm

by jnxx 6y ago

The emissions of trains are always many times less. For a quantitative comparison: https://www.seat61.com/CO2flights.htm https://www.seat61.com/CO2flights.htm For example: London to Nice Plane: 4 hours, 250 Kg CO2 Train: 8 hours by Eurostar+TGV, 36 Kg CO2 85% less Traveling short to medium distances by plane is simply indefensible if you care about climate change. For an average European, it can easily make up one third of their total yearly carbon emissions, more than 1500kg, or even more. (BTW this site, seat61.com, is a great and very useful web site, if one likes train travel or wants to travel by train in Europe, one should seriously have a look!)

renewiltord 6y ago
Nah, flying is totally defensible. I fly everywhere. The problem is offsetting your emissions. Most people are offloading their externalities to the Earth. Since climate change is a non-local phenomenon you can be carbon negative for very cheap if you pay to reduce carbon emissions. Also, it's a little bit rich to listen to any sort of climate talk from anyone in cold countries¹. They emit so much carbon just to be warm. Well, I don't, because I live in California. ¹ Between 14% and 30% of total emissions are from heating in Germany for instance https://www.bmu.de/fileadmin/Daten_BMU/Download_PDF/Klimaschutz/klimaschutz_zahlen_2019_fs_gebaeude_de_bf.pdf https://www.bmu.de/fileadmin/Daten_BMU/Download_PDF/Klimasch...
- freeflight 6y ago
  > Since climate change is a non-local phenomenon you can be carbon negative for very cheap if you pay to reduce carbon emissions. How does that work in practical reality so it doesn't just turn into a money making scheme with no real impact akin to Catholic indulgences? > Also, it's a little bit rich to listen to any sort of climate talk from anyone in cold countries¹. They emit so much carbon just to be warm. Well, I don't, because I live in California. How many emissions in the US come from the use of AC and heating due to basically zero federal building standards for energy efficiency? [0] Afaik AC is generally considered way more inefficient, heating can be captured as a side-product from a lot of processes, cooling not so much. [0] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328701132_A_comparison_of_building_energy_codes_and_policies_in_the_USA_Germany_and_China_progress_toward_the_net-zero_building_goal_in_three_countries https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328701132_A_compari...
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    > How does that work in practical reality so it doesn't just turn into a money making scheme with no real impact akin to Catholic indulgences? As a matter of policy? Universal carbon-tax with increasing fee schedules. Everyone pays for their carbon emissions. The sum is then distributed back to everyone evenly as a Green Dividend minus admin costs. Net zero cash to the government, whopping undirected green energy subsidy possible by tuning amounts. It already worked for Sulphur Dioxide. As a matter of personal preference? Well, I get nothing from this except the right to brag I'm carbon negative so really it could totally be equivalent to indulgences. As it so happens I do care to be doing my part, but you're right in that there's no incentive for that. > How many emissions in the US come from the use of AC and heating due to basically zero federal building standards for energy efficiency? Right, but I live in California and have no AC.
    - dash2 6y ago
      I think the practical question is, how do you know when you buy carbon offsets that you are really offsetting carbon? There's an awful lot of scope for fakery out there.
      - renewiltord 6y ago
        I trust TerraPass because I can go see their stuff.
- eganist 6y ago
  > Most people are offloading their externalities to the Earth. I'm having a hard time understanding this sentence.
  - schrodinger 6y ago
    Really? They’re saying that most people who fly are unaware and unaccountable for the negative impact their flight has on the health of the planet due to carbon emissions, among other things.
- jnxx 6y ago
  > Nah, flying is totally defensible. I fly everywhere. The problem is offsetting your emissions. You are in denial about the destruction you do. No, you can't offset emissions. A single short flight will release as much as 400kg CO2 to the atmosphere. This amount of carbon was bound by huge forests about millions of years. It is not possible to undo that release by planting a tree. Ask a geologist if you do not believe me. And I am not saying it is not good to protect forests. Of course it is. But if you have any rational choice between offsetting and not flying, offsetting and flying, not offsetting, not flying -- not flying is always the best option.
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    One mature oak tree is like 20 kg / year. You can easily plant a sufficient quantity to cover that. Especially since Earth is not at carrying capacity yet. But that's hardly necessary. I can just pay you the minimum necessary to get you to shift off fossil and I make some good savings.
    - mrpopo 6y ago
      Please note that all coherent carbon neutrality scenarios use tree planting for carbon offsetting PLUS a reduction in plane travel. There are more essential services that will require carbon sinks to function at full regime. Air travel is easily replaceable by low-carbon alternatives that exist today. When you do the accounting of carbon offsetting/carbon sinks capacity, it becomes quite obvious everything unnecessary must go.
      - renewiltord 6y ago
        Of course, I don't disagree with the reduction. But an economically efficient reduction will reduce from people who can't afford to pay the premium and leave people like me to spend appropriately. This is possible precisely because it is unnecessary. If air travel were necessary then we'd have to ration it by person. Since it is not, we can afford to ration it by the dollar.
        6y ago
- jnxx 6y ago
  > Between 14% and 30% of total emissions are from heating in Germany Heating is a large factor in emissions but if you fly several times a year, it is without doubt the largest source of emissions.
  - jnxx 6y ago
    You can check that here yourself - it is a carbon footprint calculator from the German Federal Environment Agency: https://uba.co2-rechner.de/en_GB/ https://uba.co2-rechner.de/en_GB/ https://uba.co2-rechner.de/de_DE/start https://uba.co2-rechner.de/de_DE/start
joking 6y ago
i would prefer the train for almost any travel of less than 5 hours, that’s a 1200km radius on HSR, the thing is that Barcelona - Paris is 120€ by plane and 250 by train. Planes are way cheaper than trains.
- willyt 6y ago
  I had the opposite experience, my flight from Bordeaux to London was cancelled. By the time we’d realised the next available flight was 2 days later and €500. The train next day was €300. It took 2hrs for Bordeaux-Paris we decided to hang out in Paris for a few hours then 2hrs to London.
  - emteycz 6y ago
    I would simply wait for the plane ticket to be available and cheap again, I know it will because I paid jack shit for flying a lot of miles over the last decade (your route is offered for 40 USD on Skyscanner right now). The train ticket will never be one bit cheaper. No promo events, nothing; state-owned enterprises seem incapable of such thinking. The price is simply absurd - renting a car and putting enough diesel into it would've been cheaper even if you went alone.
    - willyt 6y ago
      Well I couldn’t wait, and the airline that cancelled my flight had to pay up to €400 costs anyway. The ticket to Paris was €60 for a 400 mile journey that takes 2hr15 pretty cheap. The cheapest option for that leg if we’d got up really early was €33, this was booking less than 12hrs before travel. That’s on the SNCF which is state run. The Eurostar from Paris to London is privatised and is much more expensive for some reason. Trains in the U.K. tend to be ridiculously expensive and slow compared to France but we have a privatised system that’s based on a poorly designed artificially created competitive market that just created a huge amount of expensive contract bureaucracy and no coordination between operations and maintenance.
- henrikschroder 6y ago
  I used to fly Stockholm-Copenhagen regularly some years back, and even though I would have preferred to go by train, it was much more expensive, and slower door-to-door. It gets pretty hard to defend the choice when the economics look like that.

by jnxx 6y ago

renewiltord 6y ago

Nah, flying is totally defensible. I fly everywhere. The problem is offsetting your emissions. Most people are offloading their externalities to the Earth. Since climate change is a non-local phenomenon you can be carbon negative for very cheap if you pay to reduce carbon emissions. Also, it's a little bit rich to listen to any sort of climate talk from anyone in cold countries¹. They emit so much carbon just to be warm. Well, I don't, because I live in California. ¹ Between 14% and 30% of total emissions are from heating in Germany for instance https://www.bmu.de/fileadmin/Daten_BMU/Download_PDF/Klimaschutz/klimaschutz_zahlen_2019_fs_gebaeude_de_bf.pdf https://www.bmu.de/fileadmin/Daten_BMU/Download_PDF/Klimasch...

freeflight 6y ago
> Since climate change is a non-local phenomenon you can be carbon negative for very cheap if you pay to reduce carbon emissions. How does that work in practical reality so it doesn't just turn into a money making scheme with no real impact akin to Catholic indulgences? > Also, it's a little bit rich to listen to any sort of climate talk from anyone in cold countries¹. They emit so much carbon just to be warm. Well, I don't, because I live in California. How many emissions in the US come from the use of AC and heating due to basically zero federal building standards for energy efficiency? [0] Afaik AC is generally considered way more inefficient, heating can be captured as a side-product from a lot of processes, cooling not so much. [0] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328701132_A_comparison_of_building_energy_codes_and_policies_in_the_USA_Germany_and_China_progress_toward_the_net-zero_building_goal_in_three_countries https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328701132_A_compari...
- renewiltord 6y ago
  > How does that work in practical reality so it doesn't just turn into a money making scheme with no real impact akin to Catholic indulgences? As a matter of policy? Universal carbon-tax with increasing fee schedules. Everyone pays for their carbon emissions. The sum is then distributed back to everyone evenly as a Green Dividend minus admin costs. Net zero cash to the government, whopping undirected green energy subsidy possible by tuning amounts. It already worked for Sulphur Dioxide. As a matter of personal preference? Well, I get nothing from this except the right to brag I'm carbon negative so really it could totally be equivalent to indulgences. As it so happens I do care to be doing my part, but you're right in that there's no incentive for that. > How many emissions in the US come from the use of AC and heating due to basically zero federal building standards for energy efficiency? Right, but I live in California and have no AC.
  - dash2 6y ago
    I think the practical question is, how do you know when you buy carbon offsets that you are really offsetting carbon? There's an awful lot of scope for fakery out there.
    - renewiltord 6y ago
      I trust TerraPass because I can go see their stuff.
eganist 6y ago
> Most people are offloading their externalities to the Earth. I'm having a hard time understanding this sentence.
- schrodinger 6y ago
  Really? They’re saying that most people who fly are unaware and unaccountable for the negative impact their flight has on the health of the planet due to carbon emissions, among other things.
jnxx 6y ago
> Nah, flying is totally defensible. I fly everywhere. The problem is offsetting your emissions. You are in denial about the destruction you do. No, you can't offset emissions. A single short flight will release as much as 400kg CO2 to the atmosphere. This amount of carbon was bound by huge forests about millions of years. It is not possible to undo that release by planting a tree. Ask a geologist if you do not believe me. And I am not saying it is not good to protect forests. Of course it is. But if you have any rational choice between offsetting and not flying, offsetting and flying, not offsetting, not flying -- not flying is always the best option.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  One mature oak tree is like 20 kg / year. You can easily plant a sufficient quantity to cover that. Especially since Earth is not at carrying capacity yet. But that's hardly necessary. I can just pay you the minimum necessary to get you to shift off fossil and I make some good savings.
  - mrpopo 6y ago
    Please note that all coherent carbon neutrality scenarios use tree planting for carbon offsetting PLUS a reduction in plane travel. There are more essential services that will require carbon sinks to function at full regime. Air travel is easily replaceable by low-carbon alternatives that exist today. When you do the accounting of carbon offsetting/carbon sinks capacity, it becomes quite obvious everything unnecessary must go.
    - renewiltord 6y ago
      Of course, I don't disagree with the reduction. But an economically efficient reduction will reduce from people who can't afford to pay the premium and leave people like me to spend appropriately. This is possible precisely because it is unnecessary. If air travel were necessary then we'd have to ration it by person. Since it is not, we can afford to ration it by the dollar.
      - 6y ago
jnxx 6y ago
> Between 14% and 30% of total emissions are from heating in Germany Heating is a large factor in emissions but if you fly several times a year, it is without doubt the largest source of emissions.
- jnxx 6y ago
  You can check that here yourself - it is a carbon footprint calculator from the German Federal Environment Agency: https://uba.co2-rechner.de/en_GB/ https://uba.co2-rechner.de/en_GB/ https://uba.co2-rechner.de/de_DE/start https://uba.co2-rechner.de/de_DE/start

joking 6y ago

i would prefer the train for almost any travel of less than 5 hours, that’s a 1200km radius on HSR, the thing is that Barcelona - Paris is 120€ by plane and 250 by train. Planes are way cheaper than trains.

willyt 6y ago
I had the opposite experience, my flight from Bordeaux to London was cancelled. By the time we’d realised the next available flight was 2 days later and €500. The train next day was €300. It took 2hrs for Bordeaux-Paris we decided to hang out in Paris for a few hours then 2hrs to London.
- emteycz 6y ago
  I would simply wait for the plane ticket to be available and cheap again, I know it will because I paid jack shit for flying a lot of miles over the last decade (your route is offered for 40 USD on Skyscanner right now). The train ticket will never be one bit cheaper. No promo events, nothing; state-owned enterprises seem incapable of such thinking. The price is simply absurd - renting a car and putting enough diesel into it would've been cheaper even if you went alone.
  - willyt 6y ago
    Well I couldn’t wait, and the airline that cancelled my flight had to pay up to €400 costs anyway. The ticket to Paris was €60 for a 400 mile journey that takes 2hr15 pretty cheap. The cheapest option for that leg if we’d got up really early was €33, this was booking less than 12hrs before travel. That’s on the SNCF which is state run. The Eurostar from Paris to London is privatised and is much more expensive for some reason. Trains in the U.K. tend to be ridiculously expensive and slow compared to France but we have a privatised system that’s based on a poorly designed artificially created competitive market that just created a huge amount of expensive contract bureaucracy and no coordination between operations and maintenance.
henrikschroder 6y ago
I used to fly Stockholm-Copenhagen regularly some years back, and even though I would have preferred to go by train, it was much more expensive, and slower door-to-door. It gets pretty hard to defend the choice when the economics look like that.