8 ms·

> 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

by 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.
    - emteycz 6y ago
      That it's not an immediate live or die situation does not mean that lives of many people won't be significantly worse. I generally dislike the argument because I care about Earth and the life on it, but it would be really interesting to see how bad would increased temperature be in terms of dollars.
  - jfim 6y ago
    > Air travel is easily replaceable by low-carbon alternatives that exist today. Intercontinental and cross continental travel are a bit harder to replace with low carbon alternatives. Europe has a functional high speed rail system due to its high population density, but the distances between some city pairs in the are hard to replace with rail or other low carbon alternatives. Think of Los Angeles to NYC, or San Francisco to Paris. Many of these flights could be replaced by video conferencing, but if one really has to travel that distance, rail is a hard sell. It's not unpleasant to take Amtrak across the continent, but it's not fast either.
    - mrpopo 6y ago
      1) A high-speed rail from LA to NYC would take ~15h with stops in the middle. While it's a large investment, it would shave off millions of tons of CO2 released every year. Of course, you cannot travel oceans with high-speed rail. 2) Again, fast travel across the globe is a luxury, not a necessity. More than 80% of the world's population has never been near an airplane.
      - jfim 6y ago
        A large investment is quite an understatement. At say, ten million USD per kilometre (a low estimate compared to actual costs borne by France for building the TGV [0]), and a bird's eye distance of 3966 kilometres between LA and NYC [1], that's almost 400 billion dollars, or about 60% of the non-defense discretionary budget of the US for a single year. Keep in mind that's a very generous cost per kilometre; California's HSR projected costs are north of 60 million USD per kilometre. And that's for a single pair of cities, with no cost overruns, no tunnels, straight line distance. It also excludes things like stations, rolling stock, and maintenance. It's not impossible to build, but having high speed rail throughout the US is an investment that would be a multiple of the costs of building the entire interstate highway system. Mind you, I'd love it if that were to happen, riding high speed rail is much more pleasant than flying. Speaking as someone who has gone across the continent a few times on Amtrak and enjoyed riding high speed trains in Asia and Europe, it's just hard to see it happening. Recent US infrastructure projects have had massive cost overruns, and there is a seemingly low political appetite for building large infrastructure compared to the 20th century. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/764486/cost-construction-lines-lgv-by-kilometer-la-france/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/764486/cost-construction... [1] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=distance+between+los+angeles+and+new+york+city+in+kilometres https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=distance+between+los+a...
- jnxx 6y ago
  > One mature oak tree is like 20 kg / year. All of which will be released again when the oak dies. Net effect: Zero.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    No, that's actually not true. Trees take a very long time to decay.
samatman 6y ago
CO2 from ancient sources doesn't have some special provenance, this is magical thinking. Coal is just carbon that is in the ground. Grow a tree, convert most of it back to carbon, and bury it. Roman-era technology. This is completely tractable, the fact that we aren't doing enough of it is a matter of will, not feasibility.
- stefan_ 6y ago
  Planting a tree so in 100 years from now, that CO2 is offset, will not in fact prevent a climate catastrophe in the next 20 years. If any planting even happens; trees for CO2 whitewashing is like the perfect scam opportunity because nobody cares if you deliver.
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    Yeah, there's a timing issue with tree planting certainly. You have to discount the trees some amount for the effect. And it's not a 100 years. That flight will be covered by the oak in under 20 years. Of course, you still have to discount but it makes things much more feasible. That's why you usually don't plant trees. You can do other stuff that wouldn't otherwise get done.
    - Technically 6y ago
      I can't help but think that this is exactly the kind of back of the envelope calculation that excuses an absolutely massive amount of un-offsetted carbon that, as ben shapiro helpfully points out, "don't care about your feelings". I seriously doubt that any large portion of fliers are planting oak trees to offset their flights.
    - crucialfelix 6y ago
      A tree that only lasts 20 years will probably return all of its stored carbon to the atmosphere by burning or rotting. Only the old forests (100 years) retain it long enough to make it an effective carbon sink.

by jnxx 6y ago

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.
  - emteycz 6y ago
    That it's not an immediate live or die situation does not mean that lives of many people won't be significantly worse. I generally dislike the argument because I care about Earth and the life on it, but it would be really interesting to see how bad would increased temperature be in terms of dollars.
- jfim 6y ago
  > Air travel is easily replaceable by low-carbon alternatives that exist today. Intercontinental and cross continental travel are a bit harder to replace with low carbon alternatives. Europe has a functional high speed rail system due to its high population density, but the distances between some city pairs in the are hard to replace with rail or other low carbon alternatives. Think of Los Angeles to NYC, or San Francisco to Paris. Many of these flights could be replaced by video conferencing, but if one really has to travel that distance, rail is a hard sell. It's not unpleasant to take Amtrak across the continent, but it's not fast either.
  - mrpopo 6y ago
    1) A high-speed rail from LA to NYC would take ~15h with stops in the middle. While it's a large investment, it would shave off millions of tons of CO2 released every year. Of course, you cannot travel oceans with high-speed rail. 2) Again, fast travel across the globe is a luxury, not a necessity. More than 80% of the world's population has never been near an airplane.
    - jfim 6y ago
      A large investment is quite an understatement. At say, ten million USD per kilometre (a low estimate compared to actual costs borne by France for building the TGV [0]), and a bird's eye distance of 3966 kilometres between LA and NYC [1], that's almost 400 billion dollars, or about 60% of the non-defense discretionary budget of the US for a single year. Keep in mind that's a very generous cost per kilometre; California's HSR projected costs are north of 60 million USD per kilometre. And that's for a single pair of cities, with no cost overruns, no tunnels, straight line distance. It also excludes things like stations, rolling stock, and maintenance. It's not impossible to build, but having high speed rail throughout the US is an investment that would be a multiple of the costs of building the entire interstate highway system. Mind you, I'd love it if that were to happen, riding high speed rail is much more pleasant than flying. Speaking as someone who has gone across the continent a few times on Amtrak and enjoyed riding high speed trains in Asia and Europe, it's just hard to see it happening. Recent US infrastructure projects have had massive cost overruns, and there is a seemingly low political appetite for building large infrastructure compared to the 20th century. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/764486/cost-construction-lines-lgv-by-kilometer-la-france/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/764486/cost-construction... [1] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=distance+between+los+angeles+and+new+york+city+in+kilometres https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=distance+between+los+a...
jnxx 6y ago
> One mature oak tree is like 20 kg / year. All of which will be released again when the oak dies. Net effect: Zero.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- renewiltord 6y ago
  No, that's actually not true. Trees take a very long time to decay.

samatman 6y ago

CO2 from ancient sources doesn't have some special provenance, this is magical thinking. Coal is just carbon that is in the ground. Grow a tree, convert most of it back to carbon, and bury it. Roman-era technology. This is completely tractable, the fact that we aren't doing enough of it is a matter of will, not feasibility.

stefan_ 6y ago
Planting a tree so in 100 years from now, that CO2 is offset, will not in fact prevent a climate catastrophe in the next 20 years. If any planting even happens; trees for CO2 whitewashing is like the perfect scam opportunity because nobody cares if you deliver.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  Yeah, there's a timing issue with tree planting certainly. You have to discount the trees some amount for the effect. And it's not a 100 years. That flight will be covered by the oak in under 20 years. Of course, you still have to discount but it makes things much more feasible. That's why you usually don't plant trees. You can do other stuff that wouldn't otherwise get done.
  - Technically 6y ago
    I can't help but think that this is exactly the kind of back of the envelope calculation that excuses an absolutely massive amount of un-offsetted carbon that, as ben shapiro helpfully points out, "don't care about your feelings". I seriously doubt that any large portion of fliers are planting oak trees to offset their flights.
  - crucialfelix 6y ago
    A tree that only lasts 20 years will probably return all of its stored carbon to the atmosphere by burning or rotting. Only the old forests (100 years) retain it long enough to make it an effective carbon sink.