Planes, Trains, and Automobiles Have Become Top Carbon Polluters (technologyreview.com) 235
Transportation is likely to surpass the electricity sector in 2016 as the largest source of carbon dioxide emissions in the United States, according to a new analysis of government data, MIT Technology reports. From the article: In 2008, the global financial crisis caused widespread declines in energy use. In the U.S., that coincided with the early stages of a large-scale shift away from coal toward cleaner-burning natural gas as a way to generate electricity. As a result, carbon dioxide emissions from the electricity sector have continued to decline from their 2007 peak, even as the economy has resumed growing. The trend line for the transportation sector is less encouraging. Transportation emissions have begun rising as the economy rebounds. John DeCicco at the University of Michigan Energy Institute, who wrote the study, attributes the rebound we've seen during the past four years to straightforward causes: economic recovery and more affordable fuel prices. Vehicle sales numbers have been rising for several years, in particular for trucks and SUVs, and people are traveling more miles.
Kinda makes sense actually (Score:3)
As processes improve large scale projects such as factories and power generation tend to get more efficient as predicted but it's hard to get the same economies of scale on smaller systems like cars. It's death by millions and millions of cuts instead of by one massive blow. I'm sort of contributing by owning a Volt and have managed to go gas free for most of spring, all of summer and fall until winter when it switches over to inefficient gas engine because it needs the waste heat. To be honest thou, I never entirely went with the Volt to save gas even thou it does as a bonus. EV's are just incredibly smooth cars to drive and lack of engine noise is really nice. Hopefully more folks realize the Volt is a good option and EV's become more popular.
Re: (Score:2)
Wherefore dost thou use archaic forms?
Oh you mean though.
Re: (Score:3)
No, what GM needs to do is license their technology from the Volt to other automakers. The biggest problem with the Volt is that it's made by GM, the same company that made defective ignition switches for years and intentionally hid this and murdered people so they wouldn't have to pay for a recall. They're also known for making cars that don't last long and have crappy interiors that fall apart in a few years, and very ugly exteriors too, not to mention very poor driving dynamics.
If I could get that tech
Natural Gas is almost as bad as coal (Score:3)
As far as CO2-equivalent global warming effect, generating electricity with natural gas is almost as bad as burning coal.
The reason is subtle.
When UNBURNED natural gas leaks out of the distribution pipe network and leaks at extraction from the ground, that is methane that is being emitted into the atmosphere.
100-year global warming potential of methane (CH4)
25 x – I.e. Releasing 1 kg of CH4 into the atmosphere is about equivalent to releasing 25 kg of CO2
20-year global warming potential of methane (C
Re: (Score:2)
Not saying that total urbanization is a great idea.
However...
Clumping people together results in less environmental impact PER PERSON than distributing people across the countryside.
Dense urbanization with a public transit network, and tower homes with fewer exterior walls per home, is much more energy efficient.
Food and goods distibution also benefits from efficiencies of scale. Sure you might get some accumulated garbage and sewage, but even then, it's more efficient to deal with that in a dense form than
Re: (Score:2)
De plane, de plane! (Score:2)
Planes and rockets are the only tough bits. We can electrify cars and trains with no problem. Iron refining and cement are only a little more difficult. At least that will give us more time to work on the planes.
value of coal (Score:2)
Re:De plane, de plane! (Score:5, Informative)
You have to "decarbonize" limestone (CaCO3) to Calcium Oxide (CaO) to make cement. You _cannot_ make cement without producing a lot of carbon dioxide, even if your energy source is carbon-free.
Re: (Score:2)
You have to "decarbonize" limestone (CaCO3) to Calcium Oxide (CaO) to make cement. You _cannot_ make cement without producing a lot of carbon dioxide, even if your energy source is carbon-free.
Or, you could simply use a different kind of cement.
Re: (Score:2)
Enlighten us as to what that is, why don't you.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Work From Home (Score:3, Funny)
Cut down on automobile pollution: Save our planet. Work from home. Tell your boss he hates panda bears if he won't let you. No one wants to be known as a Panda bear hater.
I live not too far from a major highway (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
I live not too far from major highway. Noise and pollution from automobiles worry me. The electric revolution cannot come soon enough
Electric cars aren't going to help your noise problems. With modern cars, most of the noise comes from the tires at high speeds. Electric cars use the same tires as gas cars.
And why the hell do these riders intentionally make their bikes so loud?
Two reasons: 1) many of them actually believe (or claim to believe) all the noise makes them more visible to car drivers, even thou
Re: (Score:2)
And why the hell do these riders intentionally make their bikes so loud?
Because a loud bike is a known bike. If you choose to ride a motorcycle then your greatest risk is other drivers. By having a loud bike it's harder for them to not know you are there.
Re: (Score:2)
They're loud so you'll know they are there. Too often they don't get seen and often flattened as a result. I heard one the other day riding in my blind spot off my quarter panel. Death wish I guess, since he was riding a crotch rocket.
Re: (Score:2)
Because they are dicks. Isn't it illegal where you live, can you call the cops? Removing the muffler makes the vehicle in-roadworthy.
Re: (Score:2)
If this were true the fags would have their exhaust tips pointed up and forward. They don't because the fags don't want the full noise of their own sybians either.
Re: (Score:2)
LOUD PIPES SAVE LIVES
Bullshit. Any decent motorcycle rider knows to drive defensively because everybody else is out to get you. The loud motorcycles tend to cause (at least some) motorists to get surprised and swerve dangerously when confronted with one. I have a Honda Goldwing - it's quieter than most cars. It's big, so that helps for visibility, but I've driven many, many miles without incident because I've been vigilant. I've had several other smaller bikes as well. Not to say there haven't been any close calls, but I get th
An excellent paper on that subject (Score:4, Insightful)
I take this article to be good news. Renewable energy is finally contributing to the grid well enough to where emissions will drop below the carbon emitted from transportation. This is excellent progress and excellent news.
Now, here's how you fix the transportation part. A wonderful article you can only find on the Wayback Machine, from 2004. UNH Biodiesel Group, Widescale Biodiesel Production from Algae, Michael Briggs, University of New Hampshire, Physics Department. [archive.org]
It's my favorite paper on the topic and I'll take any opportunity to post it.
TL;DR - if we really wanted to, we (meaning the USA) could utilize biodiesel entirely for our current transportation needs. It would be 100% renewable, carbon neutral, and all the money spent would stay inside our own borders. And any other country could easily do the same. There is absolutely NO need to haul oil out of the ground anymore.
Check the math in the paper. We really could do this.
Re: An excellent paper on that subject (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Oh sure, it's not a sexy solution at all. I'd like to see a future with a Tesla in every garage and fusion plants dotting the landscape. And I do think we'll get there someday. But this approach does have the merit of being available today. It uses the petroleum infrastructure we already have in place, so no spin-up costs there. And it's 100% carbon neutral, which will become increasingly important in the next few decades.
Millions of years of evolution has already given us a pretty darn efficient sol
We need nuclear (Score:2)
But this approach does have the merit of being available today.
No, it is not available today. What we have now are a handful of small experimental producers that make biodiesel at considerable cost for vanity consumers. The US military is buying a lot of this biodiesel and they are paying something like 4X the price they would for petro-diesel. I don't have a real problem with that since they are funding research that might prove useful in the future. I also don't have a problem with biodiesel research because the US military is also working on synthetic hydrocarbo
Re: (Score:2)
Problem is the emissions. While it may be carbon neutral, other nasty stuff comes out if the exhaust, and people have to breathe it in.
Electric vehicles are the best solution. Batteries are getting really cheap and are highly reusable and recyclable.
Don't agree with the conclusion .... (Score:5, Interesting)
The author concludes that our best hope to fix this trend is a return of high gasoline prices.
IMO, that's ONE way it might change, but pretty much the WORST option.
Personally, I'd rather see more people opt for electric cars or public transit because improvements were made in those areas, making them more desirable!
High fuel prices punish the people who are already struggling, on tight budgets. If they need to drive a vehicle for any kind of delivery or taxi job (Uber, Lyft, etc.) - it means their costs go up, because they can't just "drive less". Often, it's the same story for someone who relies on a car to commute to/from work. All those people telling you to carpool to work or take a bus aren't being that realistic. In many cases, you need the ability to haul things around in a trunk or back seat of a car that you don't get when using a bus or other mass transit, and you can't always find a workable carpool. It makes everyone pay more for package delivery too, harming your ability to get your asking price when you sell used goods on the Internet via sites like eBay. (It actually hurts the whole economy since pretty much every business relies on shipping in some manner. But it hurts individuals the most, IMO. The big companies do enough volume so they can negotiate pretty nice discounts with shippers like UPS or FedEx. They may pay more than they used to to ship goods, but it'll still be far less than you or I pay.)
I know personally, I live around 50 miles from my workplace. I used to take the commuter train, but the combination of increased prices for it and reliability issues forced me to go back to driving. There are just too many times the train is really late due to freight train traffic that gets priority on the rails they use, or mechanical breakdowns. When I was waiting on the last train of the evening and it was one hour, then 1 1/2 hours, then 2, 3 and finally 3 1/2 hours late -- I had enough. (To add insult to injury, it was cold and raining outside, and the station platform is outdoors with no good shielding from the wind or rain.)
What I *have* done is to express my plight to my bosses at work, who finally agreed to let me start working from home more often. That winds up letting me claw back all of that commuting time I lost before - as well as saving on travel expenses. So it's a win all around. But yeah -- I really tried to stick with the public transit option. They just don't have their act together enough to make it attractive.
Re: (Score:2)
But but, higher gas prices CAUSES your outcomes.
If gas gets too expensive, people in your town will demand either telecommunting and better non-personal travel options. If the economics of personal car driving becomes untenable, then people should start car-pooling (why aren't you?). Further, expand car pools into even cheaper daily bus routes. Further, enough bus services and all of a sudden new rail lines become another viable option. And all that's strictly driven through commerce and economics.
Re: (Score:2)
Bullshit.
In Minnesota user fees (of which gas taxes are just a subset) doesn't cover the maintenance cost of the roads and less than half the total cost of the roads. And the bitching about deferred maintenance and delayed capital spending for roads is endless.
Politically you would never get away with the $2-3 in statewide tax increase directly funneled to mass transit. The people who don't or can't use mass transit (ie, they live hundreds of miles from it) would never agree to a huge gas tax and the $4-6
Re: (Score:2)
If we committed to gradually raising taxes on fossil fuels in a predictable way, we would encourage the purchase of more energy efficient vehicles. Even prices half of what they have in Europe would go a long way towards this. If you knew that in 10 years the minimum price per gallon would be $4-5, and that taxes would be going up ~$.25 a year until then, your next car purchase might be a smaller one than otherwise.
Opting for electric cars, while obviously a nice idea, is currently even harder for poor peop
Re: (Score:2)
This is why it ought to be a revenue neutral carbon tax where the revenues are distributed to everyone equally. Maybe your wallet wouldn't notice that extra $500 check from the government, but it would be a windfall for someone on a fixed income.
Re: (Score:2)
but it would be a windfall for someone on a fixed income.
It will be a windfall for two groups: the people who never pay for any gas and get free money from other people, and the government employees who are hired to manage the program. The latter, by the way, is why such a system will never be "neutral" and never pay out as much as it takes in in additional taxes.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, and correcting negative externalities makes the market more efficient [wikipedia.org].
That's another good point: it would create jobs.
So what's the downside?
Re: (Score:2)
Government employees are inherently unproductive.They suck up the livelihood of honest folk and produce nothing but their own excretions.
"Creating jobs" without a full analysis of all effects leads to such silliness as the Broken Window Fallacy.
Re: (Score:2)
So what's the downside?
The downside is that the claim that all money that is taken from the economy as the carbon tax would be paid back to the people. A large amount has to be skimmed from the top to pay the management. This makes it inherently unfair, and in large part a hidden tax, as it will increase the prices of anything that is transported or manufactured using energy.
Re: (Score:2)
High fuel prices punish the people who are already struggling, on tight budgets. If they need to drive a vehicle for any kind of delivery or taxi job (Uber, Lyft, etc.) - it means their costs go up, because they can't just "drive less".
That doesn't mean it shouldn't be done, it just means that it shouldn't be done too quickly or without warning. People can adapt, by moving where they live, by relocating businesses, by switching to telecommuting, by carpooling, using mass transit (which may require transit buildout) etc. (and taxis can simply raise their prices to account for the higher fuel costs -- or switch to electrics). The key is to give people time to adapt, and let them know that they need to.
IMO, we should implement a schedule o
Re: (Score:3)
The author concludes that our best hope to fix this trend is a return of high gasoline prices.
IMO, that's ONE way it might change, but pretty much the WORST option.
Oh, there are far far worse options. Increasing the cost of something will decrease usage, starting with the least necessary usage. Also, a lot of supposedly "necessary" usage will eventually be reduced or eliminated, possibly after a painful transition. The price could be increased by placing a tax on it, and returning the proceeds to the people in a way that would minimize the damage to the most affected people or industries.
Alternatives such as laws requiring carpooling, laws forbidding gasoline engines,
Re: (Score:2)
Why do you live 50 miles from your workplace?
Uhhh...perhaps the cost of housing near his job is prohibitive? If he works in the heart of San Francisco, he might not be able to afford a place there; 50 miles out, the housing gets cheaper. Think, McFly, think!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.
It is in the quantities we're generating. Whether something is a pollutant (or a toxin) often depends heavily on the amount produced.
Re: (Score:2)
Container ships are worse (Score:2)
Planes, trains, and automobiles?
You forgot the biggest polluters: ships!
The next step in the research (Score:2)
I'll need a whole lot of unrestricted grant funding to develop a machine to measure the size of the sh*t I do not give.
And trucks (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, the bizarre thing is many firms manufacture more efficient and less polluting planes, trains, and vehicles, including trucks.
End the tax exemptions for business use of fossil fuels: as fuel, in depreciation for vehicles, in deductions for business miles travelled in fossil fuel vehicles of any type.
The Invisible Hand of Capitalism will then crush fossil fuels, which are massively subsidized, and eat up large segment of national and state and county and municipal budgets.
This includes any lanes for fossil fuel vehicle usage, by passenger mile traveled.
Capitalism cares nothing about fossil fuels. It will crush these buggy whip manufacturers and kerosene users like it did before, if you give it the proper signals.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re "statist government" types.
You do realize I assume that the opposite of "statist" government is transnational mafia, mega-corporate, and warlord chieftain government, don't you?
You seriously think those types would let idealist libertarians prance around insisting on their "rights"? That would be good for a laugh.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:So what next? (Score:5, Informative)
If you RTFA (yeah yeah...) you'd notice that this is not an indictment of transportation, but a sign that efforts to reduce emissions from power generation are succeeding. In other words, it's not that transportation emissions are unusually high, it's that other sources of emissions are on the decline.... so you can now unbunch your panties.
The article then laments that efforts to curb transportation emissions haven't gained much traction yet, and notes that higher fuel prices are the best chance to drive efficiency gains and adoption of alternatives. Boo hoo!
=Smidge=
Re: So what next? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Polio. Smallpox. Rickets. A whole host of other diseases. All eradicated or avoidable by modern technology.
.
.
Electronic communications and entertainment.
The automobile.
A 17th century lifestyle is nothing but drawbacks.
Anyone believing the vile garbage you spew is a fool.
Re:This simply means we're succeeding. (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, this trend makes pretty good sense.
Electricity - while the oldest form of generating electricity involved burning coal or oil, there had evolved several alternatives to it, thanks to electricity generation being stationary. Like hydro, nuclear, wind and solar. So it was not difficult to minimize one's dependence on carbon based fuels, aside from the political brinksmanship - the environmental protests that the dams will drown the fish, nuclear will be another Fukushima, windmills will slaughter birds that fly into it, leaving only solar, which is good in tropical and equatorial regions, but limited elsewhere.
Transportation is a different story, however, since one can't have hydroelectric damns on a train, nuclear power in a ship (aside from Russian icebreakers) or wind power driving a car. There, one is forced to use fossil fuels. However, if one can eliminate their use in electricity generation, that reduces their consumption, and ergo, whatever pollution they create. Hopefully, one day, solar powered cars would be completely viable.
Looks like the trend is right as far as reducing pollution due to electricity goes.
Re: (Score:3)
> There, one is forced to use fossil fuels
But we can reduce it significantly. Especially in cars, where plug-in-hybrids can easily double (or more) average milage with basically zero effect on the way the car is used. Pure electric doesn't really help much on top of that.
> solar powered cars would be completely viable
Not possible. Literally.
A Tesla, which is actually pretty average, goes about 5 km on a kWh. At highway speeds, that's three minutes of driving. The S has a roof about 2 square meters. Th
Re: (Score:3)
I don't disagree with your math, but an article on NewAtlas TODAY extols a claim from a German company that they are going to build a car with 7.5 m^2 of 22% efficient polycrystalline solar cells covering its flattish surfaces, with a 14.5 kW-H internal battery, that will get at least 30 km/day from normal ambient (unobstructed, sure) sun. Their so-far rendered image of a car looks like a smallish four seater commuter car. They also CLAIM that they will sell this for $14 to $16K USD.
I'm skeptical -- but i
Re:This simply means we're succeeding. (Score:4, Informative)
Did you know that electric trains don't need to carry their own power source? True story!
Re: (Score:2)
Did you know that electric trains don't need to carry their own power source? True story!
Because of cost of infrastructure, electric trains are really only viable in urban areas. You aren't going to electrify a rail between two cities and expect it to be cost effective... Passenger rail has a different set of economics, so when you do see electrified rail between cities, it's generally passenger only.
Re: (Score:3)
We seem to have electrified railways going between cities in Europe, and they seem to be cost effective. We even have an electric train that crosses the English channel.
Re: (Score:2)
Solar-powered cars are physically impossible. There isn't enough photonic energy, even in Arizona, striking the surface of a car to power it. Unless you mean battery-powered cars recharged using solar power, which is completely doable, and already done today (ask anyone who has a Tesla and a bunch of solar panels on their roof).
Solar power is completely viable almost anywhere, not just in equatorial regions and deserts. Germany makes a huge amount of power with it, and their climate is not sunny at all (
Re: (Score:2)
For windmills, you can use vertical axis windmills to avoid slaughtering birds.
Or, you can put cats in hamster-wheel cages that generate electricity. After all, cats kill somewhere between several hundred million and a billion birds a year, almost as many as transparent glass windows kill by enticing birds to bash in their own brains flying into them. According to at least one of the efforts to put names to causes of human-linked bird mortality. Turbines aren't really in the top ten causes. Windows is
Re: (Score:2)
Vertical-axis mills should be better for another reason, however: they don't care which direction the wind is traveling. Regular (fan-looking) windmills have to be actively turned into the wind. Also, they should have lower maintenance requirements as they should be mechanically simpler (just a straight vertical shaft, no 90-degree turn at the top).
Re: (Score:2)
Solar power is completely viable almost anywhere, not just in equatorial regions and deserts. Germany makes a huge amount of power with it, and their climate is not sunny at all (look at their latitude on a globe).
Solar capacity factor in Germany is on average only about 10%. Where they really struggle is in winter months, when their power usage is actually higher, but solar is almost non-existent on many days. "viable" is a subjective term, but I wouldn't agree it makes a lot of sense in Germany. Wind is much more productive for them.
Re: (Score:2)
You can't, unless you're proposing to have vehicles that can't go faster than bicycle speed. The size and weight of modern cars stems directly from crash-safety requirements.
Re: (Score:2)
You can't, unless you're proposing to have vehicles that can't go faster than bicycle speed. The size and weight of modern cars stems directly from crash-safety requirements.
Crash-safety requirements are necessary only because cars crash. When we mandate fully-autonomous vehicles, crashes will be reduced to a miniscule fraction of what they are, because they'll occur only in cases of severe mechanical failure or some non-vehicle object on the roadway (big rocks, etc.). Effectively, we'll move the crash safety assurance from heavy steel to lightweight sensor, communications and computing equipment.
I'm not sure if cars can be made lightweight enough to operate at useful speed f
Re: (Score:3)
Very true... but outside of the article title, the article makes no distinction or breakdown between mass transit and personal transit, while alluding in the text to cars and other small/personal transport options - the Mike Orcutt article mentions vehicle sales, trucks, SUVs and cars, thus giving the impression that the increase is down to the American vehicle owner. Maybe the paper it references, written by John DeCicco, has a bit more of an objective viewpoint, but this particular paper is not yet linked
Re:This simply means we're succeeding. (Score:4, Insightful)
Air travel should be one of those novelty things that the lucky few can justify, same with having something air freighted, sure its nice to get stuff 2 days, but reality is waiting a week or two isnt a problem.
The rest of us should be traveling via high speed rail or hyperloop.
Thank you for deciding how fast I need to travel, or how quickly I need something. And thanks for killing many people as auto travel is much more dangerous then air travel. Sure appreciate it! And can you direct me to a hyperloop, please? I can't seem to find mine.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That sounds serious. I hope you made a full recovery.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I see you are now blinking red/black, that means you are on Last Day citizen...when you officially turn 21yrs, please turn yourself in for "Sleep"...otherwise, the Sandmen will come for you, and you don't want to face The Gun shooting a homer at you....very unpleasant.
Re: (Score:2)
right wing scientists too, no doubt!
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Planes fly better with both a left and right wing
Re:This simply means we're succeeding. (Score:5, Insightful)
Air travel should be something that you do when you're crossing an ocean, because trains over water (and subduction zones) are physically impractical, and ships are too slow to be practical.
That said, we badly need a high speed rail network in the U.S.; Amtrak is kind of fun to ride, but it takes three days each way to get across the country. As such, it is a luxury that few can afford on a regular basis.
Re: (Score:2)
You have fun with that....
If my drive time is more than 3-4 hours, I fly.
I'd rather fly a few hours and get somewhere and have drinks brought to me, rather than drive long highway miles for the most part.
I can afford it....why not do it?
With all the cities and such, I doubt high speed rail work work that well in the
Re: (Score:3)
In short, fully autonomous vehicles could cut into business trav
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Fiscally impossible (Score:2)
Air travel should be something that you do when you're crossing an ocean, because trains over water (and subduction zones) are physically impractical
Actually it is fiscally impractical, not physically impractical. You could physically build a vacuum tube-based maglev train where the tube is at some depth in the ocean to avoid surface issues and plate boundary problems. However the costs when people look at these things are utterly insane...but in theory it is physically practical to build such a thing.
Re: (Score:3)
> Air travel and air freight are the worst offenders for carbon output for work done.
So? If the goal is to reduce carbon, you start at the top. And that's car's.
We get equal carbon reduction by increasing car efficiency by 10% or increasing jet efficiency by 100%
Which do you think we should start on first?
Re: (Score:2)
90% of statistics are made up on the spot. This is one.
It might be true, if you could wrangle a ride in a SR-71 vs a Geo Metro (and not the 'peppy' 4 cylinder version).
In case anyone takes this seriously (Score:2)
In case anyone takes this comment seriously, the emissions per passenger mile are about the same for airliners and cars. Bo
Big planes use more fuel per hour than ONE car does, but they carry heck of a lot more people, in a much shorter time.
A private jet carrying just Al Gore, Bill Clinton, and four hookers is of course dirtier - both because there are fewer people carried vs emissions, and because Clinton and hookers always ends up dirty.
For freight, airplanes carry 35% of all freight, and produce 12% of f
Re: (Score:2)
Measured how? Weight? Volume? Items? Dollar volume?
Re: (Score:2)
Those are your questions? I'd rather hear more about the hookers.
Re: (Score:2)
Air travel should not be justifiable under any circumstances if AGW is true. It can only be justified if AGW is false.
Re: (Score:2)
I just want to amplify Mr Marxist Hacker's comment.
You could start a graduate level course in logic from those two simple sentences. Here they are again:
Impressive. It's like saying, "If drowning is real, then no bathing should be justified under any circumstances. Bathin
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I hope you are never in an accident and need an air ambulance to get to a hospital before you expire. But then I'm sure you'll make an exception in such cases only because I point that out.
Also, you claim that air travel is justifiable if AGW is false? Okay then, I claim that AGW is false. Therefore I am not restricted from air travel.
Oh, that's not how it works you say? Well then I'll stop flying when all those Gulfstream liberals stop flying. They will stop flying about the same time pigs start.
Re: (Score:3)
The best next thing to tackle is reducing air travel and freight. Air travel should be one of those novelty things that the lucky few can justify, same with having something air freighted, sure its nice to get stuff 2 days, but reality is waiting a week or two isnt a problem. Unless I realllllllly need something fast I choose the slower cheaper shipping, and so what that it took 2 weeks to get something shipped from Florida to Seattle for a home project that can wait.
This is basically wrong, as Amazon has p
Re: (Score:2)
US freight rail used to be a lot better. The problem was that back in the 50s, rail was highly regulated, but trucking was then deregulated, so it became cheaper to ship a lot of stuff by truck.
I'm guessing the reason freight rail isn't that great in Europe is because Europe isn't a single country (yet), so getting so many squabbling nations to agree on things and build a continental rail network hasn't been easy. Even worse, the continent was split in two by the Cold War until ~1990, and IIRC, Russia and
Re: (Score:3)
> but trucking was then deregulated, so it became cheaper to ship a lot of stuff by truck.
It has nothing to do with deregulation, and everything to do with time. You need to go watch them switch a railcar onto an industrial spur some time, it takes HOURS. The last one to go into Dominion Color, a single tanker car, took most of a day.
If your product has any time-dimension value, and they all do, then there is a price differential that means trucks are cheaper end-to-end. That line moves with the *relativ
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
A Boeing 737-900 with 180 passengers on board gets about 99 passenger-miles to the gallon for a 1000-mile flight. That is better than most cars with 3 passenger.
Single passenger cars are probably the worst common offenders for carbon output for work done.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:This simply means we're succeeding. (Score:5, Informative)
Yep, that steak you're eating is one of the largest carbon footprint problems in the world.
But, it is SOOO tasty!!!
Time dilation (Score:2)
Unless the door to door time is faster dont bother. I can suck carbon out of the air I can not make more time.
Actually you can make more time: you just need to make the world go faster but extracting carbon from the air is probably easier.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: the elephants in the room (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Water is not harmful! (Score:2)
Your body is composed of about 60% water, so it's clearly harmless! So go drink five gallons all at once and report back to us how it went.
Re: (Score:2)
Apparently bad movies raise your carbon footprint!!!
Re: (Score:2)
in my world methane is based on carbon atom
do tell about yours
Re: (Score:2)