9mo ago

A cool guide to the carbon footprint of major travel methods

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Carbon footprint is a term that was made up by oil companies to shift blame from them to us.
- Doesn't change the fact that some forms of travel are objectively worse for the environment than others. If you can reasonably take a train or a bus instead of a plane or car, you should do so.
  
  instructions unclear: purchased a bus and am now using it to commute to work instead of an f-150
  
  There's too much data missing though. What were the emissions for creating, maintaining, and disposing of these modes of travel?
- Oil companies sell oil and manipulate national policy to promote its use. Consumers buy it and support policy to promote its use. There's at least a bit of room for personal responsibility there.
- And yet, here we are using this metric to discuss how to use less oil. How is this supposed to benefit them?
- what term can I use to put the blame back on them?
  
  Carbon somebody else's problem
- There's no denying that you're part of the problem though. You're not of the hook just because someone's worse than you.

So bicycles are not a major form of transport?
- Does it produce CO₂?
  
  You're breathing more intensely than usual, so there is some overhead. But then again walking would take longer and may produce more carbon overall for the same distance
  
  Yes, and food consumed from exertion. Simon Clarke actually did a really interesting video on bikes and ebikes and how good/bad they are for the environment, now and looking towards the future.
  https://youtu.be/HW5b8_KBtT8
  Tldw; a vegan on an ebike is one of the most energy efficient modes of transportation on the planet, haha.

I wish riding a bike in my city was easier, it's basically suicide with more steps, my municipal policy forces bikes to share the road with motorist and it's 90% stroads.
- On the upside, dying saves a lot of carbon emissions /s
- I could have these problems. Bad policies are better than no policies. Driving with any vehicle seems like suicide in India.

Where can I purchase one of these fancy Eurostar trains ?
- I assume the author says Eurostar because it's essentially a French TGV service that extends to London. The rest of our rail network is made up of constantly overwhelmed, Victorian-era infrastructure and is perpetually on the verge of shutting down, especially in the North of England and in the South East. So unlike France, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc we only have a single, modern, high-speed railway, and it's called Eurostar.
  
  It also has National Rail and the London Underground on there separately. Seems the data is UK-centric which makes it weirder that they referred to petrol cars as "gas".

Ferry kinda sus.
- Ferry super sus. Like a cruise ship, but starts and stops more? Doesn't make sense.
  
  A ferry is dense. It packs a lot of people into a small space on boats that were made to effectively haul people between two docks at a relatively short distance.
  A cruise ship is huge, and given the amount of amenities they host, the density of PASSENGERS on board is vastly lower, yet has a lot of added weight from service crew, pools, dining halls, water slides, slot machines and what not.
  Ferries can be electric too. Never heard of an electric cruise ship before.
  
  There is many small ferries in the UK which are basically a floating platform that get's dragged through the water on a cable. If you run that off an electric motor those can be quite efficent.
  Maybe they are thinking about those.

Heh. "Gas Car, 170 tonnes / km / passenger, based on occupancy.
Most cars are single-occupancy despite having 4 more seats. So they're RATED at 170/km/p but they're more 850t/km each car during rush hours with no car-pooling.
And no one car-pools, effectively.
- I really hope they're right and it's grams, not tons.

What about a private plane like a Gulfstream?
Edit: so I decided to do some wild napkin math, but Trump, for example, has a B757, which uses older and most likely more inefficient engines. So take a short haul flight which is 246g/km/person, and a standard short haul flight can hold about 130 people. So if he only travels with say 13 people on board (a tenth of that) it would increase the amount tenfold and give 2,460 g/km/person.
I think the goes a long way in showing that the 0.1% blow things out of the water comparatively speaking.
- The 0.1% definitely blow things out of the water comparatively speaking.
  It's still important for the 99.9% to know where our co2 emissions are coming from so we can find ways to reduce our own emissions and put pressure on the 0.1% to reduce theirs as well.
  Spreading awereness is also important so more people will know the impact their choices have on global co2 emissions which will hopefully encourage them to make smarter choices and pressure the 0.1% and corporations to reduce their emissions as well.

What is the definition of short haul vs medium haul flight?
- IATA defines short haul as a total flight length under three hours, medium haul as 3-6 hours, long haul as 6-16 hours, and ultra long haul as 16 hours and above.
  ICAO has other definitions, and doesn't consider medium haul as a separate category. Some airlines and airports also have their own, distance-based definitions.
  
  😑 reading this on a short haul flight for work

So 113 x

This is just from a small part of my city.
- I’m surprised everyone is wearing a helmet.
  
  Well it's the law.
- 😳 Is that a daily occurrence?
  
  Pretty much during morning and afternoon rush hours.

At least half of these are not available in my general area for my normal travel.
I'd like to be able to make better choices, but my options are limited by factors beyond my control.

Like what motorcycle are they looking at, like sports or commuter? Because my commuter motorcycle (KTM 390 duke) gives me like 30-35km/L easy, no way a hybrid is more efficient. Got it once to 45km/L by falling into the slip stream of the vehicle in front of me, but that shit is dangerous.
- This is from memory from a while ago, so take it with a massive block of salt. Although motorcycles are a lot more fuel efficient than most other forms of transport, they don't have to comply with the same kinds of emission standards and as a result have "nastier" emissions. Again from memory I thought that was primarily NOx, which I thought was more of an air quality thing than a greenhouse gas thing, but maybe there is something else as well?
- Because my commuter motorcycle (KTM 390 duke) gives me like 30-35km/L easy, no way a hybrid is more efficient
  My prius c can get 20 km/l at the minimum, about 25 km/l on average, and about 30 km/l on a really good day. Winter is the worst due to the need for the heater on startup. Granted, it's not a plug in hybrid, so it isn't getting the maximum efficiency as it could.
  Currently trying to switch over to a bike, gonna try to get it a mid drive upgrade. Should have a fraction of a percent of the carbon output of my car.
- I can understand L/100 km and MPG but km/L is just wack.
  
  3l/100km then

This is good, but neglects the bike and ebike categories, which a considerable amount of the world also uses.

Total carbon?
Carbon per person?
Carbon per mile?
- I'm going to venture a guess and say it's grams of CO2e per passenger over 1km
  
  The prophecy is true
  
  How many passengers in the car?
- I walked down to the store and it was 526 cabin footprints.

I would like to know how Plug-in hybrids are calculated.
Just recently there was another report how they pollute more in real life than previously expected. Source

Thank you. I will saving this to my phone.

I can't take it seriously if it says "gas car"
Most modern countries have a gigantic percentage of people driving about in 1.2 litre shitboxes because that's all they need
People that call them "gas cars" are usually selfish fuckwits that drive 4 litre "gas" guzzlers because their government subsides billionaires

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