The article was about comparing carbon emissions, not safety. This was Pablo's interpretation of the question he was asked. Seems like a reasonable interpretation.

Except it isn't a reasonable interpretation. Did you actually do the Google search I suggested?

If you use per passenger mile figures for airplanes, then any notional "carbon reduction" relies on everyone (or at the very least lots of people) choosing drive over fly.

And then you (in saying Pablo's "got the maths right") compare that with a single optional car journey. That is, in the specific terms of the example, three people choosing drive over fly.

But, of course (and this is, really, idiotically trivially obvious) lots of people choosing drive over fly -- what's required for per passenger mile figures to translate into actual emissions changes -- has massive flow-on consequences which are not carbon-neutral.

If you compared, and again, this is the most trivially obvious thing, per passenger mile figures for average driving summer holidays compared to per passenger mile figures for average "fly somewhere" summer holidays, then you might, at a pinch, have the very start of a rational discussion about this.

A discussion that would immediately, without fail, lead into speculation about what the flow-on ecological effects of any large scale change from fly-to-destination-and-back to drive-there-and-back.

So what this article does, is compares wild apples to tomatoes grown using hydroponics in the desert, then draws conclusions from that comparison, and then utterly fails to take a single step beyond that conclusion. And yet you persist in cheering it on, and denigrating responses that point out the problems.

I asked before, but did ya go ahead and do that Google search I set you for homework?

No, the single car journey as hypothesized represents many such journeys in a reasonable way

No, it doesn't. You are allowing your dogmatic defense of Pablo to trump reason.

In fact, the more "such journeys" you hypothesize, the more other factors must come into play in any "emissions profile" of such a large change of public behavior. That is obvious.

The single car journey hypothesized talks about the "emissions" for the driving part only of the cross-country drive (in a far more efficient car than most Americans drive), where that is transparently not the only environmental impact.

Whereas the averaged emissions for the cross-country flight are far more easy to accept in the hypothesis as stated, regardless of whether or not I (or others, see above) feel that is a reasonable hypothesis.

To say that in another way: even only in terms of itself, forgetting the many objections I and others have raised, the hypothesis of the article is flawed beyond any useful purpose.

And I owe you half an apology: the exact search phrase I used was "drive or fly? environment" which has at least 3 pertinent links on the first page of results, and many more if you keep paging. But if you were actually interested in finding better data on this "conundrum" you would have found more yourself. Methinks that's not your goal here.

Amity:

I like your call to take the positives from the article. My take-home is that we've got to get ourselves some better hypotheses!

Mike:

I've made my "position" as clear as I can. If you think it's worthwhile to compare three people not turning up for a scheduled flight, to three people carpooling across the country, in terms of emissions "saved" from that plane and "caused" by that car (not, note you well, an _average_ car to an _average_ flight), then I can't help you to get anywhere else.

As for your comment about motivations, you make a fair point. You're right, I haven't a clue about why you are defending the parapets on this one.

EddieB:

Exactly. You get it.

LW: Examine closely the process that built your expectations of the "film industry" to the point where they were so far from the reality you experienced -- a reality that everyone I know in the industry understands, and moreover would have been happy to explain to you 2 years ago.

This might sting a bit, but I think you have self-knowledge and really do understand that whatever your process was, it seriously mislead you.

And so you need to be very, very sure that you aren't applying that same process to building your expectations of your "year at home saving" or your East Asian backpacking extravaganza.

You need to be sure of these things, because on the evidence of your letter, your ideas on how to progress your current relationship have been built by the same unrealistic process. I think you actually understand this, deep down.

So take a good, hard look at how your expectations get built. And then act on the conclusions you come to about bettering that process. And then decide what to do.

Good luck.