Letters to the Editor
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Not Straight
NineNine wrote:
"Assuming one could drive a Toyota Prius in a straight line from Denver to London (which is impossible), the distance is 4680 miles. 4680 x 2 [round trip] = 9360 miles."
Planes don't fly in what we think of as straight lines. They follow "geodesics" of sorts, meaning that because the Earth is not stationary on its axis as the plane flies, the plane must take what looks TO US like an arching route to get where it's going, making the trip longer in terms of "ground miles" than the straight line distance we might measure on a map or globe.
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Who did the graphic?
It's fantastic. Great work.
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bad argument
The author deconstructed her entire article in one sentence:
"By that measure, flying direct from Denver to London and back puts about 3,600 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere, equivalent to driving a Toyota Prius hybrid 10,000 miles."
Since the distance from Denver to London and back is about 10,000 miles, the author just proved that flying is better than driving a Toyota Prius hybrid, since you can't jam 200 people into your Prius to carpool like you are with flying.
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Planes...or meat?
I think it's great that more attention is being placed on our personal contributions to the climate crisis. It's about time we as a society began to look at our impact, and I'm happy to endorse any initiative which helps us focus our efforts. To most effectively harness the energy and enthusiasm for change, we should be certain that it is being directed towards areas which can result in the biggest gains.
Whenever someone talks about air travel, I look at its 1.5 percent contribution and wonder whether there are other areas we should be looking at which could result in even greater benefits
One such area is livestock, which are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions (more than from cars!), according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) (http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2006/1000448/index.html).
When emissions from land use and land use change are included, the livestock sector accounts for 9 percent of CO2 deriving from human-related activities, but produces a much larger share of even more harmful greenhouse gases. It generates 65 percent of human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CO2. Most of this comes from manure.
And it accounts for respectively 37 percent of all human-induced methane (23 times as warming as CO2), which is largely produced by the digestive system of ruminants, and 64 percent of ammonia, which contributes significantly to acid rain.
Livestock now use 30 percent of the earth’s entire land surface, mostly permanent pasture but also including 33 percent of the global arable land used to producing feed for livestock, the report notes. As forests are cleared to create new pastures, it is a major driver of deforestation, especially in Latin America where, for example, some 70 percent of former forests in the Amazon have been turned over to grazing.
I'm a meat eater and I fly a lot, but I have to wonder whether cutting back on one or two flights a year would have as much impact as, say, cutting back on one meat meal a week.
The cynic in me says it's easier for us humans to tweak technology we created than to change something as fundamental as our behavior and diets. But if we're serious about responding to the threats we face, we should also be serious about taking an honest assessment about how we live and what we can do to spur change. We may not like some the realities we face, but I suppose it's a sign of maturity to buckle down, make those changes, and get the job done.
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Where'll they put the planes?
Over the next 20 years, more than 27,000 new aircraft will take flight, and the number of air travelers will double to 9 billion during the same period
As Ask the Pilot has noted, the skies are so crowded now that delays and scheduling problems are rampant. Where are all these extra flights going to fit?
Trains require huge investments in infrastructure to connect America and improve the rail lines to the standards of high-speed rail. Included in these investments are the "Right of way" issues that slow many trains down even on tracks that can support higher speeds. The funds for these investments would not be unreasonable, but are opposed by many politicians (mainly republicans) who cry that Amtrak and the train system shouldn't be subsidised.
However, these same politicians have no problem subsidising the airlines (public airports, bankruptcy bailouts, government contracts and more), the oil companies (the most recent spending bill tried to stop the oil company handouts, but were successfully lobbied against. These handouts continue despite oil companies racking up record profits year after year.) and the auto industry (public highways, local roads, road maintenance including plowing, traffic control systems, etc...)
You want better train service? Call your congresspeople and point this out to them. Call your local paper. Bring it up whenever you can. Until this changes, you won't see trains as a viable alternative.
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Good point, Dave
And this is one of the problems I have with those "carbon footprint calculators" you find all over the net. They take into account whether you drive or walk, what your monthly utility bills are, and how often you fly, but don't bother asking what kinds of products you use and where they come from.
Aside from the meat issue, have you ever noticed how much of your fresh produce comes from California, even if you're on the East Coast? What is up with that? I know they have nice weather and all, but peaches, blueberries, strawberries and tomatoes grow as well here as there. Spinach can be grown in the snow. Why is our food supply so dependent upon our ability to ship fresh produce across the entire continent?
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Airport Redesign
The majority of fuel used in flights is during takeoff, correct? A few years back, I read about an airport design that would address this. I couldn't find the actual plan, but the theory proposed sounds really interesting:
http://www.proxybot.org/node/31
A nice side effect is that airports would take up less room as well.