Megan McArdle (May 22, 2008) - Tradeoffs: who knew?

Ah, but what if we get other people to fly and drive less?

Posted by Marcin Tustin | May 22, 2008 2:37 PM

"We cannot simultaneously fix both problems."

That's the talk of the old politics. Obama is going to rescue us from that.

You say "we cannot" but I join with all progressive, non-reactionary Americans in chanting "Yes we can!"

Si, si se puede!

Posted by Bob | May 22, 2008 2:43 PM

Mwahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Posted by Nanonymous | May 22, 2008 2:48 PM

Let's stop worrying about "climate change" and keep flying and driving affordable. I don't want to live in a world where only pompous plutocrats like Al Gore can fly, while they buy carbon "indulgences", all so we can try to keep the earth's average temperature from going up 1 degree over the next century. Let the climate change, if it even will to a noticeable degree. People will adapt, or they'll move. Focus energy on real environmental problems (e.g., the air pollution in China that Fallows describes in the current Atlantic).

Posted by Fred | May 22, 2008 2:58 PM

Either we get upset about doing less driving and flying, or we get upset about climate change. We cannot simultaneously fix both problems.
The trade-off is simpler than that.
Less driving and flying will not "fix" climate change. If you believe the IPCC, Kyoto and such have a negligible effect on future temperatures. If you believe that the solar-cycle drove the warming from 1970 to 1998, then it is completely out of your hands.
Either way, you can get upset about "climate change" if you want to, but it won't help ...

Posted by Robert Ayers | May 22, 2008 3:09 PM

You're right: flying, as currently practiced, is bad for the environment. But I have hope that we can find a technological solution that allows us to move long distances in a reasonable amount of time without as much damage to the planet.

This isn't necessarily just about climate change. We're also going to have to change the way we travel because oil is becoming more scarce. (So, whoever finds this technological solution is likely to make a lot of money.)

Posted by Rulial | May 22, 2008 3:16 PM

"Let the climate change, if it even will to a noticeable degree. People will adapt, or they'll move."

Move!? Move where? We're talking about global climate change, not local. And while some locales will be affected more than others, the change is a global one.

Posted by Jeremy | May 22, 2008 3:28 PM

Interesting ... Standard Carbon, whose business is allowing people to buy carbon offsets, suggests the same carbon offset for airliner or car travel (1 lb of CO2 per mile; a little more if using an SUV) See their calculations here. Of course, you can put on a lot more miles in a day of flying than a month of driving.

Posted by Kevin | May 22, 2008 3:29 PM

Let's stop worrying about "climate change" and keep flying and driving affordable.

It's not clear that's possible. The costs of flying and driving are not being driven up by actions against global-warming, but by the high price of oil. Actually, the price of driving for most people can be reduced considerably by greater fuel efficiency and more passengers per vehicle. Those two things together could cut the fuel costs of driving by 50-75% (drive a 35MPG car with two people instead of a 17MPG car with one). But it's much harder with flying -- airplanes are already pretty full (been on a lightly loaded flight lately? I haven't). And although newer planes like the 787 are somewhat more efficient, the difference is nowhere near as great as switching from an SUV to a Prius.

Posted by Slocum | May 22, 2008 3:37 PM

what do you meeeeeaaan I can't have anything I want! /petulant

actually we have grand national amnesia about a lot of things, plus the best blinders money can buy about what it really costs to do something.

"our current ailine industry wasn't designed for $130 a barrel oil" - some industry guy on TV.

Yeah? Didn't they think it wouldn't eventually happen? There is a finite amount of everything on this planet, which means the price is going to change. Everyone will have to change too. Ultimately changes in the market will effect the amount of CO2 produced more than any scheme of taxing or credit. Because the energy production of elements that produce CO2 when consumed will go up in price due to the difficulty in getting the elements.

We WILL have to convert for a lot of reasons, but mostly because you can't get something for nothing...

Posted by SwissArmyD | May 22, 2008 3:38 PM

I have no trouble with airlines cutting flights or even consolidating if it means they might stay/become solvent. They're not entitled to make money, but they're sure as hell entitled to try.

The add-on fees, however, are cowardly BS. If they're too chicken to tack $15 to the cost of a flight then they deserve to be ridiculed. Charging for the FIRST checked bag is contemptible.

Posted by Matt B | May 22, 2008 3:38 PM

There's nothing wrong with high-speed rail. And high-speed rail need not be fossil-fuel dependent. There's also the fun fact that high-speed rail can be much, much faster than travel by plane, though I don't know how long it will be before such a thing becomes economically feasible - it's very capital-intensive.

Posted by ScentOfViolets | May 22, 2008 3:50 PM

It's not clear that's possible. The costs of flying and driving are not being driven up by actions against global-warming, but by the high price of oil.

Kinda sorta. The price of oil has been driven upward by the increasing demands for energy of China and India. However, environmental concerns have kept US oil reserves out of production for decades. If we had brought on line our reserves in Alaska and off shore, world supply would be higher today and the price of oil would be lower. The cost of gasoline (as opposed to oil) is higher than it need be because of a shortage of refinery capacity. Again, it's been primarily environmental concerns that have kept us from building more refineries. So, it's true that the current impetus for higher energy have little to do with global warming worries. It's also untrue to say that environmental concerns have had no effect on prices.

Posted by David Walser | May 22, 2008 3:50 PM

Complaints about fees for checked bags don't have anything to do with the environmental impact of air travel. The question is whether airlines encourage everyone to carry on their bags or facilitate checking them, and how that is handled has no apparent evironmental impact.

A number of airlines charge fees for a second bag, the weight of which might have some impact on jet fuel usage, and most of the blog comments I saw regarding this issue accepted that as reasonable.

What's next? Decrying standup comics who do routines about lousy airline food as environmentally insensitive?

Posted by alkali | May 22, 2008 4:24 PM

"However, environmental concerns have kept US oil reserves out of production for decades. If we had brought on line our reserves in Alaska and off shore, world supply would be higher today and the price of oil would be lower. "

Those reserves, other than ANWR, were not economically viable to exploit until the recent price spike. ANWR was only viable assuming there was not going to be another price collapse al la the late 90s. Under no conceivable circumstance could any of that oil possibly be on the market today.

Posted by Njorl | May 22, 2008 4:24 PM

Either we get upset about doing less driving and flying, or we get upset about climate change. We cannot simultaneously fix both problems.

Actually, you can. The solution works just like any other liberal solution:

Coastal elites keep flying, and cars are taken away from the working people.

Expensive? Well, raise taxes on the middle class, and pass more tax breaks for hedge funds.

It's pretty easy being a liberal.

Posted by secret asian man | May 22, 2008 4:41 PM

ScentOfViolets:

There's nothing wrong with high-speed rail. And high-speed rail need not be fossil-fuel dependent. There's also the fun fact that high-speed rail can be much, much faster than travel by plane, though I don't know how long it will be before such a thing becomes economically feasible - it's very capital-intensive.

Actually, there is. High-speed rail requires land in very expensive areas.

Posted by secret asian man | May 22, 2008 4:46 PM

Uh-huh. Do elaborate on why this is such a deal-killer. Especially since the same objection has applied to various airports in the past.

Posted by ScentOfViolets | May 22, 2008 4:51 PM

Vactrain, to the rescue!

Posted by Stephen Smith | May 22, 2008 4:51 PM

The add-on fees, however, are cowardly BS. If they're too chicken to tack $15 to the cost of a flight then they deserve to be ridiculed. Charging for the FIRST checked bag is contemptible.

Why?

Posted by dan | May 22, 2008 4:57 PM

Decent rail service would help by eliminating flights under 500 miles or maybe even 750 or 1,000 if we had decent high speed.

We have Horizon Air flights between Portland and Seattle every hour for most of the work day. It si already faster to take the train even with the slow Amtrak we have now when you factor all the waiting time required to fly. The problem is the schedule isn't very conventient.

Posted by eric k | May 22, 2008 5:01 PM

"People will adapt, or they'll move. Focus energy on real environmental problems (e.g., the air pollution in China that Fallows describes in the current Atlantic).

Posted by Fred | May 22, 2008 2:58 PM"

Unless you live in Bangladesh, then you're fucked. But you don't care about drowning dark-skinned people anyway.

Posted by Reality Man | May 22, 2008 5:03 PM

ScentOfViolets: Very simple. you can buy the land you need for an airport quite easily. You just need a patch of land around three miles long and a mile wide. You can hunt around and find that sort of land within driving distance to a major market. Any patch that size will do.

It is a significantly different problem to build a rail line where you need many times the land, and it all has to line up in a relatively straight line.

The only countries to build a truly large-scale independent-track HSR system like France and Japan have done so by taking the land at gunpoint and displacing great multitudes.

Which isn't so bad if you're the liberal surveying it all from your Gulfstream, but is pretty unpleasant when you're newly homeless and broke.

Posted by secret asian man | May 22, 2008 5:20 PM

ScentOfViolets: Very simple. you can buy the land you need for an airport quite easily. You just need a patch of land around three miles long and a mile wide. You can hunt around and find that sort of land within driving distance to a major market. Any patch that size will do.

It is a significantly different problem to build a rail line where you need many times the land, and it all has to line up in a relatively straight line.

The only countries to build a truly large-scale independent-track HSR system like France and Japan have done so by taking the land at gunpoint and displacing great multitudes.

Which isn't so bad if you're the liberal surveying it all from your Gulfstream, but is pretty unpleasant when you're newly homeless and broke.

Posted by secret asian man | May 22, 2008 5:20 PM

Stephen, that's exactly what I was thinking of. Gerard O'Neill claimed you could have them go fast enough to have free fall inside the cabins. They also consume far less energy than other forms of transport.

But that's techno-utopia stuff, right up there with passenger Zeppelins. Sigh.

Posted by ScentOfViolets | May 22, 2008 5:21 PM

The only countries to build a truly large-scale independent-track HSR system like France and Japan have done so by taking the land at gunpoint and displacing great multitudes.

Uh-huh. You mean what other people call 'eminent domain'. Something that's been used a lot for roads, another one of your 'area intensive' transportation schemes (Not that any airport construction in history has ever had to resort to this either, right?) I'm guessing that you're one of those 'taxes are taken at the point of a gun' folks as well.

Posted by ScentOfViolets | May 22, 2008 5:28 PM

In Chicago they had the 'el' (elevated train.)

In disney they had the monorail.

I wonder if they could just do an elevated high-speed train line which ran along the route of a major existing highway.

Posted by Ryan W. | May 22, 2008 5:33 PM

Njorl: "Under no conceivable circumstance could any of that oil possibly be on the market today."

Given that drilling in ANWAR was first shot-down in 1995, do you think it takes longer than 13 years to get first-oil?

Posted by David | May 22, 2008 5:34 PM

I wonder if they could just do an elevated high-speed train line which ran along the route of a major existing highway.

Depends who "they" are. Disney could probably do so. The government? Fat chance.

The government, we note, owns the highways.

Posted by secret asian man | May 22, 2008 5:51 PM

The TGV has an average speed of ca 150 mph. Is this really an alternative to flying for a country the size of the USA? And how do you want to avoid that the railway network just turns into a bottomless pit into which your money disappears?

Posted by heartofEurope | May 22, 2008 6:40 PM

The problem with high-speed rail is not the costs of acquiring the land. It's the the incredibly long time to complete the Environmental Impact Statements. Take the Southeast High Speed Rail Corridor. The corridor was approved for study in 1992, and the two tier EIS is still not done. The EIS was started in 1999, and Tier II is expected to be done in 2010. That's for a project that's over existing rights of way, albeit some of which that has fallen into disuse.

The National Environmental Policy Act requires EISes for major projects. It was adopted in the 1970s-- partly because of backlashes over the Interstate Highway System construction. It makes it incredibly hard to start a new rail project. It's apparently much easier to expand existing roads, however.

If drilling in ANWR takes too long, then doing the environmental studies for high speed rail takes too long. (Building itself is estimated at another 3 to 5 years.)

Posted by John Thacker | May 22, 2008 6:42 PM

The high speed rail lines could be put in existant right of ways. Since we had rail before roads, most of the corridors already exist. That isn't the problem, really. High Speed rail requires more infrastructure than regular rail, so you would need to put in THOUSANDS of miles of new infrastructure. It would be very expensive, and who is going to buy? We already don't take the best care of current infrastructure. I don't have the figures on how much per mile high speed rail costs, but it is a lot.
Plus, the only way to make it pay, is to force every one to use it, and that would require taking out the airlines, and who will foot the bill for that?

Plus+ rail takes less time because the security is lower, d'ya think once it starts being used heavily that wont change?

Posted by SwissArmyD | May 22, 2008 6:42 PM

Plus, the only way to make it pay, is to force every one to use it

Nonsense. High-speed rail, built right, has the potential to be quite popular. Start, go, stop. There are at least two major corridors in Colorado where this kind of system could be feasible (I-25 between Ft. Collins and Colorado Springs, I-70 between Denver and the ski areas). The problems with most US public transportation outside of the densest cities is that to accommodate the sprawl and the many political boundaries mapped out therein, you have to accommodate lots of stops.

As a basic example, one of my coworkers, fresh out of college, spent his first six weeeks at the company commuting by bus from a location about nine miles up the highway out front. This required about forty minutes out of his morning and evening. Once he had been working long enough to have his first car payments saved up, he immediately went out and bought one. This cut his commute time to fifteen minutes. In this example, the bus commute time is aggravated by not only the frequent stops, but the fact that there are about seventeen stoplights in that corridor, many of them synchronized. A commuter vehicle can stay in sync and make only two or three stops, while a bus traveling the same route cannot.

Light rail is often only marginally better, in spite of having right-of-way and tunnels, again because of stopping for passengers. Some of my friends in Oregon have commented on a similar 2.5x time discrepancies for popular routes when using the light rail as compared to a car.

Posted by aMouseforallSeasons | May 22, 2008 7:24 PM

That isn't the problem, really. High Speed rail requires more infrastructure than regular rail, so you would need to put in THOUSANDS of miles of new infrastructure. It would be very expensive, and who is going to buy? We already don't take the best care of current infrastructure. I don't have the figures on how much per mile high speed rail costs, but it is a lot.

Well, this is the century of the Fruitbat, is it not? It's time to get with the times. And part of that is knowing that you have to take care of infrastructure, unglamorous as it is, whether it's putting in new roofing shingles or filling in the potholes on route 66.

Plus, the only way to make it pay, is to force every one to use it, and that would require taking out the airlines, and who will foot the bill for that?

As I recall it, this thread was initiated in part by the notion that at $130/barrel(or more), there really won't be any reliable airline service in the not-too-distant future.

Posted by ScentOfViolets | May 22, 2008 7:57 PM

Ugh - Megan - why take such an obviously unfair and non sequitor swipe like this?

This may seem like a shock so several posters, but NY city has, you know, lots of people. Most of whom aren't even rich! They don't jet off for weekend shopping trips to Paris. Their carbon footprint is a fraction of persons who live in low-destiny ex-urbs. It is true that rich people usually have an insanely high carbon footprint compared to less wealthy people, but that's true everywhere - even in Bentonville!

This is just an example of bullshit populism, where someone point out a supposed hypocrisy of "teh eh-leets!". But what you pointed out isn't an example of "rules for thee but not for me". You're comparing middle class ex-urban dwellers to the wealthist persons in America.

I also find it amazing how any discussion about global warming around here seems to send some of the regulars into screeds recycled from industry-financed bogus papers to try to pretend there is doubt, when in fact there is overwhelming concensus among scientists.

Posted by szr | May 22, 2008 8:14 PM

One more point on alternatives - Airbus claims it is close to developing the world's first passanger airplane that runs on hydrogen. Of course, airbus hasn't exactly been a model citizen when it comes to delivering on its promises of late...

Posted by szr | May 22, 2008 8:20 PM

We can build some better f-ing planes.

Posted by TH | May 22, 2008 8:49 PM

Re: Yet a few long haul flights a year are the carbon equivalent of driving an SUV in an exurb.

Why? It's not like very many people have a private jet. Instead they fly in jam-packed planes, the air equivalent of buses and trains. Of course planes produce CO2, but they do so as mass transit, not personal vehicles.

Posted by JoNF | May 22, 2008 8:55 PM

Scent,

As I recall it, this thread was initiated in part by the notion that at $130/barrel(or more), there really won't be any reliable airline service in the not-too-distant future.

In 1999 I used to take American Airlines from Boston to SFO regularly. The price for a Monday through Thrusday ticket in coach was $2400. I just checked what the price is now - $409. At $400 or even $500 a barrel there would still be plenty of planes in the sky.

Posted by jmo | May 22, 2008 9:18 PM

By the way, you're missing the point Megan. As a coastal elitist, I welcome the higher prices. With every dollar increase in ticket prices, the prior marginal consumer ceases to fly. That means less crowded airports and flights and fewer delays for those of us who can afford to pay the higher fares.

Posted by TH | May 22, 2008 9:38 PM

I also find it amazing how any discussion about global warming around here seems to send some of the regulars into screeds recycled from industry-financed bogus papers to try to pretend there is doubt, when in fact there is overwhelming concensus [sic] among scientists.

Leaving aside the truth of the "concensus" contention, scientific issues are not decided by a show of hands, but by dispositive data, which are not forthcoming. (NB: Computer models are not data.) Plate tectonics, ulcers resulting from H. pylori infections, the possibility of heavier than air aircraft, and of radio transmissions, are a few of examples of notions that contradicted the "concensus" of scientists.

Considering how flaky and nascent climatology is as a science, a little humility (and skepticism) about its predictions is more than justified.

Posted by Occam's Beard | May 22, 2008 9:40 PM

In 1999 I used to take American Airlines from Boston to SFO regularly. The price for a Monday through Thrusday ticket in coach was $2400. I just checked what the price is now - $409. At $400 or even $500 a barrel there would still be plenty of planes in the sky.
Posted by jmo

This doesn't make any sense. Maybe you should lay out what your assumptions are.

Posted by ScentOfViolets | May 22, 2008 9:44 PM

Of course planes produce CO2, but they do so as mass transit, not personal vehicles.

Yes, but they produce A LOT more CO2 than a car or a bus or even a passenger train. As in, orders of magnitude more. Getting a 20 ton hunk of metal to achieve liftoff requires a lot more energy than getting it to move 100 miles an hour along the ground. That energy is produced by burning very high energy fuel in very large quantities, which means lots of CO2. Furthermore, planes eject most of their CO2 output into the upper atmosphere, which is worse than ejecting it close to the ground where it is more easily absorbed by plants and oceanic water. Megan's statistics are correct - a single long haul flight for a family of four is equivalent to the average American's yearly energy usage in terms of CO2 output. It is, therefore, extremeley hypocritical of anyone who takes regular flights unnecessarily to fret about global warming.

America is facing a transportation crisis, if not now, 20 years in the future for sure. Our network is not all that efficient in terms of resource usage, demand is rising, and energy, particularly energy derived from petroleum, is going to get more and more expensive. Absent economical hydrogen-powered engines or the like, there's no way the current system is sustainable. Objections that high-speed rail or the like is going to be expensive and difficult to implement are correct; however, in the long run, a transportation system in which planes are used only for long-distance travel and cars only to service areas in which public transport is not feasible will be both cheaper and more environmentally sustainable. Once built, high-speed rail would greatly reduce the need for short- and medium range flights in the northeast corridor, along the west coast, and in the Midwest between Pittsburgh and Minneapolis.

We also need to start planning our cities in a way that makes them more walkable/bikeable. You shouldn't have to get in your car every time you want to go anywhere.

Posted by Xeynon | May 22, 2008 10:32 PM

Why are people still discussing the CO2 theory of global warming as if none of the following recent data never happened:

1) oceans are cooling
2) troposphere temperatures are unchanged; and
3) surface temperatures are falling

All of these fly in the face of the computer models that supposedly proved CO2-led warming is happening now.

Is this some kind of cognitive dissonance zone?

Posted by chip | May 22, 2008 10:34 PM

I don't understand why the coastal elites are always flying off somewhere when they supposedly live in the best places on earth (at least that's what they tell us every day in San Francisco, despite all evidence to the contrary)....

Maybe there really are better places??? Sacre bleu!

Posted by David | May 22, 2008 10:53 PM

Yes, but they produce A LOT more CO2 than a car or a bus or even a passenger train. As in, orders of magnitude more

Before you say something it might be nice to know what the fuck you're talking about.

An A380 can take 853 people 15,200km using 81,000 gallons of fuel. 853 / 81,000 = 94 gallons per passenger. 15200 km x .62 = 9424 miles

9424 miles / 94 gallons = 100 miles per gallon

"Orders of magnitude" - do you even know what that means?

Posted by jmo | May 22, 2008 11:05 PM

Sorry Meghan, that should read:

Yes, but they produce A LOT more CO2 than a car or a bus or even a passenger train. As in, orders of magnitude more

Before you say something it might be nice to know what the f**k you're talking about.

An A380 can take 853 people 15,200km using 81,000 gallons of fuel. 853 / 81,000 = 94 gallons per passenger. 15200 km x .62 = 9424 miles

9424 miles / 94 gallons = 100 miles per gallon

"Orders of magnitude" - do you even know what that means?

Posted by jmo | May 22, 2008 11:08 PM

My carbon footprint was rather high today. Must've been burning about 12 to 14 gallons of diesel an hour....chisel plowing. So ya'll would have something to eat. Or, more precisely, so the cows would have something to eat, so y'all would have your milk, cheese, and yogurt.

So a TV guy said the airline industry isn't designed for $130 a barrel oil. Well, neither is this country's Ag industry. With oil this high, jetting off somewhere will not be a big concern for most. Putting food on the table will be.

Unless this gets fixed, the future will look nothing like what we've become accustomed to.
Bob

Posted by Bob | May 22, 2008 11:28 PM

Xeynon,

For a shorter range jet - look at an RJ like the Embraer 190. It can take 100 people 2200 miles using 4000 gallons of Jet-A. That works out to be about 51mpg.

Posted by Jmo | May 22, 2008 11:38 PM

Contango! Oil futures are now more expensive than the current spot price. This has asset bubble written all over it, especially now when we have all this conventional wisdom talk about how we have to rebuild our cities. Remember when the internet was going to change everything?

Posted by mishu | May 23, 2008 12:05 AM

I also find it amazing how any discussion about global warming around here seems to send some of the regulars into screeds recycled from industry-financed bogus papers to try to pretend there is doubt, when in fact there is overwhelming concensus among scientists.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Society has successfully eliminated popes and priests as the source of dogmatic edicts about the ways in which the earth turns, and then filled the void of thier absence by appointing scientists as their priests and obtaining overwhelming majorities by excommunicating the heretics.

Posted by aMouseforallSeasons | May 23, 2008 12:10 AM

jmo,

You might want to read what I wrote more carefully. I wasn't talking about gas mileage, I was talking about the impact of CO2 output. Jet fuel produces more CO2 per gallon burned than gasoline does. Furthermore, almost all the CO2 produced is released high in the atmosphere, where its impact is greater than that of CO2 released on the ground. Very few planes fly under the ideal conditions your math uses - flights aren't always full, often must idle on the runway before takeoff or circle before landing, and frequently must take indirect routes or contend with weather conditions which reduce efficiency. None of these is quite so much of a problem with a high-speed train. In addition, planes release a number of other harmful gases in addition to CO2. I haven't done the math for a trip between, say, DC and NYC by high-speed train vs. plane, but "orders of magnitude" is almost certainly an exaggeration, and I'll concede I should have stated that I was speaking figuratively. Nevertheless it remains an indisputable fact that current aviation technology is not as green as the alternatives for short and medium distances.

Posted by Xeynon | May 23, 2008 12:21 AM

It's clear to me, if to no one else, that the human race has almost no impact on the planet. Worrying about the miniscule effect of the industrial revolution when there are so many other problems that need immediate attention strikes me as irresponsible. I admire and respect people like Bob Geldof and Bill Gates for understanding that the biggest problem we must deal with is the lack of infrastructure in places like Africa. If you want to do some good, tell people to stop wasting their time on feelgood crap like environmentalism and work to help out the unnecessarily poor of the world, who are the ultimate victims of environmentalism.

Posted by Pink Pig | May 23, 2008 12:53 AM

Hmmm.

"I don't want to live in a world where only pompous plutocrats like Al Gore can fly, while they buy carbon "indulgences", all so we can try to keep the earth's average temperature from going up 1 degree over the next century."

I have to point out that Al Gore does NOT *buy* carbon credits.

Al Gore is part owner in several companies that deal in carbon credits and as such he gets his carbon credits for *free*. They are a perk and as such don't cost him a dime.

Which is pretty much how all the "elites" will do it.

Posted by memomachine | May 23, 2008 1:06 AM

Hmmmm.

"... understanding that the biggest problem we must deal with is the lack of infrastructure in places like Africa."

Actually that isn't true.

African countries have been the recipient of hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign aid, charities, international loans and loan writeoffs. That's in addition to income earned from mining, oil drilling, agriculture and tourism.

The problem with Africa is that it lacks responsible government. If Africa had responsible government then the infrastructure would follow easily.

Posted by memomachine | May 23, 2008 1:11 AM

Hmmmm.

"For a shorter range jet - look at an RJ like the Embraer 190. It can take 100 people 2200 miles using 4000 gallons of Jet-A. That works out to be about 51mpg."

Are you suggesting that MPG is somehow related to the number of people being transported?

Well in that case a Suburban can carry 10 people and gets 10 MPG normally. But with your twist it really gets 100MPG.

Someone call CBS!

Posted by memomachine | May 23, 2008 1:33 AM

Hmmmm.

"Unless this gets fixed, the future will look nothing like what we've become accustomed to.
Bob"

Yeah. And McCain wants to add a "cap and trade" system for CO2 to combat global warming. That'll add enormously to the cost of energy *and* the cost of farming. No way a cap and trade on CO2 could be put into place without including farmers.

People simply don't understand how much of their lives get delivered by truck. The whole internet economy is based largely on truck deliveries. This means that the whole internet economy could self-destruct if fuel prices climb so high that shipping or delivering products become too cost prohibitive.

Just imagine hundreds of billions of dollars in stock market equity wiped off the face of the earth in the span of a week. Ebay is particularly vulnerable, IMO, to this as many items aren't very high value to begin with.

Then, as you pointed out Bob, there is food production and distribution. I did some software programming for Tropicana in logistics and distribution. Rail and intermodal can do a lot. But it's a rare case where a train can deliver to a street address.

The other problem is that any new source of oil will take years to exploit fully. In the case of ANWR it might be 15 years before we see a single drop.

Right now Americans are worried. Soon enough Americans will be really pissed off. And next winter a lot of Americans are going to be really cold and extremely angry about it.

The question that's going to face congress is who is going to pay the political price for it.

Posted by memomachine | May 23, 2008 1:48 AM

Let me point out that in some places the trains do not run past 10 p.m. or earlier because of noise pollution. Here are the west coast, communities such as Del Mar, La Jolla, Carlsbad, etc. don't want to hear the noise of a train at night, so the last train north is a bus leaving San Diego at 10:30 p.m. otherwise you'll have to thumb (or drive).

Posted by Casey | May 23, 2008 1:52 AM

Let me point out that in some places the trains do not run past 10 p.m. or earlier because of noise pollution. Here are the west coast, communities such as Del Mar, La Jolla, Carlsbad, etc. don't want to hear the noise of a train at night, so the last train north is a bus leaving San Diego at 10:30 p.m. otherwise you'll have to thumb (or drive).

Posted by Casey | May 23, 2008 1:52 AM

Let me point out that in some places the trains do not run past 10 p.m. or earlier because of noise pollution. Here are the west coast, communities such as Del Mar, La Jolla, Carlsbad, etc. don't want to hear the noise of a train at night, so the last train north is a bus leaving San Diego at 10:30 p.m. otherwise you'll have to thumb (or drive).

Posted by Casey | May 23, 2008 1:52 AM

Let me point out that in some places the trains do not run past 10 p.m. or earlier because of noise pollution. Here are the west coast, communities such as Del Mar, La Jolla, Carlsbad, etc. don't want to hear the noise of a train at night, so the last train north is a bus leaving San Diego at 10:30 p.m. otherwise you'll have to thumb (or drive).

Posted by Casey | May 23, 2008 1:53 AM

memomachine said:

"African countries have been the recipient of hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign aid, charities, international loans and loan writeoffs. That's in addition to income earned from mining, oil drilling, agriculture and tourism.

"The problem with Africa is that it lacks responsible government. If Africa had responsible government then the infrastructure would follow easily."

The African people have not received anything like hundreds of billions of dollars, and with a few exceptions, most African countries are economic basket cases. Just consider the numbers. There are roughly 750 million people in Africa, and if (as you hope we will think) they have received humdreds of billions in aid, then each individual African should have received at least several hundred dollars as his share. That's probably about 10 times or more than what most of them could hope to earn in a year. Does anyone think that that's actually happening?

It is true enough that most African countries lack "responsible" (which I take to mean Western-style) government. If all they needed was money, they would be in much better shape today. Here's a few points to consider:

1) The West has been generous and well-meaning with respect to aid, but the local governments have generally demanded that they have control of all the aid, most of which ends up in their pockets. This is a problem that's not confined to Africa -- right now, the Burmese dictators are shamelessly making the same demand. The West has difficulty saying no to tyrants.

2) If you wish to argue that giving money to the corrupt governments will eventually create an infrastructure, perhaps you could cite an example of a place where that has worked.

3) Western governments, in addition to their cravenness when confronted by corrupt politicians, are generally driven by interests that simply don't make sense for people that don't already enjoy the benefits of Western progress.

For example, a lot of African countries have been told by Western governments that their aid will be cut off if they attempt to use the abundant coal resources that they have, because the Western environmentalists have the luxury of doing without coal, already having a viable non-coal-based infrastructure in place. One notable example of this that I've heard about is a hospital that turns out all its lights at night, because the electricity is incapable of providing illumination and refrigeration simultaneously. The only power source that they are allowed to use is solar panels.

For another example, a lot of African countries have been told that their aid will be cut off if they use DDT to help prevent malaria, because the snooty types at the UN (in New York and Geneva) don't have to worry about malaria any more.

Yeah, yeah, I know that DDT and coal aren't actually illegal, but try telling Mugabe that he'll have to live without the flow of cash into his pockets if he tries to use them.

I probably shouldn't have allowed myself to be distracted by this, because it is totally off-topic.

Posted by Pink Pig | May 23, 2008 2:19 AM

Scent,

You say, "And high-speed rail need not be fossil-fuel dependent."

I am very interested to know how high-speed rail would be powered without using fossil fuels.

Posted by person of choler | May 23, 2008 2:42 AM

"Unless you live in Bangladesh, then you're fucked."

Aren't you already fucked if you live in Bangladesh?

"But you don't care about drowning dark-skinned people anyway."

Since Bangladesh was created in a war between "dark-skinned people", it would seem that it's the dark-skinned people who don't care about their similarly-complected fellows drowning. Why didn't Pakistan invite the Bangladeshis to move out of their perennial Monsoon disaster zone and into the Pakistani highlands? If they did, and the Bangladeshis fought them for the right to live in South Asia's equivalent of the 9th Ward of New Orleans, than maybe the Bangladeshis don't care about themselves drowning.

But, of course, it's whitey's fault. Your constant dogmatic imputations of racist intent are the mark of a humanities major from a middling school.

Posted by Fred | May 23, 2008 2:56 AM

person of choler -I am very interested to know how high-speed rail would be powered without using fossil fuels. That seems pretty obvious. It's easy to convert to nuclear. Or solar or wind. Or anything else that produces electricity.

Posted by Ryan W. | May 23, 2008 3:19 AM

Bring on the trains. I love them. And make sure they have terminals below the airports so that you can take a long flight followed by a medium train journey.

Posted by Aaron | May 23, 2008 3:38 AM

"For a shorter range jet - look at an RJ like the Embraer 190. It can take 100 people 2200 miles using 4000 gallons of Jet-A. That works out to be about 51mpg."

Are you suggesting that MPG is somehow related to the number of people being transported?

Well in that case a Suburban can carry 10 people and gets 10 MPG normally. But with your twist it really gets 100MPG.

Yes -- what matters is the number of 'seat-miles per gallon', not the miles per gallon of the vehicle. So a full 8-passenger suburban on the highway IS actually much more efficient than any jet. This suburban is rated for 20MPG on the highway:

http://www.edmunds.com/new/2008/chevrolet/suburban/100895787/researchlanding.html

That's 160 seat-miles-per-gallon -- more than double what is promised with the new efficient Boeing 787 and more than triple the 50 seat-MPG of current aircraft. A full minivan at 25 MPG is even better -- ~200 seat-MPG. Hybrid and/or diesel versions of these vehicles would do better still (jet fuel and diesel are basically the same thing, so we really should be comparing diesels to jets for a fair comparison of fuel efficiency).

And cars don't dump their exhaust into the upper atmosphere (which makes the greenhouse impact). The bottom line is that there is a great deal more room to improve the seat-MPG of cars (in part with higher MPG vehicles, but mostly by getting more butts in the seats). This is not the case with air-travel, which is already operating close to max fuel efficiency.

Posted by Slocum | May 23, 2008 7:26 AM

memomachine -- efficiency is what matters. If you had a choice between taking 2 Priuses (8 people) at 50 miles per gallon or one SUV at 25 mpg (say a Tahoe hybrid) the Tahoe would break even. If you are driving them around empty the math works the other way.

Ergo a full plane flying country is much better in terms of CO2 production than a fleet of Priuses (Prii?) to take the same amount of people.

Furthermore if we were to take your snark as true coin we should immediately rip up all the train tracks in the country because those things get about only about 1mpg.

Posted by BladeDoc | May 23, 2008 7:28 AM

aMouseforallSeasons wrote:

"The more things change, the more they stay the same. Society has successfully eliminated popes and priests as the source of dogmatic edicts about the ways in which the earth turns, and then filled the void of thier absence by appointing scientists as their priests and obtaining overwhelming majorities by excommunicating the heretics."

Except that science has two awesome features previous sources of authority did not have - the scientific method and empiricism. Science is, after all, not a cult or an order, but a highly successful method of studying the world.

If someone were to provide convincing evidence overturning the scientific consensus, that isn't dismissed, it is rather celebrated and that person has his or her name added to the history books.

I do agree with you that we shouldn't be dogmatic about our current conclusions of science in general. With climate change, the science had grown more, not less, convincing. And at this point, there really is no serious alternative being offered, and those who offer lesser alternatives have invariably been on conflicted positions (their research was funded by organizations hoping climate change wasn't true, not the scientific reasons, but policy/economic reasons).

Occam's Beard wrote:

"Considering how flaky and nascent climatology is as a science, a little humility (and skepticism) about its predictions is more than justified."

Well, if you believe this statement you wrote, there seems to be literally nothing that could change your mind. You’re wrong about climatology being a nascent science. You also misunderstand why the consensus has emerged around climate change - quite simply it is the best logical inference based on overwhelming scientific evidence. No proposed alternative has close to the explanatory power of current climate change models.

Could our understanding of CC be wrong? Certainly! But saying something could be wrong isn't the same thing has offering an alternative logical inference that is better supported by the data. And considering how much money has gone into funding just that, I think it is pretty telling that Exxon has since decided its money is better spent on peer-reviewed climate change science, rather than ideologically pleasing, but unsupported, alternatives

I love the name, BTW.

Posted by szr | May 23, 2008 8:04 AM

The US cannot reduce global carbon emissions. The US can only reduce US carbon emissions.

If the US were to reduce US carbon emissions, while China (the largest carbon emitter) continued to increase carbon emissions at their current rate, the absolute quantity of carbon released into the atmosphere would continue to increase, though somewhat more slowly than it might otherwise have increased, at least in the short term. In the longer term, the shift in production from the US to China (which uses energy less efficiently) would probably increase the absolute quantity of carbon released into the atmosphere, all other thing being equal.

Global issues are not amenable to sub-global solutions.

Posted by Ed Reid | May 23, 2008 8:18 AM

A vote of support not just for the price increase, but for the way it was levied in the form of a baggage charge. It was hardly the cowardly thing to do, as some suggest; how many times has an airline raised its ticket prices by $15 and nobody's even noticed, let alone protested? This move will draw a lot more fire, but it's the right thing to do: it essentially offers a rebate on an across-the-board price increase for those who can be bothered to lighten their loads. This incentivizes good environmental behavior, which is exactly the right way to get people to conserve.

It's not that I think they're moral crusaders or anything; lighter planes will cost them less to fly. But this is a case where their bottom line coincides with environmentally responsible behavior change.

Posted by professordarkheart | May 23, 2008 8:20 AM

Was it Gordon Brown or some other British VIP who was jetting off someplace and explained that their CO2 was balanced by offsets?

Those offsets, it was reported, were from people in farm villages in India substituting peddle-powered water pumps for Diesel-powered pumps.

Is this Monty Pythonesque or what? Some Lord Blimp in England gets to fly on an airplane, and what is keeping that plane up in the sky, or at least in some proxy sense, is regiments of people in India peddling like mad to get their water. At the high point of English colonialism, no one hadn't taken things that far.

Posted by Paul Milenkovic | May 23, 2008 9:09 AM

"I bet you are one of those 'taxes are taken at the point of a gun' people."

Well, I would note in his defense, that your freedom will be taken from you---at the point of a gun, if necessary---should you fail to pay those taxes.

Not saying I think it should be otherwise, but let's remember that, in the end, the bullets in a cop's gun help keep the peace.

Posted by Spartee | May 23, 2008 9:17 AM

If we are really serious about addressing a potential devastating environmental catastrophe we should be worrying a heck of a lot less about the gradual accumulation of hydrocarbons on the atmosphere and the resultant slow climate change and a lot more about identifying near earth astroids and finding a way to alter their trajectories. Somewhere there is a rock flying around that has earth in its sights that will end civilization on this planet of ours and possibly life altogether. Though we don't know when precisely that will happen, when it does happen (and it will happen), it will be immediate and the devastation will be total. That is if we do not show the foresight to give ourselves advance warning and develop the tools to avert it. The global warming crowd is not wrong to be concerned about environmental change, they have just wrong-headedly chosen to focus their passions on the less pressing threat.

Posted by Someguy | May 23, 2008 9:22 AM

The global warming crowd is not wrong to be concerned about environmental change, they have just wrong-headedly chosen to focus their passions on the less pressing threat.

Given that the last time such an event happened was 65,000,000 years ago, don't you think it's a bit of a stretch to call it a "pressing threat"?
Moreover, NASA seems to me to be quite aware of the situation - every time an asteroid comes remotely close to Earth we're reminded how much data they're compiling on asteroid orbits. In addition, should one come along that's on anything close to a collision course with Earth, we've got a rather vast arsenal of nuclear ICBM's we could use to blow it apart or at the very least divert its trajectory enough so that it didn't hit us. So why, exactly, is this a more serious threat than something that very likely could cause widespread starvation, displacement, and conflict within the next century if not addressed?

Posted by Xeynon | May 23, 2008 9:48 AM

I am amazed that we have gone through this whole discussion without anyone hitting on the obvious soution to the problem - CAFE standards for airplanes. Soon we can be flying in planes with twice the fuel effeciency of those in use today.

/sarcasm off

Neil

Posted by Neil S | May 23, 2008 9:58 AM

Two people have mentioned this and I would really like to know about it.

They say planes are worse because they release the CO2 into the upper atmosphere. Now, what is the rate at which gasses diffuse in the atmophere? I would assume the rate of diffusion is very high, such that it doesn't really matter where you relase the carbon as it will mix rather quickly with the rest of the atmosphere.

And Slocum, I think the correct metric should be grams of CO2 per passenger kilometer. But you need to keep in mind that the average aircraft is flying 85%+ full. While the average Suburban is traveling maybe 12.5-25% full.

Posted by Jmo | May 23, 2008 10:00 AM

Xeynon,

I call it a pressing threat because we simply do not know when it will happen next. Maybe tomorrow, maybe 10,000 years from tomorrow. However, when it does happen we will likely be caught totally unawares, and we will have no recourse. NASA is quite aware of the situation, which is what makes it so terrifying. By their own estimation they have only cataloged a rather tiny fraction of the near earth rocks. And often when an asteroid comes close to earth we are caught largely by surprise. Given this there are remarkably few resources devoted to updating the threat database. The reality is that we do not know enough to identify most collision trajectories in advance. We also lack the capacity to divert anything that is inbound. Our ICBMs lack the lift capacity to loft a nuclear device beyond low-earth orbit, far to close to effectively deflect a large rock traveling in the neighborhood of a thousand miles per second. Of course the scientific consensus is largely united behind the notion that a nuclear warhead would not be effective for diverting an asteroid even at greater distances. Most believe that at most it would fragment the rock. The pieces of which would proceed on the same trajectory, with the same total tunage, at the same velocity. I believe that this warrants more attention than global warming because it would not change the game. It would end the game and at present there is nothing to do to prevent it. Global warming is not trivial, but neither is it the only threat we face. And it is not an existential threat.

Posted by Someguy | May 23, 2008 10:17 AM

They say planes are worse because they release the CO2 into the upper atmosphere. Now, what is the rate at which gasses diffuse in the atmophere?

People who make a living studying these things have done the math, but whatever the rate is, releasing the gases high in the atmosphere and giving them a chance to absorb unfiltered solar radiation before they diffuse increases their impact.

And Slocum, I think the correct metric should be grams of CO2 per passenger kilometer. But you need to keep in mind that the average aircraft is flying 85%+ full. While the average Suburban is traveling maybe 12.5-25% full.

Nobody's advocating a fleet of Suburbans driven by single drivers as the alternative to air travel for short or medium distances - of course there are alternatives to flying that are worse, inefficient small passenger vehicles among them. It's buses and trains (the latter of which can be run without reliance on carbon-based fuels) to which the comparisons should be made.

Someguy,

Like I said, 65,000,000 years and counting. Yes, there is a threat, but it doesn't seem like one that's worth staying up at night worrying about, any more than we stay up at night worrying about the sun blowing up or space aliens from the planet Zork invading or the Rapture. It could happen, but some events, no matter how catastrophic, are so improbable that it's a misallocation of resources to worry too much about them.

And while ICBM's might not be suitable, I'm sure there are missiles we could use to put a nuke in space if need be. Also, I don't see why breaking up an incoming asteroid would be all that much worse than diverting it, since far more of its mass would burn up on entry into the atmosphere and thus when whatever was left did impact it would do so with far less total kinetic energy.

I also think you're understating the impact that climate change could have. The ecology of the planet and the related logistical networks on which our civilization is based are a bit more fragile than we think. Widespread crop failure as a result of drought or flooding, one very likely consequence of a global temperature rise, could quite easily cause a global conflict and hence inadvertently an existential threat.

Posted by Xeynon | May 23, 2008 10:35 AM

"Given that drilling in ANWAR was first shot-down in 1995, do you think it takes longer than 13 years to get first-oil?"
Posted by David

No David, the right to drill in ANWR was shot down. Nobody was going to drill then. They might have said they would start right away, but it would have been a lie. Oil people don't like to lose money.

Posted by Njorl | May 23, 2008 11:45 AM

Re: People who make a living studying these things have done the math, but whatever the rate is, releasing the gases high in the atmosphere and giving them a chance to absorb unfiltered solar radiation before they diffuse increases their impact.

Except that's not how the greenhouse effect works. It isn't unfiltered solar radiation that CO2 absorbs, it's infrared radiation being re-emitted from the Earth's surface after that surface has first absorbed it as visible light. So I have to wonder why it matters where the CO2 is at: whether it is at one mile up or five, the key fact is that it's there absorbing infrared photons and heating up the atmosphere. I don't see how altitude matters.

Re: Widespread crop failure as a result of drought or flooding

Absent a global catastrophe (massive vulcanism, nuclear war, or an asteroid strike) you're not going to get worldwide crop failures. You may get local or regional crop failures. Also, conflict is an unlikely result of such an event. There have been previous calamities which crashed agriculture over large areas and warfare generally ceased because nations could not afford to fund and feed armies and had to expend all possible resources simply to keep people alive. Starving people don't make wars, or revolutions.

Posted by JonF | May 23, 2008 12:18 PM

Here are a few links:

http://www.grida.no/Climate/ipcc/aviation/006.htm

A nice short doc:

http://www.campaigncc.org/Howdoesairtravel.doc

which has this relevant bit:

Aviation's impact on the climate is worsened by the fact that the polluting emissions happen largely high up in the atmosphere. Here they can do more damage, with not only CO2 but also water vapour and nitrogen oxides having an effect, with the whole referred to as radiative forcing.
In total, the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change estimates that the warming effect of aircraft emissions is about 1.9 times that of carbon dioxide alone, due to the other gases produced by planes. (A higher figure of 2.7 was previously used, but a more conservative one of 1.9 is now preferred, and is the one commonly used).

Aircraft are not uniquely bad, on a per mile per passenger basis. Planes are roughly comparable to cars, in their fuel consumption per passenger mile, just in terms of carbon dioxide output alone. Long haul flights are a little more efficient, per passenger kilometer, than short haul flights, as a high proportion of the energy is required to climb to cruising altitude. However, this does not take account of the radiative forcing effect. With a 1.9 multiplier, the figures for the climate changing effect of flying look very different.

Note the 1.9 multiplier, btw. I don't know exactly what this means, but I would guess that roughly, high-altitude CO2 emissions count for 1.9 times as much per gram than corresponding low-altitude emissions.

Posted by ScentOfViolets | May 23, 2008 12:31 PM

So I have to wonder why it matters where the CO2 is at: whether it is at one mile up or five, the key fact is that it's there absorbing infrared photons and heating up the atmosphere. I don't see how altitude matters.

I'm not a climatologist or a physicist, so I don't know the precise scientific answer to this question. But what I said earlier - that gases higher up in the atmosphere retain more energy from the sun - is an accurate paraphrase of the scientific consensus.

Absent a global catastrophe (massive vulcanism, nuclear war, or an asteroid strike) you're not going to get worldwide crop failures. You may get local or regional crop failures.

I

Tradeoffs: who knew?

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