Hacker News Reader

> I work from home most of the time, except for travel across the US one week a month. The result I got was that I was about 8% worse than someone with an uncongested 10-mile (one way) daily commute in a typical compact car.

Are you sure about that? I'm curious about your numbers. This is 12 round-trip flights across the US a year, right? And I assume they're always on full flights (peak efficiency)?

From [1] (2013; maybe it's more efficient now), that's 2-3 tons of CO₂ per round-trip—so in your case, let's average and say about 25 tons/year.

The EPA [2] says "A typical passenger vehicle emits about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year."

That means your flying (1 person) is costing 543% as much as driving (1 car)? It's unfortunately not apples-to-apples, so I'm curious what your calculation was.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/sunday-review/the-biggest...

[2] https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-t...

Those 2-3 tons are the "warming equivalent", based on some multiplier that they don't specific (see the correction at the end of the article). The actual CO2 emitted by the flight is much lower, less than 200kg/passenger (EDIT: per leg).

The other estimates I've seen put flights as worse than cars, but not that bad.

Oh wow, interesting. I was looking around and found another estimate that it's 1.4 tons (SFO/NYC round-trip).

I guess this is better (365% vs. 543%), but still looking much worse than driving?

[1] https://co2.myclimate.org/en/flight_calculators/new

I got about 1.3 tons for BOS<->SEA. Close enough I guess. For cars, start with

https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-t...

Look at the third answer down. The figures I cited earlier were based on about half that mileage per year, so that comes out to 2.3t. Lots of unit confusion here, but I think those both end up being metric tons and the daily commute is already worse than monthly air travel. Maybe that's all wrong, but the point I'm trying to focus on is that the need for regular long-distance travel severely erodes the environmental value of letting people work from home.

> that comes out to 2.3t

2.3t per year, not per month, though.

Ah, right you are. Now I'm really sad.

Okay, so to also summarize for anyone else reading, here's what's going on. The assumptions are:

- Using 261 gal gas/year (which 21.5 gal/month, or e.g. driving 2 × 15 mi/day at 41 mi/gal)

- 1 gal gas = 8.9kg CO₂ (resulting in 2.3 tons of CO₂/year)

In your case that's 15.6 tCO₂/year for flying, vs. 2.3 tCO₂/year for driving.

So, yeah... your flying footprint is 678% more than driving. i.e. you need to fly to work less often than once every 7 months in order for it to beat driving the route you had in mind.

Sorry for the bad news :( but yes, you're very much correct that this makes it even harder for remote work to be good, if you have to fly even twice a year.

> this makes it even harder for remote work to be good, if you have to fly even twice a year.

Well, he's working a continent away from his office. There are still infinite possibilities for remote work without having to travel 2500 miles for those occasional visits.

If your measuring climate impact, then the "warming equivalent" is the correct metric and pure co2 is the wrong one. Am I misunderstanding what you're saying?

The problem is that we're comparing 2 numbers, one is "warming equivalent" and the other doesn't seem to be. We need to adjust one or the other, but which one we adjust shouldn't matter here.

No, it does matter, we should use Warming Equivalent. "Warming equivalent" is the correct metric. Warming equivalents are typically given in Tons CO2 equivalent. It's a way of converting methane and NO2 and other more powerful greenhouse gases to their CO2 equivalent. It's the standard metric anytime we're examining the climate impacts of actions.

In the case of gasoline powered cars, I believe they just put out CO2, the other components are pretty negligible. So you can directly compare the warming equivalent of planes to the pure CO2 of cars, it's a reasonable comparison.

It's worth double checking that last thing, it's been a minute since I looked at the numbers, but I'm about 85% sure of it.

Interesting... I just learned N2O is 300x worse than CO2. I don't know how to make a better comparison then. Some numbers I can find:

"Aircraft engine emissions are roughly composed of about 70 percent CO2, a little less than 30 percent H2O, and less than 1 percent each of NOx, CO, SOx, VOC, particulates, and other trace components including HAPs." [1]

For gasoline the ratio seems to be 51% CO2, 47% H2O, and 0.9% nitrogen oxides, and 1.3% other stuff (excludes nitrogen). [2]

Water vapor isn't considered to be relevant when calculating CO2 equivalents so we can ignore that. [3]

But I'm not sure how much the difference in NOx contribution is... given ground level emissions aren't the same as high-altitude and such.

On the face of it it seems unlikely to me that the non-CO2 components would tip things in the other direction, but I'd definitely welcome better numbers...

[1] https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/policy_guidance/env...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exhaust_gas#Spark-ignition_and...

[3] https://climatechangeconnection.org/emissions/co2-equivalent...

> If you're in or adjacent to academe, you'll have to travel to conferences.

I really think we should be working to change this - conferences are huge wastes of resources IMHO. I usually see a handful of inspiring talks, which could just as easily have been delivered as webinars (which would also allow asynchronous viewing, involving a wider potential audience).

Then again, I'm antisocial and terrible at "networking", so those aspects of conferences don't really appeal to me.

>Then again, I'm antisocial and terrible at "networking", so those aspects of conferences don't really appeal to me.

And, really, the "hallway track" is the value of going to conferences. For the most part, if someone just goes to a conference to sit in breakout sessions, they're probably better off just watching video of the sessions (if they were filmed) or a webinar version of the content.

I love going to conferences, even though I'm an introvert - some would even say a misanthrope. I just need time to recharge afterward. But the fact that some people enjoy them is far outweighed by both the environmental harm and the exclusionary aspect of requiring such travel. We need to figure out how to replicate that energy and easy discovery of like-minded people online. Even as a 30+ year online native myself, I don't quite see it yet.

Most people are social, even if they express it in different ways.

Virtual events are fine, as are watching videos. (In fact, for bigger events, I'll often watch the keynotes from my hotel room rather than packing myself into a room with 10,000 of my closest friends so I can watch the distant speaker projected on the screen.)

But it's a small subset of the experience of attending live.

Well put - that's exactly how I feel.

It's a huge problem that makes the hypocrisy argument palpable when thousands of climate scientists fly across the world every year for conferences on climate change. Teleconferences should be a thing for nearly everyone but the presenters, but it'll never happen because of prestige and elitism.

This hypocrisy is a reoccurring issue with most people who favor coercive political solutions to problems instead of voluntary and cooperative ones.

When people make arguments like "taxes should be higher" or "air travel should be more expensive", they almost always mean "for other people".

People need to eat their own cooking or they instantly lose all credibility, even when the facts are on their side.

No, they mean "for all", rather than just for the patsies sacrificing themselves so that others can just consume more.

Taxes aren’t coercive (unless you’re a Galt’s Gulch Randian, I suppose), and I’m sorry, but would you rather deal with driving a more efficient car or millions of immigrants trying desperately to escape drought, war, and famine after it’s too late? If climate change really is the looming disaster it seems to be (and I personally think we’re fucked), then yeah, sorry, governments might have to do some things you find unpleasant. That’s the price we pay for unfettered consumption for generations. It might be time to pay the piper.

Also, it’s really hard to live in the modern world without using fossil fuel-based comforts. You can criticize air travel and still travel to a climate conference. It doesn’t make climate change any less real. You can maybe argue that people are hypocrites, but so what? The ice caps don’t give a shit. And maybe that meeting of scientists in-person is what it takes to fix a really big global problem. Flying to Asia every year for a vacation definitely won’t do that, though.

I never argued that climate change isn't real or that nothing should be done about. My point was simply that when people behave in a hypocritical manner, they tend to lose all credibility even when they're right, and they hurt the credibility of those around them who are making the same argument. It's like an anti-halo effect.

Every Hollywood actor demanding we take action on climate change while flying around in a private jet weakens the argument for real action on climate change. It makes the issue look like a vanity cause even though it's not.

You see the same thing on taxes. You've got guys like Bernie Sanders out there demanding we all pay more taxes while he himself has a very low rate of charitable giving by most standards. He could also opt to voluntarily pay more taxes right now. Of course he doesn't, which again undercuts any broader point he may have.

Human beings are hardwired to be turned off by hypocrisy.

I'm not sure there is hypocrisy if they believe gathering together will ultimately lead to solutions that lower future carbon emissions.

It could be viewed as an investment in future lower emissions, the same way spending money on R&D today can improve profits in the future.

Even voluntary and cooperative solutions would benefit from the type of coordination an in-person conference affords.

> I work from home most of the time, except for travel across the US one week a month.

I've worked full time remote for over 10 years for different companies and never had to fly that much. I've always flown once or maybe twice a year at most. I think this is more the norm, at least for software engineering and operations.

> The problem IMO is that too little work is truly remote.

You follow this with some specific examples, most of which would require travel even if you were in an office. I don't agree on those you list as requiring face-to-face meetings, they are all fully capable of being done remotely. IMO the only ones that require you on site are one where you physically interact with things/people.

> they are all fully capable of being done remotely.

They certainly are, as long as others cooperate. Good for you if you've never been on a team where people resist and sabotage any such effort. I don't see any particular reason to believe your shorter experience is more representative than my longer one.

> your shorter experience

I had assumed I had the longer experience as most people I've discussed it with have only worked a few years remotely and you didn't specify.

I've only worked one job that was part-time remote where people weren't cooperative with it. But that was mostly the results of one manager who was generally bad, so I didn't take it as remote specific. The other 3 companies where I worked full time remote were all good experiences w/ no one sabotaging things. Solving the issue with one place with the bad manager was pretty simple though... I just found a new job where it wasn't an issue.

Anymore I only apply to places that are either fully remote or advertise themselves as remote friendly with a remote-first culture and it hasn't been an issue.

> travel across the US one week a month

That seems excessive. I work remote and only have to fly in once or twice a year for a few days at a time, maybe a week.

Do you have an idea of why they don't go all the way and let you WFH on the same basis as I do?

I kind of alluded to this in the first couple of reasons why people have to travel. Some companies, including this one, just don't have remote-friendly work flows/habits. Too many hallway conversations with outcomes that are never recorded because nobody can bother. Too many people who allow in-person interruptions to take unqualified preference over response to remotes. Too many people mumbling and/or talking over each other in meetings, so the remote has trouble following or breaking in. Inadequate videoconference and VPN infrastructure making that worse. Too many high-level planning or review meetings that are explicitly in-person for no good reason at all.

I could go on much longer. ;) The point is that accommodating remote workers requires significant cultural change, and people in mostly-colocated groups resist it. It's much easier for all-remote teams, somewhere in between for teams that are still mostly colocated but have already been "broken in" by someone like me. My last company was much better at this, though worse in other ways. Since there are only about five teams worldwide doing storage at the scale we are, and I want to keep doing that, it's a the "price of admission" and overall I think it's worthwhile. But it's still unnecessary and I'm still sad that it's not improving faster - for myself and others in similar situations.

> Too many people mumbling and/or talking over each other in meetings, so the remote has trouble following or breaking in. Inadequate videoconference and VPN infrastructure making that worse.

This, in spades. Thanks for taking the time to explain in more detail.

The first step is to make "kinda remote" way more normalized and pervasive ... then we can work on "truly remote".

I'm OK with that, as long as we realize that in the short term "kinda remote" might actually be worse than status quo due to long-distance-travel requirements. We're discussing the numbers in another sub-thread to see how much.