Air travel’s sudden collapse will reshape a trillion-dollar industry | Hacker News Reader

Air travel’s sudden collapse will reshape a trillion-dollar industry

economist.com

58 pointslxm146 comments

Let's invest in a high speed national passenger rail system!

Rail has much higher initial and fixed costs than air travel, and high-speed trains consume more energy than aircraft on long-distance routes (as airliners travel at high altitude with low air resistance).

The literal footprint of a rail system is also very large; clearing and grading rail lines across the country would have a significant environmental impact.

That’s a bold Claim. What proof do you offer?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail for the costs side.

https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/airplane/drageq.html for the drag side.

There are also a huge number of fuel consumption, economic analysis, and environmental impact studies, but I am sure you can find those easily if you're interested.

CHSR is like the worst case example of cost. That project is a disaster.

I agree, but I see no reason to assume other states would be better. New York's subway cost spiral has been quite bad as well.

Every contractor and their mother had their hand in the cookie jar. And every politician wanted a stop in their constituency town(s).

This will not be any different nationally. It might actually be quite worse.

Based on this equation, shouldn't high speed trains consume less energy since they travel so much slower than planes (3x speed = 9x drag)?

Really not sure whether the person you’re replying to is actually correct, but the air is a lot denser on the ground than at cruising altitude. That’ll have an effect on energy consumption that works in the other direction.

Of course it’s not correct. A high speed train will use about 40kwh per 1000 people per mile

A plane is about 5 tons an hour, or 10kg per 300 people per mile, so 30kg of jet fuel per 1000 people per mile, or 1.2GJ

So a cruising a330 uses about 10 times the energy per passenger mile as an ICE high speed train.

Clearly the comparison of polution caused it then affected by how green the electricity source is and the extra environmental impact of burning fuel in the high atmosphere.

> high-speed trains consume more energy than aircraft

citation needed. It helps a lot that (electric) trains do not need to carry their own fuel. Also, trains can run on low-carbon energy, whereas there is no viable alternative to jet fuel at the moment, and producing that from net-zero-carbon processes (akin to biodiesel) is not economical.

Airliners travel in air that is >60% less dense than the air at sea level, and usually travel over or around energy-wasting terrain features and weather.

That's not a citation, it's a random factoid, which doesn't make for a fruitful discussion. Other random factoids include:

* trains are long

* trains travel slower than airplanes, and drag is proportional to the square of speed

* making conclusions solely based drag coefficients from the density of the air is sound reasoning

One of these statements is false. I get that hackernews is just a forum for casual discussion of various technical topics, but overly categorical statements based on a reasoning in a vacuum (no pun in intended) just force the conversation into unproductive threads like this one. I'm kinda sorry I took the bait at this point.

> I get that hackernews is just a forum for casual discussion of various technical topics

I hear this sentiment a lot, and I don't understand it. Trying to speak the truth isn't just optional outside formal contexts. There's no situation so casual that I it suddenly becomes appropriate to make up bullshit and present it as facts.

That is to say, I agree with your larger point: if nickff wants to make the claim that trains consume more energy than aircraft, he'd better come up with a reasonable source for that information.

Trains are long, but skin friction drag is real. Traveling slower is a bug, not a feature. If you want to go slower, airplanes can be more efficient as well!

Yes, but they travel 5-10x faster than ground vehicles. Drag losses go linearly with air density and quadraticly with speed. Likewise the distance traveled is going to be higher on a rail network but probably in the "2x as far" realm. You're not going to make those two orders of magnitude up with this.

I think if you want to make this analysis come out you need to include starting/stopping losses (and maybe fuel hauling, empty car overhead, etc...) to the train trip or somesuch. Naively trains are going to win and it's not even close.

Biodiesel is not economical and a dumb idea, but it's pretty cheap to make flying offset factory emissions like within the EU emissions trading scheme (works out to ~€3 per passenger-hour), or even direct air capture schemes (~$20 per passenger-hour). Zero marginal carbon flights still works out to be cheaper than most countries' high speed rail networks if you compare unsubsidised costs.

Four things I would like to mention that don't come up generally in discussions like these:

* Transportation infrastructure is a societal investment that produces benefits, it's not just about its cost. Investing in terrestrial transportation like trains, even if it is more expensive can give rise to proportionally greater societal benefits than air travel--think, a long-haul train has multiple stops, providing connection points for economic activity (smaller towns and cities connected through train stations) that planes clearly cannot. I actually think it's totally OK that trains require more investment because they may create larger network effects in the big picture.

* In some sense, all societal spending is make-work. If we're going to have make-work programs, we might as well spend it on the best long-term strategy, which in my honest opinion, having lived in Europe for a number of years, is cities being well-connected with cheap and fast rail, subways, and trams.

* Climate change is a real thing, and it's due mostly to CO2 emissions. It's gonna cost money to fix. We need to stop deploying the "but itz mah dollarzzzes" as an excuse not to act. We need to start thinking about paying back the absolutely massive debt we racked up from cheap and easy energy.

* Carbon offsets are a shell game that we can play in the short run, but ultimate we need to get to zero carbon footprint, which cannot be accomplished with offsets alone.

In summary, we better start paying up.

High speed rail requires speeding up and slowing down too. And at 15m/mile it's significantly cheaper and better to build airports

What does "15m/mile" mean?

I suspect that means 15 million dollars per mile of rail. It should depend on where the rail is being installed though, because for paved asphalt roads, the price per mile can vary from 500k per mile per lane in a rural area, to north of 10m per mile per lane if you’re in a densely populated urban area

To go from LA to SF, flu. To go from Fresno to SF... Airport, really????

The advantage with the train though is that it can use renewably produced electricity, whereas the plane burns hydrocarbons.

It's pretty cheap to offset. About $5 to offset all the carbon produced during a transatlantic flight in economy seating

That's great, but the environment doesn't care about the cost to offset just that it has less CO2/etc in the air from humans.

Yeah, and the offset is directly causing that much less of the gas to be emitted into the atmosphere by someone else. CO2 is fungible. Rather than eliminating it from the hardest to eliminate use cases first (planes), it makes sense to tackle the easiest use cases first (power generation, trains, and road vehicles). Your dollar goes a lot farther there.

Cool. Air travel is not getting banned.

Much as I love trains, air travel's crisis at hand is predicated on people's widespread and perfectly understandable reluctance to spend long hours in a sealed tube in close proximity to all and sundry, so I don't think this is the cue for trains to step in and save the day.

Do we know anything about how strong the economic pressures are for airlines vs. trains, regarding cramming passengers closer together?

Obviously, for a given number of passengers, more space = more cars or larger cars. But I'm curious if giving passengers 8" of extra legroom is cheaper per passenger-mile for trains than it is for airlines. I'd assume so.

One competitive advantage of trains is that if they sell more tickets than anticipated, they can (capacity permitting) add an extra car at relatively low cost. An airline has to add another plane or bump passengers. Equally, rail companies can scale more easily to different social distancing guidelines.

Does this ever actually happen though? I'm not aware of variable length passenger trains along a single route. And the stations for boarding are only so long.

Not your ideal train system, but happens in India. Quite often.

More often what happens (London) is the inverse. They’ll take two carriages off and squeeze you in tighter. Mornings always 10 carriages comfortably seated? So, Let’s take two off and let them stand for their expensive season pass.

There is no automatic process but it common to add cars for events, school trips or other organized groups.

Amtrak does this.

Many rail networks are designed for trains of a specific length. Primitive signalling systems risk trains colliding if trains are longer than the design length, or there are places a longer train would get stuck (a pair of long trains each cannot move forward because each requires the other to move first due to the design of the signalling and safety systems)

You can definitely run shorter trains though.

IIRC the NEC in America can accommodate 16-car trains but not all trains are that long.

Planes have flight attendants, and part of safety regulations is that you need a flight attendant per 50 people, or something like that. Trains have no such thing.

IIRC in its early days JetBlue used to strip out a row of seats in its a320s to get a number divisible by 50. The rearranging of the rest of the seats allowed them to advertise having the largest domestic economy seat pitch in America, which was a happy side effect.

Planes also have higher energy consumption given that they have to move you vertically and horizontally, and electric trains have an even greater advantage since electricity is a lot less prone to swings than fuel.

As far as modes of long distance travel go, the train is probably the most comfortable given generally much better ride quality than a bus and much more legroom than a plane, to say nothing of the fact that you can actually get a full size table in a train and walk around and whatnot.

The Interstate system is not high-capacity enough for all long distance travel to be in hermetically sealed private cars.

Oh, yes, indeed! Let us invest, using the fantastic negative-$864 billion/month budget surplus that we have been so blessed as to earn amidst this global pandemic.

Provoking people into this exact argument was, in fact, the entire point of blowing up the budget deficit in the first place.

Put military spending, corporate tax rates, and upper income tax rates back to where they were, and re-allocate that money to productive infrastructure and it'll be fine.

I am confused; you seem to say that trillions of dollars in US taxation and spending were chosen primarily for their rhetorical effect? This seems like a pretty stunning accusation to make against policymakers.

There has been a long-term effort by the Republican party to shrink government, the core of which is often called "starve the beast"[1]. The idea is that by cutting the revenue of the government, it will have to reduce spending on things like, say, a national high-speed rail system.

So, yeah, regardless of how you feel about the goal, I don't think it's unfair to say that trillions of dollars in US taxation and spending were chosen primarily for their rhetorical effect. Being able to say "but we can't afford that!" was a top goal in recent tax policy.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast

How curious.

Well. I did some basic math. The figures I found online indicate that the 2017 tax cuts reduced total revenues in 2018 from forecasts, by about $275 billion.

The June 2020 deficit was, as noted, $864 billion in a single month. This suggests that the added revenue from restoring taxes to "where they were" would pay for June's deficit over the next ~4 years — well, three and a bit, and you have to account for the revenue drop in a crisis.

This is, of course, on top of the $779 billion deficit in 2018 and the $984 billion deficit in 2019. And, of course, there are multiple months in 2020.

I think the general point stands, unless you're going to raise taxes VERY high or go full "money printer go brr" perhaps?

Depends on where the earlier commenter meant when they said "where they were"; the 2017 cuts were just the latest in a long line. For instance, if we rolled all the way back past Reagan's 1981 tax cuts, we'd be up to a 70% top marginal tax rate (it's currently 37%). They also wanted to cut military spending, which has gone up by a fair bit in the same time period, and meddle with corporate taxes.

It's probably fair to say that all this would have a big impact on that deficit.

It's unlikely to cover the 2020 economic-crash monthly deficit, of course... but hard times are the right time to go full deficit-spending to try to prop up the economy. Money printer can, indeed, go brr if it'll slow a collapse. So says mainstream economic theory.

If you borrow to invest for the future by adding value, you grow. Everyone seems delighted to borrow ever more against existing housing stock, which creates nothing.

Yes, but only if you add value. It is of course possible to borrow to invest in the future, and lose value, particularly given the time value of money.

Do you think this proposed investment is being made with conservative, reliable underwriting, such that we can be confident that it will deliver value?

What if people are doing nothing with their time [0]? If that's the case it wouldn't matter what the money is spent on. Of course it would be better to optimize everything perfectly but that is a luxury that's not available to everyone.

[0] Most likely mass unemployment due to the corona virus.

Please avail yourself of an economics work and read about what the "time value of money" is and how little it is connected to unemployment. You will be able to engage in a coherent discussion. Thank you.

Yes, I agree. You have a fence that needs painting, paint, a brush, and a guy who is about to spend the day watching daytime TV.

Yet we are told, no!, do not pay this man, we can't afford it. We cannot get that day back when the sun sets.

Economics has let us down very, very badly.

How would locking _more_ people together in a confined space for even _longer_ help in this situation?

Trains at least stop and open their doors occasionally letting in fresh air. Each car has less people in it than a typical commercial flight, and my train trips are significantly shorter than my plane flights as well. It’s not obvious to me what’s worse one way or the other.

Can you give an example of your train trips that are shorter than the flights. It seems like a short flight between SFO-LAX is about ~1.5 hours of sitting-inside-the-tube. I am not aware of a train between these two cities that can do this trip in any significantly less time than that.

the parent comment is that we should build highspeed trains like the ones in other countries that demolish plane travel time and overall checkin to destination time.

Building high-speed train track would provide exactly that, something like Shinkansen or CRH trains.

Wasn't sure which were the apples and oranges to even begin comparing it seems. I was thinking of train trips locally like commuter trains for about 30 - 40 miles v. short flights a state away because for a train trip to be made a route needs to exist, and those tend to be commuter trains. I wouldn't suggest a train to be an aggregately shorter time period for a long distance trip.

Another factor to consider is that total time for air travel for the covid context should include sitting on a tarmac and loading / unloading.

One thing to consider is that train seats are significantly roomier and more comfortable than airline economy seats. This site[1] lists most high-speed trains having seat pitch of >900mm (or 35in), some reaching 1,000mm (39in). According to [2] most airlines have seat pitch of 31-32 in.

[1] https://misc.transport.rail.europe.narkive.com/ffTnAi0D/seat...

[2] https://www.seatguru.com/charts/longhaul_economy.php

6 feet is 72 inches though. So this is insufficient.

A plane lets in fresh air the entire time throughout the flight.

When I read a long time ago I interpreted recirculated air to mean 100%. It seems that old planes had 100% fresh air and modern planes are 50% or so recirculated. Heck, I didn't think even HEPA filters would have been sufficient until I just did some reading, but clearly if as of 2002 a simple cold virus won't transmit appreciably with recirculation, the coronavirus won't either [1].

[1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/195131

The problem with recirculation is not that it makes through the filter (although that'd be part of the issue, if it did), the problem is that air is blown throughout the cabin, and those droplets travel quite a bit _before_ they reach the filter. Someone sneezes 3-4 rows away from you, and you could inhale whatever they expelled.

As someone who voted for the California initiative in 2008, I don't trust the competency of our national (or CA state) government. Perhaps it can be done in a privatized manner somehow.

Highway self driving will make virtually all of those obsolete as well.

We did, then it was regulated to bankruptcy and the government took it over and now we have Amtrak.

Trains used to be high speed new technology. If the government got out of the way (I'm looking at you, California high speed train fiasco) we'd be fine and there would be great systems.

The interstate highway system had something to do with the end of long distance rail.

Let's invest in medium speed national passenger rail that will go to cities of 100,000 population everywhere.

I agree with this - max speed around 120mph looks like the sweet spot in terms of ROI. I see HSTs as more of a vanity project these days - lots of them run under capacity and are even worse on paying back the money invested into them than standard rail. I love HSTs, and have been on Eurostar, Thales, ICE, AVE. But in many circumstances - and obviously it's down to the particular geographical situation, and many other factors - HSTs are not the optimal solution.

Really? Why not develop something you can use to stop wasting fossile fuels on trucking stuff around? A rail system using small electrical vehicles instead of diesel would make more sense with an option to move people as well.

Since I live in EU that would only make sense for this to be multinational and therefore probably never get built. Also it would require our leaders to think about the future and not just about how to get more votes.

Most high speed trains are actually powered by electricity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_high-speed_trains

First-and-last mile delivery need the flexibility of trucks, there's no way around it. So an expanded railway system and electric trucks are the way to go I believe.

Not in Denmark where I live. Most (I think) trains are running on Diesel as our politicians decides not to electrify all parts of the country.

When travelling on our highway (e-45) I see many trucks which are not first/last mile but more likely in the 1000 km range. I think that we should consider smaller trains which cost more to establish but could use some of the power getting wasted (wind/solar) at times where it is generated but the demand is low.

The problem here is that Europe optimized for passenger rail (so the rail is fast, which is good for people, but expensive per mile, which is bad for freight) and the US optimized for freight with the reverse positives and negatives.

The only country that I’m aware of that did both great on the same network was China, but they ran into capacity issues so they spent hundreds of billions to move people onto a brand new dedicated passenger high speed rail network and now the legacy slow one has more room for freight.

That was the leadership call. In the US, current leadership might do the same. It's likely a national poll would support an electric solution though.

We’ll need to solve the last mile problem effectively - especially in low density areas. At least with airports you can rent a car and continue your journey. Train stations need to have similar infrastructure.

Having just completed the 32 hr train trip from Los Angeles to Seattle I would love a high speed alternative.

Even before this, the airline industry was downsizing. Boeing 747 and A-380 aircraft were no longer being ordered, and many were already parked. The 737-MAX debacle didn't result in a capacity shortage.

Business air travel, overall, will probably never come back. More meetings will be online; only for really important ones will people actually take an airplane. With more people working at home, there may not be an office to meet at. You'd have to book a conference center.

I hope it’s never that disposable to fly for business ever again. At my last employer, they flew me across the USA one evening, drinks and dinner and hotel room. Morning breakfast, then we had the 1 hour meeting we had scheduled (a meeting that easily could have been done remotely). Then a big fancy lunch, my Uber arrived, and a plane ride back across the country to my home. At least during the 1 hour meeting my boss brought in his baby goats to show us, so there’s that.

wow

I wonder how much carbon was released for that trip

Honestly if you really analyze the world and how it works, this is because the folks at the top have to maintain the illusion that they do important work and need a certain level of spending to create the environment to execute it. I do agree that stuff like conferences etc. are absolutely necessary. However, any job or work above a certain level is more about projecting power, persona after following regular practices in strategy.

Probably your employer did it because they were allocated that amount in the annual budget and had to tick the box, but won't you as an employee prefer at least the stay to be extended by 3+ days for more meaningful interaction. Conversely won't it be better to cancel it altogether and pass 30% of the savings to you, the employee ?

the baby goats were worth the trip!

> Boeing 747 and A-380 aircraft were no longer being ordered

I think it was more multi-faceted than that. For a while, 747 and 380 served the "hub and spoke" model, where giant planes would fly a gazillion of passengers between the hub cities, and smaller aircraft would distribute smaller quantities of passengers to their actual destinations. This worked especially well for Airbus and their European customer base, which invested in their mega-hubs in AMS, LHR and MUC.

Boeing's 787 Dreamliner was a surprising success (maybe even for Boeing itself), as lighter materials like carbon fiber got cheaper, and allowed for a medium-size plane to ferry passengers between some very distant (but overall not very well-trafficked) pairs like LAX-Warsaw or NYC-Oslo, eliminating the need for an overlay in a hub. All that at a fairly competitive cost per seat per mile.

A bunch of carriers suddenly had a Dreamliner-centric business strategy that undercut the old-school hub-and-spoke rivals. Norwegian and ANA come to mind - convenient direct connections between city pairs that are not that popular. And the market share those carriers aimed for frequently belonged to the airlines that bought 747s and 380s.

How do we stop any article that can somehow be linked to C02 from turning into the exact same off topic repetitive conversation about global warming again, and again and again and again.

This article is a big deal, but I doubt we'll see anyone talking about the spider web of the world having been removed and the massive ramifications it will mean.

It's not like we can't do both.

If I have anything interesting to say about the socioeconomic repercussions of shutting down air travel I will.

But, in general, I think the more people talk about global warming the better.

Highway self-driving will immolate short and medium flights.

Would you rather have YOUR car drive you overnight on a highway while you sleep and get to take far more luggage and have a car when you get there and spend about 20$ in electricity at a lower carbon footprint and you can leave and return and change your schedule at will?

Or go to the effing airport?

400 miles is about the same amount of time at a far lower cost and flexibility.

500-600 miles is an extra hour or two, and you can stop and see friends and eat food, or just sleep overnight.

700-1000? Sure a bit more annoying, but still you can take more, is cheaper, and you get your car when you get there.

So in my opinion, any trip under 1000 miles will probably be driven once self-driving takes off.

And highway self-driving is the easiest to automate, and highways are the infrastructure that will be "converged" or adapted with self driving first.

I don't sleep well in cars and I certainly won't make it that far without a bathroom stop. A quick flight sounds more appealing still.

You can ask your car to stop to go to the bathroom.

Self-driving cars will probably have better reclining that the current ones. It will be a feature.

Even if you don't sleep, going to an airport with sufficient buffer, checking baggage and checking in, security lines, waiting to board, boarding, actual flight, taxi time, getting baggage, getting ground transport is about 4-6 hours even for a 1 hour commuter flight.

And when highway self-driving really improves with mesh networking cars might be able to cruise at 100mph.

Are cars gonna have bathrooms in them now? Because if not, you're now talking about rest areas, many of which are closed at night. And if I wake up having to pee, and the nearest rest stop isn't for an hour, what then? I can't go back to sleep. The nice thing about a plane/train/coach is that the bathroom is right there -- no need to interrupt your travel.

It's all kind of academic anyway because I don't own a car, nor does owning one here make sense anyway as I'd never use it except on road trips, so the plane/train/coach is the only option.

I don’t sleep well in cars either. I wonder what it would take to be comfortable.

Sleeping on a train on a bed sounds doable. I think it all comes down to smoothness.

You will never, ever be able to ride a car in a highway without paying attention. Cars are not designed like that, highways are not designed like that, and even in your magical ideal scenario you'll be jolted awake several times by the car suddenly breaking or accelerating.

You can sleep on a car travelling on a highway right now. It's called a bus.

> [...] highways are the infrastructure that will be "converged" or adapted with self driving first.

That's called a railway.

There's a lot to hate about Covid-19 but the planet must be breathing a sigh of relief at the reduction in planes and cruise ships pumping carbon into the air.

Airlines = 2% of global carbon emissions

Cruise ships = 0.2% of global emissions.

Stopping both will have a negligible effect on global carbon, probably near 0 since more people will drive as a result.

* https://www.atag.org/facts-figures.html

* https://www.tourismdashboard.org/explore-the-data/cruise-shi...

> Stopping both will have a negligible effect on global carbon, probably near 0 since more people will drive as a result.

That seems to assume that people are still doing the same amount of travel, just not by air; but I don't think that's true.

I feel like most people travel because it's cheap. In Europe, and with a bit of preparation, you can get round trips between any 2 major cities for less than 100 euros, sometimes much less. Berlin<>Mallorca is often under 25 euros (round trip)

Wow! 2% of emissions? That's a lot. If you shut off airlines it's the same as a single year's growth in emissions.

> If you shut off airlines

Well the thing is that you don't.

Even if the airline industry is decimated, you would only see a fraction of that potential value go down.

In essence you're talking a fraction of 2% of all emissions.

That doesn't even register as noise in the overall trend.

It won’t totally fix the problem. Might as well not do it then.

If you want to address a problem, you don't waste your time focusing on inconsequent approaches.

And more importantly, you are doing absolutely nothing to fix the problem. You're passively watching while a temporary crisis affected an industry that has a potential contribution to the problem that is at best around 2%.

Sure, but I've heard that argument so often about so many different industries. The effect of changing any individual industry will be small -- so the solution is to change many of them rather than none of them.

Air travel is the most direct wallet-to-well way to spend one's money. Money spent on other things will spin up a lot of economic activity and will ultimately reach a fossil fuel extraction beneficiary anyways. Could it be that all the spinning-up on the less direct route would ultimately lead to faster fuel extraction/burning in total? It would surely allow more people to participate in the benefits stemming the economic activity caused by the more indirect wallet-to-well route (a social benefit of not flying), but I have repeatedly failed to wrap my head around the relative speed of fuel extraction/disposal of more direct burning vs more indirect burning.

That’s an airline interest groups website so the figures are the rosiest you can find — not to say they’re egregiously wrong but they’re framed very positively.

Air travel doesn’t exist in isolation, less air travel _because_ less people are travelling means you would expect to see a reduction in car use too.

The figure agrees with the EESI, which claims 2.4% globally and 3% domestically: https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-the-growth-in-gr...

I can't find any evidence that EESI has an industry bias.

Parent was probably thinking of the whole shipping industry which is responsible for ~3% of global emissions.

You can make it seem like there's no effect if people simply ride airplanes then disappear.

There's a whole economy before, during, and after. People taking trips on airplanes are often riding taxis and pumping CO2 into the air, buying up loads of goods during their trip that needs to be processed and manufactured (clothes, knick knacks, excess food), and so on. Countries and regions with economies dependent on tourism are taking huge hits to their GDP. That'll likely be reflected in lower emissions.

> riding taxis and pumping CO2 into the air, buying up loads of goods during their trip that needs to be processed and manufactured (clothes, knick knacks, excess food), and so on.

People would do exactly this locally as a substitute for travel. It might be a boon for a local economy, but doesn't help with carbon and other types of emissions.

Travel is a time of excess. There’s a lot of cost beyond just the airplane tickets. Those costs come from somewhere.

I don’t think many people will be driving from say NYC to London.

The LA Times had this story:

https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-co2-sea...

In it they say:

> For every metric ton of carbon dioxide released into the air, three square meters of Arctic sea ice disappear.

[...]

> To put that in further perspective, Notz said, it means that driving about 2,500 miles in the average American car results in another three square meters of melted ice. A round-trip plane ride from New York to London costs another three square meters or so of Arctic sea ice.

If a single trip between the US and UK can melt that much ice per passenger, the airlines must be spewing a tremendous amount of CO2 into the air. I would think short flights would be even worse. I have a really hard time believing the airlines trade group's 2% figure.

> must be spewing a tremendous amount of CO2.

So you’d rather go with your gut and an incredibly vague (square feet of ice / passenger) metric than a straightforward %?

And what does square feet of ice even mean? Last I checked that’s meaningless and a volume of ice should be measured.

That article had a link to the study.

> Because climate-model simulations of the sea-ice loss differ substantially, we used a robust linear relationship between monthly-mean September sea-ice area and cumulative carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to infer the future evolution of Arctic summer sea ice directly from the observational record.

Cruise ships are massive emitters of sulphur dioxide.

> The results [of the study] show that the luxury cruise brands owned by Carnival Corporation & PLC emitted in 2017 in European seas alone 10 times more disease-causing sulphur dioxide than all of Europe’s 260+ million passenger vehicles. Spain, Italy, Greece, France and Norway are the most exposed countries to cruise ship air pollution in Europe.

https://www.transportenvironment.org/publications/one-corpor...

Doesn’t sulfur dioxide having a cooling effect on the climate?

I'm not versed on the subject but a quick google search seems to indicate it's a very obvious net negative for the environment. It's not just about temperature...

This doesn't make a lot of sense since passenger vehicles use low sulfur diesel while cruise ships don't

> Ultra-low-sulfur diesel (ULSD) is a standard for defining diesel fuel with substantially lowered sulfur contents. As of 2016, almost all of the petroleum-based diesel fuel available in the UK, mainland Europe, and North America is of a ULSD type.

Cruise ships are one of the most climate friendly ways to vacation, given how many people fit on them.

(Vacations aren't climate friendly in general, but when you spread the emissions equally per passenger, it's remarkably efficient)

I see that type of message all the time and it's infuriating... It' not only about carbon, planes and ships are releasing way more nasty shit and frankly I doubt this is news to you. "where" the pollution happens is also a major issue. A 50cc scooter doesn't pollute much but if you have it running in your bedroom it quickly becomes an issue, same thing for higher atmosphere and oceans.

It's time to stop hiding behind meaningless numbers and face what's really happening.

> probably near 0 since more people will drive as a result.

Good luck driving from NY to Paris, or from Berlin to Barcelona for the weekend. People lived just fine when they didn't go to the other side of the world every few months.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_aviati...

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2207886-it-turns-out-pl...

https://www.smartgreenpost.com/2019/06/06/smog-in-europe-cru...

https://www.transportenvironment.org/press/luxury-cruise-gia...

I wonder how much of this is offset by the increase in shipping volume due to the increase in ecommerce volume.

Shipping by sea per item mile relative to alternative transportation methods is actually extremely efficient in emissions terms. Secondly, ecommerce might be up but overall consumption is down.

For ecommerce, "shipping" is certainly referring to shipping the item to the customer, ie. USPS/UPS/FedEx/Amazon trucks driving around.

Definitely been an increase in that.

It would still be a net loss in emissions compared to reality but less than a naive "there goes all of that fungible shipping demand forever" model as huge container ships are more efficient in emissions even though bunker oil tends to be dirtier than jet fuel. Plus overall goods consumption is certainly down with COVID.

It would be fascinating if this resulted in the removal of rows of seats to make the passengers that they do have more distanced (and comfortable), maybe even seeing competition in the area of pandemic friendly amenities.

There are some all-first-class airliners, generally used for very long-distance routes. I would expect the result of what you're describing would be a proliferation of similar models.

Why would we make such costly changes for a blip in the history of the planes? Almost nobody is going to want to keep up this horrid lifestyle after the virus is over.

Exactly. I'm completely baffled that some folks seem to think that our short term responses to Covid, which as you say are pretty horrid, will stick around after the pandemic ends. I agree there are some instances where Covid has accelerated changes that were already in motion, but I've seen too much "introvert fantasy fiction" ignoring that the majority of people are itching to end these restrictions ASAP.

I used to think the same, but then I realized that it's simply a minority of very loud voices who are actively supporting their position. Most people want lockdowns to be lifted, but they're not as vocal so it seems like they aren't saying anything.

> Most people want lockdowns to be lifted, but they're not as vocal so it seems like they aren't saying anything.

Do you have a citation for this? That "want" is doing a lot of work... everyone wants the lockdowns lifted, sure. But do they support lifting the lockdowns and related restrictions, right now? No.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/07/22/coronavirus-...

> Support for wearing masks in public is up to 68% from 54% since late March, Gerzema said, and "this shift is attributed to those who were indifferent to masks before." Previously in March, one-third (33%) responded as "neither positive or negative" on mask-wearing, but that fell to 19% last month.

> Most Americans (86%) said they were also willing to follow guidelines including masks and social distancing if it meant ending a lockdown within a month. The older the respondent, the more likely to agree, with seniors more likely to practice social distancing (96%) than boomers (89%), Gen Xers (87%) and Gen Z (77%). Seniors were more willing to wear a mask, too: 94%, compared with Boomers (88%), Gen Xers (85%) and Gen Z (78%).

> And most respondents want state officials to take measures to help stem transmission of the virus. More than three-fourths (77%) support enacting mandatory 14-day quarantines for travelers coming from states with a high resurgence of COVID-19.

Most responses will be rolled back when it’s safe again but there’s a good argument that air travel might not. The entire world is getting experience with remote meetings & alternatives and they’re not going to forget that in a year, and even most Republicans are starting to accept that climate change is real. It would not surprise me to see that a lot of business travel won’t come back as people ask whether they dislike a video chat enough to spend thousands of dollars. That disproportionately affects airline revenue, not to mention hotels, restaurants, etc. and I wouldn’t be surprised if that caused businesses to make permanent changes to emphasize parts of the experience which a remote chat can’t match.

Yes. Some remote work will move back to offices, and some won't.

Brick and mortar retail will probably take a huge hit. The big problem with online grocery shopping was getting people used to using it. That's now done.

Done for who? for you?

I'm still always going to get fresh produce from local stores, and I don't want that to change anytime soon.

If by "getting used to it", you mean "experiencing the horror", than sure.

I tried it, twice. In both cases, produce was picked by either someone that didn't care, or didn't know how to tell if some food (mellons) were ripe.

Even if only poor produce was available, well, I'd have seen, and just not bought it.

I received substitutions too, and without permission.

Meat was sent with very soon expiry dates. I'd never snag that in person. Same for bread.

Online grocery is a no go for me. My local grocer is 10 minutes away, in store time is maybe 20 minutes, including checkout.

I get what I want, how I want it, and save money by not having unusable stuff delivered to me.

Food isn't like a TV. One orange is not the same as a other.

Even bananas... I prefer them almost green, a friend I know, almost rotten.

Your experiences aren’t universal. None of my neighbors have reported things being anywhere near that bad - and having multiple competing options suggests it wouldn’t stay that way if it was - and services like CSAs, Hungry Harvest, etc. around here have seen enormous increases. I don’t think that’ll go back to pre-pandemic levels in a hurry even if a vaccine shows up tomorrow.

I think my point was, your experiences aren't universal. Yet you're still basing your determination upon yours.

Take what you will from mine, but even aside from my two bad experiences, I can't imagine how one gets precisely what they want, via online. I like to tap my melons, touch my tomatoes, and why does this sound like a porno now? :P

Anyhow. I think you get my point, my view. I've got yours, eg, you don't care about a personal pick.

So the real question is, how many really, really prefer to pick precisely what they want?

Obviously for a box of corn flakes, it probably matters little.

If you read my comment, note that I didn’t present anything as universal. I’m sure both are real accounts of what happens.

The point is that you don’t need perfection to have a big change. Video chat doesn’t need to hit 100% of meetings, classes, and conferences to have a big impact on those industries. Delivery services don’t need to completely replace brick and mortar to have a big impact in low margin industries. Maybe you personally want to check every tomato but ask how many people care that much every time, even when they’re busy, etc. Do you think that’ll be enough to shift an industry?

Sorry for the late reply. Been Saturday busy...

I think what you're missing here, is a bit of tongue in cheek. I, too, did not present my case as universal, yet you took effort to point out it wasn't.

Tit for tat, and all that...

That said! I think you have it a bit reversed here. At least, what I read as you (paraphrased) said is "Do you think people wanting to check product, will shift an industry?"

Yet, that question is a bit flawed, as I see it. This is because the industry isn't shifting because a person might want to check a tomato. It's failing to shift.

The inertia, the default "People who want to check produce, have always bought in the store." and "Further back, people could only buy in the store."

Now, you seem to be under the belief that everyone is buying online. Using home delivery. Not going to the grocery store. Yet when I go to the grocery store? When I visit?

You know what I see?

People! Lots of people!

Take me, for example.

I received poor service, and as a result, have not used online grocery shopping. I've gone to the grocery store weekly, as I did prior to COVID.

So from where I sit, the industry isn't shifting in my case, it never changed. And from the numbers I see at my grocery store, this seems to be common.

And this is because I've always cared. I cared before COVID. I care now. I'll care after.

I think you're literally dismissing my experiences as if yours are the universal! Or, if not, as if yours are "clearly what is happening in most cases".

Yet I disagree here.

Let me put this forward.

How many grandparents shop online? I'm not talking about in Palo Alto, but all over the US and Canada?

And to answer that, let me mention something. Grocery stores have always offered home delivery, for a small fee.

Why did most people not avail themselves of that? Why do you believe online shopping, is so different from phone shopping? Or fax shopping?

Both of which always existed.

Anyhow.

I have a feeling we're not going to agree at all here.

I agree most things won't stick around, but I really do hope all the extra plastic shields stick around. It would be nice for all the retail workers to be at lower risk of general sickness like cold and flu.

I also would be totally ok with a law that required masks October to March to cut down on cold and flu season.

> Almost nobody is going to want to keep up this horrid lifestyle after the virus is over.

We are modifying our lifestyle in response to COVID-19. I don’t plan to spend significant time in an office going forward.

Do you think there will be long-term changes in travel patterns l? I’m curious if there will be, as we have made some changes like this (postponing international travel for several years, buying a travel trailer to focus on travel to parks, etc).

i think there will be the mother of all travel booms when covid dies out.

People can already pay more to be more comfortable on planes - almost no one does because it isn't worth it. I'm fine with putting up with 10% less legroom to save 10% on my ticket, given that it is only a few hours and a ticket is several hundred. And I think the majority of the population agrees, given how full economy is compared to the more expensive classes (at least in the flights I am on).

Have you ever seen 10%? When I look it’s usually 50% or a whole number multiple, which is big enough that most people aren’t going to pay.

I think price here works as a filter precisely for this reason. Otherwise the demand would be too high for airlines to manage and for business potential passengers to buy tickets.

https://archive.is/XdtCp

Suddenly this big-brain thread from two months ago looks like less of a joke: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23165866

> More assertively, Airbus’s boss, Guillaume Faury, does not rule out suing customers who renege on their orders.

Okay, so it's still kind of a joke, but the tone of the humor has changed quite a bit.

Other countries probably won't want to let many people in until a vaccine comes out.

But, for domestic travel, it seems to me that the airlines shouldn't need too much technological sophistication to make airliners safe, at least for people mature enough to wear some kind of airline-provided apparatus on their face for the duration of the flight.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com