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I think passenger ships are going to make a comeback at some point in the next 50y. International air travel is one of the few big climate impact vectors with no reasonable substitute. Domestic you have possibility of better all-electric high-speed rail...
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Isn’t shipping responsible for much more co2 emissions than air travel? Like 17% vs <2% Making ships less dirty + simplifying supply chains would prob make much more difference
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Not on a per-pound-per-mile basis, plus air travel has higher impact emissions because stratosphere altitude emissions cause about 4x more impact for same amount of CO2.
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Not to say it won’t become a political hot topic - but like plastic straws, or fox hunting in the UK, it’s a symbol and a proxy for a whole bunch of other things
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I knew you’d make plastic straw comparison 😆 The analogy is off. Plastic straw bs is based on misinformation around a rounding-error part of a problem (0.5% of oceanic plastic waste) Air travel is like 10% under proper accounting, and the thinking around it is mostly correct.
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2% is the airlines figure for base emissions. It gets to 10% once you factor in altitude multiplier effect of about 4x-5x I believe. Stratosphere emissions have much stronger radiative forcing effects.
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2 only gets to 10 if only airline emissions are subject to this multiplier (and you do nothing to the denominator - but it’s close...) - id love to see the source for this.
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But yeah, 10% is sort of my working estimate of a worst-case bound for quick and dirty thinking. Probably too pessimistic. I’d say 5% would be the optimistic bound which is still a nice wedge worth working on. Most things people talk about are like dumb 0.5% wedges.
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