
I didn't want to fly – so I took a cargo ship from Germany to Canada - nwrk
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2020/jan/07/cargo-ship-train-rail-to-vancouver-canada-low-carbon-travel-europe
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gambiting
I mean....yes. Yes, your carbon footprint is smaller by travelling slower. But
you need to be in an extremely priviledged position to be able to afford
travelling this way, both financially and time-wise. Cross-atlantic is
obviously quite extreme, but even within Europe a train is not really a viable
alternative for a lot of people, when I go to visit my family the choice is
either a ~£100 Ryanair ticket for a 2 hour flight, or around 40 hour long
train journey that will cost at least £500 one way. I just don't have the
money or the time to travel this way. I don't know what's the right answer
here - I suspect it is "just don't travel then".

~~~
scandinavegan
I agree with your main point! I want to state that upfront so that you don't
think I'm arguing about the current situation, apart from addressing
specifics.

You will have to add some time to flying scenario. You have to arrive early to
the airport to go through security (2 hours?), you have to wait for your
luggage after landing (30 minutes?), and since airports are usually located
outside of the city center you have to add travel time to and from the airport
(45 minutes in each direction?). In my example that's an extra 4 hours added
to the 2 hours time flying.

It's still a lot less than going by train, but with train you get the
convenience of being able to run onto the platform 2 minutes before departure,
you end up in the city center, you pick up your luggage and leave, and you
usually have more space which makes it easier to work on the train if needed.

Also, flying is extremely subsidized and tax-exempt. I just read articles (in
Swedish, so I don't know if anyone wants links) claiming that air tickets
should be between 50% and 95% more expensive if they had to carry their own
costs, if there was a tax on airplane fuel, and so on. So the price for air
tickets probably doesn't reflect their real costs, and obviously doesn't take
the environmental effect into account.

But even adding the extra time and extra cost, it would still be faster and
cheaper to fly than to take the train, which is unfortunate from an
environmental perspective. I wish we had faster trains, and a lot more
overnight trains so that you could start your travel in the evening and wake
up in a new city. It wouldn't help with a 40 hour trip, because it would still
be two nights with one full day on the train.

This might work for people who can work remotely on the train, but not for
everyone. Start you journey on Thursday night, work Friday on the train, and
arrive Saturday morning at the destination. Someone I know did this recently
while traveling to a conference, and the company obviously paid for the
tickets. This doesn't help when visiting family, but for work travel, train
could be an option.

I have an airplane interested colleague and I asked him about environmental
fuels. He said that aviation biofuel already exists, and it's just a question
of adoption and scale. A carbon dioxide tax might push air companies towards
biofuel, or you could have the option of green biofuel departures and let the
customers decide if they think it's worth the extra cost. I'm sure my train-
traveling conference goer would consider that option if it was available.

As I said, I agree with your main point that if you just look at price and
travel time today, the less environmentally friendly option makes more sense.
It would make more sense if the slower option was also much, much cheaper than
flying, because that would encourage more people to use that option.

~~~
jaclaz
Only as a reference:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19562152](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19562152)

The whole thread may be of interest to you, it is about Sweden wanting to re-
surrect night trains:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19557848](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19557848)

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jocoda
> ships rarely have room for more than a dozen passengers

Reason is that you need a ship's doctor if there are more than 12 passengers.

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flounder3
There is no mention of the type of fuel the cargo ship burned while outside of
port (bunker fuel, anyone?). The three citations at the end of the article
simply reference generic sites, not specific information.

~~~
Symbiote
Possibly something awful, but irrelevant for the passenger on the scale of
moving a 100,000 tonne ship, so we should consider that issue separately.

~~~
DoingIsLearning
Couldn't we make the same argument for an airliner:

X cubic meters of CO2 divided by 200 odd passagers in an airliner.

Vs.

Y cubic meters of NOx/SO2/CO2 divided by that person and however purchased the
freight goods in the container.

We could argue that the cargo ship would sail irrespective of that passenger,
but we could equally make the same reasoning for people buying last minute
seats that would otherwise fly empty.

Without doing the maths this risks making very fortunate people feel good
about themselves and distracts from corporation practices that are orders of
magnitude more harmful.

Again I do not have the numbers but what is the carbon impact of halting all
german flights versus decomissioning all german coal plants?

~~~
dwild
> We could argue that the cargo ship would sail irrespective of that
> passenger, but we could equally make the same reasoning for people buying
> last minute seats that would otherwise fly empty.

Sure but the cargo ship business isn't moving passenger. If they always fill
all the passengers rooms, they won't decide to bring more ships into the
equation. Whether there's 0 passenger or 15, the ship will still go through
that same amount of fuel.

Someone else did gave some good example of energy usage that a passenger will
cause, like the water he will consume will need to be desalinated, or if he
get sick and that require diverting a ship.

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asdfadsfgfdda
The carbon calculations seems questionable. The author should include all
energy used on board the ship, which is entirely from fossil fuels. The energy
required to desalinate seawater for drinking/washing was probably greater than
a flight.

Also, an additional, unnecessary person on the ship is slightly increasing the
risk of diverting the ship because of a medical emergency. Imagine how much
carbon would be burned if this massive ship had to turn around to drop off a
sick passenger.

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dsalzman
Cargo ships are unregulated and burn the lowest grade oil called bunker fuel.
These ships can emit the equivalent sulfur emissions of 19 million ICE
vehicles.[1]

[1][https://www.cadmatic.com/resource/articles/does-one-ship-
pol...](https://www.cadmatic.com/resource/articles/does-one-ship-pollute-as-
much-as-50-million-cars-)

~~~
acrooks
Not as of January 01 - there's a new regulation this year that imposes a
sulfur cap on fuel burned by cargo ships [1]. Most ships must now burn more
expensive and cleaner fuels. Some ships - mostly larger ones - still burn HSFO
but they can only do so because they've installed "scrubbers" which clean the
emissions to reduce the amount of sulfur emitted into the atmosphere.

It's an open question whether scrubbers are really helping or just a diversion
from purchasing higher quality fuel, but it's only economical to install
scrubbers on the very big ships and so the large majority of the ~50,000
strong merchant marine fleet don't have them installed.

[1]
[https://ihsmarkit.com/topic/imo-2020-regulation.html](https://ihsmarkit.com/topic/imo-2020-regulation.html)

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ZeroGravitas
Seems like offsetting would be easier?

That's one of those economically sensible things that normal people dont seem
to like though.

