Quote:
Originally Posted by jimworcs
This argument will run and run. There is evidence to suggest that the emissions in the high atmosphere are more damaging that those at the surface. It is also without doubt significantly less polluting to take the train for short haul journey's. The other factor is that the "infrastructure" argument could work for largely undeveloped infranstructure countries such as China... it certainly doesn't work for Europe or parts of the NorthEast US, where the infrastructure carbon has already been spent.
The New Scientist article also doesn't address the fact that air travel doesn't actually take you to where you want to go. Trains tend to run city centre to city centre, so the journey is virtually complete. ~Airports tend to take you to some place well outside the city.. and then require further infratructure (and thus carbon) to actually take you to where you were going.
The truth is, as with all of these things, it is not either/or. We need to reduce gas guzzling car usage, and in particular, to price gas realistically based on the true environmental cost. We then need alternative fuels including solar, wind, nuclear, tidal etc.. and we need to increase the costs of travel to reflect the damage it does.
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I am a idiot...I do get blindsided when folks like justme. I was expressing my opinion and suddenly I felt like I had to defend myself....
Your right...I did read kind of the same thing.
http://www.greenfudge.org/2009/09/25...-to-fly-green/
But, military jets are a differant story though...