Journalist: "So what do you think long-distance air travel is going to look like in 2050?"
Climate Scientist *laughs derisively*: "By 2050, most long-distance holiday destinations will be uninhabitable, so I expect the majority of long-distance air traffic to be non-existent by 2050."
Phew. Hadn't heard it THAT bleakly during a live interview yet.
@Br3nda @tbaldauf
And a book tour by train across the country?
Or to a single festival or event if there aren’t others lined up along the route?
There’s no way I can tour my #accordion book in North America 😢
There’s bands who have done tone tours by bicycle 🚲
North America is so damn big
Times I wished I lived in Europe 🪗.6
Author readings could so easily be virtual
But I’d miss talking with real people
Maybe pair local author events? Vancouver/Berlin
@AccordionBruce
> North America is so damn big
Bigger than China, where you can get almost anywhere by train, many of them by electric fast train or sleeper train?
@tbaldauf then we should all hurry to see this places before it's too late! 😂 (sorry for misunderstanding. This was meant to be sarcastic. For sure these places don’t need more long-distance-traveling tourists)
@strypey It's big and empty, compared to China. That doesn't entirely work as an excuse though. Mostly US infra is a policy failure rather than a natutal consequence.
@tbaldauf DAMN. You can only do that stuff in live interviews because the media will 100% cut that out of ANY recording.
@tobiasgies This is not true. Here is the recording (in German). https://share.deutschlandradio.de/dlf-audiothek-audio-teilen.html?mdm:audio_id=dira_DLF_69c17cb4 @tbaldauf
@Geoffberner explained to a European that touring in Canada is something like “Tonight’s gig is in Amsterdam, now drive through a blizzard because our next show is a tiny club in Kazakhstan”
@strypey @Br3nda @tbaldauf @Geoffberner
I heard so many stories of bands having deaths and near deaths driving in winter weather after I moved to Canada 🇨🇦
@strypey @AccordionBruce @Br3nda @tbaldauf Canada, China, and USA are all pretty similar in size — in the world, Canada is no. 2, China no. 3, and USA no. 4*.
But together, Canada, USA, Mexico (which is no. 14 in the world) — ie. North America — are more than twice the the size of China and, in fact, bigger than the largest country in the world, Russia. So yes, North America is so damn big.
Should there be better rail offerings in North America? Of course there should. But the problems posed by sheer size are non-trivial.
* depending on how you count, USA can be larger than China — but they are regardless pretty close.
@fgraver
> together, Canada, USA, Mexico... — ie. North America — are more than twice the the size of China and... bigger than the largest country in the world, Russia
OK, but Russia also seems to offer better rail services than North America;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_Russia
... as does India;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_India
... although neither is as advanced as China. If you look at rail across China, India and Russia as a whole, that's much bigger than North America.
@fgraver
> Should there be better rail offerings in North America? Of course there should. But the problems posed by sheer size are non-trivial
Granted, but I raised China as an example of how size is not a barrier to a functioning passenger rail system if the political-economic decision-makers prioritise it. I doubt we disagree that people in North America suffer from generations of over-investment in roads and cars, and underinvestment in passenger rail.
@fgraver @strypey @Br3nda @tbaldauf
The fact that 90% of Canadians live within 100 miles of the US border means that getting anywhere Else in the country is a real problem
It’s when population density is factored in that “North America is big“ comes into play
There’s other isolated parts of the world, but less people in some US States than most cities I’ve lived in
Those big open spaces make trains hard to fund with the US’s archaic government
@AccordionBruce
> Those big open spaces make trains hard to fund with the US’s archaic government
This is my point. It's a political-economic problem. As the examples of China, Russia, India and even SEA demonstrate, the logistical and technological obstacles can be overcome, even with far less wealth (per capital or per acre) than the US or Canada has at their disposal.
@sj_zero
> China is a poor example since to be comparable you'd need approximately 8 billion people on the American continent
Please explain the logic underlying this conclusion.
Similarly, Japan has great train service since there are 250 million people on a small series of islands.
Europe is another example, where a relatively large number of people live in large dense cities throughout Europe. Many Europeans come to North America and assume travel will be similar to Europe where you can visit a bunch of places in a short period of time because they're relatively close together, and then are shocked for example to learn that it takes 4 days to drive from Toronto to Winnipeg and most of the area between is just bush with little to no people living there. Winnipeg only has about a million people. Saskatoon and Regina are only 250,000 people each. Calgary is about 1.4 million and Edmonton is about 1 million, and even in BC you're only getting 3 million people province-wide in a nation 30% larger than the entire nation of France. When you take a flight over the country you see huge forests for hours at a time. The US is different of course, but lots of parts of it aren't that different. There's some highly populated areas, but there's some similarly unpopulated ones and whereas a plane simply ignores those areas, a train needs to travel through every inch.
There are regions with train service in America. In Canada, I've been on good trains in Vancouver, Toronto, and I've also taken trains in Ottawa. In all 3 cases it was the highest population density in Canada. There are also decent trains in New York and California, both regions with high population density.
Under both capitalist liberal democracy or authoritarianism, the construction of a common good requires two things: enough people to justify doing the project, and enough other stuff going on (or potentially going on in the future) to justify the project. Under both systems you burn through different forms of capital to get these projects done, and so eventually the laws of physics will pull you to the ground if you're doing wasteful things that don't help the people or the state.
In both cases, a certain solution must compete with other solutions for time and money. In the case of trains, they compete with planes for long distances and cars in shorter distances. The benefit of trains is they can carry overwhelmingly large numbers of people very efficiently and so if you have the population density you can carry lots of passengers and so justify your rail system. On the other hand, if there just aren't that many people then there just isn't anyone to use the system and so you're using all these resources for basically nobody, particularly if the potential users have other options and so take a car or a bus or a plane.
In the early industrial period, the monopoly trains had on travel allowed a lot of inefficiency. Railway companies built entire towns were built every so often to ensure there was water and coal for trains, and there were also stores in each so people could buy stuff along the way (or for those living in the towns) and in those towns the railway was virtually the entire economy but there was no other option for travel so that level of inefficiency for passenger travel was nonetheless justified. I went to one such town. All that's there today is a clearing, a railroad track, some building foundations if you look carefully, and an unkept graveyard.
Having higher population density would justify lots of investment in trains because you'd have so many people to move. The regions of China and Japan with great train service are highly populated, and to justify really good trains everywhere in Canada and the US, you'd need high population density everywhere. Towns of 5000 or 10,000 people would need 10x that number of people, and regions with nobody in them (of which there's lots) would need lots of people.
Given that the geographical reality is that North America has much more favorable geography than the bulk of China which is largely unpopulated and doesn't have many trains as a result, to have the equivalent would easily require 8 billion people to justify a really great investment in continent-wide rail. Even that may be a low estimate given just how much space we're talking about and the scale required to justify all the expense. Planes only require an airport at the source and destination and a plane. Considering that there might be only a few dozen major destinations, it is obvious why air travel has essentially taken over the long range travel market.
When it comes to climate comparisons, I think it isn't so simple as "trains use less fuel per passenger". To get from new York to California by rail you'd need to destroy huge amounts of nature, and burn through massive amounts of energy, including in the production of steel and concrete in unimaginable amounts, particularly for high speed rail systems. I suspect the calculus might not be so favorable in that light, especially if the trains are mostly empty because they don't solve a problem in many cases along American routes.
@sj_zero @fgraver @strypey @tbaldauf
I just saw a long video where some guy had worked out his ideal plan for high-speed rail from Vancouver, BC to Eugene, Oregon
As a native of Tacoma Washington, we got screwed again and left out 😑
Those N/S high density corridors are the ones that might have the population for such rail lines
But this guy’s single multi billion dollar decades-spanning train line had like five stops
@Br3nda
> why am I tagged on this?
I presume you were part of a thread this one branched off from. I will do my best to remember to untag you if @sj_zero bothers replies and I bother respond.
> Pretty sure whoever you're reply to has blocked me.. But I've never heard of them so more likely they were blocked/defederated
Your instance may have been blocked by theirs, but given the instance you're on, the reverse is more likely.
@sj_zero
Wow! That's an incredibly thorough explanation. Thanks for putting in the effort. I hope you've put it up as a blog piece or somewhere less ephemeral than the verse, as it's a valuable contribution to the debate on the logistics of passenger rail.
Obviously I'm going to need to think about it deeply and carefully before responding, because you've covered a lot of ground there (pun intended).
@sj_zero @fgraver @strypey @AccordionBruce @tbaldauf this exchange is one of the reasons I love the Fediverse. Thanks all for giving me a little much-needed 'faith-in-human-kindness' injection.
@Br3nda
In my app it starts here;
https://mastodon.nzoss.nz/@strypey/112431651073452504
... but this was a branch of a thread you posted on here;
It would be great if threading in the fediverse was more self-healing, so we could always see a post in some kind of context. But it's an engineering challenge to ensure that in a federated network, while still making sure to respect post deletes, Block/ Mute decisions etc.
That's why I often quote extensively in my replies. I don't assume a reader will have access to the preceding posts, so I try to supply as much context as possible in-post.
@sj_zero
> You're not the first person to suggest a blog, but it's more about the journey
Fair enough. I just wanted to make sure you know that what you've written would be worth preserving and circulating, if you were so inclined.
@sj_zero @Br3nda @fgraver @strypey @AccordionBruce @tbaldauf Funny to encounter this today. Yesterday my sister-in-law and friends were supposed to go to Colorado by train from small Indiana town through Chicago. Two trains were running late and caused them to miss the third. There was no alternative train for the last leg within their holiday schedule. The great USA train trip was a bust.
@sj_zero
> When it comes to climate comparisons, I think it isn't so simple as "trains use less fuel per passenger"
Agreed, and this is where the rubber meets the road. If you accept the greenhouse effect, and that the planet is warming, then it's worth investing in things that aren't financially efficient, as long as they reduce carbon emissions.
So the key question is, would a China-style fast train network in North America reduce carbon emissions?
(1/?)
If they were electric trains, and adding enough renewable generation to power them was part of the project, I can't see how they wouldn't. Yes, that would require some *big* investment.
But both the electrification, and the upgrading of tracks to allow faster speeds, can be rolled out in stages, as it was in China.
(2/?)
Remember we're not talking about starting from scratch here. An extensive track network already existed in China before they started electrifying and upgrading tracks for fast trains. As it does across North America;
US;
https://stb.maps.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=96ec03e4fc8546bd8a864e39a2c3fc41#!
Canada;
https://rac.jmaponline.net/canadianrailatlas/
https://ontheworldmap.com/mexico/mexico-railway-map.html
Every piece of track electrified or upgraded adds value to the network as a whole.
(3/?)
It does seems logical to start with the most populated areas and work out from there. Which explains your observations about the correlations between high population density and train corridors. But so does the fact that causation goes in the other direction too. A small town on a new or upgraded train line between two major centres can become a much more attractive place to live, when some of the trains stop there. Plane links can't do this.
(4/?)
Having said that, do I think there should be a train linking every population centre? No. You're right that mass transit only makes sense for routes where it is (or likely will be) common for a large number of people to travel. There are journeys where trains can't replace buses, private vehicles and active transport.
But based on what I saw in China, I think they can and should replace most (if not all) domestic air travel.
(5/?)
I do think that railways lines themselves are a natural monopoly. If they are owned by for-profit companies, and especially if those companies can be bought out by those invested in car/ oil/ airline/ hyperloop etc, is unlikely to result in passenger-friendly development.
So railways either need to be (re-)nationalised, or heavily regulated to make sure decision-making prioritises the interests of passengers, and the network as a whole.
(6/6)
@strypey @sj_zero @fgraver @tbaldauf
I recently learned that the new #FastFerry here uses more fuel than flying between #Vancouver and #Victoria
I didn’t expect flying to be more efficient than water-travel, but I guess if you speed up the boat pushing it through the water costs a lot
So doing the math on these projects may turn out results we don’t anticipate
And long distance travel may end up being harder to justify
The post you're replying to is just a jumping off point, as indicated by the (1/?) at the bottom. Did you read the whole thread?
Even if you use renewable energy (and let's pick a version like hydroelectric energy that we know can run for centuries once built), you have to consider the total environmental cost of building and maintaining massive rail lines.
In 2009 I did a study showing that if you used 30% of all renewable and nuclear energy on earth at that time you could replace the cement industry's use of fossil fuels with electric. The thing I didn't notice at the time is that the creation of cement inherently releases CO2 even if no fossil fuels are burned. In the year since, I've come to realize that limestone is in fact the only real geological term carbon sink, and stuff like trees don't hold carbon for very long in geological timeframes.
In the same study, I showed you could replace hydrocarbons as an energy source in producing steel if you used another 30% of all renewable and nuclear energy on earth at the time. The thing I didn't realize at the time is you can't create steel without coal because steel is iron and carbon, and the carbon comes from a derivative of coal.
In both cases, fossil fuels are also required to gather the raw materials. Mining is a fossil fuel intensive operation. Some people might counter with "but look at this mine that's fully electric!", but I'm aware of such mines and usually they aren't telling you about the fossil fuels they use. One mine I'm aware of claims to be "fully electric" but burns a city worth of propane every day in the winter to heat their mine air. It also conveniently leaves out the ancillary fossil fuel use since you don't deliver 30T rock trucks (or other supplies) hundreds of kilometers into the middle of nowhere with Tesla transports.
When you're talking about tens of thousands of kilometers of rail, the amount of steel and cement required are almost beyond human comprehension.
I forgot to mention that a high-speed rail system needs to have a much different level of workmanship compared to a regular rail. For example there are rail systems up in Northern manitoba, but those trains barely move, and so if you wanted to turn those into High-Speed rail you'd have to create a powerful foundation which would likely be made out of steel and concrete along with the rails themselves.
@strypey
I did
Funny how mastodon threads work
I was responding as much to what was above with my random interjection
Sorry
@AccordionBruce
> I was responding as much to what was above with my random interjection
No worries. Just trying to figure out some more context before deciding if it needed a reply from me.
@sj_zero
> you have to consider the total environmental cost of building and maintaining massive rail lines
As already mentioned - with network maps supplied - the rail lines already exist. Upgrading those has a tiny environmental impact compared to building them from scratch.
@sj_zero
> stuff like trees don't hold carbon for very long in geological timeframes
Individual trees, no. Forests potentially. Where do you think coal comes from?
@sj_zero
> When you're talking about tens of thousands of kilometers of rail, the amount of steel and cement required are almost beyond human comprehension
Bridges and such use concrete, but I'm not sure it's needed for most rail lines.
@sj_zero
> I forgot to mention that a high-speed rail system needs to have a much different level of workmanship
I did mention that. I also mentioned that the upgrades can be done in stages. Fast trains can travel slow over unimproved sections, with travel times getting get shorter and shorter as more upgrades are done. Which is why they're a better choice than new tech like mag-lev, which can go faster, but entire lines have to be built from scratch.
@sj_zero
> you can't do high speed rail on normal rail infrastructure
Again, that was mentioned in the thread you're replying to.
> you'd need a lot more material
As spelled out in an edit you may not have seen...
> the rail lines already exist. Upgrading those has a tiny environmental impact compared to building them from scratch.
@sj_zero
> Coal almost exclusively comes from an era hundreds of millions of years ago called the carboniferous period before any organisms learned to digest cellulose
Huh. I did not know that..
>After that period, wood that would just sit there and sink into coal beds instead gets converted back into CO2 by fungi
... and reabsorbed by growing plants. As long as forests aren't cleared, they can hold carbon indefinitely.
@sj_zero
> Calling construction an upgrade doesn't mean it doesn't use material
Calling an upgrade "construction" implies ripping a path through unaltered countryside. It implies having to buy or seize the land required from existing owners.
Yes, the upgrades and ongoing maintenance have an ongoing resource cost. As does upgrading and maintaining roads, although I'd wager rail maintenance is much less resource intensive per kg carried than road maintenance.
Moreover, you can't say for certain whether a spot will even stay a forest on geological timeframes, and the odds are it will not. There have been 5 mass extinction events on earth, and 3 of them happened since the end of the carboniferous period. The End Permian event was caused by volcanic activity releasing large amounts of CO2 and H2S which caused acid rain and ocean acidification (killing 96% of species), the End Triassic event was caused by underwater volcanic activity which caused global warming and a change in composition in the oceans (killing 80% of species), and the End Cretaceous event was caused by a meteor impact which caused global cataclysm including global cooling (killing 76% of species). Besides that, there have been 13 other mass extinction events if you include the current Holocene mass extinction event. Antarctica was once part of a massive forest and today is an icy waste, and Australia was once almost entirely forest and today is mostly desert.
That's why the coal exists for the 60 million years after plants evolved to grow cellulose and before something else evolved the ability to digest cellulose, and essentially disappears. During the carboniferous period, anywhere there was forest (particularly swampy forests), that carbon essentially became part of the landscape and over 60 million years accumulated and was exposed to anerobic conditions thanks to the swampy conditions, and if the forest died, the carbon remained because there was nowhere for it to go and often got driven underground by geological processes over millions of years. I'd expect that millions of years of sedimental deposition by itself (even through processes like wind) would be enough to cover up the tree beds over time. The reason it stops after that is the tree beds don't stick around and become deposited carbon, they become CO2 through the metabolic processes of fungus.
By contrast, the process of life producing rock such as carbonates is a long term place for carbon to go. The white cliffs of dover for example are formed from the bodies of millions of years of aquatic life forms dying and falling to the ocean bed, and the parts that don't rot, oxidize, and aren't eaten by other creatures end up sticking around and packing down, creating entire mountains of carbon impregnated rock.
Honestly, one of the biggest shocks in my life was reading geological history and realizing that stuff we think would be important ended up being meaningless, while stuff we think of as insignificant ends up becoming incredibly important when you're talking about geological timeframes.
I did a bit more research, and it looks like high speed rail lines would likely require significant ground work (digging up existing areas and replacing what was there with an engineered underlay, as well as improving drainage in marginal areas such as my often referenced manitoba track), and instead of traditional track and timber rail ties, they'd use something like a ballastless track, which is continuous cement with steel mounts for tracks, so anywhere you go you'd be doing a lot of work and using a lot of cement where you used none, and a lot more steel per meter.
As for roads, that's a good question too. Asphalt is a highly recycled material, but it isn't free either, and some new asphalt needs to be added. Also, how does a highway compare to a high speed rail in terms of what's required? Trains are heavier than anything on the road by far, but I'd guess there's a lot less traffic on any given train line than a given road.
Overall, my mind is still imagining trying to replace new york to LA, and the costs involved with those, since I don't think either of us disagree that existing rail could likely be upgraded in relatively small regions I mentioned at the beginning that already have viable rail systems that have proven themselves. My argument has been that for something like the new york to la route, an airplane may be the most environmentally conscious method because while you burn a lot of fuel you don't need to build or maintain any infrastucture between the points.
@sj_zero
> The CO2 in a tree is gathered over years and years, whereas rotting can occur in a relatively short period of time.
Right, but you're not seeing the forest for the trees. What you call "rotting" is mostly fungi, bacteria and other decomposers, eating dead plants and using the carbon to form mycelium etc. A wild forest has a wide range of plants and fungi, all of which are absorbing carbon as they grow.
(1/?)
New forests absorb more carbon from the atmosphere than they release. Once the biodiversity stops increasing - adding more species to absorb carbon in the same area - they become carbon neutral. So returning cleared areas to wild forest, wetlands etc, is a fantastic way to reduce net atmospheric carbon in the short term, and potentially hold it for centuries. With a bonus effect of helping to restore biodiversity.
https://phys.org/news/2020-04-dont-mature-forests-carbon-dioxide.html
(2/?)
@sj_zero
> you can't say for certain whether a spot will even stay a forest on geological timeframes, and the odds are it will not
Fair point. We also can't guarantee that future generations won't clear the forests to "improve" land, as our well-meaning but ecologically ignorant ancestors did. But for as long as a forest is allowed to exist, it's at minimum a carbon store, and potentially a carbon sink, depending on its maturity, biodiversity etc.
(3/3)
End note; again, thanks to @sj_zero for laying out your arguments with so much detail. I'm finding this discussion both fascinating and insightful.
Note to @fgraver @AccordionBruce and @tbaldauf, if any of you are not enjoying our exchange, and want to be untagged, please just sing out.
@sj_zero
> you need to redesign corners because something you can safely take at 40mph is suicidal at 200mph
You can also slow down for those sections of the trip. So for every such section, it becomes a calculus of how much reduction in travel time you can get, for the cost and clearing of new ground involved in smoothing out a corner.
(1/2)
@sj_zero
> for something like the new york to la route, an airplane may be the most environmentally conscious method because while you burn a lot of fuel you don't need to build or maintain any infrastucture between the points
You also don't serve any of the communities between the points, or help them travel to the points. So the cost of maintaining 2 airport+fuel vs. the cost of maintaining a high speed railway+fuel is not apples vs. apples.
(2/2)
There's additional risks to lines where you're constantly having to change speed. A lot of rail accidents have occurred over the years where trains were supposed to slow down for a certain corner and didn't, which can result in derailments which have both a large human cost and a large environmental cost if there's a bad accident you're going to have to replace whatever is destroyed.
I've criticized people for jumping immediately to a safety argument when it comes to things like small EVs because if it's as people say and the environmental impact is an urgent existential threat to humanity then additional risks are something we need to consider and perhaps make a decision to accept (put another way, does your right to personal safety trump humanity's right to safety as a species?), but I do think the calculus changes somewhat if you're talking about overwhelming environmental consequences in the event of an accident, and it's another thing to plug into an equation considering the cost between the two.
Up here in Canada we have a little airline called Bearskin (Also known as "scareskin", but that's another story) that does a milk run of all the different communities, compared to the big airlines which tend to just hop between major centers. It does take a lot more resources to do a milk run (and presumably would also be so with a high speed rail line that does a milk run), so flights with bearskin tend to be an order of magnitude more expensive than standard flights, representing in part the fact that hitting each little community between new york and la isn't free, either economically or environmentally.
@sj_zero
> There's additional risks to lines where you're constantly having to change speed.
You argue pretty effectively with yourself here, so I hesitate to get between you ; ) But...
I've described how alternating between fast and slow speeds was a key part of the incremental roll-out of fast trains in China. It doesn't introduce unmanageable safety risk, any more than does firing a giant missile full of high-octane fuel and people between cities.
(1/2)
@sj_zero
> It does take a lot more resources to do a milk run and presumably would also be so with a high speed rail line
I doubt it. Rail corridors run through many population centres between A and B (eg, NY and LA). To service those places, all a train has to do is stop there on the way from A to B.
Doing the same thing by air requires a scheduled flight between each place on the milk run. Using far more fuel than a high altitude direct flight.
(2/2)
A couple more points on fast trains;
Earlier you mentioned the carbon emissions associated with smelting steel. The Volts podcast just put up;
"Making carbon-free steel with clean electricity"
https://www.volts.wtf/p/making-carbon-free-steel-with-clean
Me:
> alternating between fast and slow speeds was a key part of the incremental roll-out of fast trains in China
Also, if the people driving trains can't be relied on to vary their speed safely, how do they stop at stations? ; )
The steel itself gets its properties from carbon in an alloy with the iron. You can use hydrogen to make sure the steel is in an oxygen poor environment, but you can't replace hydrogen with carbon in the metallurgy of the metal.
So what's really going on here is that it's a reduction in carbon in one or two parts of the process, but it isn't carbon free steel even at the point of manufacture, just steel with reduced requirements for carbon emissions. Moreover, the mining process is very likely to require fossil fuels, as well as the processes for creating reagents and things like the anode mentioned in the article. I believe earlier I talked extensively about looking at the entire supply chain, because it's important not to just look at one part of the process to make assumptions about things being carbon neutral or good for the environment.
Another thing I need to remind you of is that every step using green energy will require a significant portion of the world's renewable electricity generation at scale. This is one of the things about doing stuff at an industrial scale, that something perfectly clean in a lab has a large impact at scale. If you're using electricity to heat the ore, electricity to run electrolysis, electricity to melt the refined iron, electricity to hydrolyze water for the blast furnace, that's each a step that will use significant amounts of renewable energy that will then not be available for other uses. Given that it must be base load electricity, that could be a significant problem.
With respect to your comments that trains slowing down for sections of track or for sharp turns would be also at risk while entering or leaving a station, there's a lot of risk analysis that goes into something like that because both situations are potentially dangerous.
There's a big difference between varying speed in a straight line and varying speed because you're going to hit a turn too fast, since failing to slow down at a station could potentially just mean going past the stop, whereas hitting a corner too fast could derail the entire train.
In London in 2016, an accident occurred on a railway track that was converted into light rail. The new rail stop needed a sharp turn to be added to the route. The turn required speed changes and the driver failed to change speed and blew the turn. The train derailed, landing on its side. 7 people were killed, 19 were seriously injured, and 42 recieved minor injuries.
However, stations are potentially dangerous places as well. A 2002 crash in England, one of a surprising number of deadly crashes in that time period, caused by a faulty set of points. It killed 5, severely harmed 10, hurt 70, and demolished a large part of the train station. There are also known major accidents where trains failed to speed up correctly or slow down correctly at a station causing deadly accidents.
Trains are as a matter of statistical fact less safe than planes. It's still safer than riding in a car, but when things go wrong they can go insanely, horribly wrong -- the deadliest train accident I was able to find killed almost 2000 people (though it wasn't directly related to speeding up, slowing down, or turning but rather a natural disaster). The deadliest aircraft disaster I'm aware of was in 1977, when a pair of 747s collided on the ground. Just as with rail where station stops are particularly dangerous parts of the trip, the most hazardous time for airplanes is when they're taking off and landing, and in that case 248 passengers on one plane and 335 on the other were killed, with only 61 people managing to escape, all while the planes were on the ground.
Unlike rail, airplanes are generally safe once in the air since they're not reliant on tracks and there aren't obstacles or unexpected situations such as railway crossings for vehicles or pedestrians, particularly when they're flying at high altitude since while it's true a plane that catastrophically fails at altitude is going to kill all aboard, that's typically not the way things happen. I'm aware of one example of that happening on an Air China flight in 2002 where a plane hit its tail on the runway during a difficult landing in 1980 and instead of fully replacing the damaged portion of the tail as the Boeing manual required, the technicians welded a patch on instead. That's a relatively unique example.
I really think this thread has run its course. Thanks again for the time and thought you've put into it. My final contribution to this thread, if I remember, will be a blog post that summarises each of the objections you've raised, with my response.
So on to my final rebuttals. It's up to you whether to use your right of reply.
(1/9)
@sj_zero
> "Carbon-free Steel" is a contradiction in terms
Splitting hairs much? ; ) That podcast talks about ways to make steel without significant carbon emissions. As you grudgingly admit, while handwaving at emissions from mining. There are probably also ways to use sequestered carbon for steel (eg biochar), and recycled steel for rails instead of mined ore.
But none of that is required to make electric trains vastly lower emission than planes.
(2/2)
Even if we can't decarbonise steel production, once the rails are made, electric trains can run on them for about 100 years with no further emissions from steel production. Contrast that with emissions from passenger flights over the same timeframe.
Maybe passenger planes can run on batteries or green hydrogen. Just like maybe steel can be made without carbon emissions. But on proven tech, there's just no contest.
(3/9)
@sj_zero
> it's important not to just look at one part of the process to make assumptions about things being carbon neutral or good for the environment
True, full life cycle analysis is important. But here's where it's *not* useful. As an excuse to dismiss solutions that don't eliminate all environmental harm in a single step. Making the perfect the enemy of the good, gets in the way of transitioning to tech that has a demonstrably lower footprint.
(4/9)
@sj_zero
> every step using green energy will require a significant portion of the world's renewable electricity generation at scale
Add the word "current" after "world's", and consider that renewable generation is growing exponentially;
"By 2026, global renewable electricity capacity is forecast to rise more than 60% from 2020 levels..."
... and this isn't as much of a problem as you make out. See also post 3/9.
(5/9)
@sj_zero
> There's a big difference between varying speed in a straight line and varying speed because you're going to hit a turn too fast
In terns of risk, yes, but not the skills involved. I've already pointed out that alternating between fast and slow speeds has been a standard part of rolling out fast trains in China, with no significant increase in accidents. So unless you're arguing that US train drivers aren't as competent as Chinese ones...
(6/9)
@sj_zero
> Trains are as a matter of statistical fact less safe than planes
Citation please. Where the comparison is between passenger flights and modern fast trains, so it's relevant to the topic.
Also, and more to the point, climate change is a lot less safe than trains. Again, see post 3/9.
(7/9)
Finally, I've really tried to resist editorialising on your discursive method here (much pruning before posting) but...
It's really starting to feel like you're strongly motivated to find reasons to dismiss fast trains as an option for long distance travel in North America. I wonder why? Maybe you just really like flying or dislike trains?
(8/9)
Or maybe - just maybe - your thinking on fast trains is being pulled down a gravity well of spin? Generated by PR companies and think tanks paid by fossil fuel, airline, auto, roadwork, and trucking corporations, to muddy the waters of any public policy debate that might impact their dominance.
Merchants of Doubt is well worth a watch;
https://kolektiva.media/w/00e42c34-81d4-4744-a2e2-cf3b2b3c19d9
.. and for the background of thousands of spindoctors;
(9/9)
Are you sure all the reasons I've given why trains aren't particularly popular in the sparse population of continental North America outside of specific high population density areas aren't the reasons why there are already trains in a limited number of places but other places that had trains for a long time saw passenger service end? Why are you so fixated on this one solution?
Have you ever heard the phrase “First they think you’re crazy, then they fight you, and then all of a sudden you change the world”? You might think it was someone inspirational who said it -- maybe Steve Jobs or Mahatma Gandhi? It was said by the recently convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes about the multi-billion fraudulent company Theranos she created and led.
As a technologist, I often end up having to be the person reminding everyone else about the reasons why promoted technologies aren't going to be the panacea the salesmen claim. Despite being a highly technical person who embraces technologies, I'm also a boots on the ground guy who has to make promises using technology and keep them professionally, so I'm used to having to be skeptical of technological claims because a lot of the time they aren't telling you the whole story.
As someone who works industrial maintenance, once the project team has their cake and their party and pat each other on the back for their successful project completed on time and under budget before moving onto the next, I remain to see what happens next, and I'm often personally accountable for trying to pick up the pieces when reality hits.
I often have to experience the reality of failed projects. Entire huge constructions that take tens or hundreds of millions of dollars and took huge amounts of resources to build sitting and rotting because they were sold on broken promises. It would shock you the waste that can just happen and after a lot of 16 hour days and perhaps even more material being used sometimes for months or years on end it's abandoned.
Besides that, as a scientist, I have to rely on the scientific method. You aren't trying to prove your point correct, you're trying to prove yourself wrong, and if you can't then maybe you're right. If there's a bunch of reasons it might go wrong that nobody is talking about, that doesn't mean it is going to go wrong, but it's a reason to be skeptical.
I'm open to being wrong, and I would like to be, but experience tells me to be careful because ignoring important details has often led to massive waste and at times it has led to massive human suffering.
You asked in another post, here's a link to a US government website showing fatality statistics for different forms of transportation and showing the extraordinary safety of the airline industry: https://www.bts.gov/content/transportation-fatalities-mode
Anyway, it's been a fun conversation.
@sj_zero
> “First they think you’re crazy, then they fight you, and then all of a sudden you change the world”? You might think it was someone inspirational who said it -- maybe Steve Jobs or Mahatma Gandhi? It was said by the recently convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes
Holmes was paraphrasing a well known phrase about nonviolent resistance, often attributed to Ghandi, although it seems he never said it;
@sj_zero
> my support for hydroelectric and geothermal but my skepticism of widespread adoption of wind or solar -- One of them has a century of proven reliability under bad conditions, the other is always waiting for another breakthrough that's been 5 years off for 25 years
I share your scepticism about large-scale solar (it's well proven for small-scale use, off-grid etc). But large-scale wind, both onshore and offshore, is well and truly proven.
(1/2)
In Aotearoa we generate about 5% of our electricity from onshore wind;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_New_Zealand
... and in the UK, it's 30% of electricity generated;
https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/how-much-uks-energy-renewable
... thanks to some massive offshore wind projects;
https://scottishfinancialreview.com/2024/04/17/uk-offshore-wind-employment-to-rise-to-100000/
(2/2)
@sj_zero
> I'd throw your logic right back at you
Fair. It's true I really like trains. I imagine a train journey across NA would be epic.
But if you go through my posts on transport you'll also see me talking about seagliders, and how it might be a better option fast electric travel in countries like Aotearoa with long coastlines and mountainous terrain.
Wind is one that can be useful, but is variable and so isn't going to be great for baseload, just supplementation. For that reason, saying a certain % power is generated by wind or solar is a bit misleading because it implies if you increased your install base by the inverse % then you'd be able to produce all your power that way, when in reality you'd just be producing excess power on the good days and you'd be burning gas on the bad days. By contrast, hydroelectric consistently runs some jurisdictions 100% 24/7/365 -- Manitoba, Quebec, and Norway being examples.
As I've mentioned in other cases, jurisdictions with high levels of hydroelectric tend to have low electricity cost, and this has a double effect on reducing carbon emissions -- the low carbon emissions of electricity generation means electricity is better, and the inexpensive electricity will offset use of fossil fuels for home heating or industry. With already mature technologies such as electric rail, streetcars, and trackless street cars, inexpensive electricity can also break into transportation sectors.
for that same reason, it's important to choose green strategies that will reduce electricity costs. If you end up in an Australia situation where electricity costs go from some of the least expensive on earth to some of the most expensive on earth, then it might feel really good, but people will switch to fossil fuels because they can't afford not to.
In Ontario Canada, the IESO (one of Ontario's power industry regulators) has some really good data on hourly electricity generation: https://ieso.ca/power-data
The second tab is the one with the power mix.
Today the majority of baseload in the province was mostly nuclear, a good chunk was hydroelectric, there was a pittance of biomass, and a decent chunk was wind which lasted all day, but if you go back to June 3-9, you'll see that the nuclear and hydroelectric continued to provide consistent baseload generation every day, but on June 3rd the wind was as little as 5% of the consistent level we saw today. On those days, the difference was made up by running the gas power plants. The solar power is interesting in just how little there is (it appears that there is a lot more installed capacity connected to local grids rather than transmission grids), but also the characteristic of the generation.
The characteristics of each form of electricity generation are fairly interesting seen through the lens of the data.
Some people point to potential battery systems to mitigate the problems with solar in particular, but also wind to an extent, but just look at Ontario -- I can't help but think that the amount of batteries required to store 20GW of electricity overnight (so it's not entirely correct since solar is sinusoidal not off/on) but let's say 240GWH of storage) and then enough wind/solar to produce enough electricity during production periods to charge those batteries would be absolutely absurd, and have a cataclysmic environmental impact compared to finding some more big rivers for some run of river dams or places a traditional hydro dam could be built.
That being said, chemical batteries are probably just not the right choice, but pumped water storage might be... The largest pumped water storage system in the world is the Bath County pumped storage station, and at 24GWH of storage and a maximum generating capacity of 3GW, then 10x of these roughly 3.85 Billion dollar facilities could store power overnight for just the province of Ontario, and the physical footprint of that facility is surprisingly small for the amount of power it can store. (By contrast, the largest battery electric storage facility in the world is orders of magnitude smaller)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Station
A big difference between chemical and pumped water storage systems is that water is essentially eternal, whereas chemical batteries die in a decade or two and so even if you make the investment you'll need to redo everything shortly afterwards, and depending on the battery technology it may or may not be recyclable -- lead acid batteries are highly recyclable, but lithium batteries are significantly less so.
For longer term issues like no wind, you might need much more storage -- rather than storing enough energy for the day, you might need enough for a week or a month, which would take an overwhelming investment and turn it into something virtually impossible for the economy to support (I suppose maybe they could store a lot more instantaneous energy by just building bigger reservoirs mind you so you wouldn't need to increase the costs by 14 or 60)
And then there's the fact that you'd need to build enough intermittent energy generation to charge the batteries or fill the reservoirs in addition to running things at the time, so at that point you'd need potentially need not 100% but 200% or more of the total amount of energy generation.
So all of that suggests it makes sense to try to build sources of energy that can handle baseload sources and consistently provide electricity every day. The 40 billion dollars to build the pumped storage system alone could potentially produce enough hydroelectricity to power the entire province and much of the nearby US states.
No major disagreements with this. But...
@sj_zero
> Wind is one that can be useful, but is variable
The variability of wind depends a lot on where you put it. Offshore wind in particular is often sited in places where the winds are pretty much constant. Which is why the UK and a number of Scandanavian countries have built so much of it (eg thev30% of generation in the UK that I mentioned.
(1/4)
@sj_zero
> it makes sense to try to build sources of energy that can handle baseload sources and consistently provide electricity every day
Given the increasing variability of rain, intermittent generation fed into pumps definitely has a place. Although sodium ion batteries could be a game-changer for fixed storage (not vehicles unless they get much lighter per energy stored), you're right that no proven battery tech is going to compete with pumped hydro.
(2/4)
They key to getting to 100% renewables is diversity. For a start, a mix of energy sources and stores. A mix of home-scale, community-scale and industrial scale, for both generation and storage. A mix of replacement and efficiency (eg localised production of some goods - especially perishable food - to reduce energy used in transport).
Every function served by multiple elements, to paraphrase Bill Mollison.
(3/4)
Oh and FWIW existing nuclear is not a renewable;
"uranium is a mineral resource that exists in finite amounts."
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-01-18/peak-uranium-the-uncertain-future-of-nuclear-energy/
(edit: whether or not it's necessary as a transitional tech is a separate debate)
(4/4)
Manitoba, Quebec, British Columbia, and Newfoundland all have nearly 100% renewable electricity generation, but it was almost all infrastructure built before the current age of "no".
That's what's so insane about the whole thing, just imagine -- entire provinces larger than most countries in Europe have been 100% renewable longer than you or I have been alive. All day, everyday, the lights, the heat, the cooling, much of the industry. It's canada, it's a place so huge that you can't even wrap your head around it, there's so much geography that of course we could build more hydro dams, but we just don't.
I've got the same problem with nuclear that I do with steel -- the amount of resources that go into extracting and refining this stuff is on a scale that most human beings can't imagine. You can have a giant tank of propane that would be for a distribution facility in many places, and burn through it in a single day just to keep mine air heaters running, and even in places that brag about how they don't use any fossil fuels in their mining, they're lying and they still use fossil fuels on their mine air heaters. And then there's travel -- most mines today are flying fly out to reduce the environmental footprint, and that means that almost every single day there are hundreds of people flying long plane rides for remote locations. You think your morning commute burns a lot of fuel? It's got nothing on a mine in nunuvut. And that's just two examples, it's just one thing after another after another, the environmental footprint of mining is just so astronomical.
But the thing is, this is the environmental industrial complex. A known good solution to a problem that can be more or less immediately implemented and then the problem is solved isn't helpful for anyone in this equation other than the Earth and the consumer. A few people make a little bit of money maintaining a hydroelectric dam, but a lot of people make a lot of money if you're raping the Earth to dig up uranium and coal and steel! Man, there's money to be made by everyone then! Especially if you need to invent something that's perpetually 5 to 10 years off! Oh the amount of money in perpetually having something that's just 5 to 10 years off? I mean you can leech off of that grift for centuries.
Of course not everywhere is as blessed as canada, but some places are. Canada is, for example(go figure!). But again -- especially when the technology to fix things has been known for over a century, and we could actually implement the fixes immediately and start getting environmental and social benefits immediately. But we don't, because for politicians what good at that solvable problem? For crony capitalists, what good is a few low margin megaprojects when there's fortunes to be made? Nobody stands to get rich and powerful that way.
Even in ontario, I live in a region whose electricity is 90% hydroelectric.
Which brings us to another thing that really the politicians who are pretending they really care about this aren't going to touch with 100 ft pole -- why exactly are we taking people from the lowest carbon use jurisdictions on the planet and shipping them to the highest carbon use jurisdiction on the planet? You take people who are living in areas where you don't need electricity to survive, and you move to a place where if you don't have energy for travel and energy for getting your home then you die. The least sustainable places in Canada would be the places with all of the migrants, Toronto and vancouver. Why did we bring all these people in? It's not good for the planet. Here we see proof of my ongoing point laid bare: if you ask these politicians why we need to be importing people like this, they'll give you all kinds of stories about how good it is for the economy.
@sj_zero
> But we don't, because for politicians what good at that solvable problem? For crony capitalists, what good is a few low margin megaprojects when there's fortunes to be made? Nobody stands to get rich and powerful that way
Preach brother! We're totally on the same page on all this.
@sj_zero
> when the technology to fix things has been known for over a century, and we could actually implement the fixes immediately and start getting environmental and social benefits immediately. But we don't,
I'm reminded of my visit to Larnoch's Castle in Ōtākou, which in the late 1800s was using biogas generated from the toilet block to light in the house.
I'm also reminded of the behaviour of US companies, who stood to make huge profits from selling and fueling private cars. They bought up, shut down and asset-stripped public transport services, forcing citizens to use the transport mode most profitable for those companies. Regardless of environmental and social impacts.
See the doco The End of Suburbia (2004), and I think it's also mentioned in The Corporation (2003).
@sj_zero
> a lot of places have already been at 100% renewables for longer than you've been alive
In electricity generation, sure. Not energy use as a whole, which is what I meant by 100% renewables. I'm pretty sure no society in the world is at 100% in that sense (aside from low-tech societies in the Amazon etc). Especially when you factor in nuclear not being renewable.
Let's just start by acknowledging that the immigration debate is a lightening rod for both explicit and implicit racism, and thus for both explicit and implicit anti-racism as well. All of which muddies the waters.
Having pointed out that this elephant is unavoidably in the room, so we can tread carefully to avoid being stomped on by it...
(1/3)
The phrasing;
@sj_zero
> taking people from the lowest carbon use jurisdictions on the planet and shipping them to the highest carbon use jurisdiction on the planet
... implies an intention that doesn't exist. People are making individual and household choices about which country is the best place to raise their children. Governments of colonies (like your country and mine) can and do discriminate between immigrants, but they mainly look at what skills and wealth they bring with them.
(2/3)
We agreed in another branch of the thread that the technology to get to 100% renewables has existed for decades, and that not rolling it out has been a political-economic choice of plutocratic elites. That's the problem we need to fix, and problematising the flow of people from one country to another is being actively used by said plutocrats as a distraction.
(3/3)
Carrying capacity is a fundamental part of environmentalism. In biology, there's for example so much vegetation, and say it can support 100 deer, and that would be equilibrium. The amount of vegetation available to support the deer would be a function of the quality of the soil, the amount of sunlight, and the specific adaptions of the local vegetation against the deer. If you got 101 deer, there would be no immediate effects, but the vegetation would be eaten a bit too quickly for the vegetation to recover and if nothing changes the population will eventually drop because there won't be enough food.
If we're going to live in harmony with nature, we need to think the same with humans. There are locations where you don't need a lot of energy just to survive (this is particularly important with respect to local temperatures -- temperate climates where you rarely need to heat or cool your home are ideal), and it's relatively easy to farm locally, so you can live off the land with what's there and have lots of people and it's relatively OK. On the other hand, there's locations where every person needs a lot of extra energy to survive because it's too hot and needs cooling or it's too cold and it needs heating, and you can live on renewables in those regions, but if you overpopulate then you end up requiring the fossil fuel subsidy (or the nuclear power subsidy) to make up the difference between the energy you can produce and the energy to need to not have everyone die.
There is a fixed limit on the renewables that could be practically generated in a particular region, so it does matter the energy balance compared to the population.
Population size matters a lot. Ontario has roughly 10x the population of Manitoba. If instead it had 2x the population of Manitoba (it has about twice the geographical area of Manitoba, so that isn't unreasonable), then the hydroelectric generation alone would fully power the province with room to spare with no need for nuclear or oil and gas.
It's interesting given the totality of the discussion then, the dichotomy (Anakin noooooo) that high population density is really necessary for Chinese-style high speed rail to be effective, but the same high population density in many regions in North America (particularly up north) would require fossil fuel subsidies in the same way that China despite its trains uses 50% of all the coal burned on earth every year (which would bring up the next thing the elites wouldn't like, that the developing world is the developed world's environmental painting of Dorian Gray -- we pretend we're so good because we don't burn coal because we get China to burn it for us).
@sj_zero
> An Englishman living in India using little energy is no different than a Punjabi living in India for this calculation, same as an Englishman or Punjabi in Alaska burning oil all winter to not die
Exactly. Yes it's sensible to have lower overall population in areas where it's more energy expensive to live. But that's not incompatible with immigration, as long as births are below replacement, or lots of people are leaving. Both of which are happening in countries with high immigration.
In theory, populations will lean towards living in 'low energy required' areas naturally, as long as all the downstream costs of that energy can be internalised into its market price.
To test that, we'd need two lists of countries; energy usage per capita, and population change per year. With a few years data we'd be able to see if net population is shrinking in high energy use countries, and if not, why not?
@sj_zero
@sj_zero
> There is a fixed limit on the renewables that could be practically generated in a particular region, so it does matter the energy balance compared to the population
One useful things about electricity grids is they can be used to move energy surplus generated in one region, to another. Most of our hydroelectric generation is in the mostly uninhabited mountain basins in Te Wai Pounamu. All the geothermal I'm aware of is one place near Taupo on Te Ika a Maui. Most of our generation.
@sj_zero
> China despite its trains uses 50% of all the coal burned on earth every year
> we pretend we're so good because we don't burn coal because we get China to burn it for us
Exactly. If countries included the upstream emission costs of imports, including transporting them, in their own carbon emission stats, but not those of exports, the picture of who's supposedly emitting all that coal looks quite different ; )
It also I think will help the somewhat racist view that western civilization has that somehow everyone else can make stuff and our job is to be designers and managers, like that's sustainable.
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@sj_zero
> If we set the painting of Dorian Gray on fire, there's a lot of consequences
We agree on these. I'd add that if we add the carbon emissions from transport onto each country's budget, we'll see things like the true emission cost of importing high-volume, "low-emission" products from Aotearoa into the UK. In many cases it will be obvious that a less efficient product that can be produced locally will have lower overall emmisions.