I suspect "domestic flights" in the UK are pretty different than the US (a brief search indicates the average flight is around 4 times longer in the US, and planes are far more efficient during the middle of their flight compared to the ends, but average passengers per flight is a little harder to find for both countries to properly figure that out)

[–] gewindestift@feddit.org 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Thank you for the reply. "Your" numbers are not in fuel/mile/person but in energy/mile/person. So an electric train is much better carbon emission wise than it suggests. I was aware that flights and ICE cars are equal-ish per distance, but the takeaway from this should be to not fly or ICE-drive long distances and not that flying is ok.

Flying is really bad and billionaires as well as common people alike should not be allowed to do it. I do not understand why we still have to discuss this.

[–] Soggy@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The first one is measuring BTUs and converting but the UMich information is straight carbon emissions per passenger mile and planes are only ~30% worse than commuter rail in the US by that metric. It's really not the apocalypse you're making it out to be.

[–] gewindestift@feddit.org 1 points 1 hour ago

Sorry i didn't read carefully enough. Thanks for pointing that out. So there's a huge difference between the UK "national rail" and the US "commuter rail" in carbon emission (35g vs 214g per km, which is not so great again*). I guess this is because the US rail is much less electrified and runs mostly on diesel. Also a national rail train will stop less (and have to accelerate again) than a commuter train.

As i mentioned in another post in this thread a round trip transatlantic flight is almost a full year of what one person can emit (if we share it equally) to limit the warning to 1.5°C.

What breaking this limit means is easy accessible information. (No its not the apocalypse but is is shit)

*sorry couldn't resist