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Flying More Climate-Friendly Than Driving
Flying in a plane is not only safer than driving a car, it's also better for the environment... Michael Sivak of the U-M Transportation Research Institute found that it takes twice as much energy to drive than to fly. H/T: reason.com (www.rdmag.com) 更多...
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The devil is in the details, and the details are rather sparse. Google search of author and U-M found a couple of underlying reports, also lacking supporting data. He may have a point, but I'd like to see the actual study data and discussion.
Personally, it sounds to me like somebody that needs to get outside the hallowed halls of UM and see what the real world is doing. I personally think he has way too much time on his hands and has just put what he thinks into officialdom, which is why you didn't find very much on the subject. Just somebody else sucking the government teat.
In one of his references there was a table showing that gas mileage dropped 40% between 1970 & 2010. My diet prohibits ingesting the necessary number of grains of salt for that one....
Yeah, my last vehicle was a 2007 that got about 30 mpg, and the one I got now does 36 on the road. My wife insists on keeping her 98 Nissan and it's getting around 30 or better, the way she drives it. Like I said, somebody needs to get outside the hallowed halls. With no supporting data, that is a stupid statement. That said, though he may not have shared his source with us, there were many times in there after the contrived gas shortage, that SUV's and pickup trucks were king and were not the most fuel friendly thing on the road. Some friends still have them and here in the last couple of years with the high prices, they were screaming because it was costing $40-50 or more to fill them up. I did have a 2001 F150 with aV6 and std shift that got 21 if it was driven decent.
I think the denominator should be a unit weight transported. For example, my last trip to DFW would have had to compare on the one hand: a drive in a car with two people and their luggage from Austin to Denton then Irving, and back to Austin. On the other hand, a car/taxi/bus/shuttle ride to KAUS, flight to DFW or Love Field, car rental/taxicab for shuttling around the Metroplex, flight back to KAUS, then ground transportation again after return. I note that total miles travelled would be greater for the latter than the former, primarily due to additional ground transportation required.
I don't know which side of the equation wins, but I'm guessing it's the car (the one I drove averaged close to 40 mpg for that trip).
I don't know which side of the equation wins, but I'm guessing it's the car (the one I drove averaged close to 40 mpg for that trip).
I would proffer the fact that at this current time, climate friendly does not enter into a decision to fly or drive. If it is out of ones own pocket, then I think that cost and convenience would dictate how the trip is made, regardless of climatic impact.
There is no "climatic impact." It is all junk science ginned up by politicians to tax and control people. They would like to charge us to exhale, so they could mitigate the carbon dioxide by planting a tree. Sorry, but humans are too small a force to disrupt nature and the massive systems of planetary physics.
It is all about time. Airplanes are time machines. At my last company the "rule of thumb" was driving 3 hours is cheapest and quickest. If the trip is longer, flying our company airplane (Skylane) was the best compromise time/cost). Anything more than 3 hrs in the Skylane (~9hrs by car) the airlines were the generally the best choice, even taking "airport dead time" into account. Seemed to work well.
