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by exdsq 2086 days ago
Not sure why you’ve been downvoted, you’re absolutely correct.
3 comments

Would you please not break the site guidelines like this? If you read them to the end, you'll notice that they explicitly ask you not to post this kind of comment.

One reason is that users frequently give corrective upvotes (https://hn.algolia.com/?query=corrective%20upvote&dateRange=...), which leaves a complaint like this dangling as uncollected garbage.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I'm guessing it's a uncomfortable fact for the hackernews crowd who seem to travel a lot and also claim to care for climate change.
Transatlantic flight generates under 1000kg of CO2 per passenger. Cars generate 0.12kg per km. A short commute is 30 km per day, so about a 1000 kg per year - a wash.

A longer commute will generate more, being stuck in traffic will generate more, building new roads will generate more. A flight that is not cross-Atlantic will generate much less.

It’s not clear which way the balance will tilt, but you can’t just make blanket statement that planes will be worse than cars - you have to show your math.

The average american commute is about 15 miles [0] which is 24 km.

A round trip from JFK to FRA emits about 0.91 t (910 kg) CO2 but if you account for radiative forcing [1] it is equivalent to 1.62 t (1620 kg) [2].

That's not to mention multiplying all these figures by 6 (for every 2 months), so that's 9720 kg.

I don't think it's a wash.

[0] https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1006/ML100621425.pdf

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiative_forcing

[2] https://calculator.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx

1. 15 miles one way. 30miles x 1.6km x 1.12kg/km x 250 days = 1440 kg

2. Few people will move form US to Germany. It's more likely someone will move e.g. from Portland to San Diego. 275kg roundtrip, 550kg adjusted for radiative forcing.

So if you fly 3 times per year it's a wash, if you fly 6 times a year it's double the CO2 emission.