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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.

@tbaldauf

What is a "long distance holiday destination".

London, Germany, New York are all far away. But so is 99% of the planet

AccordionBruce

@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 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?

@Br3nda @tbaldauf

@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 natural consequence.

@tbaldauf @Br3nda @AccordionBruce

@strypey @Br3nda @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 @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.

@fgraver @Br3nda @tbaldauf

@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;

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-spe

... as does India;

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-spe

... 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.

@AccordionBruce @Br3nda @tbaldauf

en.wikipedia.orgHigh-speed rail in Russia - Wikipedia

@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.

@AccordionBruce @Br3nda @tbaldauf

China is a poor example since to be comparable you'd need approximately 8 billion people on the American continent...

@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.

@Br3nda @fgraver @AccordionBruce @tbaldauf

@strypey @fgraver @AccordionBruce @tbaldauf

Pretty sure whoever you're reply to has blocked me.. But I've never heard of them so more likely they were blocked/defederated

@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.

@strypey thanks for that. The thread just starts out of nowhere for me.

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.

@Br3nda

Places with really good train infrastructure tend to be places with really high population density. Even in China, there isn't great train infrastructure everywhere, just in areas with very high population density. The areas with low population density such as the mountainous regions don't tend to have lots of great train service. It's particularly good in the highest population density regions.

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

@sj_zero @fgraver @strypey @tbaldauf
I honestly don’t see anything like this being built unless we have the giant earthquake to clear all the right of ways

Assuming capacity to rebuild exists after such a disaster

Not hoping for that happen to anybody

@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).

@fgraver @AccordionBruce @tbaldauf

You're not the first person to suggest a blog, but it's more about the journey. I'm thankful to have people cool enough to have conversations about things with and who are willing to tolerate my big walls of text as I try to figure out the world with everyone.

@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.

@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.

@fgraver @AccordionBruce @tbaldauf
@lightweight

@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/?)

@fgraver @AccordionBruce @tbaldauf

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/?)

@sj_zero
@fgraver @AccordionBruce @tbaldauf

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;

stb.maps.arcgis.com/home/webma!

Canada;

rac.jmaponline.net/canadianrai

ontheworldmap.com/mexico/mexic

Every piece of track electrified or upgraded adds value to the network as a whole.

(3/?)

@sj_zero @fgraver @AccordionBruce @tbaldauf

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/?)

@sj_zero @fgraver @AccordionBruce @tbaldauf

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/?)

@sj_zero
@fgraver @AccordionBruce @tbaldauf

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)

@sj_zero
@fgraver @AccordionBruce @tbaldauf

Typically I'm a free market guy, but certain things sort of need to be set up as common goods, and if they aren't then you're just getting crony capitalism where the state steals people's money at the barrel of a gun, builds a thing using the power of government to steamroll people who own the land, then hands it to their friends. Even if someone else had billions of dollars to build something similar they can't because they can't steamroll through all the stuff you would have needed.

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.

@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.

@fgraver @AccordionBruce @tbaldauf

I mentioned (though and it was an edit so you may have missed it) that you can't do high speed rail on normal rail infrastructure and so you'd need a lot more material. It'd need to be stable enough to handle the loads of high speed rail as well as I'm sure a number of other factors you don't need to consider with standard rail. If it was that easy they'd just pop a new train on the old tracks more or less.

@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.

@fgraver @AccordionBruce @tbaldauf

@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?

@fgraver @AccordionBruce @tbaldauf

Coal almost exclusively comes from an era hundreds of millions of years ago called the carboniferous period before any organisms learned to digest cellulose. After that period, wood that would just sit there and sink into coal beds instead gets converted back into CO2 by fungi.

@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.

@fgraver @AccordionBruce @tbaldauf

The CO2 in a tree is gathered over years and years, whereas rotting can occur in a relatively short period of time. It ends up back in the air, and plants around them which take years and years to gather carbon through photosynthesis won't collect it immediately.

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.

@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/?)

@fgraver @AccordionBruce @tbaldauf

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.

phys.org/news/2020-04-dont-mat

(2/?)

@sj_zero
@fgraver @AccordionBruce @tbaldauf

phys.orgDon't look to mature forests to soak up carbon dioxide emissionsResearch published today in Nature suggests mature forests are limited in their ability to absorb "extra" carbon as atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations increase. These findings may have implications for New York state's carbon neutrality goals.

@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.

@fgraver @AccordionBruce @tbaldauf

@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.

@fgraver @AccordionBruce @tbaldauf

Calling construction an upgrade doesn't mean it doesn't use material. Especially if the upgrade requires fundamental reconstruction, so for example tearing up all the old rail lines on gravel and timbers and replacing them with a much higher quality steel on a cement foundation (which admittedly may not be required, but for things like the northern manitoba route I spoke of you'd basically need to do that to even get the trains running at normal speed, let alone high speed).

@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.

@fgraver @AccordionBruce @tbaldauf

I'd be interested in seeing how that wager works out. I might be overestimating the amount of construction required to convert an average piece of rail to high speed rail. On the other hand, I do know from some previous research into rail accidents that higher speed routes often require route redesign. For example you need to redesign corners because something you can safely take at 40mph is suicidal at 200mph. Also, as I keep on mentioning with the paths in northern Manitoba, you could end up needing to do a lot of work on a piece of land including bringing in a lot of carbon intensive material, replacing relatively carbon neutral crushed rock with a stronger foundation. I'm also not sure if a high speed train would require additional barriers to keep wildlife or people or debris away from tracks compared to standard rail.

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
> 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)

@fgraver @AccordionBruce @tbaldauf

@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)

@fgraver @AccordionBruce @tbaldauf

@strypey @sj_zero @fgraver @tbaldauf
I recently learned that the new here uses more fuel than flying between and

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?

@AccordionBruce

@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.