Does France HATE Aviation?! Or DO they have a point 🧐

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Does France really HATE airlines and aviation, and if so, is it possible to change their mind about it? And what does any of this have to do with… trains in the United States?!
Stay tuned!
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Below you will find the links to videos and sources used in this episode.
• Paris Airshow 2023 - D...
• Paris Airshow 2023 - B...
• Boeing 737 MAX Advance...
• Boeing 787-10 Dreamlin...
• Why electric vehicles ...
• ENERGIA: RIGHT FOR THE...
• Why Planes Dump Jet Fuel
• A day in the life of a...
• Can sustainable aviati...
• Air Traffic Control Ro...
• Electric taxiing: what...
• France bans short dome...
• How does the EU work? ...
• France bans short-haul...
• Short-haul flight ban ...
• Should Britain follow ...
• Il y a 20 ans : « la N...
• Paris Charles de Gaull...
• Dutch Government: We'r...
• Video Message by Cléme...
• How to fix Europe's ra...
• Hub and Spoke System i...
• Why U.S. Freight Train...
• How hybridisation cont...
• Batteries for Electric...
• Introducing #ZEROe
• The ITF Film
• First subscale test fl...
• Environment Council Hi...
• The European Green Dea...

[@MentourNow]

Try Speakly free for 7 days, and get a 60% discount if you join the annual subscription speakly.app.link/mentournow

[@jamesengland7461]

You are wrong about gas car fuel efficiency-5% is an utter lie. The actual figure is 25-30%. You didn't check your facts on that one.

[@user-unknownorknown]

Love the impartiality. It is hard these days. Only the extremes talk so congrats on your research.❤

[@classicalextremism]

@@jamesengland7461 Aye, the most focused engines get to 50% thermal efficiency. To say nothing of the Climate boogeyman in the room being an unscientific sham.

[@jeffrp8388]

@@jamesengland7461 A diplomat, you are not! A salesman, you are not! Rude and not likeable, you ARE! Saying that the 5% fuel efficiency claim is an "utter lie" is rather rude. Whether it is *inaccurate* or not I very much doubt that Petter is lying. Either Petter got his info from someone you disagree with or it may have been an error - either by Petter or his source. Additionally, why not give a link to your source (in addition to more diplomatic language)?

[@agatasoda]

The concrete industry creates as much if not more emissions than all of transportation combined but no one seems to care about it..

[@neil492]

In France, if you are close enough to a TGV station it's no secret that it's better than going by air. Once you factor in the aggro-factor of the airport, getting there, security screening, arriving in advance, the door-to-door time is less by train.

[@petter5721]

France is Europes Arabs …

[@johnstuartsmith]

Train stations are usually close to the center of cities because cities tend to grow around train tracks.. Airports are usually deliberately placed a long away from downtown on the other side of the city suburbs.

[@psisteak4122]

@@johnstuartsmithGive me please one example of French city grown around train tracks ...

[@rallymaniac92]

But France has also placed TGV stations far outside cities for the sake of having straighter, faster lines: Lorraine TGV, Belfort-Montbéliard TGV, among others. While fast, for many this can be an inconvenience.

[@johnstuartsmith]

@@psisteak4122 Well, in Europe, there were major cities before anybody invented things like trains. However, the rail lines and train stations that were built were put in the middle of cities and the airports were mostly built out on what was farmland.

[@davidturner4350]

I have switched from using flights from Geneva/Lyon to London to going by train - TGV to Paris, two stops on the Metro (RER actually) and Eurostar. About the same same in time door to door, a bit more expensive but when all factors are taken into account (travel to/from airport, hanging around at the airport, parking,cost of refreshments etc etc) less hassle and WAY more convenient and comfortable. London/Paris used to have the most flights in the world - now very few flights because of Eurostar. Lesson - if the rail system meets travellers needs, they will take the train rather than the plane. I think the French are onto something with their approach to domestic air travel.

[@grigandy]

Not only France, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands are doing the same thing. Flights under 90 minutes are becoming useless as they generally take longer from point to point and more train rides are available with double the capacity compared to planes.

[@patrickreuvekamp]

@@grigandy Flying between Dutch and/or Belgian cities would also be a bit ridiculous, due to the short distances.

[@svendstengade6350]

Let me just say that I appreciate your logical, down-to-earth reasoning! Greetings from Denmark! 🇩🇰

[@WhiskyCanuck]

I'd read somewhere that the number of domestic flights in Italy dropped off a fair bit after they built out their highspeed rail lines as they were no longer very competitive against HSR.

[@armin3057]

but flying is fun@@grigandy

[@aljack1979]

This only works if travelling by train is cheaper. In the UK we have some of the most expensive train tickets in the world due to privatisation. It's cheaper to fly than train in the UK.

[@mosmarb]

Yeah, it's crazy. I looked at the train to Brum and back and it was £200. Flying Southampton - Amsterdam - Birmingham (no direct flights to Brum from Southampton) return was just £10 more expensive.

[@housemana]

while your train tickets are expensive due to "privitisation", the root cause is not simply because operators are non-state. you're just seeing the true cost of running such operations. the elephant in the room is that mass transit - especially mass transit away from hyperurban hubs, operate in the red.

[@primmakinsofis614]

_In the UK we have some of the most expensive train tickets in the world due to privatisation._ Incorrect. See TIKhistory's video on the subject: _The UK DIDN'T "Privatize" the Railways_

[@ericbauer4559]

Interstate travel by train here in the US is a luxury trip.

[@Richard-iq8xb]

This is not true. The prices are higher than elsewhere in Europe as there was a decision to make rail passengers bear more of the cost instead of taxpayers. Nothing to do with privatization.

[@officialmcdeath]

Thanks for covering this debate.Ever since the '70s and the growth of higher-speed rail, there has been a rule of thumb within railway circles that any journey that rail can do centre-to-centre in 3hrs or under is one where air cannot compete on time. That rule obviously related to business travel - 6hr was considered the boundary for leisure trips. Those times have effectively expanded in the newer security environment. As you say, perceived reliability of the ground connection factors into this. More directly related to your channel, electric taxi is definitely something I'd be happy to see covered. Thanks again \m/

[@ww32]

That rule also changes as the speeds of rail transportation changes, TGV is an insanely fast and efficient form of transportation.

[@bearcubdaycare]

There's a tendency to focus on small, symbolic parts of the problem, rather than on bigger issues closer to home. Much bigger. But close to home problems, are less comfortable to address. Much easier to carry on about stuff way over there, or things that only affect you yearly.

[@Steeyuv]

‘I’ll fly my helicopter less, if you cut your car use by the same proportion’. Any takers?

[@awesomeblossom2417]

Nah, every decision has a political ulterior motive under the guise of altruism. I see this benefitting a very specific airline.

[@XB10001]

Indeed! It's the usual policy of the elected inepts, whoever they are. It will never change.

[@XB10001]

​@@Steeyuvor simply letting everyone work remotely (when possible).

[@cyan_oxy6734]

For 90% of people flying isn't a necessity. It's a luxury and it's easy to scale down without big econonic impact. Inside of the EU where theoretically we have a good rail system flying shouldn't be the standard.

[@Richardincancale]

Advantage with electric trains and cars is that they are as climate friendly as the source of the electricity. In France we typically operate 80%+ from nuclear and hydro sources, remaining small percentage of gas for peaker plants. The other thing with France is the existence of a world leading high speed train network, and the fact that the big cities are quite widely distributed as the area of France is the second biggest country in Europe (after Sweden)

[@uclajd]

Go away with your stupid climate religion frogs.

[@charlieBu85]

the problem is one trainline is emiting huge amount of CO2 to be created and/or maintained. 2 you can not be sure about the electricity source since it is now commun with europe that why also green energy contract are bullshit since the electricity is produced globally in europe, 3) diesel train style exist and are mainly used in region and often not take in account in number whereas ATR72 and stuff are . sorry but train is not ecologic either . number are just turned to be shiny by some organism which are funder partly by the SNCF (hello GIEC). and of course in this number petrol refining are giving to aviation and it therefore made rafinment industry carbon neutral so a good way to bring the number up. to finish the marginal kw/h to be produce to replace all aviation industrie is huge and will surely not be produce by a clean way (more porbably fossil based).

[@blameyourself4489]

However. Most people don't understand that it's not just CO2 emissions. If you for instance take a nuclear power plant, then consider the generated heat. This heat raises the temperature of the atmosphere, which somehow must leave the planet, but it cannot, because only X amount of heat can dissipate back into space. People look at CO2 as the most evil thing. It contributes to an acceleration of the problem, yes. But the true problem is the heat generated. A Joule is a Joule, and eventually, Joules will heat the atmosphere, and too many Joules won't get emitted back out into space. :-(

[@KyrilPG]

France is currently the largest country in EU (Sweden 528K km², mainland France only is 544K km²).

[@Tim_Nilsson]

France is the 3rd largest country in Europe after Russia and Ukraine. Sweden is 5th at roughly 450 000 km² compared to France ~550 000 km².

[@macattackmicmac]

As someone who has traveled fairly frequently from a minor airport internationally via a hub airport, my experience has been that taking a train for the first leg is much more reliable. If there is a problem with my flight I'm probably going to take a train anyway. If I'm not flying onwards it makes even less sense to fly. It would take me an hour to get to the airport maybe 30 mins- hour to get from my destination airport to the city, and then I still have to deal with security check in etc. Or I can take a train without any of those issues and relax for a few hours.

[@A_Canadian_In_Poland]

Much agreed. I was once re-routed on a flight itinerary to Katowice, Poland via Warsaw (originally planed via Frankfurt). The last leg, a 20 minute flight, was delayed by 3 hours that day. I could have taken a train, or even a bus, directly from Warsaw and reached my final destination sooner.

[@grigandy]

​@@sncy5303Considering that there are trains around the world that don't have that issues, lack of investment is the problem, not poor technology. If aviation subsidies were cut and train usage would increase, you wouldn't have the same problem. It's just like in the US were cars are heavily subsidised but trains are not so everyone is obliged to drive for anything.

[@ironcito1101]

If trains are better, people will choose them. There is no need to ban aircraft. Let them compete.

[@grigandy]

​@@ironcito1101No need to wait 5 years with half full planes subsidised by everyone's taxes, just ban them. There is already strong competition on rails, plane are just useless on these routes.

[@ironcito1101]

@@grigandy Don't subsidize air travel. But don't subsidize trains, either.

[@EkainMunduate]

Railways pay for the tax on the electricity they consume, but international flights in Europe pay no taxes for fuel.

[@johnkowalkowski4269]

On a railway subject....I live in the Seattle area and have knowledge of the rail in the area. The fuselage trains from Spirit in Wichita actually go right by the spur that feeds the Everett plant on the way to the Renton plant....as such, there is still direct rail linking the two. When Everett starts the 737 line, those trains will get there a few hours sooner than a trip to Renton. There was a rail line headed north from the Renton plant industrial area through Bellevue and out to the Cascades that shut down about 20 years ago. Parts of it did become trails and forced the end of a really cool dinner train service that is still missed by many today.

[@amirclev8213]

There is a lot of problems in this video, for example : - Before we talk about efficiency we need to talk about the energy needed to achieve the work, to do that the first thing to consider is the mass (how much tons of materials per passenger are there). knowing the mass we can determine the energies needed to transport one passenger, and the most important energies are the potential and kinetic energies(there are other that I'm not gonna detail here). The potential energy is = to mass x gravity x height, we can notice that the quantity of energy needed to elevate a given mass scales linearly with the height, knowing that the cruising altitude of an airliner is above 10000m and the cars need to follow the landscape it's easy to assume that the energy spent to elevate an aircraft is far greater than cars or trains. The second is the kinetic energy, it's = to 0.5mv², it's scales to the square of the velocity so here again knowing that the cruise speed of an airliner is above 800 km/h the difference between the energy spent to accelerate an aircraft and a car is really huge. With only those two forms of energies it's easy to assume that the energy spent to transport a given mass by an aircraft is an order of magnitude greater than a car or a train, even with aircraft with 100% efficiency (which is impossible), it's still not comparable. -Once we know the net energy needed we can calculate the gross energy using the efficiency, here too u compared the efficiency of the top of the line most advanced aircraft to the most garbage car in the worst conditions which is not really a fair comparison. -You also said that the railway network is a hub, it's true for the USA, they invested heavily in highway network neglecting the other transportation forms, this is why u can't live in the USA without a car. But it's not the case for France, germany and most of the european countries, you can see there rail networks here : maps-france.com/maps-france-rails/france-train-map vividmaps.com/german-railroads/ -We need to be very critical and not take the informations given by lobbyists as true without verification.

[@MrDanJB85]

So an efficiency comparison between airliners and cars based on joules extracted from the fuel isn’t really an ‘apples to apples’ comparison for a couple of reasons. The main one is that cars and trains don’t expend energy lifting their weight + payload tens of thousands of feet in the air (work done against gravity). The weight of cars and trains is supported by their wheels using no energy: the plane may get more energy from a unit of fuel, but it needs much more energy to accomplish the same journey. The other is that the legislation is about trains vs planes (not cars) - lots of trains in Europe have been fully electric for some time (and whilst the energy mix on the grid still uses some fossil fuel, it also uses a lot of renewables).

 That work done against gravity lends a particular logic to targeting shorthaul flying - long haul is less carbon intensive per mile, because that huge energy overhead of climbing to cruise happens once per flight, regardless of overall flight length. This is also why ‘hub and spoke’ operating models are so problematic, environmentally speaking - I would love to see more integrated ticketing between rail and air to reduce connecting flights). For short haul flying, I think the most interesting innovations are around the return of aerostatic lift to aircraft designs alongside aerodynamic lift. These so called hybrid aircraft use helium gas bladders to give the airframe neutral buoyancy, so aerodynamic lift (requiring energy) lifts only the payload. As to why trains are so much more expensive - the economics seem to be mainly down to externalities. Railways are relatively green, but need to cover the costs of extensive infrastructure: track, bridges, cables etc to run trains over; on the other hand, although airport slots come at a cost, the sky is relatively ‘free’ to the airline (but has a huge ‘externalised’ cost to wider society in dealing with the emissions, radiative forcing effects and so on). 
On thought that other sectors are low hanging fruit’ for decarbonisation and should go first - I don’t think that’s a real choice: its harvest time, we need to be picking *all* of the fruit. On a per-flight basis airlines interests in reducing costs do largely align with environmentalism - true, but the industry wants to grow (and so emit more overall). Every few ads I see at the moment are from an airlines offering cheap flights to make unnecessary journeys - that doesn’t seem very environmentally minded. I recently came across someone promoting the idea that if flying at a sustainable level would be (roughly) one round trip (shorthaul) every three years, and one round trip (long haul) every 8 years. I think that assumes current efficiency for aircraft - but it makes you think.

[@lordmashie]

The trains actually have to make sense as an option, shocker. For most places rail travel is sort of the awkward middle child between driving yourself and flying. A really good rail network could solve so many problems, it's a shame that such lazy approaches are taken by policy makers.

[@alexturnbackthearmy1907]

Same is happening everywhere now. Instead of solving problems, promises to find an easy "fix" are implemented. And then decades-old issues raise their head...like situation with nuclear power in france (its bad, look it up). Or suburbian dystopia and "US-style cities". Or real estate crisis, that will become even worse. It is results of being lazy in past, that come to haunt everyone for not doing their job.

[@slome815]

Trains are good for commuting to a city. At least here in belgium, with a car you will be sitting in traffic jams every day. That's it. High speed rail is fine for anything between 400-1000km, but it's way too expensive for me. Taking the car to the south of france from belgium costs me about a fourth compared to taking the TGV.

[@zapyvr]

Why do you compare the efficiency of airliner (a form of mas transport) to cars (an individual transport ) and not to trains ? Maybe because if you compared it to trains you would end up with data pointing to airliners being extremely inefficient ?

[@MentourNow]

Because the point I was making was to show why electrification of aviation is not the same as electrification of cars.. you are talking about something completely different. I’m not against using trains, I love using them myself, but that’s not what this episode is about

[@MentourNow]

I DID specifically mention (at 14:35) that the per-seat efficiency of trains is many times better than that of aircraft.

[@mycosys]

@@MentourNow what you said was entirely untrue, ICE efficiency is from 20% NA to 50% Turbo

[@jb-br8bf]

@@mycosysthat’s just the thermal efficiency of the engine itself. Add in wind resistance, friction from the tyres, and energy loss through the torque converter/clutch, and a lot of energy is wasted.

[@mycosys]

same applies to the plane, but moreso, @@jb-br8bf

[@furTron]

You were talking about pricing and asking why trains are more expensive. I would call some arguments: 1) Airplanes go only there, where they can make profit. Trains serve to community, even if it means to operate with loses. 2) Train prices fluctuate in a narrow price rage. If you lucky, you will get a ticket for 20€, if you buy ticket few minutes before departure, you will pay maybe 100€. With airplanes, the price can be somewhere between 10€ and few thousands. 3) Airports are oft subsidized with a lot of tax payer money. There's no VAT tax on tickets, and Fuel is oft tax free.

[@olfmombach260]

How about mentioning that airlines have to pay literally NOTHING for their fuel in taxes? The only reason planes can be so cheap is because they are literally unfairly advantaged before trains. But yeah, people just hate on short haul flights because muh contrails

[@izzieb]

Unfortunately, as you stated, the aviation industry is extremely visible and that makes it an easy target for political goal scoring. As such, the reality of the aviation industry's contribution to global emissions doesn't really matter. While I'm personally in favour of using high-speed rail for journeys where practical, I think it's also worth pointing out that the majority of railway "companies" in France are owned by the stare-owned company SNCF (TGV, Ouigo, Eurostar, Thalys, Lyria etc). The French government has a history of protectionism with respect to SNCF and irs subsidiaries - for example, their attempts to block Deutsch Bahn from operating through the Channel Tunnel to London St Pancras.

[@T33K3SS3LCH3N]

Aviation emissions do matter. 1. No individual sector makes up "that" much. Serious reductions have to happen across ALL sectors. 2. Aviation has a disproportionately large climate impact relative to its raw amount of CO2 due to high altitude of a part of their emissions. 3. Aviation is especially inefficient with its emissions, transporting far fewer people and less cargo per ton of CO2-equivalent than any other mode of transportation. But imo the most important point is sadly usually ignored: The Rich. A tiny rich percentage of the population makes up an absurdly disproportionate amount of aviation emissions with private jets, using air cargo, and simply accumulating insane mileage. It's not the average family that books one round trip for a vacation every couple years, but "businessmen" who fly around the globe on the regular. Formula 1 racks up most of its emissions by transporting teams via aircraft, not on the race track. Horse breeders and athletes have a dedicated horse air transportation industry... The US for example would already meet its emission goals of 10 tons/capita if everyone lived like the bottom 50% of incomes (which is around 9.5 tons/year). But thanks to the upper 50%, and especially the top 1% at over 80 tons/year, they average 20 tons/capita instead. And aviation emissions are even more unequal!

[@kenmay1572]

The French government has a history of protectionism agreed but protectionism also applies to French industry as a whole.

[@brylozketrzyn]

Actually, France had history of being blindly in love in aviation and it was close to diminish role of rail transportation. Fortunately, Japan had its Shinkansen and then fuel crisis came in, which resulted in electric TGV and nuclear power plants supplying them. With trains having advantage in all of three hour routes covering most of large traffic generators domestic flights are unnecessary. That being said international flights will stick around for long time, because even with two or three hours extra waiting before and after the flight you are able to cover larger distances in reasonable time.

[@flagmichael]

@@T33K3SS3LCH3N Using the A320 as an example, it consumes about 750 gallons of fuel per hour, for 150 passengers; 5 gallons per passenger-hour. The cruise speed is just over 500 mph, resulting in fuel consumption of 1/100 gallon per passenger mile. Cars can reach about 1/250 mile per passenger mile, but only if fully loaded. A couple traveling cross country by car would rival the fuel efficiency of the A320 because airliners are normally near or at capacity.

[@Vliegende-Hollander]

An interesting fact is that the national rail operators had larges shares in a national short-haul airline (France Inter), to propose fast travel across the country, when the TGV didn't existed yet, but with a small catch...the airline couldn't proposed flight at specific times of the day, that would interfere with the departure time of the train service to protect SNCF business.

[@jbcaycay8035]

I used to travel a lot between suburban Paris and Perpignan in the South of France. 1h20 hour journey on a plane vs 5h. For a long time, I always took the train because it was cheaper. Also as I was living far away from Orly, flying made not a lot of sense. But over the the last two years I took the plane more often because it was simply cheaper. And I mean way cheaper, specially last minute. In the end I didn't save that much time (door to door 5h vs 7h), but I just can't stand being robbed by the train company on behalf of ecology. In september I had to spend the day in Paris. Transavia charged me 195€ return. The SNCF Wanted to charge me 250 AND I had to book an hotel or spend the night in an overnight train SITTING DOWN.

[@rare_kumiko]

As someone who lives close to only a small airport, restrictions to short haul flights would screw me over so hard. Over half of my flights are connecting flights, and I'd lose many hours if I can't take a plane to Madrid first (which takes about an hour), and I'd have to take a train, then arrive early and do the check-in and all. it could easily add 3 hours to my average flight to EU destinations (which is about 5-6 hours now).

[@jacktegel3953]

A comparison of fuel consumption per seat kilometer for trains and aircraft such as a 737 would have been helpful.

[@762rk95tp]

That might be complicated as most main rail lines in Europe are electrified.

[@ThePentosin]

And that's an important factor. Trains are easily electrified, planes are not. Use trains for shorter travel and planes for longer travel. I'm with France on this one

[@XMysticHerox]

I don't have exact numbers but trains will either not consume fuel due to electrification or if they do be magnitudes more efficient. Rail is literally the most efficient form of travel we have and not by a small margin.

[@Sky10811]

​@762rk95tp comparison should be done as per emissions from fuel for planes vs emissions from the full cycle of electricity produced for the train. it might be much dirtier depending what is the sorce fir electricity

[@solracer66]

I recently traveled from Paris to Bayonne in the south of France via TGV. The price for my first class ticket was €72 from Paris-Montparnasse station. In addition I paid €1.50 for a short metro ride to the station for a total of €73.50. A flight from Paris to Biarritz could have been as cheap as €105 including baggage and other add-ons. Toss in a minimum of €11.45 for the airport train and €2 for the bus and the cost would have been at least €118.45 and could easily have been more with more flight add-ons as I'm comparing a first class train ticket with a coach flight. The time to fly would have been a lot longer as the flight is listed at 1:25 and with CDG's check-in queues (I had a large bag) and the need to transfer to terminal 2G I'd need to figure on being at least 2.5 hours early if not more. So now we have 4.0 hours plus the train time and another short metro ride and a long walk at CDG from the train station and likely it would be over 6.5 hours best case counting the time on the Biarritz end to get my luggage and take the bus. Contrast that with 4 hours on the train plus maybe 1/2 hour to get to the train station and some padding and the train is at least an hour and a half faster, is also cheaper and is a lot more comfortable and relaxing. The price difference would have been even more with a coach train ticket too, that would have been maybe €20 cheaper depending on demand. Based upon all those factors taking the train was an easy decision and I don't regret my decision for a second.

[@DamienDu90300]

And by train you get to enjoy the beautiful view !

[@solracer66]

@@DamienDu90300 If you book the top level like I did indeed you do!

[@robhobsweden]

One big cost is on board crew. If a train is as best half the speed of an airplane, the crew cost will double. For now, that is the best scenario. High Speed Rail (HSR) will never be able to efficiently replace smaller routes from air travel, but on popular routes it may be more time efficent than air travel, including travel from the airport to a city center. The only thing that actually will reduce this even more on a tad longer distances is MagLev, but few countries dare to be the first to implement this - exept some east asian countries, mostly China and Japan. The maintainence cost is less for maglev during it's life cycle than ordinary railways / railroads. The construction cost is mostly the same for a high speed maglev compared to HSR, on the same geographical and topological conditions. The higher speeds gives higher throughput and just need for approximately half of the trains compared to the fastest HSR today, to carry the same amount of passengers. Pride among politicians and government agencies are often a block that stops newer more efficient technologies, sadly. Regarding alternative fuels, I would rather see the Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) project take up some speed. This really safe reactor was from the beginning made for the flight industry, but was scrapped and buried by the US military, that focused on maritime vehicles at the time they were researched and experimentally run for hundreds of hours. The reason was more or less "There is so much water around boats", except that the bi-product (plutonium) also could be weaponised. The bi-product of an MSR could not, and also run much more efficient, mainly on Thorium, but could be used for what we today consider to be nuclear waste. An MSR could never have a core meltdown, since there is no core, and any leak will emediatly be plugged by turning the salt into solid form. The more efficient reactor also needs less fuel, and the fuel is less dangerous than what we use in today's reactors, and have much less half-time breakdown compared to Uranium, Cesium and those who come out of the reactors of today.

[@SJKRoberts]

Hey, thanks for the video. I gotta say that over here in the good ol' USA the railways are quite out of date and don't have high speed capacity like in the EU

[@TuxWing]

From what I understand in other videos I have watch on youtube, current locomotives used in long haul cargo here in the US are Diesel Electric where the diesel engines power a motor that creates the electricity the actually propels the trains. Full electric trains do not have the range due to battery capacity, plus the ridiculous charging times make them borderline impractical...and overhead lines for long-haul routes isn't really practical either. Like in the aviation industry, fuel costs are the driving factors for improving force behind efficiency in the locomotive industry and it also only contributes about 3-4% of the overall CO2 footprint so improvements will be hard to find there as well. By far, car's are the biggest contributor to the CO2 footprint, EVs are becoming more popular...but as they are still a relatively new technology it will be some time before the bugs get worked out, as an example with incidents such as the Fremantle Highway a month or so ago, I question if it is really worth it, or safe, to get an EV anytime soon...thermal runaway is a real thing, and not to be triffled with. Plus due to their higher use of petroleum products in the manufacturing process and components then that of internal combustion vehicles it takes 3-5 years of driving before the break even point of carbon emissions is reached and even at that they are just passing the buck back to the grid. Sadly, with people leasing cars in shorter time frames then that, its likely EVs never truly reach that breaking point because "we have to have latest and greatest". Insert eyeroll here! I freely admit that I am a cynical pessimist, but I really do not see Net Zero happening anytime soon, if at all. There is no way to provide enough power to everything that is currently an internal combustion engine unless we can find and utilize cleaner burning fuels on a massive scale.

[@djkennyg2065]

Yes more information on the aviation industrie's other approaches to fuel saving ideas would be great.

[@NagabhushanGudi]

Electric taxiing sounds interesting

[@MentourNow]

There is a lot of stuff we can still do

[@kenbrown2808]

electric tugs might be a useful alternative, to retrofitting existing designs. but I think there is also a degree to which taxiing gives the planes engines a warmup and cooldown period which you wouldn't want to eliminate completely.

[@pierrechardaire8525]

"The high-speed train system in France, known as the TGV, emits around 3 grams of CO2 per passenger-kilometer, making it one of the most sustainable modes of transport in the world. In contrast, a flight between Paris and Marseille emits around 87 grams of CO2 per passenger-kilometer." Note you can go from Paris to Marseille by TGV. To be fair, you should take into account distances. Paris marseilles: TGV = 862 km. So, a passenger's footprint = 862×3 = 2586 g Plane = 627km. A passenger's footprint = 627×87 = 54549 g, Thus 21 times more carbon emission by flying than by travelling by rail.

[@willemm]

238g/pkm CO2 for air travel, compared with 166g/pkm for cars, and 58g/pkm for trains on average... So it makes sense to tell people to not use air travel if it is not necessary, for instance when there are excellent rail alternatives available, like in France. Air plane engines are very efficient, but air travel is still way more polluting than any other form of travel. Unfortunately the real costs are not yet transferred to travellers due to the lack of tax on airplane fuel.

[@AirFlightTravels]

The problem living in France and Netherlands is the train prices. For example AMS-CDG flight is way cheaper than train. Train used to be people's way of transportation but now is not accessible. Very nice video.

[@joblo341]

One thing I've long wondered about is why commercial aircraft have not adopted aircraft carrier "assisted" take off using some sort of ground based slingshot. Obviously it would not be as abrupt / violent, but it could help get the aircraft rolling and up to speed using ground based electric boost. Another related idea would be to use tugs to tow aircraft around on the ground. They should be able to create electric, or even ICE, tugs that can move aircraft from the runway to the terminal and back. The pilots lose some control and independence, but "professional" tug drivers would know the airport and would be less likely to get lost. Jets would just idle their engines, maybe even only start one at terminal and wait to start rest while taxiing. Granted, this would depend on green power sources for the electricity.

[@jamiesuejeffery]

When I was in graduate school in the mid 1990's I drove motor coach. The older buses held 47 passengers. The newer buses held 55 passengers. The older buses got about 4 miles per gallon of diesel. The newer buses, when I graduated in 1999, averaged about 10 miles per gallon. Profit was the main driving force. Holding 8 more passengers and getting a significant increase in fuel efficiency...you do the math. Currently, my brother owns two electric cars. He also owns one very large (U.S. version) diesel pickup which is parked at my home (he has two teenage kids!). The diesel pickup is driven about once a month. The electric cars are driven daily (His two teenagers drive their cars daily, but only a couple of miles a day.)

[@mrvwbug4423]

The issue is diesel has reached its limit. Diesels have to run richer than optimal now to keep their NOx emissions down on top of EGR/DEF and the reliability issues that plague diesel emissions controls. And it's not a fuel issue, CNG diesels have to run all the same emissions equipment because they can produce just as much NOx as diesel fuel, they just produce significantly less CO, hydrocarbons and particulates. But they have done wonders compared to what diesels were even 30 years ago. A modern diesel has 97% lower emissions than a diesel from 1990 while getting about 50% better fuel economy (or 100% better fuel economy if the emissions controls are removed and the engine is tuned for optimal efficiency)

[@seanb3516]

Alternative Energy Sources - Have the Passengers Riding Electrical Generating Bikes. Don't Wanna Pedal? Guess you'll be Landing Sooner (and Faster) then Expected. XD

[@timburland]

I love train travel but the main problem with trains is capacity. Exhibit A is the eruption of the Icelandic volcano eyjafjallajökull in 2010, which grounded all aircraft overflying northern Europe, even as far south as Milan. I was in Milan at that time seeking a train to Rome as my flights to the US via Amsterdam were cancelled. When I got the Milan train station, there were long lines of people waiting to get a ticket to somewhere, but there were notices that all seats north from Milan were booked for the next two weeks. When I (luckily) got to Rome just before midnight there were tourists sitting on the sidewalks begging for money or food because they were stranded with no way home. It was a humanitarian crisis, which the British addressed by sending Royal Navy ships to repatriate stranded Brits. Thus, trains can't handle the volume of travel that planes can -- they are stuck in 2-D with limited bandwidth.

[@alexturnbackthearmy1907]

They can. There is just no eurotunnel between US and France (for good reasons, but still). But that is more due to effective usage of trains, there is always JUST enough to serve all routine routes. Same with everything else, be it ships, planes, buses and whatever else.

[@ketchup901]

Lol. Trains can handle way more passengers than planes can if we plan for it. Obviously when every flight in Europe is canceled there will be a higher load on the rail network. If suddenly there is 2x the demand for air travel it will be overloaded as well.

[@frufruJ]

If they're planning to expand the ban internationally, good luck with that. I recommend the video "European International Rail SUCKS, Here's Why" by Adam Something.

[@GB-kw4xt]

Never forget that French government takes avantages on motorways fees and fuels taxes as well. That could partially explain the new laws.

[@lours6993]

You don't seem to be aware that the EU has forced local rail operators to open their networks to competing foreign services. Check the competing options for Madrid - Barcelona, Paris - Milan, Paris - Frankfurt, for examples.

[@fredmapes8414]

What is not mentioned is the economici and environmental cost of green energy. My electric bill is climbing because of wind and solar. Very big batteries are needed to back these up and night and windless times.

[@davidfuller581]

The reason short haul flights get the most flak, so to speak, is because take-off and landing are the most fuel intensive parts of the flight, where cruising is pretty minimal. Long haul flights spend the vast majority of their time at cruising altitude and kind of just motoring along with the engines set to use as little fuel as possible.

[@weirdguybr]

Interesting video, but a few things: - you missed the disclosure part. Of course we know you're a pilot and hence biased towards airlines, but a lot of viewers might not know who you work for (and that you were covering changes that might affect them). - the changes to ban low cost tickets are easy to solve for companies like your employer - just admit that the tickets aren't really that cheap (after all, those companies have all sorts of extra fees added) and bundle them on the basic price already instead of pretending they are optional. - changes to other sectors, like shipping - you mean like the regulatory changes that forbade use of high sulfur fuel, which lead to massive drop in cloud formation across the Atlantic to the point that folks are calling it the biggest example of accidental geo-engineering ever? There's other sectors mentioned in the video like construction that aren't as easy to change - there's still a lot of research going on to figure out how to decarbonize cement production, for example, which is not an easy thing to do as it requires massive amounts of heat and release a lot of CO2, but there's government mandates to force those industries to figure that out, just like there are mandates for airlines. - you present those changes roughly as not being relevant due to the "small" footprint of air travel compared to other sectors. However, I'd argue that if every industry could use that argument to avoid change, *nobody* would do anything if it means having any financial impact. We're way past the point where inaction or slow action was OK and every industry has to do what they can to reduce their impact.

[@markuseden2105]

Hi there! First of all - LOVE the channel! Keep up the excellent work! :) In regard to this topic - yes, everything you say makes sense. Yet it still misses the point like all the other debates going on right now as we have simply run out of time to have debates. The climate does not care if commuters can travel from A to B in 3 hours or 6. It also does not care that aircraft are so much more efficient now as like you quite rightly stated MORE flights every year more than make up any reductions in emissions and this can be transposed onto ANY other industry on earth. Fact is emissions are STILL rising year on year while the earth is burning. I live in Greece. I have seen it for myself this summer. The one debate we should really be having is the one no one wants to have. Is none essential travel still morally right at all? Do people have a human right to travel to Crete to go on holiday given what we now know and see? Again, this is not specific to the airline industry. The truth is, unless we stop rampant consumerism of which the travel industry is only a tiny part, we are in essence doomed.

[@ads998]

Thanks for this Petter, it's a very refreshing look at a fraught and complex issue. Your analysis is a handy reminder that there's a lot of nuance in this topic, and I appreciate the time you took to methodically and comprehensively unpack it. 👍

[@JillHooper-m7u]

I am a gas turbine engineer and the quoted efficiency numbers for them looks about right (except there is a propulsive efficiency benefit of turbo props that were neglected). However, the 5% number of gasoline car engines I believe is very misleading. AAA lists is at 30%. Many manufacturers list it up to 35% at design conditions. Your 5% number might be idling in traffic. I'd argue the gas turbine is not 40% when idling on the tarmac. I've been a fan for years, but you didn't do sufficient research on the gasoline car engine.

[@justinbellotti7838]

What about all of the fuel dumped into nowhere? I completely agree that motor vehicles need to make a huge jump to catch up with where they should be. I just never had to dump the rest of my tank before I parked. What does dumping fuel do to the environment. I have always wondered that. For sure, if I ever dumped a bunch of gallons of fuel into the environment, I would be arrested so fast. Lol. Love the videos.

[@gpaull2]

It’s extremely, extremely rare. 30 years in aviation and I’ve personally seen it done exactly never.

[@ZZZZZ23490]

dumping fuel is an emergency procedure that is use only in case of emergency. it's extremely rare.

[@stephenallen4635]

@@Jesterpec666 I think even just saying 40 gallons per year is an even more impactful way to say it

[@flagmichael]

Fuel dumps are an emergency procedure, allowing a plane with an emergency to reduce itself to a safe landing weight. For an official (US General Accounting Office) analysis of the scope and consequences, google "LCD-76-447 Military and Civilian Aircraft Discharging Fuel in Flight" The report is coming up on half a century old but gives the general idea. The part that pertains to this in "Commercial Airlines" on page 10. It says in part, "Of the three commercial airlines contacted, two have airplanes capable of discharging fuel. The other airline modified its planes and set low fuel loads because most flights are relatively short. Therefore, they are capable of landing immediately after takeoff." "In 1975 the two airlines discharged a combined estimated total of 39,700 gallons of fuel." There is nothing normal about having to dump fuel. Lives are always in the balance.

[@unitrader403]

@justinbellotti7838 "Fuel Dumping" on a Car is not done when Parking, but only when your Car is on Fire while driving, just to get a proper sense how frequently it realistically happens..

[@mikereddy-x9f]

Perhaps an energy equalization fee for each transportation mode would facilitate carbon emission reductions?

[@smalltime0]

One advantage of the new rule would be to prevent some of the smaller piston plane routes from operating. They use avgas, which contains lead

[@huwzebediahthomas9193]

One word - contrails, high altitude. This morning at dawn it was pure blue skies, and then after a few aircraft flew by high up, spreading their particulates, it's cloudy suddenly, up there.

[@michaeljohndennis2231]

Between the U.K. and Ireland, overnight coaches (using diesel) and ferries (using diesel) have become twice the cost of SailRail (diesel trains & diesel ferries) post Covid, yet within Ireland, the cost of using diesel coaches has been reduced by the Irish government

[@johnmorris3744]

There has been a bitter rivalry for decades between French state-sponsored rail services and air transport.

[@elizabethopoulos4894]

I'd be interested to see a discussion between you and Sal from "What's going on with shipping". No joke he released a video today (and has said previously) that airplanes are big polluters and that people should be more concerned with airplane emissions than shipping. Rather amusing that you say the exact same about ships on the same day.

[@markj.7557]

I've traveled a few times from Stockholm to Copenhagen, and the price for the train is 3-4 times higher than flying and it's a whole day trip compared to the flight which is 2 hours or so with security. It's the same within Europe as a whole, flying is just much cheaper and faster.

[@bobnelsonfr]

I've been riding high-speed trains in France for thirty years. Comfortable and practical. No airport!

[@fernandosguera8360]

The trains are crap, and expensive for the state and the people.

[@bobnelsonfr]

@@fernandosguera8360 where?

[@SebSN-y3f]

And why doesn't everyone do it that way? Maybe because the story sounds rather made up? Wouldn't be the first time someone believed the end justifies the means.

[@TheDasHatti]

Just for a fair discussion: There is no way, a car has only an efficiency of 5%. They will run mostly at 25-35%.

[@SadisticSenpai61]

"On average the plane emits 77 times more CO2 per passenger than the train..." Well, on an electrified rail network on a grid that's very low on CO2 emissions? It's probably quite a bit higher than that. But if we're talking about non-electrified rails? Yeah, the number might be lower. But trains still transport so many more passengers per trip, so they're always going to be the more efficient and less polluting way to move a lot of ppl across large distances. And yes, I know jumbo jets can carry 300+ ppl (I think there's an Airbus that can carry up to 850?), but those larger aircraft models aren't going to be the ones operating on these short domestic flights in the first place. It's mostly going to be smaller aircraft that carry around 100-200 passengers and depending on the destination and time of year? There's probably going to be empty seats.

[@ophiuchia4916]

Unfortunately there are some major mistakes in this video. - If aviation would be a country, it would rank as the 7th or 8th larges emitter just behind Germany - Incentives and restrictions are a carrot and a stick to help consolidated industries transition - Shipping faces actually the exact same challenges than aviation. Why point at them? We probably have to solve both with similar and potentially new ideas. - Transition to zero emissions is required for human survival. Lawmakers will also make it a requirements for aircraft once enough hurricanes, droughts, etc hit their voters. But you are rights, gov'ts should not select the winners, only define the rules of the economic 'game' that is played.

[@peonwarrior]

Only 3 flights segment are concerned so far Paris Orly-Nantes ; Paris Orly-Lyon ; Paris Orly-Bordeaux. Les This is just a trial for now, interesting to see all the noise it’s making. Change is the only constant

[@100SteveB]

Where did you get the figure of just 5% efficiency for a modern car engine? All the figures I have found are well above that - normally ranging between 20 and 35%.

[@Noaaaaaaaaaah]

It appears like he used a blog as the only source. The blog has zero references supporting the claim of 5 %, unfortunately.

[@robainscough]

I can appreciate your bias since you're an airline pilot, but couple of realities ... our Chevy Bolt EV cost $28,000 US not $92,000, my wife's Kona EV cost $35,000. Tesla is not the only EV manufacturer. But I do agree that Aircraft efficiency per weight of movement is not bad, but it's not as good as shipping or rail in terms of energy efficiency. However, some key points, EV cars are NOT bound to a single energy source, EVs operate with electricity and there are many ways to generate electricity (Solar, Nuclear Fusion, Windmill, Hydro, etc.) ... an ICE vehicle is limited primarily oil as a source of energy at a horrible 5% efficiency. We have some great battery technology coming next year (Solid State batteries, Sodium batteries) with EV ranges at 600-750 miles per charge. Energy density in batteries is improving by 100%. Like you indicated, it took decades for aircraft engines to get more efficient, the same is happening to battery energy density. But one major issue, which I know you will not want to discuss, is that there are so many "Business" flights that are totally unnecessary ... with today's communications technology, we have conference rooms with multiple cameras, microphones, even VR sharing ... there is absolutely no need for 90% of business travel. Trump flying around in a 757 is a massive waste of energy and not required ... the wealthy seem to not care about our environment.

[@conradjelinger2120]

Ships have avoided eco rules since eco rules became a thing. I think it is about time to bring them into alignment.

[@bolotrybson1454]

Sulphur emissions are no longer a topic in maritime logistics as since 2020 they are obligated to use exhaust treatment plants (so called 'scrubbers') or low sulphur oil. In result exhaust gas contains single ppms of SO2. Also, carbon capture systems and regulations starts to appear next year and become 'obligatory' starting 2030. So emissions reduction is forced parallel on many paths alongside seas, air, and land.

[@chrishamilton53]

I'd think that using synthetic liquid fuel or easily liquified fuel (like propane, butane, or dimethyl ether) would be a lot more straightforward and more likely to directly replace existing airliners than hydrogen fueled ones. You can generate synthetic fuel or biofuel from sustainable biological carbon sources (or atmosphiric CO2 capture, or industrial CO2 waste capture, possibly fossil fuel based in the short term, but biomass based industry in the long term: waste from chemical synthesis, fermentation, etc, all of which would produce high density CO2 rather than the fraction of a percent in the atmosphere itself) Assuming you have an infrastructure of nuclear or alternative power generation as well, you could generate hydrogen via electrolysis combined with the captured/waste CO2 or biomass feedstock to produce hydrocarbons, alcohols, ethers, ketones, and some other potentially useful liquid fuels or ones easily liquified under pressure. (without cheap, sustainable electricity, you'd be limited to lower yields using biomass feedstock alone and CO2 capture wouldn't really be an option) This would go a step beyond the use of biodiesel or synthetic diesel (the latter much better in storage due to lack of microorganism affinity) as direct replacements for aviation kerosene, and the latter already could be a direct substitute if not for the issue of existing airliners in operation having many seals and fuel line components that are already swollen from the aromatic hydrocarbon fraction in jet fuel (kerosene), and would shrink and leak if synthetic fuel similar to synthetic diesel would be used directly as it's all saturated hydrocarbons. The flash point is also higher and freezing point is higher than jet fuel (though lower than conventional diesel) so some additives would be needed there anyway as well. Lower combustion temperatures and cleaner combustion of oxygenated fuels (especially low molecular weight alcohols) should also reduce nitrogen oxide, soot, and hydrocarbon emissions compared to existing jet fuel. But more flexible than that would be designing fuel systems to tolerate a wide range of hydrogen, alcohol, ether, and other organic liquid fuel blends, some of which would likely have higher thermal efficiency in spite of poorer energy density (this factor is common among oxygenated organic compounds, especially alcohols, though it tends to show an greater gain when optimally blended with hydrocarbons or a range of organic fuels). That said, even simple methanol fuel, while less than half the energy density by volume of jet fuel (though likely not quite so poor when actually run in a turbine engine) would be many times better than compressed hydrogen or even liquified cryogenic hydrogen. Gas turbine engines themselves are fundamentally pretty flexible about what sorts of liquid or gasceous fuel they can burn, so adapting existing engines for that via internal modification or possibly external systems modification (after type testing on alternate fuels) might go more smoothly than the existing fuel systems themselves. Albeit ethanol and methanol tend to be corrosive with certain metals (including aluminum and magnesium) under certain conditions, and that could be a consideration leading to avoiding those or adopting corrosion inhibitors (in the case of aluminum corrosion, less than half a percent of water appears to inhibit corrosion of aluminum caused by 100% pure, dry ethanol, though the higher the water content the more difficult it is to blend with hydrocarbons at certain proportions and/or without cosolvents: note, blends close to 50% tend to be least problematic for this phenomenon) OTOH you could also have a small reserve of pure hydrocarbon fuel used for ground run-ups and cool down after landing to make sure the system is purged of any corrosive fuel before sitting for any length of time, and the (potentially) corrosive fraction could be limited primarily to cruise performance. (or possibly take-off as well, but not initial run-up and taxi) On top of all that you could combine alternative liquid fuels with turbine electric hybrid power for greater efficiency over direct turbine drive, potentially allowing using the turbine engines at more efficient (near maximum continuous) operating speeds, but driving the fans or props via electric motors while using turboshaft engines (or possibly reciprocating diesel engines) for generator power. You'd either need a powerful battery bank to use full power for take-off and go-around thrust while using generator power for cruise (and to re-charge the battery bank) or you'd use multiple turbine engines, and shut some of them down during cruise. (and since the thrust is done via electric drive, the location of the powerplants and generators would be less critical and not directly related to thrust symmetry). In the case of using battery banks for short bursts of power along with a lower yield continuous power plant (or power plants), the stress on the batteries should be much less given you'd have relatively short discharge cycles followed by recharge in-flight, and Lithium Ion Batteries wear a lot less when not aggressively cycled down to depletion regularly, so lifetime should be longer.

[@chrissmith2114]

Another thing affecting electric cars is insurance premiums, they are skyrocketing as insurers get more experience with the cost of repairing them, as well as their propensity to catch fire and destroy things around them.... EV cars should be called REV or 'remote emission vehicles' because they are mainly supplied with electricity generated using fossil fuels, because renewables are only producing for about 11% of the time... Germany scrapped its nuclear and built extra coal fired stations - burning lignite, the worst most polluting brown coal.

[@virginiahansen320]

One of the issues I have is that, in the case of aviation, when the market forces are already pushing as hard as possible for environmental safety, there is NOTHING that state interference can do except get in the way. Literally anything they do will make things worse, not better.

[@neilr009]

Part of the reason that trains are more expensive than planes is down to aviation paying no tax on fuel.

[@Wayne-cj7fn]

Ok, Love your show. You spoke of 'Contrails' in this episode, what have they added to the fuel to leave a 'white trail' in the sky from horizon to horizon. These ARE NOT CONTRAILS, Contrails are made of 'ice' and disappear about 4 to 5 plane lengths behind the aircraft, however, now the 'trail' can remain in the air even after the plane has disappeared over the horizon, and I live in Australia, so big horizons. You even notice them in the sky in movies now. I'll be interested in your answer.

[@markmuir7338]

The technology for zero carbon commercial shipping is tried and tested - for over 1000 years. Fossil fuels took over because journeys would be quicker and more consistent.

[@burningSHADOW42]

The 5% and the 40% are wrong. The tank to wheel is 10-20% depending on where you drive. The 40% are the thrust efficiency of a modern jet engine. That does not include things like drag or the change of efficiency at different heights and power levels (jet engines are much more efficient at full load) So the real value is probably closer to 15% vs 30%

[@wolframzirngibl1147]

When it comes to efficiency numbers, sadly you claim, Otto piston engines achieve only 5% (naturally aspirated). To be honest, modern car motors do around 20%. Which is bad, but a 4 fold for comparison. The only meaningful measure to rule is the average CO2 per person and kilometer count. And there railway wins, in need of better than only a 6th of aircraft emissions - in case, a railway track is already existent. France has a quite narrow track network, so the ban of short haul flights makes sense, except for the weakening by decreasing the hours-spent-for-travel-limit. Further, airplanes will have to rely on fossile fuel for quite decades to come, whereas trains are electric, not carrying their energy needed with them. So, the ongoing shift in electrical power plant to renewable will further reduce the railway CO2 emissions. At least, chances are high, ground electric power plants will shift faster towards renewable than aircraft engine fuel synthesis will. So, why not face the truth and leave commercial aviation where it is best: long haul?

[@TheMitchyb61]

Shipping is more efficient than any other form of travel by weight, plus people are really not going to be happy when the price of their cheap Chinese goods start skyrocketing because prices to ship things get a lot less economical

[@ArtieMunsch]

3:10 Hi Petter, I did some fact checking on the article you cited and just wanted to mention that the stats in this article are off. The average fuel efficiency of modern vehicles ranges from 10-30% (not the 5% noted in the article here). The point made remains valid but after looking more into the blog this is from, that you cite more than once, I found it somewhat disappointing how many of the statistics provided by Fehrm have no source provided for the data presented. By no means am I here to defend cars, I just think accurate reporting of data is important when shared as fact.

[@grigory8180]

How about we focus on making stuff cheaper and more convenient than "environmentally friendly"

[@daveproctor4675]

You are only looking at the efficiency of converting fuel to propulsion. Why don’t you evaluate the whole picture:CO per passenger mile. Then add in all the overhead fuel consumption for aircraft support etc.

[@Ushio01]

I went to Italy by ferry and coach and we only got into Italy at 8pm of the second day on a two week holiday and it being a tour around the country fine but what about a week holiday? with flying it's 4 hours including time at both airports.

[@gunnarlandin3258]

You're wrong about cars engines efficiency. A modern diesel engine is almost 50% efficient. 20 Years ago VW made the Lupo 3L, with only 3 liters per 100km in consumption, that engine was 44% efficient then.

[@patpat5135]

Many trains run on electricity produced by fuel . The tax level on this fuel is much higher than aircraft fuel. Many people request that aircraft fuel being fairly taxed.

[@FangPaw]

Gasoline engines are 20-40% efficient when used to power a road legal car (source - Wikipedia). Modern turbo diesel engines are considerably more efficient than gasoline engines. I have no idea where this this 5% efficiency figure comes from. Also, cars don't dump their emissions high into the atmosphere, where they cause the most environmental damage. Contrails also contribute to global warming. And how much aviation fuel is used as ramp fuel, just for taxi-ing around the airport? The UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak recently travelled the 300 km (

[@Dr_Do-Little]

The fact that emissions are low compared to other sectors is irrelevant.

[@spmusicc]

It's a bit disingenuous to only compare cars and planes based on engine efficiency, when planes travel literally 10x faster and therefore use much more energy on fighting drag. According to data from BEIS/Defra (): domestic flights emit around 254gCO2e/pax km (when you consider additional effects from emitting at high altitude), whereas an average diesel car (only with one passenger) emits around 171gCO2e/km. Naturally the per passenger figure decreases with more passengers in the car. When you consider emissions per passenger km (as we probably should be if we're talking about emissions reduction), domestic & long haul flights clearly pollute more than ground transportation, even petrol/diesel cars. Let alone trains and buses.

[@tylerbuckley4661]

Unfortunately with those batteries they have a bad habit of catching fire when over heating and the worse part is the hazardous waste emissions when on fire as well as reigniting back on fire with those electric vehicles trucks included plus disposal of those batteries is expensive aswell as hazardous waste like disposing of nuclear waste ev is not the solution in the long run

[@zwerko]

While it's true that car engines are very inefficient (which is the reason why electric cars are even remotely viable as batteries can store roughly only 1/20th of the energy stored in hydrocarbons) the real issue with aviation is how wildly inefficient is flying itself compared to other forms of transport. There's just no way to make the jet engines so much more efficient to offset the flying penalty and beat moving people and stuff via ground, let alone rail or oceans.

[@olivergerber]

I think your biggest misunderstanding is that the goal of such laws is to make today's (or even a growing amount of) travel more CO₂ efficient. In my opinion, the goal is to reduce the amount of travel in general. Obviously, every trip that is not taken in the first place saves the most CO₂.

[@nocare]

I would argue its not fully aligned because their goal is still profits. If they can increase profits by emitting more then it will always be worth it. To truly be fully aligned if a company could have a 20% profit margin and emitte or use a synthetic fuel that slashed profit margins to 5% they would have to pick the synthetic fuel; but they won't.

[@dbackscott]

Here in Florida they just opened up the Brightline train that connects Orlando to South Florida. The trouble is the cheap tickets are more expensive than the cost to take a flight. Also, several of the train stations don’t have good local transit options. It’s kind of frustrating, since my wife has family in South Florida, and we live near Orlando. Edit for fairness: the ticket price is a bit more expensive than the flight cost on a discount airline. However, after factoring in baggage fees, etc., the train is probably a bit cheaper.

[@carlseibert9015]

Virtually empty BriteLine trains roll though my neighborhood several dozen times a day carrying many dozens of tons of steel per passenger. At least the airlines don't fly empty planes.

[@miscbits6399]

tix may be more expensive, but when you factor in the cost of driving to tbe airport, parking fees, time etc I discovered pretty quickly travelling between London and Helsinki that using a £50 "low cost airline" actually cost twice as much as a £100 "full service" carrier once that stuff was taken into account (what Ryanair called 'Helsinki' was 70 miles and a €30 train/bus ride from the city, etc)

[@Gert-DK]

Brightline is a good start. I have seen videos about the train ride and videos about the problems. The trains look nice outside and inside. Several videos suggest they are very comfortable. Next thing they have to adjust, is road crossing. They need to get rid of road crossings. It was done here in Denmark, around 30 years ago, on our mainlines. Local slow lines still have crossings. It sounds expensive, but the benefits are huge, from safety to maintenance and speed. I know it political and economic hard in the US, but it is worth it. In Italy and Spain (Germany partly) they have got the prices down. They have numerous train companies on the same track, so competition is fierce. You can find dirt cheap tickets. Without competition, capitalism doesn't work. In Europe, the trick is that tracks are owned by the state. They rent out track time, on certain conditions. Often the state has their own trains driving on the same tracks, to ensure connections on low insensitive periods of the day. Here in Denmark it works slightly different: State own tracks, they make schedule. That schedule, private companies can bid on, they get paid to drive this until contract ends. The state collect ticket income and manage the economic side. The companies hire personnel, buy trains and maintain them. So far it is only local lines, but the entire bus network works that way too. It works quite good. It turned out to be a long one, sry.

[@toboterxp8155]

In the US, in Europe it's much closer, because much less subsidies.

[@miscbits6399]

@@Gert-DK "In Europe, the trick is that tracks are owned by the state" The real trick is to break up vertically integrated incumbents(*) - these _always_ have an incentive to prioritise their own subsidaries over "competitors" (*) NOT the way the British did it (Railtrack was a disaster) The USA has really bad regulatory capture in many areas - rail, aviation, telecommunications and most of the time it happens at state level, not federal New Zealand's Telecoms model is worth looking at. The incumbent telco was broken up into separated(**) lines/infrastructure and dialtone/services companies. The result was an electrifying change from the country being a poster child of how NOT to privatise your state-run telco(***) to one of the most competitive markets in the world, with the newly freed-up lines company offering duct access to previous "competitors" (Imagine your telco offering to lease duct space to cablecos for the last mile rather than forcing them to string new overheads or dig streets - that's what happened) (**) Completely separate shares, board of directors and physical offices with all influences between the two parts cleaved. The "BT model" of a "chinese wall" between the two parts falls down when you realise that "head office" is overlooking everything and can direct the lines side to operate in ways that disadvantage competitores despite being notionally independent of the dialtone side (This is the model to look at in all vertically integrated market dominators - it's what the FTC did to Boeing/United Airlines in the 1930s too. They didn't for AT&T because they got the "universal service for all at an equal price" committment) (***) Quite literally - New Zealand was used as examples in economics lectures of how not to do it

[@mocko69]

Speaking for Italy, our railway is comparable in duration of travel and prices (at least for internal destinations) to most low-cost airline solutions and many people prefer to take the Frecciarossa from e.g. Milan to Rome or Milan to Naples for business rather than take a flight. The argument that making the trains more attractive will entise people to take a train rather than a plane couldn't be more true.

[@tjroelsma]

The Netherlands is a tiny country, so there aren't many airports and thus there aren't many domestic flights. That being said the prices of railway- and bus-travel are extremely high, the timetables are often horrible and many railway schedules are skipped for the most banale reasons (some leaves or a few snowflakes on the tracks and no, I'm not kidding) so it often makes more sense to use a car for your travels, especially if you have to travel a lot.

[@qbi4614]

When I travel in China, I will take the train up to 4 or 5 hours duration (500miles /800km), as they run like clockwork, every half hour, clean and comfortable and door to door are no slower than by air. But for that China had it invest vast amounts of money in high speed rail, to many destinations. Build it and they will come. (from someone who loves to fly)

[@Y0BDaeD]

I just got back from Italy and traveled a bit on a train there and it's so true. God bless your trains, they are so good and cheap. Also making trains more attractive not only reduces the air travel demand, it reduces the car travel demand, so it's so much better than implementing a law to ban cheap flights.

[@h8GW]

Still, the thought of spending the better part of the day on the train to cross most of China churns my stomach, especially in their 3+2 economy seating.

[@qbi4614]

@@h8GW Business class train tickets in china are cheep, like $20 to $50, but even the economy is very clean and comfortable. At 250kph they surprisingly quiet. But you really show ignorance re China thinking "cross most of China" in "better part of the day" not even a plane can do that

[@h96androidbox75]

5% thermal eficiency for cars? In 1900 maybe? For exemple : "the thermal efficiency of the 1.8L unit in the third-generation Prius (2ZR-FXE) has a thermal efficiency of about 38%".

[@MentourNow]

The 5% I mention in the video is not the raw efficiency of the engine itself. I said: "The efficiency of a conventional CAR with a normally aspirated internal combustion engine is just 5%". That's the efficiency of a car in a typical journey, including accelerating and braking between traffic lights, etc. The 40% and 25% efficiency numbers for jetliners and turboprops also refer to the efficiency that these planes get from a typical passenger flight, so it's an apples-to-apples comparison. This is the source I used: leehamnews.com/2023/02/17/bjorns-corner-sustainable-air-transport-part-58-summary-part-2/

[@karljunk6373]

@@MentourNowThe 5% maybe true in city traffic. While driving on a highway that is not too congested, you have very litte deceleration and acceleration. I the car is hybrid, it will load the battery while decelerating or going downhill and use this energy with the electric motor when appropriate. It is amazing how often my car just stops the combustion engine while driving.

[@mynung7008]

In Germany any domestic flight is supposed to be just a short hop, but in reality it isn't. Once you factor in the hours you need to get to the airport, check in, get through safety, wait for boarding, pick up luggage at the destination and finally take a regional train to the city center where I really want to go I can just as well take the train. Granted, Germany's railway has become less and less punctual lately - but I have experienced the same with flights. So: no short distance flights for me.

[@rallymaniac92]

The only trains that are reasonably reliable in Germany are the local/regional trains... unless they have to wait and give way to delayed ICEs. Punctuality is absolutely abysmal, to the point that some German trains are not even allowed to go into Switzerland anymore. Factor that plus all-around general incompetence, and you have rail service that is hugely unattractive. The AC doesn't even work on warm days (which there are too many of nowadays), so you sit inside with sweat dripping down your face. This is a pity, as I would rather avoid driving. But the Deutsche Bahn often leaves me no choice. And that's without even considering ticket prices.

[@mynung7008]

@@rallymaniac92 I agree - but planes are not much better. Last time I flew from Hamburg to Florence via Frankfurt: flight time maybe 2h, total time at airports maybe 15h. ALL flights were delayed, up to six hours, check-in took an hour (!) since there was only one person handling a complete Lufthansa domestic flight, plus long queues at security. Planes are shifted from one gate to another with personnel looking at the same screens as the passengers as nobody had any clue where the flight might depart. The price war has ruined previously reliable airlines. It's all about "how many more cents can we save to make any profit at all"?

[@thomasroth84]

Depends on your departure time. I went through security at Frankfurt on a Friday 7:30pm without a queue! That is of course a different story on the morning rush hour, but you can book your security time slot for free with Fraport (the airport operator). Retrieving your luggage is actually the worst part of flying now. I waited 70 minutes for my bag from the GRZ-FRA flight on a sunday evening. I would have given them credit for it, as this was the DTM Red-Bull-Ring shuttle and most drivers, mechanics etc. only had carry-ons, so they probably toured some outside stands before bringing different flights to the handling facility. But the same evening, a friend returned from Tunis and waited two hours - a larger plane with holiday people probably all having checked luggage... Fraport has lost too many staff during the pandemic and luggage handling seems to be the worst sector.

[@1999fxdx]

Yeah what’s going on? 50 years of German trains leaving right on the second and all of a sudden so many delays.

[@thomasroth84]

@@1999fxdx You haven't been in Germany for a decade or so then. Leaving out the regular strikes by the conductors union, the many years of strict saving take its toll now. You struggle with defective tracks, minimal maintenance on the trains, shortage of staff leading to overtime and illness. And also the not so obvious things like not having heated switches anymore or cutting the bushes along the track. It's incredible how many bush fires you have in the summer so that you can hardly imagine they ever ran steam locomotives

[@colindonoghue6120]

I know this is more focused on aviation, but Internal combusion engines in cars are not that bad, they are closer to 20% thermally efficient. Also that can be improved with things like forced induction or diesel (higher compression) to increase to around 40% relistically.

[@0bzen22]

Toyota and Honda Atkinson-cycle engines are closer to 40%, and they try to stay in that range with their hybrid drivetrains. No forced induction either. My next car, a Corolla hybrid (aka, s Prius).

[@foxstrangler]

Indeed. ICE utilise fuel at approx 30%heat, 30%friction, 30% torque at the wheel. Out of that final 30%, 80% of that is used to displace the air in front of the vehicle. EVs have to move the same air. I've yet to see a generator or an electric motor run cold, and unless it's hydro power, the energy source produces heat in transfer, so the figures are somewhat distorted.

[@KaiHenningsen]

@@foxstranglerAnd that is why all Teslas have really low cw values. Even the semi. Also efficient motors, for that matter. Just for comparison, electric is approximately two times as efficient as hydrogen.

[@andrewjoeljackson4653]

came here to say this as well....and Formula 1 engines, arguably the most efficient ICEs in the world are around 50%

[@The_ZeroLine]

@@andrewjoeljackson4653Ah, but F1 has lot so much entertainment factor with those new quiet, super efficient power units. It’s also not really the ICE that makes it so efficient. It’s the entire power unit with engine braking harvest, brake harvesting, etc.

[@theAessaya]

I would like to point out that efficiency difference between 40% and 25% is not "slightly lower", it is _huge,_ as if your engine is only 25% as efficient, you're burning almost twice (60% more, to be precise) as much fuel to do the same amount of work when compared to one with 40% efficiency. I also have issue with your quoted 5% efficiency of the internal combustion engine. Modern ICEs have efficiency number between 30-36% for gasoline and 40-47% for diesel _(Boretti, A.A. Energy recovery in passenger cars. J. Energy Resour. Technol. 2012, 134, 022203),_ and technologies like hybrid drives can help recover even more energy by applying regenerative braking.

[@JanNovak-pg8oe]

Isn't Peter talking about overal efficiency? I mean the whole car, not just the engine?

[@theAessaya]

@@JanNovak-pg8oe It wouldn't be an apples-to-apples comparison then, since with the planes he's specifically talking turbojets and turboprops, not the planes themselves. Also it would be extremely hard to come up with any kind of scientifically-correct numbers for the efficiency of a car overall, because there are _so many more_ variables at play, including, but not limited to, how it's driven, it's aerodynamic characteristics, drivetrain efficiency, load factor, hell, even tyre pressure has an effect here.

[@JanNovak-pg8oe]

@@theAessaya True. I must say Peter did not do a good job researching for this video. 😞 Well, AFAIK he is line training captain, automobiles and the science behind them is not his field of expertise.

[@theAessaya]

@@JanNovak-pg8oe yup, that cappens to everyone :) That's why I put the original comment out.

[@SkiBumBL]

Love your videos, but in this one I would have liked to hear more comparisons on CO2 emissions per passenger (or per weight measurement for cargo). Even though jet engines may use fuel more “efficiently” than other engines, they are also burning a lot more fuel per passenger (or cargo weight) than other modes of transportation.

[@NGCAnderopolis]

Why do you think he didn't talk about emissions only nebolous "efficiency".

[@NekromanKim]

Exactly my thoughts

[@Harry93IT]

literally made the same comment, I get it being invested and made a living out of aviation, but being factual and intellectually honest are values that I care a lot about. Also impressed to see many other comments like ours.

[@LittleSpot]

jepp. It was exactly my same toughts. Also a big problem is the tax zero for airline fuel in europe. It should be also zero for train power...or airlines should pay also the vat taxes. Another issues is the incubation of co2 in higher air level should be more harmful than on earth level.

[@johnroutledge9220]

@@LittleSpot They probably should pay VAT for fuel (though probably not for green fuel) but for short haul it would only amount to a few pounds per passenger. The airlines would probably argue that if they did, then maybe they should get a rebate on the other taxes/fees they do pay because they don't pay VAT. It's not the silver bullet some seem to think it is.

[@razvandunare3817]

The internal combustion engine of passenger cars has an efficiency around 25% ballpark. Some Atkinson cycle engines go much higher.

[@MentourNow]

The 5% I mention in the video is not the raw efficiency of the engine itself. I said: "The efficiency of a conventional CAR with a normally aspirated internal combustion engine is just 5%". That's the efficiency of a car in a typical journey, including accelerating and braking between traffic lights, etc. The 40% and 25% efficiency numbers for jetliners and turboprops also refer to the efficiency that these planes get from a typical passenger flight, so it's an apples-to-apples comparison. This is the source I used: leehamnews.com/2023/02/17/bjorns-corner-sustainable-air-transport-part-58-summary-part-2/

[@radzimir2]

​@@MentourNowthe cited source is wrong because car as a whole has 0% efficiency - all energy get lost after a round trip.

[@NicoBurns]

​@@MentourNow 5% is definitely not accurate for an average car. One reason being that hardly any cars use normally aspirated engines these days. And for an apples-to-apples comparison, you would also need to take into account the extra work that planes need to do to travel vertically, which cars just don't need to do at all.

[@ChrisTaylor-NEP]

@@MentourNow It's great that jet engines are becoming more efficient, but using efficiencies to compare transport types pointless. The global warming potential of a jetliner is nearly three times as damaging as a car (per passenger-km). I get the feeling the rhetoric about climate change within the airline industry is totally subjective.

[@armin3057]

you are contradicting yourself....because cars as a whole are the biggest contributor to co2 as a single mode of transportation..because they have the most milage at the end of the day....@@ChrisTaylor-NEP

[@nidaldajani728]

5% efficiency for cars? I think you can get any percentage you want by "tweeking" the parameters that you use in your survey! Furthermore, the concept of "efficiency" is basically: (things sought / the things that cost). In another words, a gasoline engine with 25% mechanical efficiency is considered a lousy mover, while with 75% of heat generation is considered a good heat generator! Another argument is whether we consider number of passengers and distance when evaluating "efficiency", or the convenience of moving people rather freely for moderate distances (say in the range of 80 to 120 km). If so, then "efficiency" becomes a "relative" measure! However, from a thermodynamics perspective, the "thermal efficiency" of a gasoline I.C.E is between 25 to 29%. Diesel I.C.E is between 27 to 32%. While jet engines (basically gas turbines) are between 32 to 36%. Steam turbines on the other hand, are between 62 to 68% thermal efficiency (some are even more). So, scientifically speaking, these are the ranges of efficiencies we are dealing with and should consider when we evaluate various technologies, (Carnot cycle, Otto cycle, etc.). Needless to say, it is not fair to compare apples with oranges. Each move technology developped to cover what other technology cannot!

[@mycosys]

Those are before you add a turbo - ICE can go over 50% efficiency with a turbocharger (30-40% would be more normal, similar to multi-spool turbofans, funny that). Its why you can barely buy a car without one now.

[@nidaldajani728]

@@mycosys Turbos are tools to make more power by "shoving" more air in the engine to allow burning more fuel! Therefore, thermal efficiency is very slightly improved in as much as you augment gas turbine efficiency into the I.C.E. i.e. the 32 to 36% efficiency.

[@mycosys]

no, they recover energy form the exhaust, @@nidaldajani728 and have given efficiency over 50%

[@MentourNow]

The 5% I mention in the video is not the raw efficiency of the engine itself. As you write, it's all about the total numbers. I said: "The efficiency of a conventional CAR with a normally aspirated internal combustion engine is just 5%". That's the efficiency of a car in a typical journey, including accelerating and braking between traffic lights, etc. The 40% and 25% efficiency numbers for jetliners and turboprops also refer to the efficiency that these planes get from a typical passenger flight, so it's an apples-to-apples comparison. This is the source I used: leehamnews.com/2023/02/17/bjorns-corner-sustainable-air-transport-part-58-summary-part-2/

[@nidaldajani728]

@@MentourNow Thank you. So basically we are comparing real life cycle of each mode of transport to fuel consumption. This is fair comparison. It also sheds light on how we can improve poor performers. For example in the case of cars perhaps carpooling would be a positive thing, among other solutions. What I meant by comparing apples with oranges is that it is unfair to compare air travel technology to land travel technology because they are not interchangeable. We need them both! Therefore the focus should be on enhancing each technology to the best possible within its field, and limit comparisons to members of like technology. I enjoy your topics and that's why I am encouraged to participate.

[@heraldtim]

"The train is so expensive and can't be trusted" -- This pretty much sums up Amtrak in the US.

[@truckerzachbell]

You got that right. Twice as expensive as flying the all 737 airline and 4x more expensive than driving. Someone's definitely paying for Amtrak's new Siemens railcars and Siemens Charger locomotives with Cummins Diesel Engines... and it's NOT just the taxpayers. It's most definitely the riders. Yet they're still limited to 79 MPH (though they're capable of 125 MPH), and have dozens of stops. The posted legal speed limit for pickup trucks in Texas is 85 MPH... making the pickup truck have a seemingly minor, yet significant, speed advantage over the train, especially in the case of new pickups equipped with tech features adopted from the airline industry (namely, adaptive cruise control (aka auto throttle), onboard radar systems, and an autopilot feature adopted straight from the 737, that some truck makers call super cruise, full self driving, or even... autopilot).

[@aprilkurtz1589]

@@truckerzachbell If Amtrak trains didn't have to keep stopping and waiting for freight trains, it would definitely be more efficient, at the least. It's federal law that passenger trains take precedence over freight trains, but this is NEVER enforced, for some reason.

[@Nill757]

Ha, Amtrak might disappoint, but it’s nothing like the unusable Scandinavian trains Mentour refers to. Thousands commute every day on Amtrak NE corridor. Not that expensive either, $82 NY to DC

[@truckerzachbell]

@@Nill757 I hear you there! Unusable trains seem to be the norm and not the exception...

[@AlexandarHullRichter]

@@aprilkurtz1589 most US rail is owned by the freight train companies, not the public. Amtrak waits for the freight trains because the Amtrak is on the freight trains' tracks, not the country's tracks.

[@patienceisalpha]

You forgot to mention that layovers were not impacted. I often fly from the US to Nantes via CDG on AF

[@norlockv]

I would take the examples of what happened in Italy (and possibly) Spain: the train became more useful than the plane. Italy has almost no domestic flights. Ticket prices are kept low due to competition. It’s all down to putting as investment into the rail as road and airport.

[@nntflow7058]

It's faster too. Usually I arrived in Marseille around 30 minutes earlier using train. THe traffic in paris could get pretty bad during certain hours if I ought to get to the airport.

[@norlockv]

@@nntflow7058 it’s a good deal less annoying too. Queues, cramped seating… Even in a crowded train, one can move around, work and have access to one’s baggage.

[@uclajd]

Well I don't want to be Italy so F off.

[@mrico523]

Rail is pretty nice in Italy indeed. A bit too many connections for my touristy tastes, but at least it's fast, reasonably priced & gets you to lots of places.

[@rikavanderhofstad]

we did indeed take the high speed train from rome to naples. was a really good and friendly way of traveling there.

[@ChaJ67]

I appreciate you bringing this up. I think there are some things that need to be better considered to paint a more accurate picture of what is happening and what can be done: 1. Engine efficiency - While I don't agree with all of your figures, for example a modern car engine efficiency, while generally very poor, isn't that poor, a big thing to consider is drag. A plane doing say 500 knots through the air, even up in the much thinner stratosphere, creates a lot of drag. Drag is generally a square factor with speed and thus power needed increases by a cubic factor as power is force times distance. Also, it is well known that jet engines perform most efficiently at or near max throttle. ICE engines are still used in cars specifically because they are more efficient at lower power levels than jet turbines. We tried the gas turbine car and it failed. Even in the Ukraine war, the USA cited the M1 Abrams tank as a sub-optimal choice over the diesel powered Leopard 2 tank in part because of the gas turbine engine guzzling down way too much fuel when not moving the tank around at max speed. 2. End to end efficiency for a trip. So you look at France on a popular high speed TGV route. France for one does a lot of nuclear power and they share power with neighboring Germany who does all fossil fuel and mixes in intermittent renewable energy when the wind blows and when the Sun shines as well as buying nuclear power from France when the wind isn't blowing and the Sun isn't shining, which is a lot of the time in Germany. So now France has a relatively green source to power trains that pull the power off of overhead 25 kV AC lines. When you want to ride the train, you just walk up and get on and the train whisks you away. A little bit later after zooming through the countryside on high speed rail you are at your destination and just walk off and are on your way. The TGV train uses up to 16 MWs of power to quickly get you to your destination. So now you look at end-to-end airliner efficiency. To get to the capacity of a TGV train, you have to pull out your A380 airliner. The A380 airliner consumes something like 600 MWs of chemical energy that comes from a combination of polluting dino juice from the ground and inefficiently produced SAF fuel in order to fly through the air at the high speeds it goes at. Notice that 600 MWs of power is a lot more than 16 MWs for the high speed train with similar carrying capacity, plus it has a much dirtier energy source. So you get to the terminal building. You need to wait in line to go through security checks. Gotta take time to check your bags. They need time to move all of your stuff onto the plane. Need to wait for your boarding, call, etc. Delays, delays, and at some point, likely over an hour after you got to the airport, you are finally in the air. Often it is 2+ hours you are on the ground after arriving at the airport before finally getting into the air. So now you fly at a high rate of speed making up for some of that lost time on a regional flight. But then you land, need to taxi around where the engines are wasting a lot of fuel because they cannot operate efficiently at taxiway speed, instead wasting gobs of fuel, pull up to the terminal, eventually deplane, wait for your bags, etc, and maybe in an hour or so you leave the airport after landing and getting everything in order and are on your way. So yeah, that 600 MWs of dirty, climate damaging energy to do the same thing as a high speed train in France that is 'only' using up to 16 MWs of power and getting it from a cleaner power source is significant. To really even it out, maybe you say the plane was only effectively doing that kind of energy burn for half of the time a train would be doing its equivalent energy burn when you add up the end to end efficiency. You still have 300 MW versus 16 MW. 16 MWs is a lot less. I am saying the train would be 20x more efficient per person all things considered, and it is using a far cleaner energy source than a plane is at the same time. 3. The problem with Europe is moving your freight around is hard. You need lots of trucks for this and more and more you use planes for the job. Your high speed rail was so narrowly minded focused on moving people around, you forgot that you also need to move stuff around. This is a problem in the USA as well where there is Amazon Prime and their associated fleet of Boeing 767's, the planes passenger airliners are dumping overboard for other planes like the Boeing 787, spewing out enormous emissions to do Amazon 1 day Prime delivery. (So no, you didn't save that much moving to more efficient planes, the older planes are working harder than ever moving freight around.) Trucks are not fast enough and especially American trains are not fast enough for Amazon Prime delivery. But everybody wants their stuff to show up right away, so Amazon has a very heavy worked fleet of Boeing 767's spewing out enormous emissions to move all of this freight around. Amazon Prime is far from the only air freight operator around and this seems to be where most of the older planes are going. They don't go out of service, but instead often become workhorse freight planes and their emissions are huge. 4. So what is really needed around the world is high speed passenger and high speed freight using tracks more intelligently for both and more point-to-point rail lines to make it all work. The problem with rail is it wasn't fast enough. So now we start doing more high speed trains with passengers and we start to solve the problem. But then you need to add freight back in with both low speed frieght and sharing the high speed lines going at high speeds and the picture starts rounding out and really working. 5. It seems like the problem with getting more to move down rail lines effectively and get the jobs at hand done the way it is being demanded of them is more of a management problem. The technology clearly points to we need to do more trains. They are just more efficient and can be made to haul far more stuff around far more cleanly. It is just when the politics and overall management of the rail system is broken, then you end up taking routes that are far more damaging to the environment such as driving more trucks around and flying more airliners around. Trucks and especially airliners will never hold a candle to what a train can do efficiency wise. 6. With "the hydrogen future" of air travel, don't forget that highly compressed hydrogen is a huge explosion hazard as well as liquid hydrogen that is so hard to keep it cold enough to stay a liquid. Hydrogen is also the most energetic chemical rocket fuel that we have that we have used to power rockets such as the Space Shuttle, which a hydrogen explosion after a solid rocket booster cut into the hydrogen fuel lines / center tank did lead to the destruction of the rocket. All hands were lost only on impact with the ocean because the explosion happened so high up that there was barely any atmosphere left for an explosion to be possible. (Chemical explosions just can't happen in the vacuum of space.) So when you have a loss of containment where hydrogen rapidly expands out and rapidly mixes with atmospheric oxygen and then ignites, you have a big boom. Now say you fill up a major international airport like Charles de Gaulle with large airliners fueled up for international flights around the globe with massive hydrogen storage tanks on site at the airport. And these will be physically massive tanks as hydrogen is a low density fuel with pressure and temperature issues around sticking it on an airliner which is a major problem when you are trying to fly somewhere on hydrogen with room left over for paying passengers. So say there is a fueling mishap at the gate while pumping hydrogen into a parked airliner and this leads to the airliner losing containment of its massive store of hydrogen and it all goes boom! Suddenly you have a massive orgy of explosions as this chain reacts through the whole airport, all of the airliners at the airport, and the huge hydrogen storage tanks. A huge mushroom cloud forms over what used to be the airport as well as leveling everything for miles around the airport and even knocking planes out of the sky that were in the general vicinity of the airport from the massive orgy of shock waves hitting the planes until they structurally failed and dropped out of the sky or blew up mid-air. This would likely end "the hydrogen future" of air travel if not an incident before it. Imagine this but on a much bigger scale with some of the explosions 1,000x more powerful: kzbin.info/www/bejne/fKS2ZHuup72bqbM The explosions at the airport would probably look more like this: kzbin.info/www/bejne/b2qWqJ-Qa715idU

[@alexturnbackthearmy1907]

Good points. Especially last one, even fuel right now is not hermetically contained and leaking by a little, especially on refueling. But jet fuel is hard to get ignited...compared to hydrogen. And hydrogen is also VERY corrosive.

[@SebSN-y3f]

Wow! That's a really short essay 😊

[@BerraLJ]

Well a diesel engine is around 35-40% and petrol is around 25% as far as i know. Not sure how well pushing trains would work here in Sweden, the trains struggle a lot already to keep the schedules and then you have the fact there is only so much room on the rails. Also we could make container ships a thing of the past if we stopped production from going to China instead of local production, then with what 20000 containers on one ship one could argue that they are not that bad considering the huge amount of goods they can move.

[@mycosys]

20-25% without a turbo. up to 50% with. i have no idea where he got 5%

[@MentourNow]

The 5% is not the raw efficiency of the engine itself. In the video I said: "The efficiency of a conventional CAR with a normally aspirated internal combustion engine is just 5%". That's the efficiency of a car in a typical journey, including accelerating and braking between traffic lights, etc. The 40% and 25% efficiency numbers for jetliners and turboprops also refer to the efficiency that these planes get from a typical passenger flight, so it's an apples-to-apples comparison. If you want to read more about this, here is the source: leehamnews.com/2023/02/17/bjorns-corner-sustainable-air-transport-part-58-summary-part-2/

[@mycosys]

@@MentourNow No, thats not the comparison he makes. He tries to argue the ICE isnt at full power so it isnt as efficient. Then compares it to the bare efficiency of the axial turbine at full power. Its deliberately misleading

[@BerraLJ]

@@MentourNow thanks for the link, as a trucker my tool is also sensitive to weight bit like a plane, cause the more weight on the truck the less cargo i can haul, which in turn lowers the profits.

[@bibhuprasadtripathy6399]

As pointed out by some, The location of Airports are adding extra layer of complexity. By nature they have to be located a bit farther from city centres and even most of them now a days are completely outside the city limits. The public infrastructure to connect those airports with the city are not that convenient in many countries especially in the developing world. Which may result in additional dependencies on motorised vehicles which again comes at great environmental cost. Airports would need supporting public transport infrastructure which adds to both development cost and travel cost.

[@Ellie-rx3jt]

I don't know about the US, but every major European airport I've visited has had a dedicated rail connection. For smaller airports where only a few planes land each day they tend to use buses instead. The developing world isn't really something I'd be worrying about in the context of short haul flights, since bus travel is far cheaper than flying in those countries.

[@valentinalbulet4004]

Hi Peter! I am a seaman sailing on those big container ships which you mentioned. The IMO has set a deadline for 2050 on the shipping industry to reach 0 CO2 emissions. I haven't heard of something similar in the aviation industry. And, secondly, those ships carry 150,000 Tons of cargo with a daily consumption around 150-200 tons of fuel/day. They are very efficient in this matter. All the best!

[@starbase218]

I think the issue is emission per km vs emission per hour. Planes probably less CO2 per kilometer. But an airplane takes about 3.6 seconds to cover that kilometer. Meanwhile, a container ship takes about 1.5 minutes to cover that same kilometer. It's not about how much CO2 we are emitting. It's about the how much we emit per hour. We, humans, and animals, exhale CO2, so we'll never get to zero in that sense either. But the amount per hour is so low that it's not an issue, even with the billions of people on the planet. The planet doesn't care that people travel thousands of kilometers. It cares about how much CO2 is being emitted per hour. We NEED to think this way. Measure CO2 emissions not in gram per km, but in gram per hour. Traveling The Netherlands to China by camel produces more greenhouse gasses per kilometer than an airplane seat. But a camel walks at about 1/200th the speed of the airplane. And how many people will make that trip in the first place? That's the uncomfortable truth. We are used to having this ability, to travel fast, and we don't want to give it up. I myself am a believer in traveling, for enrichment, and for counteracting the otherwise skewed impression you get from a country or culture. I think traveling gives hope. But that's exactly the problem. So... I don't think we will solve this. I honestly don't. But we should at least be honest about that.

[@przemyslawbrys]

Greenheads have nothing to do with science... or reality.

[@IbrahimNgeno]

@@starbase218 How many Kilos of freight is that flight carrying? versus how many is that cargo ship carrying?

[@TrabberShir]

@@starbase218 The issue is fuel per unit of capacity per kilometer. For passenger service it is fuel per person per kilometer and for freight it is fuel per ton per kilometer. Passenger service: Airlines and cruise ships tend to be very closely matched with some cruise ships being up to 10 times as efficient. Ferries average about the same as the most efficient cruise ships and if not carrying vehicles can be more than a factor of 10 more efficient than that average. Freight: that is where the 150,000 Tons @valentinalbulet4004 mentioned comes in. Ships are thousands of times more efficient than aircraft for freight, fuel is the primary cost for each, just compare the costs per ton between two port cities. Edit: I left off the reply to your primary point somehow. Per hour is far too granular, CO2 per year is far more useful, and at that scale it is easy to see it is an economics problem. Assuming equal efficiency (which is not far off between large aircraft and large ocean vessels) fuel use is related to the square or sometimes cube of velocity. So, yea, using less fuel requires moving slower. But your argument assumes that half as much stuff will be moved if it moves at half the speed, and basic economics tells us that is an incorrect relationship.

[@jeremyscherbert7336]

​@starbase218 the calculation is normally fuel or CO2 per ton-mile or passenger-mile. Basically how much fuel does it take to move 1 ton of freight or passenger 1 mile. Flying is by far the worst, rail is lowest. Flying cargo takes 50x the CO2 that rail takes.

[@Nomad77ca]

It would be interesting if you could do a video about the transportation problems here in Canada. We live in a very large country with a relatively small population where some of our major cities are 4-5 days apart by land transport and some of our more northern communities don't even have year round land routes available. I remember Europeans, when I lived in Germany, being astounded when I would mention driving 2-3 days to visit relatives. Anyway just a thought. We do have some unique challenges here.

[@theguyfromsaturn]

Canada is definitely a good case for aviation. The carbon footprint of all the needed infrastructure to connect disparate areas (not just construction, but also maintenance which way too often forgotten) really makes it the best alternative. The low population density also makes it the most economically viable.

[@yutyuiiu]

50% of population of canada is in the montreal- windsor corridor - an additional 8% live in the Calgary-Edmonton Corridor. The dense greater Vancouver area is another 7% of canadian population. so nearly 2/3 of the population is as accessible to the vast majority of trips, as it would be in Europe. High speed rail wihin these area's ( or rail in Vancouver) would dramatically improve transportation infrastructure in Canada.

[@rb239rtr]

So true, my former home town (2,500 ppl) in Northwest Territories lost its jet route- and was replaced with a small twin engine 19 seater. The road distance is 1300 km to the first major air hub (Edmonton) by land, or 750km in a small, loud 19 seater.

[@microcolonel]

Lot of the people in this comment section seem to have zero empathy for people of ordinary means, trying to budget a trip to visit family at least once a year. @@rb239rtr

[@alliejr]

Haha so true. I can't tell you how many times English or European visitors to Florida also want to stop by the Grand Canyon and Hollywood-- dreaming it's a day or two drive away just like London to Berlin or Berlin to Rome. They just have NO idea about the size of North America.

[@kenbrown2808]

at a 2.5 hour rail trip threshold; there is a good chance the train trip will take less time than going through security and boarding the plane will, anyway.

[@MentourNow]

Oh, absolutely. Make no mistake, I think the idea behind this law makes sense. But the alternatives MUST work and be price competitive for adaptation to happen.

[@kenbrown2808]

@@MentourNow certainly, the effort would be better spent in improving the alternative. and the US is a poster child for not improving rail service.

[@MarioStoilov93]

Not taking any sides here! Aren't the bullet trains electric? If they consume no fuel (at least not directly) wouldn't that really make them several time less emisive than aircraft?

[@viinisaari]

yes and yes

[@gpaull2]

@@viinisaari- Depends how that electricity is made and how far the train is from that power source. Electric lines have loses the further the electricity is transferred. Trains also need tracks. Those tracks need to be built. Depending on the landscape that those tracks have to be built in determines how much greenhouse gas is produced building them (mountainous terrain will be much more for example). Research “green” power sources. They are often not as green as they want you to believe. Everything has pros and cons and nothing is for free.

[@Jehty_]

Not only the bullet trains. In France in 2019 71% of the km driven by TER (regional train) was electric.

[@MarioStoilov93]

@@gpaull2 While that is true, we are comparing only the fuel. Jet fuel also needs to be manufactured and transported. Airports also need to be built. If you go down that rabbit hole, you'll need to comapre an awful lot of amount of data. So we stick to just emissions.

[@jan-lukas]

​@@gpaull2and because green power is not perfect we shouldn't use it. Great argument, have a nice day