Unpopular Opinion
Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!
How voting works:
Vote the opposite of the norm.
If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.
Guidelines:
Tag your post, if possible (not required)
- If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
- If it is a Lemmy-specific unpopular opinion, start it with [LEMMY].
Rules:
1. NO POLITICS
Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.
2. Be civil.
Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Please also refrain from gatekeeping others' opinions.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...
Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.
5. No trolling.
This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.
6. Defend your opinion
This is a bit of a mix of rules 4 and 5 to help foster higher quality posts. You are expected to defend your unpopular opinion in the post body. We don't expect a whole manifesto (please, no manifestos), but you should at least provide some details as to why you hold the position you do.
Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
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Thats doesnt really prove anything, the fuel burn is at its peak during take off and landing since it requires a lot of force to actually lift up. On the contrary, sustain flight is very efficient.
Shorter distances isnt a valid excuse - in fact, it is the direct problem you're seemingly defending.
How do planes compare to travel by boat? Then what about a car ferry if you go on as a foot passenger or only take a bike, are you really taking up any space on it?
So if you're talking freight, ships are unparalleled in their energy efficiency, even when you look at the disgusting dirty fuel they use. They're SLOW, which reduces friction with water, and have economies of scale.
However, planes are more efficient for passengers due to the volume (of people). People take up a lot of space, much moreso than cargo, which makes giant boats really not the most efficient choice for human transport because you end up using a giant hull with tons of overhead to move all these lightweight people across the ocean. Once planes get up to cruising altitude they hit a sweet spot where their fuel efficiency improves drastically, but it's still not nearly as good as trains.... But I have no idea how to calculate how expensive or environmentally damaging it would be to build and maintain a set of trans-continental railways. I can only imagine the insane amounts of marine destruction needed for any amount of transport bandwidth...
And none of this is taking into account time, which is another important factor. A container ship takes 10-14 days to get from New York to London; a direct flight takes about seven hours.
Suppose the route is important too. I live in Portsmouth, so the ferry to France is right here and I think it is better than flying to France. But that is also a short flight.
Plus its a car ferry, so its mainly transporting cars with people as a bit of an extra. I suspect there is much more variation with sea travel compared to flight.
I'm not saying private jets aren't a problem. Both are a problem