Category: Travel

My actual travels, those I aspire to, and those of others

Fuel efficiency, climate change, and 2050

Bridge ribs

Recently, the United Nations Environment Program and others called for fuel efficiency in automobiles to be doubled by 2050. While more efficient transport is a necessary element in dealing with climate change, this target strikes me as profoundly lacking in vision or ambition. There are two major reasons for which I think we must do a lot better.

The first is that, by 2050, we will probably be seeing serious consequences from climate change globally. It is entirely possible that there will be no more Arctic summer sea ice, and far fewer glaciers. Droughts, fires, and heat waves are likely to have increased in frequency and severity. These kinds of changes are likely, to some extent, regardless of what sort of emissions trajectory we follow. The major differences in outcome between a scenario where we cut emissions and save ourselves and one where we doom huge numbers of future generations to enormous climatic harm will largely be felt after 2050. In spite of that, it seems probable that changes which will occur by 2050 will render the strategy of denying and ignoring climate change non-viable. As such, it is doubtful that governments would ask so little of automakers.

The second concerns peak oil. There are a lot of uncertainties involved about timing, technological development, and about how the global economy will respond to falling output. That being said, there will come a day when the global production of petroleum peaks and begins an unstoppable decline. To me, at least, it seems likely that the decline will be well underway by 2050 – making a petroleum-fuelled automobile an expensive proposition for anyone, and quite possibly unavailable to most. In an optimistic scenario, where standards of living keep rising in spite of reduced hydrocarbon output, that will mean that the reduced quantity of fuel available will have a price inflated even beyond what scarcity would dictate. It is, of course, terribly hazardous to make guesses about technology and economic developments so far off, but my gut impression is that a vehicle engineer from 2050 would be aghast to see a vehicle anywhere near as inefficient as those we are using now.

If we do take climate change seriously, and we begin to capture the opportunities for economic transition the crisis offers, by 2050 we should find ourselves moving sharply towards a far more sustainable world. To take one set of examples, it might be a world where ground transportation is overwhelmingly electric, fuelled by renewables and probably some nuclear fission. Liquid fuels produced from biomass might be employed only by aircraft and for specialty applications like vehicles in very remote areas. While that scenario is speculative, to me it seems more likely than one where we are driving around in the same old internal combustion engine, gasoline cars but burning 3.5 litres per 100km rather than 7.0.

Air travel and appreciation

This video clip of Canadian comedian Louis C.K. on the Conan O’Brien show is quite amusing. He is talking about how people take air travel, and technology generally, for granted. He has an amusing way of turning around the common gripes people have about air travel:

‘And then, we get on the plane and they made us sit there on the runway, for 40 minutes. We had to sit there.’ Oh? Really? What happened next? Did you fly through the air, incredibly, like a bird? Did you partake in the miracle of human flight, you non-contributing zero?

It’s true that people fail to appreciate the immense effort and skill reflected in things like computers, pharmaceuticals, global communications, as so forth. At one level, that is simply a lack of curiosity. On another, I think it’s a kind of defence mechanism: people are completely dependent on these technologies, and yet few understand them at all. Most people probably couldn’t even explain how an airplane wing produces lift. That general point is especially well made by James Burke. He chooses an even more banal technology example than air travel, elevators. In the first episode of his series, he demonstrates how our attitude towards them demonstrates our dependence, ignorance, and vulnerability.

OxBridge and the future

Wasabi covered peas

The two books I am reading most actively right now both make me miss Oxford. They also make me regret the fact that I am not out traveling or working somewhere exciting.

The first book is Simon Winchester’s The Man Who Loved China: The fantastic story of the eccentric scientist who unlocked the mysteries of the Middle Kingdom. I have read several of his books before: one on the Mercator projection, and another on the genesis of the Oxford English Dictionary. While I am only halfway through this latest book, I think it is better than Mercator but worse than OED, though that probably reflects my own interests as much as anything else. In any case, the book conveys a wonderful sense of what was possible for a motivated and intelligent individual in the position of its protagonist: Noel Joseph Terence Montgomery Needham.

The second book is Oliver Morton’s Eating the Sun: How Plants Power the Planet. Evidently, it is largely a study of the nature and history of photosynthesis. The book contains a good summary of early climatic science, with engaging and informative asides on nuclear physics, biochemistry, and much else. It also includes a great many references to life in Cambridge, during the period between the early outbreak and late aftermath of the second world war. It is a period of unusual interest for climatologists, for reasons I described in my barely-remembered thesis. Personally, my impressions of Cambridge are dominated by the music video to Pink Floyd’s “High Hopes” – one of the very few music videos I have ever watched, and one of the handful I have enjoyed.

What they brought to the forefront is that it is possible to be out and doing interesting things (though certainly more challenging if you mean to do it in a low-carbon way). I would certainly be strongly tempted to strike away from Ottawa to more interesting places, once societal dues have been paid. Where or what that would involve, I cannot yet guess.

Greyhound’s pointless security

On my way to Toronto last weekend, I was subjected to Greyhound’s farcical new ‘security screening.’

People were made to stand in a line in front of a roped-off area. One by one, they removed metal objects from their pockets, placed them in a dish, and had a metal detecting wand waved over then. At the same time, another security person spent a couple of second poking around in the top few inches of the person’s carry-on bag. The person then entered the roped-off area, carrying their carry-on and checked bags with them, waiting for the rest of the line to be processed.

Ways to get a weapon past this system:

  • Get one not made of metal, like a ceramic knife, and put it in your pocket.
  • Put it below the top few inches of your backpack.
  • Hide it inside a hollowed-out book, inside a piece of electronics, etc.
  • Put it in your wallet. With a wallet that can take an unfolded bill, you could fit a few flat throwing knives.
  • Tape it to the bottom of your shoe.
  • Put it in your checked baggage, remove it while you are waiting on the far side of the line.
  • Go through the screening, ask to go use the bathroom, collect your weapon, and return to the ‘screened’ area.
  • Before entering the bus station, hide a weapon outside, in the vicinity of where your bus will pull in. Pick it up before boarding.
  • Use a weapon that is both deadly and innocuous: such as a cane, umbrella, or strong rope.
  • Get on at a rural stop, instead of Ottawa.
  • Get on in Toronto, instead of Ottawa, since they don’t seem to be bothering with the screening there.
  • Etc.

I am not saying that people should actually bring weapons on Greyhound buses, and I am most certainly not saying that Greyhound should tighten their security to make these tactics useless. I am saying that the new screening is nothing more than security theatre. It does nothing to make Greyhound buses safer, though it will add needlessly to ticket prices.

On a more philosophical level, it also perpetuates the kind of low-freedom, security-obsessed society that many people seem to expect. It would be far healthier to acknowledge that the world contains risks while also noticing that countermeasures to reduce those risks have real costs, whether in hard currency or in convenience or privacy or liberty.

Demise of a lens

The day after being re-united with my 50mm f/1.8 prime lens, I managed to break it into two pieces by accidentally smashing it into a wrought iron railing. Because of the Toronto snowfall, I was carrying my camera in ziploc bag. Due to the careless movement of my arm, a lens that I have used for years met what may be an untimely end.

I will investigate whether it is possible to have the two halves re-joined. If not, I will have to consider whether it is more sensible to replace the f/1.8 lens or buy the more expensive but more solidly constructed f/1.4 variant.

[Update: 29 January 2009] The word is back from the camera repair people. They estimate the chances of repairing the lens for less than the cost of a new lens at approximately zero. Also, it would take six to eight weeks. Eventually, I suppose I will buy a new 50mm lens.

Location data and photography

Dylan and Dusty

Before long, I expect that many cameras will have built-in GPS receivers and the option to automatically tag every photo with the geographic coordinates of the place where it was taken. That will allow for some neat new kinds of displays: from personal photo maps that show the results of a single person’s travels to composites of the photos a great many people have taken of the same place.

For those who would be interested in such things, but don’t yet have equipment that can locate itself, it seems like there could be a simple workaround. These days, low-cost GPS tracking devices are very affordable. All you need is a camera and a tracker with coordinated clocks. Then, you carry the tracker with you when you take photos. After you upload them to a computer, you can run software to automatically attach location data from the tracking system to the photos. Given the increasing number of cell phones with GPS capability, they might be the ideal devices to provide such locational data. You could even configure one to automatically upload a track of your movements to a web service which would then match up that information with photos you upload later.

One snag would be photos taken in areas where GPS doesn’t work, such as on the subway. To deal with that, users could be presented with a few choices. The coordinates from the closest point in time where data is available could be used, a very general coordinate for the city or region in question could be substituted, or such photos could simply be left untagged.

No doubt, people could dream up some very clever ways of using this kind of data, especially once a lot of it was online. You could, for instance, produce collages of how a particular area looked over time. A mountain valley could be presented from the perspectives of everyone from those hosting afternoon picnics to those undertaking technical climbs of the peaks, with spring and summer photos contrasted against snowy winter shots. Groups of friends could also watch their trails of photos diverge and overlap, as they move around the world.

All told, it could be a very interesting experiment in communal memory.

Metal detectors and carry-on restrictions for Greyhound travel

The policy of restrictive carry-on rules appears to be spreading from planes to Greyhound buses. Apparently, as of December 15th, passengers boarding them in Ottawa will be forced to put everything aside from “medication, baby formula and small handbags” in checked baggage. No matter that those rattling baggage holds are hostile territory for cameras, computers, and other delicate items. Likewise, no matter that the logic of security on intercity buses differs substantially from the logic for aircraft, as I have written about previously. The system has already been introduced in Edmonton, Calgary and Winnipeg.

To summarize my earlier post:

  • With a plane under their control, hijackers can fly to distant states that might assist them. The only way to stop them is to shoot down the plane, killing everyone on board. Buses are comparatively easy to stop.
  • [S]omeone in control of an ordinary plane can kill a lot of people. They can certainly kill everyone on board. They can also kill many people on the ground. Similar risks do not exist in relation to buses.
  • [I]t isn’t clear that this strategy won’t simply displace any violence that was to occur to a different venue. If I want to harm a particular person, I can do so in a place other than a Greyhound bus. The same is true if I just want to hurt people at random.
  • If you are really determined to hurt people on a bus, you can get on at a rural stop, rather than a bus station with metal detectors

It seems that the best low-cost and relatively low-carbon form of intercity travel is about to be needlessly constrained. It remains to be seen whether Greyhound proves enduringly committed to the new procedures once customers start appreciating just how inconvenient and unnecessary they are.

Modes of transport and distances travelled

Adding once again to our ever-present debate about the ethics of air travel, a study from the University of California, Berkeley concludes that the major reason planes are more problematic than trains or buses is that people simply travel farther in them. This has two major implications.

For one, it suggests that efforts to curtain short-haul air travel may have limited benefits. If a high-speed rail corridor between Toronto and Montreal would only lead to incremental improvements in emissions reductions, the better course may be to try to discourage as much travel as possible. This may be especially true given another major conclusion of the study: that a very significant share of the environmental impacts of travel arises from the infrastructure (roads, rails, airports), rather than the emissions of vehicles themselves.

For another, it suggests that investing the time and money to travel by bus or train may likewise be less green than would be ideal. The problem may not be choosing to go from Ottawa to Vancouver by air; it may be an inescapable problem of making the trip in the first place.

It is well worth having a look at the webpage for the study, as it contains a lot of additional information. The study’s conclusions were also described on Slate.

PickupPal and unhappy bus companies

Is a web-based service that helps those with spare seats hook up with those willing to pay for rides “facilitating the operation of an illegal transportation service?” The Ontario Highway Transport Board has decided that it is, in a case brought against PickupPal by unhappy operators of bus lines.

While I can see how liability issues arise in relation to safety, it doesn’t seem appropriate for the board to fine and try to shut down this service. As someone who travels frequently by Greyhound, I know that bus service in Canada could stand some competition-driven improvement. This sort of decentralized commerce seems like a pretty good way to reduce the environmental impacts of inter-city travel. After all, having a passenger or two travelling along with you does more for your passenger-kilometres per tonne of carbon dioxide emitted than buying a more efficient vehicle probably would.

While I can see the reason for the bus companies’ grievance – after all, they need to pay a fair bit to comply with commercial transport laws – on balance their complaint seems anti-competitive and likely to be environmentally harmful.