Tag Archives: train

The EPA chief’s post-election message: Keep calm and carry on.

by FloyMannsd Posted on November 21, 2016

Somehow, Gina McCarthy — who could very well see much of her work at the Environmental Protection Agency reversed in the next administration — is not freaking out.

In her first public remarks since Election Day, McCarthy told the National Press Club that the U.S. is making solid progress even without the federal government forcing states to clean up their act in the power sector.

“I truly believe, guided by President Obama’s deliberate vision, history will show that the Clean Power Plan marked a turning point in American climate leadership,” she said. “But the global transition to a low-carbon economy is much more than one regulation … If you take nothing else from my speech today, take this: The train to a global, clean energy future has already left the station.”

As McCarthy rattled off, power plant carbon emissions are already down 24 percent below 2005 levels, more than halfway to CPP’s target reduction of 32 percent. Meanwhile, nearly half the country (24 states) have already surpassed their 2022 emissions goals.

Ironically, the same stats suggest that the CPP wasn’t doing anything special to lower U.S. emissions in the first place, except to bring overly coal-reliant states into the 21st century.

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The EPA chief’s post-election message: Keep calm and carry on.

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Ben Carson: Christian Values? We Can Worry About That Piffle Later.

by BlytheDefoor Posted on October 14, 2016

Mother Jones

Donald Trump says he gave generously to charity in the aftermath of 9/11. The New York City Comptroller’s Office checked into that:

“My office has reviewed the donations made in the nearly 12 months following the attacks – and we didn’t find evidence that he contributed a single cent to the victims, our first responders, and to our city through the Twin Towers Fund,” New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, a Democrat, said in a statement to ABC News today.

That doesn’t sound very Christian of Trump, does it? Let’s ask a famous Christian:

On Morning Joe, Carson said that he’d love it if we could start teaching Judeo-Christian values to our children again—for example, that you shouldn’t grab women’s pussies—but we have more important stuff to think about: “What matters is that the train is going off the cliff and we’re taking our eye off of that and we’re getting involved in other issues that can be taken care of later.”

What about it, Christians? My book knowledge of Christianity suggests to me that this is exactly backward: values matter the most when the train is going off the cliff. But what do I know? Help me out here.

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Ben Carson: Christian Values? We Can Worry About That Piffle Later.

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Why Is Flying so Cheap?

by CasimiraCollie7 Posted on May 13, 2016

Sploid titles a postWhat the Heck Makes Flying So Expensive?I looked at it and thought, really? What the heck makes flying so cheap? I am going to New York City next month and wanted to take the train, but it is $167 one way, takes 14 hours and requires an extra night in a hotel. Flying in a Q400 turboprop takes 90 minutes and costs $115; going by jet costs $138. Who said flying was expensive?

In fact, as this great video shows at the end, flying is cheaper than ever,half of what it cost thirty years ago, when they were already flying jumbo jets.

The Atlantic

There are all kinds of reasons; the planes are more efficient, they pack more people in, they provide fewer services and they treat everything from food to baggage handling as an extra cost now. In fact, according to Sploid,

Even though giant passenger jets do guzzle down fuel at a ridiculous 0.67 miles per gallonseriously, they need 1.5 gallons of jet fuel for every mile traveledthere are so many people on an airplane that the fuel cost gets split down to a much more reasonable price: a per-person fuel efficiency of 104.7 miles per gallon. Thats good! So why is flying so expensive? Its everything else.

By that they mean the taxes, security, airport fees, the cost of the planes and the crews on them. It is a fascinating video, that does make the point at the end that flying is pretty much cheaper than it has ever been. And if I thought I was reducing my carbon footprint by taking the train, I am probably wrong; this graph shows the comparative fuel economies, but assumes the train is full; the last time I was on the run to New York it was not even close.

Of course the graph doesn’t show the true picture; asMike has noted earlier, people travel much longer distances by plane, and there is the “radiative forcing ratio” where the warming effect from aircraft emissions are more dire than carbon dioxide emissions at grade. But still, it surprises. And for my trip to New York City,flying turboprop(which uses 64% of the fuel of a jet) turns out to be the greenest way that I can go.

We used to quote George Monbiot a lot, when he saidFlying is dying.But until we are all driving Teslas or getting sucked through Hyperloops, it may well be the best way to go.

Written by Lloyd Alter. Reposted with permission from TreeHugger.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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Why Is Flying so Cheap?

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California Conservatives Are Still Idiots

by PhyllisMcWilliam Posted on February 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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California conservatives are idiots. Check this out:

The state’s powerful agriculture industry and its political allies are gathering signatures for a November ballot initiative that would grab bond money earmarked for California’s bullet train and use it instead for new water projects.

You all know how I feel about the LA-San Francisco bullet train. I don’t know how I feel about a bunch of new water projects, but there’s a decent chance I’d vote for an initiative like this just to kill the train boondoggle once and for all. Except for this:

In addition, the measure would make substantial changes to state water law via a constitutional amendment, setting domestic water use and irrigation as the first- and second- highest priorities — ahead of environmental conservation.

….Jim Earp, a member of the California Transportation Commission who led the rail bonds campaign, said the water measure could have a difficult time because its backers were greedy. “They have basically a deeply flawed measure,” Earp said. “They couldn’t resist overreaching. They couldn’t resist the temptation to rewrite water laws to benefit corporate farmers who are going to underwrite the campaign.”

The eminent domain folks made the same mistake a few years ago, and they made it twice. Instead of trying to pass a simple measure that would have barred eminent domain for private projects—which I would have voted for—they couldn’t resist larding up their measures with a bunch of wish-list provisions from libertarians and property developers. So they lost.

I predict the same thing here. The bullet train isn’t popular these days and water is a big concern. That’s a handy confluence of events for the ag industry. But they couldn’t stay content with just raiding a bit of money for water projects. They’re so furious about their water supply being restricted by a bunch of starry-eyed greens that they had to toss in a provision directly targeted at environmental concerns. But like it or not, Californians care about the environment, and they’re not likely to approve this nonsense. So the initiative will go down. Idiots.

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California Conservatives Are Still Idiots

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Quote of the Day: No Bullet Train For You

by OmerChisholm Posted on January 28, 2016

Mother Jones

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From Dan Richard, the head of California’s bullet train authority:

It may take us a little longer than we said to do this.

“He did not elaborate,” says the deadpan account in the LA Times. I am shocked, shocked.

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Quote of the Day: No Bullet Train For You

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Anything Goes on Unwound’s Latest Album

by EdwardoN54 Posted on September 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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Unwound
Empire
Numero Group

The fourth and final chapter in record label Numero Group’s fascinating history of the Olympia, Washington, trio Unwound collects the albums Challenge for a Civilized Society (1998) and Leaves Turn Inside You (2001), along with stray tracks from the same period. At this point, Justin Trosper (vocals, guitar), Vern Rumsey (bass), and Sara Lund (drums) are in full anything-goes mode. While some exhilarating songs reflect the band’s familiar hard rock and grunge roots, others take entirely different paths, using mellotron, harmonium, and studio effects in unpredictable pieces that can run ten minutes, notably the freeform electro-psychedelia of “The Light at the End of the Tunnel Is a Train.” Not everything works, but even the experimental misfires feel like an heartfelt attempt to develop new ideas without abandoning the anxiety-inducing tension that made Unwound so compelling in the first place.

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Anything Goes on Unwound’s Latest Album

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Jimi Hendrix’s Last Big Concert Hit Darker Notes

by ZeldaCarney Posted on September 12, 2015

Mother Jones

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Jimi Hendrix Experience
Freedom: Atlanta Pop Festival
Experience Hendrix/Legacy

Jimi Hendrix was at a musical crossroads when he played the Atlanta Pop Festival on July 4, 1970. With bandmates Mitch Mitchell (drums) and Billy Cox (bass) in tow, he turned in a fiery 16-song set that mixed reliable crowd-pleasers such as “Purple Haze” and “Foxey sic Lady” with less-flashy, socially conscious material like “Message to Love” and “Straight Ahead,” which wouldn’t see official release until after his death less than three months later. While Hendrix could easily have phoned it in on the oldies and still thrilled the crowd, he didn’t, preferring to add different, darker textures to his hits; the bluesy staples “Red House” and “Hear My Train a Comin'” found him, as always, using familiar structures to veer off in exciting, unexpected directions. Whether Hendrix was on the verge of entirely abandoning the rock scene for uncharted territory remains unknown, but Freedom: Atlanta Pop Festival suggests big changes were definitely in the offing.

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Jimi Hendrix’s Last Big Concert Hit Darker Notes

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Tea Party Heartthrob Ben Carson Once Lived the Hobo Life Hopping Freight Trains

by DemetriusBruns Posted on January 6, 2015

Mother Jones

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Before he was a prospective 2016 Republican presidential candidate, Ben Carson was just another disaffected teenager who hopped freight trains in search of thrills.

Carson, a retired neurosurgeon who plans to make a final decision about running for president by the end of May, became a tea party favorite after ripping into President Obama at the National Prayer Breakfast in 2013. Since then, he has staked out far-right positions on issues like gay rights (which he believes are part of a Marxist plot), the AP US History curriculum (which he fears will be an ISIS recruiting tool), and the 2016 election itself (which he believes might be canceled due to a societal breakdown).

Carson’s rags-to-riches story, as a one-time juvenile delinquent raised by a single mom who rose to the top of the medical profession, is at the core of his personal appeal. It has been the subject of a best-selling book and a feature-length movie. His youthful habit of hopping aboard moving freight trains is considerably less well known. But as Carson explained in his 2008 book, Take the Risk, he and his older brother, Curtis, began riding freight trains after moving back to Detroit from Boston for middle school:

We didn’t think twice about it at the time, and Mother certainly didn’t know about the risks we took, but just getting to and from school in our new neighborhood was a dangerous proposition. The fastest and most exciting way to commute was to hop one of the freight trains rolling on the tracks that ran alongside the route Curtis and I took to Wilson Junior High School. Curtis liked the challenge of fast-moving trains, tossing his clarinet onto one flatcar and then jumping to catch the railing on the very last car of the train. He knew if he missed his chance, he risked never seeing his band instrument again. But he never lost that clarinet.

Since I was smaller, I usually waited for slower trains. But we both placed ourselves in great danger we didn’t ever seriously stop to consider. Not only did we have to run, jump, catch the railing, and hold on for dear life to a moving freight train, but we had to avoid the railroad security who were always on the lookout for people hopping their trains.

They never caught us. And we never got seriously injured like one boy we heard of who was maimed for life after falling onto the tracks under a moving train.

As I reported in the January/February issue of Mother Jones, freight-hopping has always attracted a certain brand of (usually male) individualists who are skeptical of centralized authority. Carson’s Bo Keeley phase came to an end, however, after a run-in with a gang of racist youths. “We stopped after an encounter I had with a different threat as I trotted along the railroad tracks on my way to school along one morning,” he wrote. “Near one of the crossings, a gang of bigger boys, all of them white, approached me. One boy, carrying a big stick, yelled, ‘Hey, you! Nigger boy!'”

If elected, Carson wouldn’t be the first president with a hobo past. When Harry Truman was 18, he got a job with the Santa Fe Railroad, which required him to manage the migrant workers who rode the rails to do manual labor for the company. “Some of those hoboes had better educations than the president of Harvard University, and they weren’t stuck up about it either,” he later recalled.

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Tea Party Heartthrob Ben Carson Once Lived the Hobo Life Hopping Freight Trains

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Walk to work — you’ll be happier

by SergioBiraban Posted on August 21, 2014

Walk to work — you’ll be happier

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20 Aug 2014 8:59 PM

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A recent survey from Montreal’s McGill University suggests that people who walk or take the train to the McGill campus are more satisfied with their daily commutes than those who do anything else.

Makes sense: If you walk or take the train, you’re not a slave to traffic. Ride the train, and you can even use your commute to get work done. That explains why walkers and train riders expressed 85 and 84 percent commute satisfaction, respectively.

But the discrepancies between the other modes of transportation are where things get interesting. Look at cyclists (82 percent satisfaction) and bus riders (75.5 percent), for example.

From City Lab:

Travel time accounts for much of the difference between the two tiers. Longer travel time led to lower satisfaction whatever the mode, but walkers, train riders, and cyclists were the least affected by time variables. … The satisfaction of drivers and bus riders also took a hit with additional “budgeted” trip time, likely on account of unpredictable traffic. …

While cyclists only budgeted 5 extra minutes a day for trip delays, bus riders budgeted 14 minutes. That’s more than an hour a week set aside by bus riders just to be sure they aren’t late for work.

Still, 75.5 percent satisfaction for those bus riders isn’t bad. Who knows, maybe people in Canada are just happier, no matter how they get to work.

Source:
Which Mode of Travel Provides the Happiest Commute?

, City Lab.

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Could a bullet train take you from the U.S. to China to Europe?

by rzana79 Posted on May 23, 2014

Could a bullet train take you from the U.S. to China to Europe?

By

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If the Chinese government is to be believed, the U.S. could one day be connected with Moscow, Paris, Turkmenistan, and Beijing by bullet train. The proposed high-speed rail network might resemble one of those maps you absentmindedly stare at in the back of in-flight magazines.

Chinese media is reporting that construction of the 8,000-mile system could begin next month. If actually completed, it could ferry passengers over a substantial swath of the Northern Hemisphere at speeds greater than 200 miles per hour.

The China Daily reports that China plans to fund and build the railway itself. Here’s how the newspaper says the new line would link the continental U.S. with China — a long-ass trip that would reportedly take two days:

The proposed journey will start from China’s northeast region, cross Siberia to Bering Strait, and run across the Pacific Ocean by undersea tunnel to reach Alaska, from Alaska to Canada, then on to its final destination, the US. To cross Bering Strait will require approximately 200km [125-mile] undersea tunnel.

A project like this would obviously require extensive international cooperation, and reaching the U.S. would only be possible if Canada were on board with the idea. Ben Makuch of Vice’s Motherboard blog did some digging and found that China might just be putting the cart before the horse:

I asked the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade if the “discussions” one Chinese engineer claims are happening between the four nations​ on the proposed next-generation rail system have begun with China. DFAIT media relations spokesperson Claude Rochon was categorical.

“To answer your question, Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada is not informed of this project,” said Rochon. …

Diplomatic obstacles with the Harper government aside, any proposed Chinese rail line through land in British Columbia or the Yukon is sure to face serious domestic opposition. Besides the prevalence of wildlife and native reserves to negotiate along the corridor, future land use is a contentious issue in BC.

We’ll hold off on popping any bottles of Chinese-made champagne until conversations about an intercontinental high-speed rail network actually begin bubbling through international bureaucracies.


Source
China mulls high-speed train to US: report, China Daily
China’s Plan for a Canadian Bullet Train Is News to Canada, VICE

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Could a bullet train take you from the U.S. to China to Europe?

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