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Planes, Trains, and Automobiles Have Become Top Carbon Polluters (technologyreview.com)
Transportation is likely to surpass the electricity sector in 2016 as the largest source of carbon dioxide emissions in the United States, according to a new analysis of government data, MIT Technology reports. From the article: In 2008, the global financial crisis caused widespread declines in energy use. In the U.S., that coincided with the early stages of a large-scale shift away from coal toward cleaner-burning natural gas as a way to generate electricity. As a result, carbon dioxide emissions from the electricity sector have continued to decline from their 2007 peak, even as the economy has resumed growing. The trend line for the transportation sector is less encouraging. Transportation emissions have begun rising as the economy rebounds. John DeCicco at the University of Michigan Energy Institute, who wrote the study, attributes the rebound we've seen during the past four years to straightforward causes: economic recovery and more affordable fuel prices. Vehicle sales numbers have been rising for several years, in particular for trucks and SUVs, and people are traveling more miles.
If you RTFA (yeah yeah...) you'd notice that this is not an indictment of transportation, but a sign that efforts to reduce emissions from power generation are succeeding. In other words, it's not that transportation emissions are unusually high, it's that other sources of emissions are on the decline.... so you can now unbunch your panties.
The article then laments that efforts to curb transportation emissions haven't gained much traction yet, and notes that higher fuel prices are the best chance to drive efficiency gains and adoption of alternatives. Boo hoo!
=Smidge=
Did you know that electric trains don't need to carry their own power source? True story!
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Yep, that steak you're eating is one of the largest carbon footprint problems in the world.
But, it is SOOO tasty!!!
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
You have to "decarbonize" limestone (CaCO3) to Calcium Oxide (CaO) to make cement. You _cannot_ make cement without producing a lot of carbon dioxide, even if your energy source is carbon-free.