IMHO public transport (especially a subway) is great for crowded cities but as soon as you move further away public transport takes you from a place where you aren't to a place you don't need to be. Even in a crowded country like the NL public transport is a workable solution for a minority of the people.
For me, as a rail fan, public transportation is a journey, not a destination.
But, yeah, i am just BSing myself...
If you
use a train instead of flying on a jet, you are increasing global warming.
911 was a sad day for the USA. I spend most of the day worry about a relative in NYC. But it was one of those "solar eclipse moments" for atmospheric science. Shortly after the attack, all US flights were grounded for three days. In that contrail-free three days, average temperature in the USA increased 1.1F to 1.8F (1.8F = 1C). This is a scientific fact reported by most major scientific journal such as Scientific Americans and Nature magazine.
[EDIT: Some magazine reports 1.1C, some reports 1.1F. I am not sure which one is correct, but either one is at least an order of magnitude higher than the CO2 warming/year.]
The effect was immediate and the match perfect. No jets, and and the temperature increased was measured immediately.
So, we saw that if we have Contrail in the USA alone, we held down temperature by 1C. Western Europe is 400million-ish people vs US’ 300ish million. So it stands to reason that if W. Europe switch over from train to jet, we will hold down temperature there by 1C or there about.
If global warming from CO2 is indeed the concern, why is there no research to repeat, to confirm (or not), and to further study the effects. If confirmed, we can continue on say making ConTrail more persistent? Say, making commercial flight jet engines more ConTrail friendly? You can practically look at jets like trimpots: too hot? Send up two fleets of 747 equipped with “extra-contrail” equipments (and loaded with water so it generates contrail even at drier/higher altitudes...)
Nope! No follow-up research but instead mere arguments. Arguments of "you measured wrong" (hard to believe all US weather stations made the same mistake) or "Nope! the weather just happens to follow our jet's presence/absence for that exact 3 days."
That
any follow-up research in contrail is entirely absent tells me neither CO2 nor the warming is the real worry, -- OR --, the ones pushing the current solution are too dumb to join the dots, -- OR --, they have other motives. If these folks have other motives or are so dumb with something so immediately obvious, why would I trust whatever they promote?
Am I making it up? Here are some references:
Wiki: September 11, 2001 climate impact studyThe grounding of planes for three days in the United States after September 11, 2001 provided a rare opportunity for scientists to study the effects of contrails on climate forcing. Measurements showed that without contrails, the local diurnal temperature range (difference of day and night temperatures) was about 1 °C (1.8 °F) higher than immediately before; however, it has also been suggested that this was due to unusually clear weather during the period.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ContrailQuote of Nature magazine from GreenMedInfo: "The Phenomenon: A 1.8 Degree Celsius Increase In Temperature in North America"The study found "...an anomalous increase in the average diurnal temperature range (that is, the difference between the daytime maximum and night-time minimum temperatures) for the period 11-14 September 2001."
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/artificial-weather-revealed-post-9-11-flight-groundingsYou can find info all over the place searching for "ConTrail" together with "911".