“There seems to be a perception that large-scale investments in high-speed railways is a climate policy necessity,” observe two researchers from the Swedish Road and Transport Institute. However, their analysis concludes that “Rail investments are not cost-effective climate policy instruments.”
If you are one of those people who are deprived of a normal sex cialis 20mg tablets life. That being said, the medication cannot alone treat the generic tadalafil no prescription underlying problem causing this dysfunction. In the years we have always notice that somehow Google discriminates or just doesn’t “force” all websites into following their own guidelines and what for many websites would be an instant ban is the success of buy women viagra http://secretworldchronicle.com/tag/the-program/ others. This body chemical reacts order cialis overnight http://secretworldchronicle.com/2018/03/ with the body ingredients in order to cause the muscles around the blood vessels. This is because, “despite great investment costs it is only possible to affect a very small part of carbon dioxide emissions from the transport market.” They also find that a proposed high-speed rail line from Stockholm to Göteborg will not be cost-effective.
The abstract of the report is in English, but the rest is in Swedish. Perhaps one of our readers can translate any significant details.
Given the quiet sun, maybe this headline’s a good thing.
Given the quiet sun…
One wonders where the globul coolin went that was predicted by some pseudoskeptics not long ago as they wishfully eyed the noise in the trend. Ah, well. It’s not as if the wish will go away in the face of facts.
————–
Nonetheless, one notes how today Randal quotes directly from the paper (coughMJcough); despite this, one must keep in mind that silver bullets are rarely offered in such policy frameworks and instead such frameworks are filled with silver buckshot. One doesn’t tear apart the shell and ask whether one steel ball (we aren’t using lead anymore, right?) is cost- or target-effective – we look at the whole shell.
That is: the question is whether an instrument is effective across scales and measures. Focusing on only one tool is poor analysis and policy and a poor way to live and think.
DS
The Antiplanner wrote:
> Perhaps one of our readers can translate any significant details.
The title of the report is, in an of itself, highly relevant.
Höghastighetsjärnvägar – ett klimatpolitiskt stickspÃ¥r translates to High-speed railroads – a sidetrack in terms of climate change policy
To set some context, here are the areas, populations and population densities for some places that readers of this site may be familiar with:
Place Population Area (km**2) Population Density (persons per square kilometer)
Alaska 686,293 1,481,347 0.46
Montana 967,440 376,979 2.57
Oregon 3,790,060 248,631 15.24
Finland 5,250,275 338,145 15.53
Sweden 9,059,651 450,295 20.12
Arizona 6,500,180 294,312 22.09
W. Va. 1,814,468 62,361 29.10
U.S. 307,212,123 9,161,966 33.53
Calif. 36,756,666 403,933 91.00
France 62,150,775 551,500 112.69
Md. 5,633,597 25,314 222.55
Japan 127,078,679 364,485 348.65
L.A.Co. 9,862,049 10,518 937.67
L.A.City 3,849,378 1,215 3,168.99
D.C. 591,833 159 3,721.75
Hong Kong
SAR 7,055,071 1,104 6,390.46
New York
City 8,214,426 785 10,467.44
New York
County 1,634,795 59 27,491.21
Sources for data above are the U.S. Census Bureau and the CIA World Fact Book.
The authors of the paper wrote an op-ed based on this research paper in Sweden’s largest newspaper back in August, Dagens Nyheter.
The op-ed (in Swedish) can be found here.
Some points (translation by me) are:
There are many who assert that we should invest in high-seed rail lines for reasons of climate change. In our report we investigate such thinking.
Investments in railroads are a weak tool for reducing emissions of greenhouse gazes. About 85% of transports are by private vehicle, while the railroad serves about 10%. A new railroad can be the origin of large impacts in the railroad industry but can only lure over a small share of highway person trips and airport passengers. Most people will continue to use private automobiles or fly. A measurable reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from the transport sector requires general signals – like motor fuel taxes – which impact all travelers, not only those who travel a certain route.
If the Götalandsbanan should be built, we estimate a benefit to societal welfare of minus SEK 16,000,000,000 [US$ 2,275,000,000]. At the same time, the project would reduce emissions about 150,000 tons, in other words less than one percent of the transport sectors emissions. In this calculation we we did not include any of the increased emissions which would occur during the construction period from equipment used to build the line.
It is also important to note that Sweden has made large investments in its railroad infrastructure in the past 20 or 25 years.
Among the investments are the following:
Øresund Fixed Link bridge tunnel crossing to Denmark (two rail tracks, four highway lanes)
Hallandsås Tunnel
Bothnia Line (190 km of new single-track railroad to replace a circuitous and slow inland route)
Thank you for the translation CPZ. IF you had the time to skim the entire paper, what is the author’s explanation for the negative social welfare gains? Too small mode switch for the investment? Inability to penetrate certain areas? Sunk costs in extant transport?
Thank you in advance,
DS
What everyone seems to be forgetting here is that there is NO SUCH THING as “too expensive” when it comes to appeasing the climate gods. Also, trains are shiny.
The decreased solar minimum has neutralized global warming over the last few years.
Google it.
Nonetheless, one notes how today Randal quotes directly from the paper (coughMJcough)
It’s really too bad that Passive-Aggressive Dan showed up this week. I much prefer Normal Dan: thoughtful, rational (usually), and slightly sarcastic.
The decreased solar minimum has neutralized global warming over the last few years.
Decrees Frank as the last four months are the warmest in the instrumental record and the naughties the hottest decade in the instrumental record…
snork
I must acknowledge that the creator of the ‘Frank’ parody character is to be commended for their comedic talent, and for recognizing the potential of the Interwebs for new channels for quality performance art. And that Frank character is quality performance art, lemme tellya. He’s a hoot.
DS
It’s really too bad that Passive-Aggressive Dan showed up this week. I much prefer Normal Dan: thoughtful, rational (usually), and slightly sarcastic.
?!?
Just pointing out the patently obviously change in behavior, MJ. Apologies if it came across the wrong way.
Regards,
DS
Well, Dan, you’re showing three signs of Hotchkiss’s seven deadly sins of narcissism:
Seek treatment. Soon.
Focus on the last four months while ignoring the following makes you a cherry picker:
Ireland has 30 year cold event, plus coldest September in 14 years
Anchorage’s record setting cold summer
Alaska glaciers on the rebound
National Post: Thirty years of warmer temperatures go poof
Snow blankets London for Global Warming debate – first October Snow in over 70 years
Cold streak sets new record – Saskatoon experiences 24 consecutive days of -25 C or lower
Snowiest Winter Ever Recorded in North Dakota
Edmonton Canada bests March 10th record low by -12 degrees, columnist questions climate situation
GISS Global temperature anomaly – coldest March since 2000
New Australian continent wide low temperature record set for April
First Ever Ice Wine in Brazil
Arctic temperature is still not above 0°C – the latest date in fifty years of record keeping
Record cold in Portland Maine in July
Summer 2009 colder than normal, NOAA says
2009: Coldest U.S. summer in recent history; 300 low-temp records set
Chicago Area Sees Coldest July Since 1942
July 2009 goes into history books as coldest July in Grand Rapids
Coldest July on Record for the Midwest
Arizona – Coldest June on Record Since 1913
Oh, what’s the point of arguing with a narcissist?
Austin record setting hot summer. Hottest Ever!
Boston record heat wave this summer
D.C record heat wave this summer
Houston has record setting hot summer
Puget Sound area broke several high records this year
VietNam has highest summer forecast in history
Rio Grande Valley has hottest July ever
Bellevue WA, record hot summer tested the peak load limits of power utility
Nebraska, 2009 Warmest January ever
Phoenix, hottest July ever
California, hottest spring on record
South Florida, summer conditions have not let up yet.
So frank, while the mid west had a somewhat cool year, the northwest, south, southeast, and northeast were all breaking heat records. I don’t think that either one of our posts today proves anything, but hey just wanted to throw this out there. The world is getting hotter, and weather is becoming more spastic and violent.
CO2 levels were up to 20 times what they were today in the Ordovician glacial period ~450 million years ago. If they hadn’t built massive light rail infrastructure and transit-oriented developments to appease the climate gods, we probably wouldn’t even be here today.
Spare yourself the indignity of trying to salvage your credibility with all the creative explanations of why AGW (now they’ve claimed BOTH directions with “climate change”) hysteria is still critical. There’s a lot of ugly attempts at face-saving out there, so how’s about you just drop the pseudoreligion and we’ll give you blanket amnesty; never bring it up again? For the sake of the family name, let’s put this embarrassment behind us.
Chip, Homo sapiens and the plants we eat and the animals we eat didn’t exist 450 MYA. So your point is useless. The biota extant today are adapted to a certain level of CO2 ppmv. As we see in recent grain nutritional yields (N is decreasing in endosperm of wheat, for instance), grains do not perform as well in CO2-enriched atmospheres. And the resultant higher temps are affecting yeilds across the planet and the Phillippines is trying desperately to breed a rice race that can grow in the increasing heat. Modern society and its crops evolved in a very narrow range of temps and has never lived outside that very narrow range – likely by the next decade we will surpass the upper end of that range and it is immoral and unethical to assert that concern over forcing society into an unknown regime is OK.
So. Them’s the basic facts. Decision-makers across the planet know these basic facts. The 12% of the US population who can’t or won’t grasp the basics no longer can affect policy – they have marginalized themselves. Decision-makers do not listen to them. They cannot contribute to policy. Sorry.
DS
Frank @ 11:
You are falling into the same puerile pattern as in the past: change the subject away from the fact you have no argument to falsely accusing someone of being a projection of your fears.
Thank you for being so predictable and obvious. And being unable to see that I used the same argument you did wrt temp and trends (chuckle).
DS
Danny McDan-Dan:
My point is that our atmosphere doesn’t need humans to reach extreme CO2 ppmv levels, which I think is actually a quite useful point since alarmists have been bludgeoning skeptics relentlessly with the “CO2 ppmv is increasing => we must be causing it†line of reasoning. What we have here is the environmental equivalent of economic protectionism, with the Chickens Little trying to artificially cap some things and subsidize others, the whole while ignorant (or indifferent) to the fact that it is for the most part beyond our control. The interest groups and power-seekers openly driving some of the madness give yet more pause to the concerned.
I notice you couch your assertions in moral language: “immoral,†“unethical,†etc., which tends to confirm the skeptic’s suspicion that this is a religion for some people. Out of curiosity, to what absolute and objective system of morality do you subscribe, that you would have a basis from which to make moral pronouncements about mine and others’ cosmic standing? As to the suspender-flicking “them’s the facts†hokum you’re wont to offer, and to the “decision-makers†and “12 percent…marginalized†ipse dixit claims you made – just one question: how long did it take you to conjure up that quaint but ultimately meaningless series of hand-waves, and looking back, was it worth it?
chip,
the fact is that humans raised the current CO2 levels to what they are. And basic physics says that has consequences, which we can see being played out today. Consequences that may take us into regimes with which humans are not famiilar.
You cannot hand-wave away from facts. Nor do you have access to decision-makers that have these facts to distract them. The small minority of the population that denies facts no longer controls the societal discussion on what to do about adaptation and mitigation. Sorry.
DS
Dan wrote:
> Thank you for the translation CPZ.
You are welcome.
> IF you had the time to skim the entire paper, what is the author’s explanation for the negative social welfare gains?
First, I am a fast reader in both English and Swedish.
The report states that the value of the benefits of the project only covers 80% of the expected costs, and that expected reduction in CO2 emissions is small (and does not include the emissions that would happen during construction), and that the value of the reduction in CO2 emissions (per kilo of CO2) is over-stated by a factor of at least 2.
They also say that investment in railroads, by itself, is a poor way to reduce CO2 emissions.
> Too small mode switch for the investment?
More to the point, costs for use of the railroad network, at least in Sweden, is not high enough to compensate for the wear and tear on the infrastructure of same.
But they also point out that on average, railroad passenger ridership in Sweden has been rising since about 1970 by about 1.8% per year.
> Inability to penetrate certain areas? Sunk costs in extant transport?
In my opinion, a rail line generally serves the area through which it passes, and especially with high-speed rail and high-speed trainsets, there’s not much benefit to running the trains only intersecting lower-speed lines.
Back to the report, there is also a discussion of significant risk of cost overruns, based on other recent Swedish railroad projects, with an average overrun over about 28%. They also cite Bent Flyvbjerg’s work earlier this decade, and that there is an optimism bias of around 34% for European rail infrastructure projects.
Why Goteborg and not Malmo / Copehagen?
Danny Boy:
First, I don’t think you’re familiar with the actual definition of “hand-waving.”
Second, this is actually a relief. For a few days you had me thinking you were a worthy adversary. Your heavy reliance on ipse dixit claims, however, has convinced me otherwise. Your last entry offered a pretty good example:
“the fact is that humans raised the current CO2 levels to what they are. … you cannot hand-wave away from ‘facts’” (!)
You’ve resorted to “it just is!” which is fine with me, just don’t do it and then call me a hand-waver.
Can you link me to the study which explicitly measures “the number of people who deny facts”?
Apropos of your claims of “a small minority of the population: according to a Rasmussen poll this week, by a ratio of 46-38 percent, public AGW hysteria has dropped to the point now where the “natural causes” crowd now outnumbers the “give us your money and power and we’ll appease the climate gods” crowd. How ignorant are the great unwashed!
Chip,
Your inability to provide contrascience/pseudoscience/denialscience findings, testable hypotheses, data, literature, or evidence notwithstanding, you can wishy-wish that scientific findings are validated by taking a public poll all you want. Who cares. The hard-core denialist fraction is barely into the double digits, and is marginalized into not having access. Me, I don’t care that your mental makeup disallows you from apprehending basic facts.
Let us talk after the ACES Senate vote and see if the lobbyists of Big Coal and Big Oil succeeded in killing the bill and maintaining their profits. Because it is they who will do it, not willfully uninformed small segments of the public.
DS
spam queue.
prk166 wrote:
> Why Goteborg and not Malmo / Copehagen?
I think you will need to ask that question of the Swedish Railroads Administration (Banverket) on their Web site here.
My speculative answer would be that Gothenburg (Göteborg in Swedish) has a higher population than Malmö, and because the distance is shorter (Stockholm-Gothenburg is between 450 and 500 kilometers by automobile, but Stockholm-Malmö is over 600 kilometers).
These distances are relevant because the authors (correctly, in my opinion) point out that passenger trips by railroad of less than 400 kilometers are [at least in Sweden on its mainline railroads] faster than airline flights, but over 400 kilometers, very high railroad speeds are required if trains are going to be competitive with airline travel.
Dan —
(1) I will ignore your red herring about having failed to provide scientific literature in this forum. YOU bit at my Ordovician CO2 claim @14, saying it doesn’t matter because we’re now adapted to different CO2 levels. This of course did not refute my point, which was that this proves humans are not necessary for extreme CO2 levels.
(2) It is YOU who brought up the public support issue when you suggested AGW skeptics are among a “small minority of the population that denies facts” @18. I showed you a Rasmussen poll showing that a majority of Americans — whom you, in typically substantive form, dismiss as “deniers” of facts — reject the notion that AGW/CC are primarily anthropogenic. In other words, I showed you why you were wrong. You subsequently suggested I am using public support polls to justify my position. Sorry Dan — you were.
(3) I will again ignore your utterly vapid and self-aggrandizing ipse dixit claims.
Chip,
The point was that there is no explanation from denialists, pseudoskeptics, or contrascientists for recent warming, recent increases in forcings at the planetary surface, species movements, glacial retreat, Arctic ice thinning, and on and on. No testable hypotheses, no data, no equations, no models, no facts, no nothing. Zip. CO2 levels from hundreds of MYA is not an explanation, it is an utter failure of knowledge and understanding and a lack of education in the natural sciences.
Wrt polling, you don’t understand your own point. But it is immaterial, as decision-makers are going to vote on carbon legislation. CA has already passed land-use laws to reduce climate change footprints. It doesn’t matter that a small minority chooses or is psychologically prone to not believe in scientific findings when policy is crafted.
HTH.
DS
Dan — your ability to crap out whole paragraphs of vapid, unquantifiable handwaving is absolutely nonpareil. All on the locals’ dime, no doubt.
RESPONSE TO DAN’S ON-TOPIC CLAIMS
(1) No Dan, that was not the point. Bad! Reread #14, #17, #21, & #25. The point, which, again, was that humans are not necessary for extreme CO2 levels, has never changed. You cannot defeat this point, and would like to move onto something more defensible. How much longer can you dodge it? You can keep trying; just know I will keep hammering you over the head with the original point.
RESPONSES TO DAN’S OFF-TOPIC CLAIMS
(1) Regarding the “not science” claim: THE BURDEN OF PROOF IS ON CHICKEN LITTLE. There has been a deluge of literature and programming committed to defusing AGW hysteria; 32,000 scientists (including 9000+ Ph.Ds, which outnumbers the IPCC “consensus”) have signed the Oregon Petition; online resources abound; and work continues apace. Also, you know that this discussion is too big for the comments section of the AP.
(2) You’re right that public opinion polling on levels of AGW hysteria is scientifically unusable. Add to that fresh Rasmussen reports showing a majority of Americans do not believe AGW (now CC…) is primarily anthropogenic, and I’m not sure why you insist on referencing this population. Do you want to use it or not? LMK, K?
(3) You point to the most bankrupt, statist territory in the union (CA) as a model for climate god appeasement policy? Nice yardstick, Dan. Did you know they took on thousands of new state employees during a hiring freeze? Guess that means it’s a good idea…
that humans are not necessary for extreme CO2 levels, has never changed. You cannot defeat this point
There is no need. It is not germane, relevant, or rational for today’s situation and conditions.
32,000 scientists (including 9000+ Ph.Ds, which outnumbers the IPCC “consensusâ€)
Ah. You are an instant time-waster and have zero credibility when you use the OISM to back your claim.
Buh-bye now.
DS
Dan — unbelievable! Are you capable of anything but handwaving? The only contributions you have made from Day 1 were a series of unsupported declarations, while still indicting me for failing to publish scientific papers in the comments section, which you have indicated you wouldn’t believe anyway. Does it bother you that you are dozens of times more strident than even the people on your own side who, unlike you, actually have credentials? In my experience debating people, I have come to beware the dilettantes whose zeal far exceeds that of most experts. As somebody on the “nay” side, without the burden of proof, and who is not doctrinaire like you but who is merely left unmoved by the dearth of causal evidence and simultaneous backlog of politically-charged outcry, I think you — but not I — can safely be placed in that category.
Getting back on topic, it is germane precisely because, having happened with 20 times the severity but without humans in the past means it can happen again. For years, alarmists and the credulous alike have made the association of rising CO2 ppmv = anthropogenic AGW. The above fact, which is beyond contest, strikes a major blow to this simplistic line of thinking and inconveniently forces the would-be Green power-grabbers to refocus their efforts on more scientifically substantive pursuits like proving causation.
Let the record show that, despite the smugness and the facade of real scientific knowledge, Dan is wont to dismiss substantive, factually immutable claims (like the one above) with vapid handwaving. In #15 you came on strong with a tract of bio-babble, which sounded genuinely impressive until I realized it was all off-topic anyway, and thus amounted to the sort of sophistry I have come to expect from zealots like you whose dogmatism betrays their decidedly unscientific commitment to the cause.
For anyone not understanding – if you use the OISM as evidence, you are a dim bulb. Anyone arguing as above is so far from being able to speak intelligently to the issue that they are a time-waster.
DS