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China The Belt And Road Initiative

Train starts UK to China run

Unread postby EdwinSm » Mon 10 Apr 2017, 10:11:59

The article positions the train between ships (slow) and planes (expensive), so I suppose if it removes some airfreight then it will save a little bit of fuel.

The operators say it is cheaper to send goods by train than by air and faster than by sea.


http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-39549077
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Re: Train starts UK to China run

Unread postby Subjectivist » Mon 10 Apr 2017, 13:05:42

Actually eliminating air freight would save a heck of a lot of fuel. For something like an organ transplant, okay, but for sneakers for a grand opening sale, not so much.
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Re: Train starts UK to China run

Unread postby dolanbaker » Mon 10 Apr 2017, 17:00:35

GASMON wrote:For every full train from UK to China there will 50 full ones in the opposite direction !!!!!!!

Brit15

It's not quite that unbalanced, a lot of scrap and waste goes to China for recycling.
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Re: Train starts UK to China run

Unread postby godq3 » Thu 13 Apr 2017, 11:58:08

Subjectivist wrote:Actually eliminating air freight would save a heck of a lot of fuel. For something like an organ transplant, okay, but for sneakers for a grand opening sale, not so much.

Nothing would be saved. It would just be burned elsewhere. People want things. People's needs are limitless (almost everybody would want to win a lottery, top sportsmen earn over 10 million dollars a year, etc). To make/do "things", energy is needed. So when we save energy in one place, it will be used elsewhere. Generally, price machanisms directs where energy is used. Whole world economy is just a scheme, to use available energy as fast as possible.
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Re: Train starts UK to China run

Unread postby Tanada » Wed 11 Oct 2017, 03:10:02

godq3 wrote:
Subjectivist wrote:Actually eliminating air freight would save a heck of a lot of fuel. For something like an organ transplant, okay, but for sneakers for a grand opening sale, not so much.

Nothing would be saved. It would just be burned elsewhere. People want things. People's needs are limitless (almost everybody would want to win a lottery, top sportsmen earn over 10 million dollars a year, etc). To make/do "things", energy is needed. So when we save energy in one place, it will be used elsewhere. Generally, price mechanisms directs where energy is used. Whole world economy is just a scheme, to use available energy as fast as possible.


You can say that about any and every energy conservation measure. If you really believe that you should not have insulation in your home because it just slows down the energy use for heating and cooling and the energy you save just gets used by someone else, right?
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Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
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Re: Train starts UK to China run

Unread postby toolpush » Wed 11 Oct 2017, 04:11:38

30 by 40ft containers, and only one loco, seems a very short train for such a long journey. I know Europe is mainly set up for passenger rail traffic, therefore shorter faster trains, but only 30 containers still seems short.
I wonder if they can extend the train as it hit Eastern Europe?

The other thing, that looks like a diesel electric. I can't see it being the loco pulling the train through the Chunnel, unless they hook up an electric loco on the front for the underground haul?

On a side note, I tried to book a rail trip from Moscow to China via Kazakhstan in the mid 80's. For some reason we were not allowed to go that way. We ended up going via Mongolia instead. It was just ahead of my time I suppose.
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Re: Train starts UK to China run

Unread postby dolanbaker » Wed 11 Oct 2017, 13:16:45

GASMON wrote:All trains are electric through the Channel tunnel - diesels (due to fumes) are banned, though they may be hauled through dead.

30 x 40' containers is about right for such trains in the UK, we do not have mile long freight trains like the USA !! 775m long is the max train length on just a few UK lines. - Though they may well be longer on the continent.

Gas

I don't think there are many marshalling yards left on the UK rail network, let alone ones that are that long.
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China The Belt And Road Initiative

Unread postby onlooker » Mon 04 Jun 2018, 13:58:18

Wow, the hubris and ignorance of mankind on full display
https://nexusmedianews.com/chinas-globa ... a40e2d1000

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) simply blows out of the water anything else that’s been attempted in human history. As currently planned, it will involve some 7,000 separate infrastructure or extractive industry projects scattered across 70-odd nations, with a total price-tag of $8 trillion. It’ll span half the planet — from Asia to Africa, Europe and the South Pacific. It’ll affect every facet of human endeavor, in one way or another. In biodiversity and environmental terms, again, it’s the worst thing we’ve seen anywhere — and in the past forty years, I and my colleagues have seen some pretty horrific stuff in the Amazon, Africa, Southeast Asia and the South Pacific.

I actually think the BRI will have a greater net impact on ecosystems than it does global warming, at least for the duration of this century. [But it] will also be a major contributor to global warming, by promoting massive land-use changes, deforestation, industrial and transport emissions, and emissions from project construction. It’ll use more concrete — a major source of greenhouse gas emissions — than all pre-existing infrastructure projects on the planet.

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Re: On the fast track to doom

Unread postby Newfie » Mon 04 Jun 2018, 14:12:40

The down side seems so obvious. :cry:
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Re: On the fast track to doom

Unread postby Ibon » Mon 04 Jun 2018, 15:36:08

This very nice young Panamanian in his early 30's visited me this past weekend. 12 years ago he went to China as a student and still lives there. He started an import co that imports Panamanian products for the Chinese market; coffee, cacao, processed banana chips, pineapples, etc. He just opened a tourist company and checked out Mount Totumas as he is putting together the first tourist group of wealthy chinese to make tours to Panama. He mentioned there are close to 200 million upper middle class Chinese with loads of disposable income wanting to go on holidays to remote places because of the hussle and bussle of urban life.

I already blocked off 2 weeks for the next high season for his groups. Chinese tourists here we come.

He mentioned from his contacts in China talk of huge infrastructure projects here in Panama. CHina wants to build a high speed rail from Panama City to David, an industrial center to bring factories that will serve the South American Market. Etc. etc. etc.

As the USA wallows in its divisive self indulgence and putting up trade tariffs and retracting from globalization the Chinese are doing brick and mortar work all around the world.

All those billions and billions of dollars of trade surplus being used to build a global enterprise of business ventures spearheaded with infrastructure projects in all these developing countries.

This is not digital money, this is not financial shinannigans, this is not hedge funds and quantitative easing, this is not catering to lobbyists and making consumers pay fortunes for drugs and products. This is nuts and bolts infrastructure projects.

The USA is broke and has no money to undertake anything similar. Our wealth in smoke and mirrors. Chinese wealth is real and based on 2 decades of immense trade surpluses with practically every country on the planet.

Where is this heading?????

I am going to be using our table saw and left over tropical wood from our constructions and make a few dozen chop sticks to get ready for the next high season.

Maybe one of these wealthy Chinese will buy us out when we are too old to go up the 4x4 road?

This is not the fast track to Doom. I see opportunity. Major opportunity. And I will milk it for all its worth.
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Re: On the fast track to doom

Unread postby onlooker » Mon 04 Jun 2018, 15:51:34

Interesting Ibon, how in the short term it will be a boom to some including your deserving and honorable haven in the cloud forest of Panama. But in the longer term think of all the extra CO2 emissions and the further taking over of natural habitat by human habitat and consequent loss of Biodiversity. This in turn leading to what sort of planet we are leaving to our descendants and survivors. Does not the resiliency of Nature have limits? And certainly some resources are finite and limited
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Re: On the fast track to doom

Unread postby Newfie » Mon 04 Jun 2018, 21:34:57

Ibon,
I agree with Onlooker, it’s the beginning of the end for your Eden. Sorry.
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Re: On the fast track to doom

Unread postby Ibon » Mon 04 Jun 2018, 22:28:08

Newfie wrote:Ibon,
I agree with Onlooker, it’s the beginning of the end for your Eden. Sorry.


Oh No. I have some blankets. Does anyone have a good pathogen?
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Re: On the fast track to doom

Unread postby Revi » Wed 06 Jun 2018, 11:05:56

I used to live in Guatemala, in the cloud forest. It's as good a place as any to witness what's going to happen. At least there's a chance of eating tortillas and beans for a while. I wouldn't worry Ibon. We're just as screwed as you are when the excrement hits the wind machine! I have a fantasy of a place to live post-peak too. I think it will get really bad around the time of my expiration date, so what the heck!
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Re: On the fast track to doom

Unread postby onlooker » Thu 07 Jun 2018, 20:31:38

Revi wrote:I used to live in Guatemala, in the cloud forest. It's as good a place as any to witness what's going to happen. At least there's a chance of eating tortillas and beans for a while. I wouldn't worry Ibon. We're just as screwed as you are when the excrement hits the wind machine! I have a fantasy of a place to live post-peak too. I think it will get really bad around the time of my expiration date, so what the heck!
Funny, guys. From what is approaching, makes one think you can run but you can't hide :P
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Re: On the fast track to doom

Unread postby Plantagenet » Thu 07 Jun 2018, 20:53:28

Ibon wrote: there are close to 200 million upper middle class Chinese with loads of disposable income wanting to go on holidays to remote places because of the hussle and bussle of urban life.

I already blocked off 2 weeks for the next high season for his groups. Chinese tourists here we come.......
I am going to be using our table saw and left over tropical wood from our constructions and make a few dozen chop sticks to get ready for the next high season.

Maybe one of these wealthy Chinese will buy us out when we are too old to go up the 4x4 road?

This is not the fast track to Doom. I see opportunity. Major opportunity. And I will milk it for all its worth.


Good luck with your Chinese tourist boom. But lets not pretend it isn't one more tiny push down the fast track to doom.

---------------------

I'll never forget back in the early days of the IPCC when I was working in Bern, Switzerland on some of the paleo-climate data associated with huge volcanic eruptions. It was apparent even then that air travel was a major contributor to CO2 flux to the atmosphere, and concomitant global warming. Some of the IPCC worked up a proposal to curtail air travel to mitigate global warming, and made a presentation while I was there in Bern. They suggested that to start every person should be limited to one air trip within their home country every 5 years, one air trip in Europe every 10 years, and one intercontinental air trip every 20 years. Needless to say I was taken aback by this, as I had just travelled from Alaska to Switzerland by air to work with the IPCC, and I was averaging about 1-3 intercontinental trips every year, mostly as part of my job for my scientific work. I was about 50 times over their proposed limit on individual air travel. almost all because of my travel for work.

I realized right then that this problem was essentially not solvable on an individual level. If people's jobs require them to travel, then they are going to have to travel. And if Chinese tourists want to fly from Beijing across the Pacific to Mt. Toutamas to see Butterflies on a mountain in Panama, then they are going to do that.

The only way to cut CO2 is not rely on individuals all simultaneously deciding not to travel anymore, but to mandate restrictions and limits from the top.

And that hasn't happened yet. AND, after seeing all the MSM media spin and PR Sham associated with the fraudulent Paris Climate Accords, I now doubt that it ever will. We aren't going to fix climate change. The Paris Accords showed that our leaders are going to put on a bit show and lie and pretend we've fixed global warming.....and then just go on as before with BAU.

IMHO we are indeed on the fast track to doom. We might as get out the popcorn and enjoy the show.

Image
Wow! That was pretty good doom! Oooooh...look at that doom happening over there! Holy Kreist...did you see how much sea ice melting this year? Ohmigod...the forest fires are starting up again across the west....damn the rate of sea level rise went up again...etc.etc. etc.
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Re: On the fast track to doom

Unread postby Ibon » Thu 07 Jun 2018, 21:29:20

I am a lifetime Platinum member with American Airlines having surpassed 3 million miles already back in 2004 after 20 years of extensive business travel when I sold my business and exited the world of commerce. Now I only get in an airplane once or twice a year for short trips back to the USA but our little reserve here is increasingly becoming a world class destination drawing hundreds to get in airplanes to come visit. So direct or indirect my carbon footprint puts me in the top 1% egregious contributors of the problem. I know that. The irony to own a reserve and share wildlife with folks from all over the world while their travel to get here imperils our biosphere. I can't resolve this.
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