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[–] 6 points 1 year ago (9 children)

Glorious coal for scenic steam locomotives. It’s a win-win

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  • [+] 3 points 1 year ago (9 children)
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    In theory, you could make a carbon-neutral coal-burning steam locomotive. You would need to make synthetic coal out of atmospherically-captured CO2. But in theory it would be possible...

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  • [+] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)
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    And what's wrong with that? Who says the coal has to be a net source of power?

    Synthetic fuels are actually a pretty viable method of decarbonizing, especially for hard-to-decarbonize applications like aviation. Sure, you don't get net energy out of them, but who cares? Thanks to dirt cheap solar, our civilization has stupidly abundant access to energy. It's only portable energy or energy when we want it that costs a lot. But people have seriously proposed making even gasoline from atmospherically derived carbon. Sure, it's just a fancy battery. But the Joules/dollar you get from the grid is so much cheaper than what you get from gasoline that it may be worth it.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Copilot’s deep think says it would take a 2K passenger train to be more environmentally friendly than 2K electric cars, given a coal-steam train and electric cars recharged by a coal fired power plant.

    But that’s irrelevant, electric cars lose the coolness factor against steam trains. Choo-choo electric drivers!

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  • [+] 0 points 1 year ago* (4 children)
  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago* (3 children)

    Well I don’t know anyone who works in either designing mass transportation nor makes environmental impact analysis, so no one could give me an accurate guess, hence why I specified that I asked.

    I cannot express the depth of disappointment i feel here.

    I even let it ‘think’ some extra time, come on

    I sincerely hope you are never responsible for so much as brunch

    I’ll make it my goal to ensure I’m supervising every single brunch you’re going to for the rest of our lives

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  • [+] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)
  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Too much work for shitposting after work, don’t you think?

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  • [+] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)
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    A baseless answer is a baseless answer regardless of origin though. I'd argue more thought went into getting the LLM to give me an estimate that it would've if I just typed "yeah 600 passengers on a coal train are probably better". But hey, do feel free to hate on LLMs

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