How many miles and how much carbon will my journey take?

Question

I've no idea how to work this out with a fair degree of accuracy.

I'm flying to Estonia from London

Getting trains from there to St Petersburg

Train from there to Ulaanbaatar (trans-siberian express)

From there a train to Beijing, and then finally to Hong Kong.

I can find flight calcualtor websites and distance calculators - but nothing which will give me the distance by train.

Answer 1

Keep in mind a very significant part of your trip will be over electrified railways.  These have a much smaller carbon footprint than air flight, even the electricity comes from nasty coal.  

Diesel railway is about comparable to air.  Electrified railway can be 1/5 to 1/10 as much.

Answer 2

My carbon footprint is about the size of the Loch Ness monster. So I quit worrying about is and drove my Hummer to Wyoming and stayed guilt free. I am sick of these Liberal phonies that worship Al Gore and Mother Earth and have no clue how to think for themselves.

Answer 3

Forget it.

I tried paying for my fare with carbon, and they just won't take it.

Answer 4

Effectively none.  The trains and planes are going there anyway.  

Why not look for the "Trans Siberian Railway" on the net?



By the way, someone I know did the Vladivostok -Moscow train trip a few years before the USSR fell to bits.  From what he says, take your own soap, toilet roll and some food and be careful of thieves.  

Some crazy Australians who drove Beijing-Paris in 100 year old cars recently were given grief by Chinese police and army and were glad to get away.  Mongolia was good - people were friendly and helpful.  Things in parts of Russia and Siberia away from the main cities had got worse, not better since the end of the USSR they said.

Answer 5

Complicated trip, sounds interesting though. Cant imagine the train distance isnt available at the RR company's website, even if its in kilometers.

As for the carbon, who knows?? Would depend on how many ppl in the train or plane with you, divide the amount used by the number of passengers but I think you probably have more to worry about than that.