* cars can be powered by carbon-free energy. There's not much current prospect for planes.
* planes also do great harm from non-CO2 emissions:
"The climate effect of non-CO2 emissions from aviation is much greater than the equivalent from other modes of transport, as these non-CO2 greenhouse gases formed at higher altitudes persist for longer than at the surface and also have a stronger warming potential"
Define disproportionate and "frequent flyer". If you've ever been on an airplane before, you probably count as a frequent flyer to most of the world's population.
> [The airline industry] says the annual 860 million tonnes of CO2 the industry currently generates is only 2% of world emissions.
Is that correct? I have always heard that flying was one of the absolute worst things you could do as far as generating CO2 and that a single international flight is like the same as a year of normal living in terms of generating CO2.
If that's the case, where is the bulk of emissions coming from?
> Its also one of the reasons that despite private planes being one of the biggest contributors to climate change nothing will ever be done about it.
Aviation as a whole is responsible for 3.5% of climate change [0]
So while the impact on a per-person is very high, it's a tiny amount compared to the mass impact of international shipping, heating, and even commercial planes.
> The global aviation industry produces around 2% of all human-induced carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Aviation is responsible for 12% of CO2 emissions from all transports sources, compared to 74% from road transport.
> For example airplanes emit tons of CO2, but if the same 300 people in a plane drove the same distance it could be much worse.
Technically true, however airplanes provoke a rebound effect. By making travel so efficient and fast, it makes people travel more. If airplanes didn't exist all people would simply travel less, not drive more.
> per passenger-mile, flying is much less polluting than driving a car, even after you account for the fact that pollution in the stratosphere is more damaging. If getting rid of air travel results in more people driving across the country, that makes the greenhouse worse.
Flying enables burning more fuel to go farther in the same amount of time.
Your comparison is simply bogus and structured to favor flying.
In a world without flying, those travel miles don't get replaced by automobile miles. They simply don't occur for the most part.
For such comparisons you should really hold the travel time constant, not the distance.
> Consider a world where every human traveled by plane like you do and where also every human used recycling as you do. Would you prefer living in that world?
According to the above article, one would prefer that.
> The trend has continued so that in 2010, flying burned just 2,691 BTU per passenger mile—an improvement of 74 percent since 1970. That was 43 percent better than driving the average car, which gets about 21.5 miles per gallon (4,218 BTU per passenger mile)
> I am always curious what happened to the realization that air travel is a multitude worse than any other type of air pollution because it essentially directly delivers harmful particles right into the highest strata of our atmosphere. Is that no longer a concern with the jet-setting, globe trotting liberals?
"The IPCC has estimated that aviation is responsible for around 3.5% of anthropogenic climate change, a figure which includes both CO2 and non-CO2 induced effects. The IPCC has produced scenarios estimating what this figure could be in 2050. The central case estimate is that aviation’s contribution could grow to 5% of the total contribution by 2050 if action is not taken to tackle these emissions, though the highest scenario is 15%."
So, it's a concern, but far from the largest. There have been pretty significant advances in fuel efficiency, lighter aircraft, stuffing more people into a single plane, etc.
> The IPCC has estimated that aviation is responsible for around 3.5 percent of anthropogenic climate change, a figure which includes both CO2 and non-CO2 induced effects. The IPCC has produced scenarios estimating what this figure could be in 2050. The central case estimate is that aviation's contribution could grow to five percent of the total contribution by 2050 if action is not taken to tackle these emissions, though the highest scenario is 15 percent.
As I said, people tend to overstate the actual impact of aviation.
No. Air travel is about 5% of GHG emissions. A lot of the remaining 95% can be gotten rid of without giving up any quality of life. We can keep air travel, no problem.
The data does not support the common opinion that airplanes are terrible for the environment. Their total contribution to for example CO2 is tiny compared to industry and electricity generation.
Somehow the climate activists have decided to make a lot of noise about flying but it's mostly unfounded. They go as far as using very old models of planes in their calculations (e.g. a 737-400 model) and claiming that's the amount of CO2 per passenger of all air travel. While that model is out of use by the airline for at least 15 years already. It was designed in 1985.
So beware of the data and tricks like this when you're told flying is so bad for the environment.
> A single plane ride from NYC to LA emits about 20% of the greenhouse gases your vehicle does each YEAR.
I can't immediately tell from the source NYT cites, but is that 20% of one person's vehicle emission, or 20% of the aggregate vehicle emission of all passengers?
If it's the former, that might not be a great way to frame the problem since cross-country flights typically have hundreds of passengers.
"Over all, air travel accounts for about 2.5 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions — a far smaller share than emissions from passenger cars or power plants."
2.5% means we should focus on reducing somewhere else in the near term.
This is true on a relative basis: flying across the US puts out a lot of CO2 for a single person.
But on an absolute scale, it's pretty tiny: 2% of total CO2, 12% of transportation CO2.
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