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Earth Transportation

Aircraft Responsible For 2.5% of Global Carbon Dioxide Emissions 232

jIyajbe writes: Christie Aschwanden of FiveThirtyEight.com reports that the world's aircraft are responsible for roughly 2.5% of global carbon dioxide emissions. The industry as a whole puts out more CO2 than most countries, and emissions are expected to grow significantly over the next few decades. She writes, "Planes don't just release carbon dioxide, they also emit nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides and black carbon, as well as water vapor that can form heat-trapping clouds... These emissions take place in the upper troposphere, where their effects are magnified. When this so-called radiative forcing effect is taken into account, aviation emissions produce about 2.7 times the warming effects of CO2 alone." A related article breaks down how much each airline pollutes, relative to the others. Alaska, Spirit, and Frontier are tied for the highest fuel efficiency score, while American beats out Allegiant Air and Sun Country for the lowest spot.
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Aircraft Responsible For 2.5% of Global Carbon Dioxide Emissions

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  • Vs Driving? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    How much greenhouse gas would be emitted if everybody drove their car, or took a boat vs. flying? Me thinks much more.

    Most people who take planes aren't going to take buses either. The main advantage is the speed.

    • How much greenhouse gas would be emitted if everybody drove their car, or took a boat vs. flying? Me thinks much more.

      Most people who take planes aren't going to take buses either. The main advantage is the speed.

      The point isn't to just stop flying. The point is, focusing all of your efficiency standards on automobiles is stupid.

      Those that support "Green" energy often have a very naive view of what exactly "Green" is. Solar panels are the answer to all of our problems... but they never consider the effects of silver mining and glass production of the panels. Hydroelectric is carbon neutral! But destroys vast swaths of the ecosystem in the process. Electric cars don't produce CO2! Yet 67% of our electricity comes fro

      • Re:Vs Driving? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Moof123 ( 1292134 ) on Friday January 02, 2015 @05:44PM (#48721081)

        Green fanboys and fangirls often suck at math, or at least lack the critical thinking to apply it. Often it undermines their arguments, often in laughable ways. My favorite forehead slapping example is of fanboys doing "green" remodels who rip out perfectly good counter tops and back splashes so they can install something that is "sustainable" or recycled. Boggles the mind. Driving to the local farm or farmer's market to "buy local" often is self defeating when you realize the modest amount of produce at a stand was driven maybe 100 miles that morning by a pickup truck that morning. Efficiencies of scale at large operations don't look like a warm fuzzy good thing, but often they are vastly less energy intensive per veggie than your backyard garden or even your farmer's market veggie.

        However, please don't assume that all those pushing for "green" solutions are unthinking green drones.

        Also, please include the costs of sticking to the course on fossil fuels. Currently our middle east policies, and their war costs, are usually not included in the cost of a gallon of gas. Should we have an Isreal foreign aid surcharge on a gallon of gas? How about a despot welfare fund surcharge?

        Solar is a good niche that fills a real need at a real time. Summer AC usage causes a peak in power usage in summer, in the afternoon, which lines up well (not perfectly) with solar's output. Solar looks to be a good 10-20% solution that complements new or existing power sources. Hydro is not perfect, having a lot of side impacts on the streams and rivers, but in the PNW it accounts for over half the power supply to my house. It has a huge advantage of being adjustable and can be the counter point to solar and wind, picking up the slack when the wind doesn't blow or the sun isn't shining, and saving its stored energy when those are cranking. We can also do a lot on the load side to move energy intensive activities to line up with power availability, but we need new standards and incentives to make the "smart" grid start living up to the hype.

        We can do better, and I would be all for trying to doing better at capturing the externalities to all energy sources. Petroleum should foot the bill for our middle east adventures, coal should better foot the bill for their extra high C02 emissions, nuclear should better shoulder the burden of waste disposal, etc. There are many sources of energy that would be more economically viable if the true costs were imposed on each source. I don't expect a single energy source to be the one true solution (thorium fixes everything!!! Not.). I do expect that we will be better remembered by history if we try harder before things get to any more of a crisis level.

      • Yes, hydro dams can and do destroy vast tracts of river ecosystem but they also create a vast ecosystem of lake, which while different cannot be ignored when discussing environmental impact. My hometown has a large area of swamps and wetlands that are over 100 years old directly attributable to an old dam that produced power for a long defunct mill. Remove the dam, restore the river and eliminate several thousands of acres of wetlands. Not a win in my book.

        Not saying that dams are all good but dams and h

    • by Alomex ( 148003 )

      You got it. Airline travel is more efficient per mile traveled than all other forms of transportation practically available in North America. In Europe train is an alternative and people massively use trains over short haul flights i.e. less than 1,000km.

      • by Toth ( 36602 )

        If the oceans put about 70 gigatonnes of co2 and land puts about 70 giga tonnes wouldn't aviation's 500 mt (according to TFA) be less than 1%?

         

    • How much greenhouse gas would be emitted if everybody drove their car, or took a boat vs. flying? Me thinks much more.

      That may be what you thinks, but have you checked?

      http://environment.about.com/o... [about.com]

      That says no, cars would be worse. I'd expect boats would be too, if everyone took their own.

    • Commercial air travel runs roughly 50 mpg per passenger. It also has the advantage of flying mostly as the crow flies, so there are a few more percent advantage if include the jogs and winding nature of roadways.

      Traveling solo is more "green" on a plane, while a packed mini-van can readily beat a plane on a purely mpg basis. Trains and buses should be best, but they are also the slowest option. So unless fuel prices exploded, I don't see them ever being the wave of the future.

      My interest is very much pea

  • In the past visions of an utopian future, is based on having a Portable, Safe and Affordable Energy source.

    While CO2 causing global warming was know back in these future prediction, the scope wasn't really understood. Oil Was very cheap, and the Idea of Nuclear being good for everyone was still popular.

    Flying takes a lot of energy. We never solved the problem of Portable, Safe, Clean (A new modern condition), and Affordable Energy. Back to the Future had Mr. Fusion, If we had Mr. Fusion today I could see

    • by Richy_T ( 111409 )

      Flying isn't too bad. I once did a quick calculation that put flying a small Cessna at using about 2x the fuel of a regular car for the same point-to-point distance. Most flights are typically hundreds of people so I wouldn't be surprised if it broke even well before having 100 people on a flight. If this were not the case, it wouldn't be so cheap to fly (look at ticket prices. Most of that is services and taxes).

      • by buck-yar ( 164658 ) on Friday January 02, 2015 @04:44PM (#48720623)

        From some website:

        A plane like a Boeing 747 uses approximately 1 gallon of fuel (about 4 liters) every second. Over the course of a 10-hour flight, it might burn 36,000 gallons (150,000 liters). According to Boeing's Web site, the 747 burns approximately 5 gallons of fuel per mile (12 liters per kilometer).

        This sounds like a tremendously poor miles-per-gallon rating! But consider that a 747 can carry as many as 568 people. Let's call it 500 people to take into account the fact that not all seats on most flights are occupied. A 747 is transporting 500 people 1 mile using 5 gallons of fuel. That means the plane is burning 0.01 gallons per person per mile. In other words, the plane is getting 100 miles per gallon per person! The typical car gets about 25 miles per gallon, so the 747 is much better than a car carrying one person, and compares favorably even if there are four people in the car. Not bad when you consider that the 747 is flying at 550 miles per hour (900 km/h)!

        • by Richy_T ( 111409 )

          Yep. And like I say, we're talking point-to-point. In many cases, a plane will significantly less distance to get from point A to point B as a car would.

        • by sound+vision ( 884283 ) on Friday January 02, 2015 @08:34PM (#48722103) Journal
          The fuel economy might be comparable, but we are talking about emissions, not fuel economy. Cars have catalytic converters that scrub all kinds of nasty stuff, stuff worse than CO2, from the emissions. Jets have no such thing, the fuel is combusted in open air, and all the emissions are propelled out of the back, no filtration.

          Additionally, as mentioned in these Slashdot comments, the pollutants are more damaging when released at 35,000 feet than at ground level.
    • Funny how things turn out, isn't it? Instead of having flying cars to make it easier for you to reach the world, we got the internet to make it easier for the world to come to you. No contest which strategy uses less energy.

  • by PPH ( 736903 ) on Friday January 02, 2015 @03:16PM (#48719849)

    Figure it that way (even with the multiplier for altitude effects). Then get back to me.

    Atmosfair, a German organization that sells "offsets"

    I thought I disabled ads.

    P.S. In my day, we called them indulgences [wikipedia.org], not offsets.

  • According to the infographic in the article, 20 people running their refrigerators for a year produces more CO2 than a return flight.
  • Clearly not one more minute should be spent worrying about the polluting effects of aviation, but rather ground transport, industry and power generation are where the focus should be.

    Author can't comprehend math and magnitudes..

    • If AA, one of the largest airlines with one of the worst scores could achieve the number that Spirit (one of the smallest airlines with the best numbers) could, perhaps 2.5% of global emissions could become 2.25% or 2%.

      If a half percent of all global CO emissions could be eliminated, that'd be noteworthy, and a good start.

      • No. Wrong.

        Know this, Spirit airlines has all of 65 airplanes. AA has a thousand.

        Think again.

        • You've got 1,000 airplanes, and they're the lest CO efficient ones in all the skies. If you can operate them with the CO efficiency of the company with only 65 planes (who does nearly the best), then you stand to make a huge impact in the pool.

          All planes together average 1
          There's, say, 1,000 AA planes all averaging 1.2 "bad CO's" per year, because they're the worst
          There's, say, 2,000 other planes together averaging .9, the best 65 from Spirit only produce .8

          As such, you all come together to produce 3000 ba

    • by LWATCDR ( 28044 )

      This part is more interesting
      " they also emit nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides "
      Those actually reflect light and lower the effects of greenhouse gases. Of course jets are actively reducing those emissions.

      • If you want to talk about sulfur that would be the cargo ships doing that. Airplanes are a distraction, the polluters in this world are surface transport, power and industry.

  • by Jim Sadler ( 3430529 ) on Friday January 02, 2015 @03:21PM (#48719911)
    Aviation does cause way too much pollution as well as attacking all of our immune systems due to the ability to transport bacteria and virii all over the world at high speeds. Prior to avaiation germs were far more localized and therfore people did not have to fight off the large numbers of attacks that they now must do. Shipping as well as cruise ships also are major polluters and also transport diseases and even invasive wild life species and tragedies like oil spills. It may be time to halt aviation as well as commercial shipping of all kinds.
    • by Jaime2 ( 824950 )

      Sure... and have a substantially poorer quality of living because you can't get nutrition you need during the part of the year that your part of the world is too cold to farm.

      Aviation only seems to cause way too much pollution if you don't consider the alternatives.

    • Shipping as well as cruise ships also are major polluters

      Yup. Something like 4.5% of all direct CO2 emissions, give or take. So about twice as bad as air travel, but probably 10 times simpler to fix than for aircraft because of easier constraints on weight and much less stringent safety requirements, etc.

      Of course, aircraft are basically going to be switching to carbon-neutral* bio-kerosene in the next two decades or so anyway, so the argument against air travel is kind of moot.

      *Assuming the energy used t

    • ...as well as attacking all of our immune systems due to the ability to transport bacteria and virii all over the world at high speeds....

      Thereby also transporting both resistance to those same bateria and effective community procedures, helping to improve world health in the long run. Note that the black plague propagated quite effectively around the world at walking speed.

    • by LWATCDR ( 28044 )

      The Unabomber cabin is that way ---->

  • Quick, emergency... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Richy_T ( 111409 ) on Friday January 02, 2015 @03:24PM (#48719933) Homepage

    Let's have a conference about how to address this issue and fly in all the delegates. And their entourages. Don't forget them limos.

  • The mode of transportation that is chosen when travelling very long distances. The article even gives an example where Flying from Denver to NYC results in a net gain over choosing to travel the same route in a Toyota Prius.

    The summary seems to suggest that you should not fly if you want to be environmentally friendly, but the opposite is true.

  • Sigh really this headline and story really indicates why this issue has fallen into the realm of the slogan repeating idiots.

    If you are actually worried about CO2 emissions and not about controlling people's lives, the concern is how much CO2 is emitted moving a person from place to place, not the bulk number for any given industry or industry segment. You might as well try to rile people up by publishing comparisons of CO2 emissions of buses vs cars. That however wouldn't gain any traction because people w

    • by itzly ( 3699663 )
      Per passenger mile isn't really fair either. Every few years, I fly a few thousand miles for vacation. If flying was not an option, I'd never consider driving a few thousand miles. Instead, I'd find a closer destination.
  • by peter303 ( 12292 ) on Friday January 02, 2015 @03:29PM (#48719977)
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E... [wikipedia.org]
    planes about .2 kg ppm cars .3 kg ppm
    However its a lot easier to rack up miles in an airplane.
  • This article only takes into account direct emissions. It neglects the CO2 emissions due to the energy used in the manufacture of said airplanes, which is proportional to their cost.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    So having read the articles, a couple things are clear:
    1. Their comparison metric includes "flight frequency per unit of fuel burned", which I think causes their comparison to be backwards. Modern jet engines are most efficient at high altitude and cruising speed, lowest efficiency at low altitude and low speed. Maximum thrust (fuel burn) occurs on takeoff, so more flights=more takeoffs=more fuel burned.
    The list favors airlines with short hops and appears to penalize long-haul airlines. Long haul airlines

  • Already there are military applications for fossil free jet fuel, and as the technology scales, this will likely make greater contributions to civilian applications. http://www.usatoday.com/story/... [usatoday.com]
    • I guess you didn't read the reference you posted;

      Experts have been working on the idea for almost a decade, Discover notes; it could be commercially viable within 10 years, the Navy says. Right now, however, researchers are showing off the technique using a model plane.

      That technology is not available yet.

  • Why are we obsessing over an industry that

    1. is making every effort to improve efficiency (airplanes are 30% more efficient than they were only a decade ago or so),
    2. is difficult to replace since it is not like you can walk across the Atlantic
    3. is more efficient per mile traveled than a Honda Civic
    4. while ignoring an extremely inefficient means of transportation, i.e. trucks, which can readily be replaced by a much more efficient one i.e. railways?

    Sorry folks, but all this attention to airline emissions has astr

    • by PPH ( 736903 )

      Why are we obsessing over an industry

      Because TFA is shilling for outfits selling "offsets". The aviation industry has money. Al Gore Inc wants a cut. But the only way to create demand is by generating guilt.

  • Long distances == lots of CO2.

    I've crunched the numbers for various trips I commonly take. My share of CO2 emissions on a trip from my home in Boston to Sacramento California is going to be around 750 kg +/- 50 kg whether I (hypothetically!) drive (in my 34MPG highway car) or fly. Airplane CO2/distance figures overlap automobile considerably (185 - 277 grams/mile for air travel). Air travel CO2/mile is higher for short trips, but lower for longer trips because you amortize the CO2 emitted in takeoff over

  • by goodmanj ( 234846 ) on Friday January 02, 2015 @04:26PM (#48720457)

    In our efforts to decarbonize our society, aircraft should be the last to go. There's no renewable technology that's likely to match what a passenger jet can do (try to design a battery-powered Airbus. You won't get far.) Also, the amount of carbon dioxide they emit is pretty minor, relatively speaking. I'm a pretty big global warming doomsayer, but even I want to live in a world where I can fly to the other side of the planet in 24 hours if I really have to.

    • I'm a pretty big global warming doomsayer, but even I want to live in a world where I can fly to the other side of the planet in 24 hours if I really have to.

      I'm a vegeterian, but I want to eat meat whenever I want.
      PROTIP : Nobody really *needs* to be on the other side of the planet in 24 hours.

  • Alaska, Spirit, and Frontier are tied for the highest fuel efficiency score, while American beats out Allegiant Air and Sun Country for the lowest spot.

    So American has beaten every other airline by producing more pollution than anyone? You know what this means...

    We're number one! We're number one! You! Ess! Ey! You! Ess! Ey! You! Ess! Ey!

  • 2.5%, huh -- I'm not impressed. So basically if we all stopped flying it would have just a tiny effect on net anthropogenic CO2 production. Sounds like we should concentrate our efforts on other more profligate industries first and worry about building electric airliners in 50 years.

  • Maybe not, but if this is true then shoudn't we be focusing our efforts towards a replacement for jet engines that burn fossil fuel?
  • by TomGreenhaw ( 929233 ) on Friday January 02, 2015 @06:35PM (#48721447)
    There are a lot of industrial processes that generate *a lot* of CO2. A quick check on Wikipedia indicates that 5% of man made CO2 is from the manufacture and use of concrete. Steel production is another big one.

    Industrial processes are something we can improve without unbearable cost increases in the foreseeable future.

    In the transportation sector, marine shipping accounts for 14% of man made CO2 and mostly through the combustion of the dirtiest bunker fuel. Nuclear powered ships are an obvious solution.

    Its hard to imagine any technology that we can realistically apply in the next decade to reduce CO2 from aircraft in any meaningful amounts. Why bother with aircraft when there is so much other obvious low hanging fruit?
  • So this basically means that the entire airline industry has a negligible effect on CO2 emissions and any improvements would also have almost zero impact? They could basically plant a few trees and become carbon neutral?

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