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Aircraft Responsible For 2.5% of Global Carbon Dioxide Emissions
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.
Volcanoes produce less than 1% of the net CO2 emissions. Breathing produces no net CO2, since the carbon was taken out of the atmosphere in the last couple of years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E... .2 kg ppm cars .3 kg ppm
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However its a lot easier to rack up miles in an airplane.
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)!
But then where would you get your red herrings from?
1) Europe alone produces 10x CO2 emissions/year than all volcanic activity on the earth combined. Europe is only the 3rd biggest emitter behind China and the US
2) Volcanos are part of a balanced system. Their relatively constant CO2 contribution over the last few million years is easily handled by the earth's natural CO2 sinks
3) The CO2 you exhale was originally captured out of the atmosphere by plants, who will again capture what you're exhaling now (see: balanced system)
Side note: All the coal we are mining now is coming from 50 Million Years worth of carbon sequestration from a time when trees had evolved but no species had yet been able to digest them (wiki: Carboniferous). If nothing changes we can probably burn through all of that in a few centuries. You really think reversing a natural process at a rate 100,000 times faster isn't cause for concern?
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?
Greed is the root of all evil.