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.

Comments

Re:Don't mess with my jetset lifestyle

[lgw]

That's just it: terrorists don't hate airplanes. But not only does the TSA do nothing to make air travel safer, even if it did it would be doing nothing to reduce the threat of terrorism. But even in some fantasy land where the TSA was actually helping it's not worth it. Dignity matters. Training people to put up with government strip searches even when there's no apparent threat is appalling. It's a fucking totalitarian nightmare, and every year it kills a large number of people because they drive instead of fly, and driving is the most dangerous thing most of us do (there's a CMU study behind that that came up on /. a while back).