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cagenut3y ago· 1 in thread

https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/09/Emissions-by-sect...

the short answer is "1"

Ok, my own lifestyle is a half tonne per year, so all flights in a year emit 2 billion times more than me, so virtually 25% increase of the world population with my lifestyle as reference

jeffbee3y ago· 1 in thread

I agree with the other comment but I also believe in answering the question asked: global aviation peaked at just over 1 gigaton in 2019, before COVID-19 nuked the industry. It's trivial to figure out the carbon emissions because every kilo of aviation fuel sold emits a definite amount of CO2.

mercutio23y ago

True on the simple chemistry of combustion, but it’s also true that upper atmosphere combustion products may have a different climate forcing than sea level combustion.

There’s an argument I haven’t evaluated myself that even if the fuel was carbon neutral, high altitude combustion might have a residual forcing.

I think transoceanic travel is critical to human flourishing, so I definitely hope we can minimize that residual.

it_citizen3y ago

What would you do with a number of giga tons in a vacuum? I can't picture what a giga is, nor a ton of CO2. You probably cannot either.

What matters is how much it represents in relation with our total emissions (2%) or with other activities we also have to tackle to decide where to put our efforts first. (Or all at once whenever possible)

Therefore, I maintain what I say. 2% of the pie doesn't represent that much if we want to achieve net zero. But at some point we will have to tackle it.

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