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Human breathing produces about 2.5 billion tons of CO2 per year. Aviation is just under 1 billion tons per year. Aviation is one of the great wonders of the mo
by zaroth 7y ago
Human breathing produces about 2.5 billion tons of CO2 per year. Aviation is just under 1 billion tons per year.
Aviation is one of the great wonders of the modern world. The carbon it produces is essentially inconsequential.
Compared to the wealth, knowledge, peace, and prosperity that international travel directly supports, calls to curtail plane travel in order to reduce CO2 IMO are seriously misguided.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- cjbprime 7y agoThe tons produced by aviation are produced in higher concentration in air, and produced nearer to the atmosphere at high altitude, making them more dangerous than the tons produced by human breathing. You can't just compare the total.
- cesarb 7y ago> Human breathing produces about 2.5 billion tons of CO2 per year. The carbon emitted in human breathing came from the food, and the carbon in the food came from the atmosphere. It's a closed cycle. It doesn't matter if it's a billion or two, an identical amount of carbon had to be captured first.
- zaroth 7y agoWell technically it’s all a closed cycle. Humans consume carbon sinks, whether it’s for glucose or joules, to survive. The carbon sinks we consume to produce glucose do tend to be ones that pulled their carbon from to atmosphere in the last couple years, rather than millions of years ago. And I agree, moving fresh carbon between atmosphere, organisms, and back into the atmosphere doesn’t have a net effect that builds up over time like burning fossil fuels. So it wasn’t a great comparison.