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"~2% of total emissions" .. "not that much" Do you have an idea of how many giga tonnes of CO2/year we're talking about here?
by 11235813213455 4y ago
"~2% of total emissions" .. "not that much"
Do you have an idea of how many giga tonnes of CO2/year we're talking about here?
- it_citizen 4y agoWhat 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.
- cagenut 4y agohttps://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/09/Emissions-by-sector-%E2%80%93-pie-charts.png https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/09/Emissions-by-sect... the short answer is "1"
- 11235813213455 4y agoOk, 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
- jeffbee 4y agoI 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.
- mercutio2 4y agoTrue 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.