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'Worse Than Anyone Expected': Air Travel Emissions Vastly Outpace Predictions
Greenhouse gas emissions from commercial air travel are growing at a faster clip than predicted in previous, already dire, projections, according to new research — putting pressure on airline regulators to take stronger action as they prepare for a summit next week.
The United Nations aviation body forecasts that airplane emissions of carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas, will reach just over 900 million metric tons in 2018, and then triple by 2050.
But the new research, from the International Council on Clean Transportation, found that emissions from global air travel may be increasing more than 1.5 times as fast as the U.N. estimate. The researchers analyzed nearly 40 million flights around the world last year.
"Airlines, for all intents and purposes, are becoming more fuel efficient. But we're seeing demand outstrip any of that," said Brandon Graver, who led the new study. "The climate challenge for aviation is worse than anyone expected."
Airlines in recent years have invested in lighter, more fuel-efficient aircraft, and have explored powering their planes with biofuel.
Over all, air travel accounts for about 2.5 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions — a far smaller share than emissions from passenger cars or power plants. Still, one study found that the rapid growth in plane emissions could mean that by 2050, aviation could take up a quarter of the world's "carbon budget," or the amount of carbon dioxide emissions permitted to keep global temperature rise to within 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.
[...] The decision by Greta Thunberg, a young climate activist, to sail across the Atlantic rather than travel by air ahead of her speech at the United Nations next week, has refocused attention on aviation's role in causing climate change and its consequences, including sea-level rise and more intense heat waves, hurricanes, flooding and drought.
Climate protesters have said they plan to gather in Montreal next week, where airline regulators are set to hold their own summit.
William Raillant-Clark, a spokesman for the U.N. aviation body, stood by its emissions projection, which he said was "the most up-to-date" and provided "a clear picture on the future environmental trends." He added that the group "endorses and welcomes wholeheartedly" calls for the aviation industry to address climate change with greater urgency.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ilPapa on Sunday September 22 2019, @04:36AM (6 children)
I'm doing my part: I've stopped using air travel for anything except overseas travel. So instead of dozens of trips in an airplane every year, I make maybe one round trip. I'd much rather hop on a train or drive my PZEV myself.
Anyway, air travel has in my lifetime gone from a wonderful way to travel to the absolute worst. Greyhounds are more comfortable than most airline seats. I used to love flying, and my wife was a stewardess for a European airline when I met her (she says, "air hostess", but we know better). Now it's the pits. The airlines seem to want to make it as uncomfortable as possible. Maybe things would change if they'd just start enforcing the anti-trust laws when it comes to airlines, but now that all the airlines have consolidated, it's shit, pure and simple.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mhajicek on Sunday September 22 2019, @05:40AM (5 children)
I haven't flown since TSA.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @06:11AM (2 children)
How the hell do you manage that? I suppose one could easily do it if they never venture more than a few hundred miles from home but, man!, that would inevitably leave me feeling a bit claustrophobic after a while. I suppose one could travel by train or boat instead but that incurs its own set of costs which, in my opinion, seem rather high just for the sake of avoiding the hassle of the TSA line at the airport.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @06:36AM
Bike. Train. Bus. Busses are lousy for multiday trips but actually superb for 8h legs. Take a night bus and sleep. Ships for intercontinental, takes a couple of weeks so I haven't crossed either Atlantic nor Pacific yet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @06:41AM
Greyhound can be a shitshow, but it works.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday September 22 2019, @12:04PM
TSA was always there, they just ramped up with each new "terror strike" - meaning: perpetual growth.
1989 - London Heathrow pulled me aside for a patdown due to passing a metal detector with a PDA in my pocket - they were already ramped up due to whatever "terror strikes" had happened there, maybe Lockerbie?
I seem to remember a humorless bag search with my mother, I can't remember if my smartass self was 20 or 12 when it happened, was probably leaving MIA sometime in the early 1980s.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Monday September 23 2019, @12:06PM
Same here. I have voted with my feet and dollars.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by sfm on Sunday September 22 2019, @05:04AM (3 children)
Assuming real life follows the predictions for future air travel, where does that leave us for
options? It is a given that airlines will continue to push for better fuel economy in planes.
The only other "knob" we can turn is to reduce the demand for air travel.
Not an easy pill to swallow.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @05:18AM
Simple. The poor and middle class should notbe able to fly but the rich and politicians (but i repeat myself) MUST fly to show how bad it really is and promise they are biting the bullet because its uncomftorable.
#greennewdeal
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday September 22 2019, @12:08PM
You could kill the global economy - a reduction in international travel naturally follows.
You could tax the bejesus out of meatspace air travel, use the funds to provide ubiquitous free or very low cost ultra-high definition teleconferencing facilities.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Sunday September 22 2019, @12:17PM
I have not been in an aircraft since I was with the military. The guys I work with are always hopping on and off planes, mostly for weekend trips to foreign capitals (but they all look the same to me) and for shopping. (they tell me Dubai is wonderful place to buy jewellery). Yeah, sad loss for the middle classes, they will be stuck with too much money. Cue sobbing violins.
(Score: 3, Informative) by bradley13 on Sunday September 22 2019, @05:48AM (1 child)
Aircraft fuel is basically the cheapest fuel available, because governmentd don't tax it. Make it cost $5 per gallon, like gasoline (in Europe, anyway) and fewer people will fly.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday September 22 2019, @12:14PM
they use it in absolutely massive quantities. There are pipelines from the major fuel ports to the major airports (and they occasionally leak...) One random quote from Google:
That's 163,000 pounds, over 81 tons. When a lard-ass 350 pounder straps in for a transatlantic flight, the fuel to take them there far outweighs them and their luggage.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Sunday September 22 2019, @06:10AM (25 children)
"Climate protesters have said they plan to gather in Montreal next week"
So, how many of them have decided to drive their individual cars cross country so they can avoid the pollution from flying?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @06:22AM (15 children)
More importantly, how much pollution is cut out of the equation by driving individual cars rather than flying? Serious question. Another question: how much was pollution reduced by the climate activist Greta Thunberg traveling by boat to give her speech at the UN? Also, wouldn't it have reduced pollution even more to just give her speech by remote video conference?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @09:19AM (11 children)
Actually, driving individually is much more polluting. Planes burn about 2l/100km while the cars are at least double that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft#Medium-haul_flights [wikipedia.org]
They would have to get there in full buses, which makes it about 0.5l/100km. Almost anything else, except fully packed cars, is more polluting than the planes.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Sunday September 22 2019, @11:08AM (1 child)
I am assuming you mean 'per person'?
And I think you need to check your figures [howstuffworks.com]:
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Sunday September 22 2019, @05:09PM
There are almost no 747s still in service for passengers these days. It's an old plane, a really huge plane, and a fuel guzzler, so it's not a good example to use for airplane fuel efficiency numbers. A 777 would be a better choice if you want to look at something commonly used for intercontinental flights, and a newer 737 (NG) or A320 for domestic/shorter-range flights.
But yeah, he probably means per passenger, which is what's important anyway. The problem with comparing planes to cars is that with planes, you're moving hundreds of people and a big metal can that holds them, whereas with cars, you have a 3-5000 pound metal box on wheels that you have to move around, each one with 1 person (2 if you're lucky). The amount of overhead per passenger with cars is truly enormous. So yeah, planes burn a lot of fuel, but they also move a LOT of people through the air as they do it. Trains are even better, as they can move even more people usually, and even though the cars are quite heavy, they're not having to fight gravity much.
If we were really serious about reducing carbon emissions from air travel, we'd be building more high-speed rail lines and taxing shorter-range flights to help pay for it. Planes are of course the only sensible choice for intercontinental travel, but for shorter inter-city travel trains make more sense, but you have to have a society and a government smart enough to realize this and push it.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Sunday September 22 2019, @12:09PM (2 children)
You forgot trains, by far the least polluting transport, especially if electric. You are probably American, if so don't worry, most Americans do. I know most American passenger trains are crap but this is a World article.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @02:02PM
Trains? In America?
Only if it is over our cold dead bodies!
Oh wait, that sounds like a movie ... Snowpiercer
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Sunday September 22 2019, @05:11PM
If you ignore the electric bit (or assume electricity is generated from fossil fuels, as much of it is), ships are probably the least polluting transport. Of course, ships are also pretty slow, so people don't use them for intercontinental travel much: most people don't have the luxury of being able to take 3 months off for a vacation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @02:07PM (5 children)
Lots of things are more efficient than aircraft - but only in theory.
The thing is that aircraft make it possible to travel long distance more quickly, which makes it easier to tolerate the conditions necessary to achieve that fuel economy. Everyone complains about flying cattle class, but you can put up with it for three hours. To achieve the same fuel economy per passenger on other transport, you would have to put up with it for two or three days. Nobody is riding a fully loaded bus for three days, nobody is riding a packed train for three days in an ordinary seat. (Maybe in a sleeper, but then so much for the fuel economy advantage).
And that's just for cross continent travel. Intercontinental travel without aircraft takes weeks.
It's almost as if people and businesses working together and making free choices naturally choose the most efficient way to do things! Unbelievable! Well, to certain people anyway.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Sunday September 22 2019, @04:25PM (3 children)
Trains can travel a hell of a lot faster than buses.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Sunday September 22 2019, @05:15PM
In places like Japan and Germany, they certainly do. In America, not so much.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @07:01PM
Not in America. It would be restricted to 80 mph max and have to stop at every farm in Big Joe's constituency.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23 2019, @06:03AM
Not faster than planes, though.
Americans frequently like to travel between, for example, Los Angeles and New York. This is a distance roughly equivalent to traveling from Lisbon to Bucharest (it's actually a little farther). I attempted to plan a train trip from Lisbon to Bucharest and it would take three days, plus changing trains six times.
Trains work in Europe because Europeans don't frequently go very far.
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Sunday September 22 2019, @05:46PM
"Nobody is riding a fully loaded bus for three days"
Really? I've certainly done it on charter buses, tour buses, etc.
Nobody is a pretty strong word.
A couple days on Greyhound isn't that uncommon for me and though it varies as passengers get off and on at stops the bus is usually far from empty.
I've not flown commercial since about 2005. Nothing against it, but it's happened that when I've been taking long trips recently I've usually needed to take a lot of stuff with me so it was a fully loaded Suburban perhaps with cargo trailer. (I used to do lighting and sound for some sci-fi conventions.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @09:42AM (1 child)
I'll reply to this question too,
That's not a fair question because it doesn't involve only her actions. *She* wanted to get there in a method that doesn't pollute - she succeeded. I would say she "reduced" CO2 more through the trip than anything else. Flying, she would have burned 200L of fuel.
Now, the owners of the boat, they flew in a replacement crew .... sad ... but you can't control everything - otherwise you can't do anything. So yeah, this was not fair question.
For some people, talking directly is more important. And I'm talking about the people she met in America, not Greta.
Also, this entire thing has very little to do with UN - I know, "bogeyman" of America.... even if America wanted to be host. Americans seems to forget that UN is a place of discussion so that diplomacy is not done like it's done by Trumpf on his twitter-rage-feed.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Sunday September 22 2019, @12:08PM
You certainly can control travel by methods more polluting than flying.
What's "unfair" about the question? The inconvenient answer? It illustrates the primary problem with environmentalist hair shirters. Namely, that they don't have a clue what is better, environmentally. She might have mildly reduced her own personal emissions (sorry, travel by boat is not going to be that much better than airplane), but she did so by increasing it elsewhere.
We see this crap all the time. Recycling that wastes more valuable resources (like human time) in order to save less valuable resources (like cheap plastic). Nuclear power regulations that collectively make us less safe (like prohibiting the construction of new power plants, and the transportation and recycling of fuel rods). And making us all collectively poorer (and have more kids, the correlation with poverty) because greenhouse gases are bad.
Funny what is more important when it's their interests at sake. Well, my take is that a developed world lifestyle is more important than reducing greenhouse gases emissions or the theater that one cares about such things.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @04:24PM
It would have been a lower footprint if the corporate media had let Greta Thunberg stay at home, and gave Macaulay Culkin a climate preacher job stateside, given both their showbiz roots.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday September 22 2019, @06:23AM (1 child)
Don't be silly. They have all left home already, in their horse and mule drawn carts!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday September 22 2019, @12:24PM
Man, talk about greenhouse gas emissions... I hope they're feeding those horses and mules a low methane blend.
Sailing actually does reduce emissions, not so much because the individual trip is so much more efficient (it isn't, when you account for constructing, maintaining, supplying, crewing, and decomissioning the ship) where the real "carbon savings" comes in with sailing is that so many fewer trips are possible per lifetime - it spreads out the emissions over time. You might argue some net carbon savings if you consider the ground travel that you're not doing while you are captive on the sailing ship...
Still, nice stunt, and an appropriate way to get a message out.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @06:38AM
And yet even those sore thumbs would be saving gas, compared to flying.
So... ok? It's not telepresence, but fine.
Hm.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday September 22 2019, @12:17PM (5 children)
Fun fact, driving solo actually uses more fuel per person-mile than flying commercial. Not to mention the higher infrastructure costs supporting ground travel. If you get into a multi-day ground trip, you should also be considering the cost of building, supplying and staffing your lodging and restaurants.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Sunday September 22 2019, @05:32PM (4 children)
Bingo! That was exactly my point.
Individual transport usually pollutes more per passenger mile than group transport like planes, trains and buses.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday September 22 2019, @07:30PM (3 children)
And, per passenger mile, the Space Shuttle is one of the most efficient (and safe) forms of transport ever created....
The real question is: how much do people really NEED to travel. It's not an easy one to answer, for instance: sales, definitely more effective in person, but, is sending one sales rep all over a million square mile territory really a necessary approach? As long as jet travel is as cheap as it is, it will be the economically sensible thing to do.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday September 22 2019, @10:02PM (1 child)
Well, how many people really NEED to exist? For real NEEDs, there just isn't the need for more than three people. Any residual travel after this reasonable population reduction would be at my direction and by definition NEEDed. The real question is when are we going to implement this? I'm tired of looking at all these unNEEDed people. It's so inefficient.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday September 23 2019, @01:33AM
Thanos wasn't wrong.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Monday September 23 2019, @02:10AM
Teleconferencing has its downsides, but environmental impact certainly isn't one of them.
I've long been a taker of stay-cations. There's usually lots to do near where your at, though I must admit, you have to really like corn and soybean fields for scenery if it's central Illinois.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @04:01PM
The California Air Resources Board is going to require all aircraft be retrofitted with a catalytic converter, EGR valve, and smog pump.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @06:17PM
This is what all the sound and fury is about; or do you really believe the puppeteers zipping about in private jets are troubled by the 2% carbon emissions?
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday September 23 2019, @12:12PM
And this whole thread went by and nobody suggested zeppelins as a greener alternative to jumbo jets. Yes, they're a little slower, but the lifting is done by the gas envelope, not by burning fuel. One can board one in the evening and be across the Atlantic by morning. They can also land in fields, so there's no need to build expensive airports. You can make them really large, so the passengers can get up and walk around during the flight. They fly lower, so you can see the scenery.
Washington DC delenda est.