Carbon calculator: taking one flight emits as much as many people do in a year | Hacker News Reader

Carbon calculator: taking one flight emits as much as many people do in a year

theguardian.com

36 pointsrobin_reala40 comments

Learning information like this finally led me to take responsibility for my actions that affected others. I challenged myself to go one year without flying. Like everyone, I have family all over and earning money meant flying. Now I'm in year 4 and it's one of the best choices I've made.

After a few months of transition, figuring out how to resolve the challenges, I changed from expecting to be on a flight on day 366 to going for another year, no longer out of obligation but because of the increased role of community, greater adventure, discovery, and all the values I attributed to flying but that I could create more when challenged on my own.

I don't think that flying is bad. I love traveling. But the headlines on climate are irrefutable and I refuse to claim I'm not responsible for my choices that hurt others, especially for my recreation. Planes aren't going to fly anyway. They respond to people paying. One plane may bring me to my relatives, but flying in general disperses them in the first place, leading to less time with them. At some point I had to rip off the band aid and switch from accommodating a lifestyle of scattered community with rare actual eye contact, hugs, and touch to getting closer to the people close to me.

Among other transitions, last summer I learned to sail to get off North America. I've taken the train across the country and back. I've met as diverse people and done as adventurous things. I used to say I expect to fly some day again, but the longer I don't fly, the less I expect to. Who knows?

People always ask my distribution of family and sources of income. I had to solve my problems for my life but your life is different so my solutions won't apply. The only meaningful answers I can give to something I think you can only learn experientially is that you can do it too and if you do, the reasons for not flying will override the reasons to fly. You'll be glad you did. I don't know if this will make sense or resonate, but the longer I go without flying the more people talking about flying sounds like people talking about heroin.

I wrote a piece in Inc at the end of the first year, which I think captured some of the joy to that point, but I've discovered and created more since then https://www.inc.com/joshua-spodek/365-days-without-flying.ht....

> the headlines on climate are irrefutable

That would be a first for journalism in its long history. Why can't people accept that headlines on climate are as clickbaity as headlines on just anything else?

Edit: also being downvoted for pointing out that newspapers headlines are clickbaity is a first :)

The headlines may be faulty, but the broader point is climate is rapidly changing and every action we take is one less drop in the bucket.

I agree, there's a lot of solid science, confirmed by what we're measuring year after year. Climate change is happening and CO2 emissions are a major cause, or the only one.

But we should not underestimate the power of a decades-long daily stream of clickbaity headlines on the same topic, all skewed in the same direction- the catastrophic one, the one that spreads fear and incites indignation. Nobody is immune to it, not even scientists are.

Not the only one by a long shot. Methane (from cattle and melting permafrost) is a dramatically worse greenhouse gas than CO2.

We gave up years ago.

We've travelled to Europe via train. Some places have been a lengthy journey, but the views and transitions on the way more than make up for it. It's as much a part of the trip as the destination. We've been able to stop for lunch or dinner in places we'd otherwise have simply flown over, and we've discovered countless places we'd otherwise not have known existed.

A lot of those discoveries have been here in the UK too - all those little gems off the tourist map. Like deserted beaches and forests, niche museums and other attractions. Or making an itinerary through the minor towns and villages free of overdevelopment and sprawl rather than the major hubs that flying tends to push you to. There's a hell of a lot to discover at home, so overseas every year simply isn't necessary.

Even if carbon neutral flying came about I don't think we'd resume, except perhaps a couple of long haul trips that aren't really doable otherwise. Rail and ferries are less fraught and far more relaxing. A bit like contemplating McDonalds against your favourite fine but slow restaurant - best kept mainly for emergencies.

"Taking one return flight generates more CO2 than citizens of some countries produce in a year" (Uganda or Somalia -in article)

In Somalia 29.89 % of the people have access to electricity[1], so an average person in develop countries consume 10xxx% more electricity per year than "citizens in some countries".

We can keep it going with many more metrics, is clearly a click bait.

I might be wrong but we could use better comparison in order to make a point.

[1]:https://tradingeconomics.com/somalia/access-to-electricity-p...

This was my conclusion too while using one of those calculators. One year of eating "normal" amounts of meat instead of being a vegetarian has about as much CO2 equivalent impact as one flight across the Atlantic Ocean.

I'm still trying to reduce meat consumption (and choose e.g. chicken over beef) but going on holiday e.g. via train instead of by plane is way more ecologically impactful than becoming 100% vegan...

Flying consumes around 2-3 litres of fuel/100km so it's about twice as efficient as driving the distance alone in a car. Problem is that too many people want to (and can) go to the other end of the world too often.

It's not really that linear because taking off and landing both consume significant "flat" amounts of fuel.

Also, fuel consumption is exponential with distance, for reasons similar to the rocket requestion.

Wikipedia has a cool graph:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft#/me...

That graph is not 0-based, so it is very misleading.

Indeed. 7500nm generates only about 10% more CO2 than 2500nm. Not exactly what I was expecting from 'exponential'.

If you're looking for fuel efficiency, a more apt comparison would be with trains rather than cars.

I’m not sure I agree with the sliding scale penaliziation. If flights cost a lot, they should just cost a lot. Penalizing people who use it more does nothing to alleviate the gap between the haves and have nots at the individual level, but really exacerbates the issue of medium sized companies breaking into the international scene and further widens the gap that currently exists.

I assume it's meant to allow families to have their annual holiday?

On the one hand I agree with you, on the other its significantly harder to get broad buy in when you're 'taking away peoples holidays'. So I would say this is a good first step.

The co2 numbers don't seem to take radiative forcing [1] into account, so the actual total climate impact would be 2-4 times the numbers mentioned in the article.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_aviati...

It would be very interesting to see the numbers of CO2 reduction if people would have only one child instead of many. Overpopulation seems to be the biggest problem at all.

There is a Catch-22 in choosing to breed less, in order to be responsible. You are choosing to limit your genes, and in many respects limit your impact on our culture. Irresponsibility continues to breed, while responsibility doesn't. I absolutely agree that our CO2 emissions would be much lower with fewer people, but choosing yourself to have fewer children is not the answer. A lot of the world is choosing to have children at an older age, and this almost always means less children. A better strategy is to try to get more people from all cultures to share this trait (not forcefully, of course).

There’s an “easy” solution to this quandary, IMO: you can adopt.

You’re not directly contributing to the increase in carbon associated with having a child because that child would exist regardless of your actions, and you have the opportunity to pass on your cultural values and sense of responsibility.

Best of both worlds, plus you’re providing a home and family to someone who might otherwise not have one.

I wonder how much carbon the average national newspaper puts out, with the print newspaper itself and it's distribution, online edition servers, journalist travel, accommodation etc.

Sure, we should fly less frivolously, but many other activities can improve their carbon footprint (flying, not so much, until we switch to butanol or whatever), and many are also less necessary or beneficial than flying.

For most people the four biggest categories of carbon emission are the stuff they buy, heating their house, car emissions, and jet flights. A newspaper falls into the first category but it's a pretty small fraction of it.

Newspapers may have a big carbon footprint, but printed news is important in local communities for many people who don't have easy access to smart phones or computers. There's plenty other things that I think can be dropped before the paper.

Well, maybe if the US had a functioning health care system, I wouldn't have to fly out of the country for any medical procedures.

Unfortunately, taking a train across the Atlantic is also a no-go.

Also, quite unfortunately, the US passenger rail system sucks in general, so it's never going to be an alternative to flying, not in the next 30 years anyway.

There are no alternatives for flying.

There are, however alternatives for local transport, which are hybrid/electric buses, light rail, and generally not buying a giant F150 truck if you live in the city and don't actually need one.

So maybe we can start there instead of bashing flying.

You seem to be taking this oddly personally. Here, bash my flying instead: I'm about to take off from San Diego back to Pittsburgh after being here for 13 hours of a 25-person meeting. We collectively agree it produces better outcomes than trying to discuss online, but perhaps we should decide it's not worth the externalized costs.

I don't really want to bash anyone's flying, because as it turns out:

1. There's no real alternative like I said 2. It's actually pretty damn efficient compared to personal vehicles 3. There is very tangible value produced by flying, compared to other forms of CO2 emissions (e.g. commuting in large personal vehicles or recreational boating)

And yes, it's hard not to take health care issues personally. Until someone figures out how to grow redundant organs from stem cells on the cheap.

Framing aircraft travel as a personal moral failure rather than a problem to overcome wrt climate change leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The idea that humans wishing to travel long distances in minimal times are somehow exploitative doesn't sit well, along with the implication that you can do your part by remaining in the section of earth you were born in.

Surely we should be focusing on solving the environmental and economic problems of air travel rather than painting it as a decadent and reckless means of moving around.

Surely we should be focusing on solving the environmental and economic problems of air travel rather than painting it as a decadent and reckless means of moving around.

I've yet to see any technology that is going to eliminate CO2 emissions from air travel whereas we have all the technology we need to get to zero carbon for pretty much everything else.

At what point do employers have a responsibility to stop flying their employees all over their respective country/continent or the world for $REASON_WE_CAN_JUSTIFY_IN_WORDS.

Why do I have to be made to feel guilty for being an economic migrant in my own country and wanting to visit my family who I have had to move 3,000 miles away from for employment? Why do these companies get a fucking pass every time an article shows up?

As bad as air travel is in absolute terms the way they cram people in it's not too bad on a person-mile basis. About the same as a typical car being driven with two people in it.

https://www.withouthotair.com/c20/page_128.shtml

True, cars are very bad for climate change as well. I think that the reason people focus on airplanes is that they tend to take you a lot further. Almost nobody flies for a 100km trip, like very few people undertake a 10.000km car trip.

The math seems to be off in this article (by 3x). It claims 3,153 Kg CO2 from London to Perth.

A Boeing A380 creates 75g per passenger per Km[1]. The distance between London and Perth is 14,470 Km = 1,085 Kg.

  [1] https://www.environmentalleader.com/2007/11/airbus-a380-could-have-jumbo-sized-carbon-footprint/

It says return flight, that probably accounts for 2x?

The figures are averages taking into account which aircraft models are typically used on flight routes, and the estimated occupancy of seats on board those planes.

I tried doing the math from Boeing's stated fuel economy for different models of planes and even older 747s which aren't great in terms of fuel economy were coming out 2.5x better than the numbers in this article. I can't figure out how they are coming up with their numbers. Maybe there are lots of empty planes on these routes or something?

There are a few other aspects to consider, like radiative forcing[1], which add a significant multiplier onto the basic CO2 released from burning the fuel. For one take on calculation of emissions, see how MyClimate (a carbon offsetting service) calculate total CO2 emissions[2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_aviati... [2] https://www.myclimate.org/fileadmin/user_upload/myclimate_-_...

I wonder why their calculator left out a lot of airports. (e.g. RDU doesn’t work)

> Emissions data for flight connections was sourced from atmosfair.de

They probably just copied part of data over. The calculator on Atmosfair's site seems to be more detailed – more airports (RDU works, and you can even input multi flight trips), selectable plane model & class.

https://www.atmosfair.de/en/offset/flight

What if what we're getting for air travel justifies the green house gas emissions?

A good argument for a carbon tax.

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