Environmental impact of flying

Khannie

Hello all,

First post in this forum.

Anyway.....

I watched one of the "Royal Institute Christmas Lectures" this christmas, and it had a little questionaire about your habits then gave you a "how you affect the planet" type chat.

They gave each habit a score, like "I drive to work every day" was 30 points, this kind of thing.

Anyway, "I holiday in 'the rest of the world' " gave the equivalent score of driving to work every day for three years!!!! (or thereabouts).

Last year I went on honeymoon to Indonesia, the year before I went on holidays to Cuba. Did I really use three years worth of driving to work 5 days a week on those trips????? I mean, a fully loaded large airbus or boeing splits the fuel cost over 300+ people.

I'm very environmentally conscious, but you never really hear about long haul travel. I'd hate to think all my other efforts were nowt compared to my holiday destination choice.

Anyone know for sure?

<edit>
In trying to find an answer, I found this which made me pretty ashamed to be Irish for the first time in my life.

</edit>

zzap64

In relation to our increased energy consumption.. in fairness our economy and population has grown a great deal over the past 10 years and increased energy use is going to be a part of that.

A more interesting study would be average consumption per head of population from different countries.

Regarding flying by plane, I don't have figures but flying by plane is VERY bad for the environment, the fuel use by each person is very high and for fuel use per mile is even worse on short haul flights.

ishmael whale

You might find these calculators interesting, which produce much the same results:

http://www.sasems.port.se/

Using this, it calculates that flying Dublin to Sydney burns 1001 litres of fuel and releases 2532 kgs of CO2 per passenger.

http://www.travelcalculator.org/
By comparison, commuting alone 100 miles a week in a car with catalyst 2.2 tonnes of CO2 – or slightly less than a one way flight to Australia.

Capt'n Midnight

When Concorde took off, most of the weight was fuel, more than the combined weight of the passengers, luggage and the aircraft itself.

Air travel is cheap because airlines claim that the fuel is burnt outside countries boarders (in the air) and so it's tax empt.

dub - cork (737-800) gets 19.4 kg per person, (24.2 litres)
or 48.4 Litres for a round trip, which would release 126.2Kg of CO2 which is more than most passengers and luggage combined

(take off and landing burn a lot of fuel - but scary to see how much used on a short journey)

RyanAir should have lower emissions since less empty seats

Khannie

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

dub - cork (737-800) gets 19.4 kg per person, (24.2 litres)
or 48.4 Litres for a round trip, which would release 126.2Kg of CO2 which is more than most passengers and luggage combined

Hmmmm. 24.2 litres of fuel....that roughly compares with one person driving there in their own car.

Thanks for all the answers. I reckon holiday choices will take a while longer in future.

There's a great link from that site to here which has a database of car fuel efficiencies.

<edit>
Bought a bicycle from buy and sell today. Hopefully I can get my emmissions down a bit.
</edit>

Capt'n Midnight

Khannie wrote:

Hmmmm. 24.2 litres of fuel....that roughly compares with one person driving there in their own car.

Approximate distance in miles from Dublin to Cork City is 136 miles or 218.82 Kilometers, 1 Gal=4.55L => 25.6 Mpg with very little urban if done outside of rush hour. So it's worse than driving.

Bought a bicycle from buy and sell today. Hopefully I can get my emmissions down a bit.

Don't forget that when you exercise more you spew out more CO2 !
I was going to mention that food is a renewable resource but I've a National Geographic at home with a picture of a Cow and the barrels of oil used for farm machinery , processing , heating , transport and production of fertiliser which are about the same weight as the cow..

Khannie

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

Don't forget that when you exercise more you spew out more CO2 !

I take it that you're taking the p1ss at this stage.

Concern for my bodys carbon emmissions = 0

Oh, and on the cow front....it takes approximately 10KG of vegetation to make 1KG of meat, so you can rest easy at night when eating your veggies

Kali

There was an interesting tv programme on a few weeks back, which covered one US researchers studies of the affects of contrails (jet fumes) on both environmental and weather patterns, noticing that on the two days following 9/11 that there was very unusual activity, due to the grounding of all aircraft.

A quick search finds his research paper here: http://facstaff.uww.edu/travisd/1_multipart_xF8FF_2_418601.pdf .. interesting reading, but not methodically sound proof.

CJhaughey

It may be worth noting that the effect of jet exhaust gases on the environment is actually worse at high altitude than at ground level.

ednwireland

Khannie wrote:

so you can rest easy at night when eating your veggies

only if they are locally produced - if your eating dutch carrots kenyan mangetout ( grow your own) your not helping

Capt'n Midnight

ednwireland wrote:

only if they are locally produced - if your eating dutch carrots kenyan mangetout ( grow your own) your not helping

is the salad fresh ?
we have it flown in from Surinam every morning ..

Khannie

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

is the salad fresh ?
we have it flown in from Surinam every morning ..

ROFL.

ednw: I do try to buy local veg, even at a premium, or european veg failing that (as they're less likely to have been flown here).

Capt'n Midnight

Found it.

National Geographic June 2004 "The end of cheap oil"

Page 98-99 two page picture of a cow and 6 red oil barrels.

THE PRICE OF STEAK
A POUND OF BEEF TAKES THREE-QUARTERS OF A GALLON OF OIL TO PRODUCE
Weighing in at 1,250 pounds, Marina Wilson's champion steer Grandview Rebel is ready for auction at a county fair in Maryland. Raising this steer has taken and agricultural investment equal to 238 gallons of oil-represented here by the red drums. That includes everything from fertilizers on cornfileds to the diesel that runs machinery on the fields.

http://yosemite.epa.gov/R10/OWCM.NSF/0/27ad8886b3335a33882565150053de66?OpenDocument
hand recycling weight guide - 1gal oil =7lB (US gallons)
http://www.oilhistory.com/pages/Barrels/standardization.html - another link to oil barrel size - note Texas barrels are the smallest

So a pound of beef takes over 5 times it weight of fuel to produce , not counting the fuel used in the transport and production of the fuel. Probably does not include the energy cost of storage and delivery and cooking and waste disposal.

Khannie

Ah, in fairness, that's an american cow. I'm sure an Irish cow costs less fuel. Americans are just more wasteful. If you've ever seen them "in the wild", you'll know what I mean. In the mid 90's I did the J1 thing in San Diego. We were forced to use dryers to dry our clothes by the company we were renting our appartment from, because clothes on a line were "unsightly".

Still, interesting point. Clearly unsustainable behaviour.

omnicorp

I couldn't be paid to eat American Meat, let alone make it or touch it.

But, in many ways conserving energy and resources is an excellent thing, but, washing clothes at 40c is not good as it does not kill germs, and replacing Decidous Trees with fast growning conifers, destroys habitats, it needs to be thought through, saving energy is not neccaserily good.

ishmael whale

http://www.rte.ie/news/2005/0601/pollution.html
Report warns of aircraft emissions' growth

01 June 2005 10:11
A new report has warned that efforts to reduce industrial pollution in Europe could be wiped out entirely by the growth in emissions from aircraft.

Research published by the environmental group, Friends of the Earth, suggests that expected increases in airline flights in the next few decades will make it almost impossible for EU governments to achieve their promised carbon reduction targets.

The findings are based on a study of growth trends in the aviation sector and the rapid rise in emissions between now and 2050.
A copy of the report is to be presented by Friends of the Earth campaigners to the EU's Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas in Brussels today.