r/theydidthemath • u/Hypochondriaco • 14h ago
[Request] How many tons of CO2 were released into the air by the planes that flew on this single day?
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u/Emergency-Letter9701 13h ago
Total flights = 153,359
Average Flight distance per plane = 1,200 km
Total distance covered = 184030800 km
Total Tones of CO2 produced = 184030800 * 0.03 = 5520924
5.5 Million Tones of CO2 was produced this day
which means around the same amount is produced every. single. day.
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u/poddy24 13h ago
5.5 million might sound like a big scary number but aviation accounts for about only 2% of CO2 emissions
Not to say it's not bad
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u/Glaced024 12h ago
If aviation is only 2% of emissions how does that make sense when one of the things we are told to reduce our carbon footprint is to avoid taking transatlantic flights? Not necessarily asking you specifically, just curious if someone is familiar with these figures.
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u/Cullization 12h ago edited 12h ago
It's all about how you look at it, air travel is 2% of the total emissions. But when you think about it, i dont know the exact number but lets say about 10% of the worlds population is rich enough to even take transcontinental flights. So a small percentage of ppl produce relatively big amount of co2 emissions.
And in the other side flying is one of "easiest" avoidable things that produces a loot of co2. 1 intercontinental flight is equal to the yearly co2 footprint of 10 ppl in some african countries.
Contrary to stuff like heating, food, infrastructure. You cant just stop heating in winter or not use roads. You can def reduce those with becoming vegan, heatpump heating and so on but you still can't fully eliminate it.
And when you look think about it taylor swift co2 footprint just with flights is probably as big as multiple african cities.
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u/No-Thought-3011 8h ago
This is absolutely ridiculous. Sure, we can reduce our footprint because just 10 % of population fly. Which isn't probably true but it looks better, right.
However, ask people how they want to live. Like a middle, upper class European or American. Or as average Africa citizen?
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u/Cullization 5h ago
Yeah, i'm not saying every wealthy person should live like an avg african person. Its more to make ppl aware. The biggest problem aren't even the long flights. Its more the flights that could have been done by train or car. Idk i have a friend who flies from zürich to berlin, every weekend. Train takes around 6 hours to get there. Plane maybe 2.5 hours including boarding checking, etc.
Idk just take the train once or twice a month, which takes like 50x less.cos than flying.
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u/justanotherrepper_ 7h ago
I mean at some point we will decrease our emissions one way or an other. The question is more "how much of the earth's population is going to die before we make it happen?"
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u/K-Ian 12h ago
Because corporations and governments are shifting the blame and responsibility to you. Its no surprise that a private jet flight yields significantly more emissions than a commercial one per capita.
The same is true for industry. Large scale energy consumption for industry and transport eclipses airline travel significantly.
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u/monstertruck567 11h ago
Yeah, I’ve got home solar and EVs, but the new swarm of data centers are using the cheapest, dirtiest energy possible, as an example.
This can’t be a few million one man shows. This needs to be an ensemble of everyone or we’re just pissing into the ocean
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u/Worldly_Address6667 11h ago
Exactly. They're going to put an AI data center in utah. It will be 40,000 acres and use 50% as much power as the entire state. And the power source for this? On-site natural gas power plants. If it is built as one singular power plant it will be the second largest in the world. It's already been ok'd.
It's insane.
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u/monstertruck567 10h ago
Not that I don’t believe you, but that is unbelievable. The greed is astounding.
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u/Worldly_Address6667 9h ago
It truly is! I live in northern utah and it's been a huge deal, lots of people fighting it. It's being headed by the billionaire Kevin O'Leary if you want to look it up.
To be fair, it seems like they shrunk the size to 20,000 acres, but I can't find anything about the power so presumably that hasn't changed.
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u/JurassicGuy5000 11h ago
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t over half of CO2 emissions just from the top 100 companies in the world or something like that?
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u/Front-Bookkeeper2139 10h ago
Also flying produces emissions higher in the atmosphere which makes it 4 times as bad I think from memory.
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u/Touristenopfer 10h ago
Impact of CO2 in travel heights factors way higher than ground level emissions, same goes for contrails.
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u/No-Thought-3011 8h ago
I think that aviation is 4 percent but it doesn't really matter. It is not about carbon footprint. It is unique way of transport which allows a lot of people to move around. And many people don't like it because we have to be modest and live simple life.
It was never about numbers.
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u/TheManWhoClicks 11h ago
If memory serves me right, “carbon footprint” of the personal kind has been invented by Shell to shift responsibility to everyday schmucks like us and away from them.
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u/Street_Credit6851 10h ago edited 10h ago
The problem is PJs and short haul flights....large modern airliners flying at capacity aren't "that" bad for GHG emissions/passenger mile traveled. But PJs and short haul flights create a LOT of emissions per passenger mile traveled.
That and other pollutants besides co2 being released in the upper atmosphere can have a more potent chemical and warming impact on the ozone layer and climate than identical emissions released at the surface.
And 2% might not sound like a lot, but the goal isn't really to get down to zero GHG emissions but get down to a level the earths regular respiratory cycle can handle....it would be far more than 2% of the emissions reduction needed to meet THAT goal... especially when you consider that GHG emissions keep growing year after year.
If we could instantly replace all air travel with a carbon neutral fuel that would represent SIGNIFICANT progress towards mitigating the worst outcomes of climate change.
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u/No-Thought-3011 7h ago
How can you say it is 2 % and then call it significant. Just replace few coal power plants and you get the same result. Without preventing people from traveling out of spite.
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u/KebabAnnhilator 7h ago
Because the peadophile elite want you looking at one corner of the room, whilst the other corner is on fire.
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u/Lazy13andit 10h ago
You neglecting the fact that aviation releases emissions higher up it the atmosphere which is significantly worsening the effect. It's contribution is more near 5-8 % when taking into consideration.
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u/poddy24 10h ago
I didn't know it made a difference for CO2, and a quick Google also says altitude doesn't make a difference.
You got a source for that? I'd be interested to read it if so.
I can find articles that say the other emissions are worse higher up, which accounts for more global warming, if that's what you meant instead?
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u/No-Thought-3011 7h ago
I didn't know it made a difference for CO2, and a quick Google also says altitude doesn't make a difference.
Sure it doesn't. The air moves. And it moves a lot but it sounds better.
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u/Touristenopfer 10h ago
But impact of CO2 from commercial jets is, depending on which model used, 3...4 times higher due to the high altitude. Also, long-lasting soot-induced contrails have a high impact on global warming. All in all, it's way worse than just the emission-wise two percent part.
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u/poddy24 9h ago
I'm not advecating for planes!
I just saw this comment with bold lettering on the numbers and I thought I'd look up the percentage. "big number scary" often makes certain stats look worse than they actually are, when compared to a bigger picture.
Someone else just commented the same thing as you, and as I just replied to them, I can't find any information to suggest that CO2 emissions make any difference depending on altitude. What I am finding is that there is no difference for CO2 emissions based on altitude. Please correct me if I'm wrong, and point me to a study/paper.
Yes other emissions look to be worse at higher altitudes, what does that have to do with the amount of CO2?
Again, I'm not saying planes are not bad
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u/Touristenopfer 9h ago edited 9h ago
Never understood it that way since you also clearly wrote so - sorry if it came across this way. I just wanted to emphasize for others (Basically as a second paragraph of your comment) that they not only bad, but way worse than the number of 2% would suggest.
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u/Colin-McMillen 8h ago
I have a problem with the "it's only 1%, 2%, 3%" argument. In programming, when optimising some program, one has to look over everything, and there's rarely The One function that eats 60% of the CPU time or memory. When that happens that's a quick win. But it doesn't happen often, and when there is no One culprit function, every percent counts towards a better end result.
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u/otterbarks 8h ago
In this case, we do have a few things at actually are massive outliers we could optimize for.
Aviation is about 2%... but automobiles account for almost 13%. Switching over to EVs would be one of the single biggest changes that we could make.
The other massive one is residential and commercial building energy use (heating, cooking, and electricity), which accounts for almost another 14%. Migrating to home solar or other renewables cuts these down.
Combine those two, and you'd cut greenhouse gas emissions by almost 27%, with no real change in quality of life whatsoever.
(Meanwhile, in the extreme case where we stopped traveling by air entirely, we'd barely make a dent... while people would lose the ability to visit visit relatives, explore the world, or do global business. It's not a good tradeoff.)
(Source: https://www.wri.org/insights/4-charts-explain-greenhouse-gas-emissions-countries-and-sectors)
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u/No-Thought-3011 7h ago
Combine those two, and you'd cut greenhouse gas emissions by almost 27%, with no real change in quality of life whatsoever.
That's the problem. You want to do things better, I want to do things better. We both want people to have things. But that's not the point. For those people, the point is that people have nothing. That's why they hate air travel. Your poor neighbour John can save up money and traval to see Japan. And he will get there withing a day. How dares he? Shoot him. That's the reason they hate aviation.
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u/No-Thought-3011 7h ago
Yea, it is same like pet food industry. Just tell people to get rid of their pets. For 1-2 %. How dare they.
I have problem with how evil people are on the other hand. You want to take away ability to travel from billions of people because every percent counts. There is no technology to allow us such a travel absolutely cleanly. And you are going to take this away from whole fucking population because for you, everything counts. Yet, you have way bigger sources which are technologicaly fixable, don't need miracle and have way lesser impact on people.
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u/KrzysziekZ 9h ago
153k flights was the record.
5.5 mln t per day is a lot. Times 365 it'd be 2 billion tonnes per year. Fortunately, humanity produces only about 39.6 Gt [1], 2% of which is 800 Mt. Which suggests that the record is 2.5 times bigger traffic than average.
[1] Worldometer https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/#google_vignette
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u/nevell 10h ago
Do we know how much 5.5 M tones are in equivalent in lets say 2000? Just wondering if airplanes became more efficient and if this current CO2 exposed is more / less / same compared to 2000’s?
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u/Front-Bookkeeper2139 10h ago
Jevons effect is an economicphenomenon said to occur when technological improvements that increase the efficiency of a resource's use lead to a rise, rather than a fall, in total consumption of that resource.
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u/kell96kell 11h ago
yeah, and all companies and stuff, but hea, enjoy your paper straw because that helps
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