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Your flight emissions are way higher than carbon calculators suggest
(www.newscientist.com)
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this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2025
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Climate
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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
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Less than 2% of aviation emissions come from private air travel. Even if you ban those altogether, it wont mean much globally. People have to stop flying regularly, whether the rich stop too or not.
I dont know how you figure that flying is more efficient than driving. Do you mean time-efficient? That should be obvious, but regarding emissions flying is around twice as bad as driving a car alone, around 10 times worse than driving with 4 people in a car.
Its not about blame, its about what options we have for stoppingclimate change. And unlike most other emissions, for aviation the responsibility actually lies with the consumers, the government cant realistically ban flights for good.
Also that 'if I dont fly on this plane, someone else would' argument, I hope you realise that its nonsense if you think about it for a second.
You seem to be gravely mistaken about how physics work and shouldnt act smug about stuff you dont understand. Flying a machine that weighs around 1t per passenger at 10km in the air is not more efficient than rolling on the ground, just because there are more people on the machine. Means of transportation have immense differences in efficiency, thats why ships are even more efficient than cars or trains.
The website you linked doesnt give real world values, which becomes obvious by this passage:
Measuring avition emissions has never been easy and lobbyists have taken great advantage of that. Those are the absolute minimum values that could be proven beyond doubt, many years ago when studies around aviation emissions were just in the beginning. Actual emissions are way higher, which should have been obvious to you too if you had read the article instead of parotting capitist propaganda.
Please read up on the matter or at least stop suggesting that flying could be more efficient than driving, because flying is by faaaaaar the worst method of transportation you could choose.