By Chris Davey
This piece is about one of its causes… but let’s begin with a favourite quote of mine:
“I don’t know about you, but I liked it when the weather was the boring bit at the end of the news, not the big scary headline at the start of it. ”Jonathan Pie on climatesciencebreakthrough.com*
Having recently watched the BBC1 programme Cheap Flights: what they really mean for you, I had some reservations of what was in, and what was absent from, the programme. I wrote a comment on the BBC website, and was limited to 2k characters, and so had to edit down my original draft — here is what I wrote:
“Greenwash by the aviation industry was evident, with the emphasis on the carbon reduction achieved in some areas, e.g. at airports, which is dwarfed by the emissions from the aircraft. A ten percent increase in kerosene engines’ efficiency is insignificant compared with the planned expansion of airports and flights.
“In the comparison of planes/trains/cars, I assume the car example was a fossil fuel vehicle (as carbon intensive as a flight) but it would have been useful to assess the journey in an electric vehicle.
“The other huge greenwash I noticed was using the metric of grammes of CO2e per passenger km, which the industry is seeking to reduce. Fair enough, but again with large-scale expansion of flying, such tweaks will soon be wiped out. But to return to that metric for the moment, the figure is far higher for short-haul than long-haul flights: 255 vs 150 – and for international rail, 6g (Our World In Data). So this is the area where big savings can be made, and the advantages of high-speed rail were largely ignored. It is also the sector where first generation electric airliners will appear, one leading developer being Heart Aerospace of Sweden, and a section on their development activities would have been relevant.
“The section on contrails appeared to mimic the messages from the fossil fuel industry in the past – that there is ‘uncertainty’ as to the effects. Yes, scientists talk about uncertainty, but to a scientist that means the possible range of error in the projections. The consensus is that contrails have a warming effect, and quite a considerable one, as at high altitude they contribute to high cloud formation and so trap heat. Clouds formed by ships at sea level increase the ‘albedo effect’ and so are cooling.
“The programme rightly highlighted [that] flying is seen as a right by a large number of people. This has to change. Future generations will judge us harshly if we don’t act to curtail emissions (generally, but particularly) from aviation.”
And here are some of the bits left out, now somewhat expanded, especially for Still European!
Aviation has long been one of the targets of the “eco zealots” (like me), with thanks to one of our previous prime ministers for the phrase. Basically aircraft contribute about 2.5% to overall carbon emissions, so not a huge percentage. But…
- Other factors including water vapour and nitrogen oxides from turbofan engines, and also tiny black soot particles, approximately double the overall effect on climate.
Emissions are released at high altitude which increases their potency.
Contrails often spread into high altitude cloud layers which have a warming effect.
The vast majority of people on the planet never fly, but will still experience the consequences.
The industry makes great play of SAF, Sustainable Aviation Fuel, so-called. This is basically like kerosene, not from fossil fuel sources, but other products, notably used cooking oil which would otherwise likely be put into landfill. However, analysis by Carbon Brief suggests that the progressively increasing use of SAF, as is government policy, will be almost completely cancelled out by the expected expansion of the aviation sector. Furthermore, the idea that there is enough used chip oil to make up 50% of all aviation fuel (because the plan is still to blend SAF with fossil fuel kerosine 50-50) seems unrealistic — which means there will be, let’s just say, a huge temptation to use land to grow large quantities of oil-yielding plants to feed the catalytic converters and make SAF. In other words, deforestation to grow palm oil and soya. Here is the view of Flight Free UK on SAF.
The reality is that currently, the only way to reduce emissions from flying is to fly less.
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* The folks at Climate Science Breakthrough think it’s necessary to translate what climate scientists say “into human”. I think they make for effective communication, and so I have linked to them before, but just to repeat the warning: the videos contain strong language.
