Earth Day
So it's Earth Day! Of course, every day is Earth Day, just like every day is also Christmas and Easter and Columbus Day and my birthday, just today is more SPECIFICALLY Earth Day because there are advertisements for it on TV and the Internet.
:(
Well, here's my contribution to Earth Day '05.
I’ve always just admired the pretty trails of clouds that airplanes leave behind them, and never wondered whether those clouds might be a cause of bizarre climate change and poor air quality.
But surprise! Cars and factories aren’t the only major contributors of greenhouse gasses and other harmful emissions. Airplanes are in on it as well! This should be no big shock, since jet engines use internal combustion to burn fossil fuels (usually kerosene) just like automobiles do, but I never really stopped to think about it.
According to NASA, four percent of the annual carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels around the world come from planes.
More from NASA:
“In 1993, a study of toxic emissions at Chicago's Midway Airport revealed that arriving and departing planes released more pollutants than the industrial pollution sources in the surrounding 16-square-mile area. A more recent study at London's Heathrow airport showed that aircraft contributed between 16 and 35 percent of ground level NOx concentrations.”
“Because of local concerns about the gases exhausted by airplanes, the expansion plans of several U.S. airports—Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and Washington—have been stopped.”
Their site is about five years old, so it’s probably a bit outdated, but they do a remarkably good job of explaining some concepts (greenhouse gasses, the ozone layer, fuel efficiency, etc) in a few paragraphs that my Chemistry for Consumers class spent weeks on.
Let's work together for a cleaner tomorrow!
posted by Aaron at 11:49 AM
5 Comments:
too bad we can't just not fly places. i mean, i guess we could stop flying places for fun...but that would limit us to not being exposed to other cultures and the like. and I think that would be even worse than pollutants from planes.
i wonder if they could make a hybrid-like plane. In that it would use some other technology to not emit the gases (since a hybrid uses gas to start up and that's where the planes are emitting most of the toxic stuff).
well the other thing about that amount of emmision coming from planes is that planes are also carrying a butt-load of people. it's a massive car(?)pool to where ever they happen to be going. so, though bad and needs a more efficient fuel burning system, planes are pretty Earth-friendly.
That's a good point -- if everyone had to drive where they wanted to go instead of fly, it might pollute even more.
But on the other hand, it's not like I would drive to Chicago every other week for a business meeting -- airlines make it possible to travel where you might not otherwise be able to go. I think if they didn't exist, we'd be doing a lot less traveling in general. So I don't think it's a one-to-one substitution. However, it does seem likely if you were to choose to fly somewhere instead of drive, it would burn less fuel overall.
planes=more bearable long distance
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aka family, friends, and other loved ones
All i'm wondering is WHY we haven't switched to electric cars/planes yet? Or even Hybrids?!?! We already have the flippin' technology, so why hasn't it been put into effect yet? Crazy. By the way, good point everyone!
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