From the American Chemical Society, a robust model of planes trains and automobiles heating the Earth. So much for Fahrvergnügen.
Traveling by car increases global temperatures more than by plane, but only in long term
Driving a car increases global temperatures in the long run more than making the same long-distance journey by air according to a new study. However, in the short run travelling by air has a larger adverse climate impact because airplanes strongly affect short-lived warming processes at high altitudes. The study appears in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology, a semi-weekly journal.
In the study, Jens Borken-Kleefeld and colleagues compare the impacts on global warming of different means of transport. The researchers use, for the first time, a suite of climate chemistry models to consider the climate effects of all long- and short-lived gases, aerosols and cloud effects, not just carbon dioxide, resulting from transport worldwide.
They concluded that in the long run the global temperature increase from a car trip will be on average higher than from a plane journey of the same distance. However, in the first years after the journey, air travel increases global temperatures four times more than car travel. Passenger trains and buses cause four to five times less impact than automobile travel for every mile a passenger travels. The findings prove robust despite the scientific uncertainties in understanding the earth’s climate system.
“As planes fly at high altitudes, their impact on ozone and clouds is disproportionately high, though short lived. Although the exact magnitude is uncertain, the net effect is a strong, short-term, temperature increase,” explains Dr. Jens Borken-Kleefeld, lead author of the study. “Car travel emits more carbon dioxide than air travel per passenger mile. As carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere longer than the other gases, cars have a more harmful impact on climate change in the long term.”
ARTICLE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE “Specific Climate Impact of Passenger and Freight Transport”
DOWNLOAD FULL TEXT ARTICLE http://pubs.acs.org/stoken/presspac/presspac/full/10.1021/es9039693
CONTACT:
Jens Borken-Kleefeld, Ph.D.
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
Laxenburg, Australia
Phone: 43 (2236) 870-570
Fax: 43 (2236) 870-530
Email: Borken@iiasa.ac.at
Leane Regan, Press Officer
IIASA
Tel: +43 2236 807 316 or Mob: +43 664 443 0368
Email: regan@iiasa.ac.at
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Just can’t quite get myself to read the pdf.
So, driving, or traveling short distances by air like most “common” folk do is bad and harms Mother Earth, but those long, long, transoceanic trips to places like Bali and Copenhagen and Mexico and such for climate conventions is A.O.K. Gotcha, I understand now.
Is there no end to the misuse of research monies?
Hopefully, they will find a cure for researchitis some day….
I have never been snipped on this site but if I expressed my true feelings about this report I think I would be banned!
Anthony, are you suggesting that we ditch our petroleum-powered transports?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle
Being chemists you would think that they would check the temperature record just to make sure it was going up.
Just perhaps if the money spent on this study and many more just like it went into research to save fuel, then the resultant products will just maybe be something that consumers and business want to buy, something they feel that they must have, because they save them money, and that in turn saves the country money. And it may create demand that saves a job or 2 or dare I say it create a job or 2. It may also contribute to less real pollution and with a side benefit of appeasing the warmists, because any reduction in fuel burn is the quickest way to reducing CO2 if you believe that it really matters.
In the scheme of thing whilst we continue to fund studies that dish up useless information we will not develop the technology to move on. As and as an ex diesel engine engineer I’m appalled at the current diversion of resource trying to reduce almost zero harmful pollutants to less than zero. We are into diminishing returns and money now needs to be spent on properly focused research otherwise the lead the West currently has will disappear.
So what happened to the “global dimming” effect of contrails that was supposedly cooling the earth? According to this study, aircraft only warm the earth now?
OMG!!! Quick somebody tell Jeremy Clarkson ! (sarc off)
More mere computer output. And for how long has CO2 stayed in the atmosphere for far longer than any other gas, and where is the proof that the same CO2 does the heating. If that were true, the greenhouses out in the countryside that pump in elevated concentrations of CO2 to promote plant growth should be flying about like hot-air balloons!
The line that told me the ‘models are robust and the uncertainty low’ says it all!
Fortunately for my PC, I had put my coffe cup down on the desk before I read that.
And they all get paid for producing this horepuckey
I couldn’t find anything about how they compute the person-kilometers for cars, i.e. how many passengers they assume. I wonder, because I find it quite offending that I pay huge CO2 taxes for my car and the diesel it consumes, while it actually is more energy efficient than almost anything else when we use it for long holiday trips: Since we travel 5-6 people in the car, the consumption per person-kilometer is very low even when e.g. driving at very high speed on the Autobahn. In fact (speaking of Germany…) the energy consumption calculator of http://www.bahn.de (“Vergleich” in the form on the left hand side) confirms what I knew: 5 people consume the least energy (by far!) per person if they travel by car (compared to train and air plane).
I got as far as “models” and switched off.
A report based on unproven assumptions giving rise to uncertain outcomes, but they are still sure of a strong temperature increase. So that passes the “Can we have more AGW research funding please” test.
Did they only measure plane journeys starting at night in a cold location and ending during the day in a warm one by any chance?
I think if I measured the affects of travelling by plane from California to Alaska, I could show a strong cooling effect. Especially if the atmospheric conditions meant that the contrails spread out and blocked sunlight, causing cooling.
I guess the American Chemical Society is as dedicated to propagating a non-scientific, hypothesis as the American Physics Society.
OT but while we are on the subject of transport, there is a very interesting breaking story in Canadian media:
http://fairquestions.typepad.com/rethink_campaigns/
Nasty roads, brutish cart haulers, and short tempers.
===================
First of all: I am happy to see that you are on board again, Anthony!
Second, I completely agree with Peter Geany that money should be spent on constructive research which solves problems rather than on research which desperately tries to find problems – but never any solutions!
Concernig the overall eco-balance of our means of transport: A lot would be gained if we asked our engineers to design vehicles in a way which makes upgrading to newer, more efficient engines possible. I find it hard to believe, that a car could not be designed in a way which allows engine replacement for lets say two modell generations. This could crate jobs locally – in your workshop around the corner – and save a bit of energy too – all the energy which goes into the production of the body & interior. If all the alarmist politicians really cared so much about our future, and if their catastrophist assumptions were realistic – then it would surely be in order to demand a more “sustainable” car design. But sustainability is not really on their agenda. They rather spent taxpayers money to wreck perfectly usable vehicles in order to stimulate sales…
global cooling must have been very severe over the last decades to make up for the warming westerners have generated.
I’m ashamed to be a member of the ACS.
“The findings prove robust despite the scientific uncertainties in understanding the earth’s climate system.”
The findings are only as robust as the underlying assumptions. One of the assumptions is that warming is bad. That assumption is utter garbage. Garbage in, garbage out. Warming is beneficial. Higher CO2 concentration is beneficial. Thus the correct conclusion would be that travel by plane, train, or automobile are all beneficial but in the long term travel by automobile provides the most benefit.
I think the impact in the region of the jet’s engines would be extreme
Who gave those idiots computers?
Del: You’re in a pretty lousy mood, huh?
Neal: To say the least.
Del: You ever travel by bus before?
[Neal shakes his head]
Del: Hmm. Your mood’s probably not going to improve much.
It’s robust!
I am reading the paper. There seems to be an awful lot of assumptions made. I don;t think that most of them are “provable” assumptions at first glance. I did talk to my Gerbil — he says they are wrong.
They mention uncertainties but do not test those uncertainties in their assumptions in their model and produce a table of “absolute” values. For example, what range of values would you get using a range of values for CO2 residence time? The most uncertain assumption is the CO2/global temperature relationship upon which their calculations are based. Pick your assumption values and you can get what ever value you want to support your assumptions.