ELI5: how does burning 4,712kg of jet fuel emit 16 tons (14,515kg) of CO2?
Edit: is it the oxygen? I could believe that, but it seems like a lot without doing any math.
Edited 2y ago
@sean I have no idea what the answer is.
A possibility is that we use CO2 as a proxy for all greenhouse gasses, and convert other things into it to make conversations easier. It's within the realm of possibility that burning that much jet fuel emits a bunch of *some other gas* that's 10x worse than simple carbon dioxide. So it's not really 16 tons of CO2, it's 1.4 tons of some other worse gas, and 2 tons of CO2 that turns into 16 tons of CO2 equivalent.
Your theory: also great.
Edited 2y ago
@preinheimer I sure hope not, but I could believe that too.
@lmorchard confirmed that my hunch was right.
The “I hope not” part is kind of like how warming up a cold can of soda to body temperature takes more calories than the soda contains so how could you gain weight from drinking too much cold soda? (answer: we really mean kilocalories most of the time)
@sean @preinheimer @lmorchard the extra spiciness involved in aviation emissions is "radiative forcing" caused by the aerosols produced at altitude, which contributes to warming.
Aviation CO2 emissions are sometimes adjusted to account for that.