The Astronomist: Flying is Unsustainable

Today I am crossing Australia, the Pacific, and then the West Coast by airplane and I feel guilty. You see everything that I do in my daily life to be environmentally friendly is nullified by my airplane travel. Even if I was completely carbon neutral in my daily life the excessive amount of airplane travel that I partake in each year would place me me in the same ranks as the worst polluters in America. According to a green manifesto (also see this description of 'low-energy astrophysics') by astrophysicist P.J. Marshall and others the average energy consumption per day of a person in the U.S. is 250 kWh/day/person. An astrophysicist uses an extra 133kWh/day/astronomer, yet the vast majority of that additional energy usage, 113 kWh/day/astronomer, is contributed by flying. The key message of the manifesto is that while astronomers are not actually a significant energy consumer in the U.S. (they use 0.001% of the national total energy production) we are high profile scientists who must set an example. Astronomers believe global warming is real, and thus must act.

2 comments:

s=1/T(r)May 3, 2011 at 5:59 AM
Apparently, according to my daughter (14 going on 30), I owe you an apology for the following:

Misleading you into believing in drop bears.
Pretending to be a nice guy.
"The whole astrologer / astronomer thing"
Trolling the comment section of your blog.
Being "shifty" (whatever that means.)

So......

suck it up cupcake 'cos it ain't happening.

Have a good flight mate. Catchya next time.
Robert L. OldershawMay 4, 2011 at 8:03 PM
With the advent of the internet and technologies like Skype, a large percentage of business meetings and many conferences of all kinds could be conducted via the web.

We have developed a bad habit of excessive air travel, and other forms of travel, because we have gone through a period of plentiful energy and environmental neglect.

Time to exchange those bad habits for more sustainable ones.

A good place to start would be with more sensible reproductive choices. If the human species cannot control its alarming population growth, then not much else matters.

RLO