Flying less won’t be a big deal to some people, but to business and the military it will be a big challenge. Developing massively polluting military transportation has been a big, profitable business for the U.S. and the Defense Dept.  will probably be the last to change.   We could solve a lot of the military emissions problem by ending our wars, but even that wouldn’t stop the DoD from ordering development of new military aircraft for sale to other countries.

Eventually, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, people are going to have to fly less.   Airplane traffic accounts for a large amount of global warming, about 15-20%.  That vacation to your favorite island by air might become an impossibility in the future.  (Has anyone invented the Holodeck yet?)

Naturally, it would be better for the climate if people telecommuted rather than fly somewhere in person, when possible — at least to climate change conferences!  The Copenhagen climate conference had an enormous carbon footprint:

The Copenhagen climate talks will generate more carbon emissions than any previous climate conference, equivalent to the annual output of over half a million Ethiopians, figures commissioned by hosts Denmark show.  Delegates, journalists, activists and observers from almost 200 countries have gathered at the Dec 7-18 summit and their travel and work will create 46,200 tonnes of carbon dioxide, most of it from their flights.

You’d think people who really want to solve climate change would stop adding to it by encouraging so many people fly to that conference, which was in a rather remote location for most of the world.   Some people took trains,  but of course that wasn’t possible for everyone.  Why did so many people who weren’t delegates or heads of state have to be there in person when our remote media capabilities have never been better? The air travel itself didn’t exactly set a great example for the rest of the world and the footprint handed climate skeptics a lot of ammo.  Air travel is going to be a real barrier in solving climate change, not just commercial air travel but private jets and military aircraft, which will probably be exempt from any carbon trading.  The military and commercial airliners are taking what steps they can to reduce emissions, like landing differently, but eventually they will need to replace their fuel with something that emits no carbon at all, or be taxed for every mile they fly.  If that happens, only the very rich will be able to fly anywhere.

According to Climate Progress, citing the journal Nature, aircraft vapor trails are responsible for 15-20% of Arctic Warming.

Nature (subs. req’d) reports on an analysis presented by Stanford’s Mark Jacobson to the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting last week:

The first analysis of emissions from commercial airline flights shows that they are responsible for 4–8% of surface global warming since surface air temperature records began in 1850 — equivalent to a temperature increase of 0.03–0.06 °C overall.

The analysis, by [...]