If Carbon Dioxide and Carbon Monoxide are the root problem with the Earth warming, what about Jet Planes???

Question

Carbon Monoxide rapidly changes over into Carbon Dioxide in the free atmosphere. Carbon Dioxide is heavier than Oxygen, Nitrogen, Helium, Hydrogen, and it sinks to the surface of the Earth. At the surface of the Earth CO2 is absorbed by plants, shrubs, and trees which emit Oxygen in return.

Travel by Jet Aircraft has increased ten fold in the last ten years. Jet planes emit millions and millions of cubic feet of CO2 and CO as they make cross country and transcontinental flights. When they emit the gas, they do so at very high altitudes which are unreachable by plants, shrubs, and trees.
The gases must first cool down and then settle to the surface of the Earth for that cleansing action to take place. Who is concerned about Jet Aircraft causing Global Warming? It seems like the only concern is automobiles, buses and trucks. If Global Warming is a killer like they say why arn't we seeing massive evergreen shrub and evergreen tree planting activities by the US Government???

Answer 1

After 9/11 CO2 in the upper atmosphere started to fall and the ozone hole began to heal ... now you are starting to see a problem that really exists. Demand that regulators charge airlines the same fuel taxes you pay for the gas you put in your car.

Answer 2

The CO2 emitted by jet engines diffuses very rapidly. It would take no more than a year for the CO2 from a jet flying at high altitude to distribute evenly throughout the entire atmosphere. The greater concern is the water emitted by jet engines. The water condenses into clouds that disperse slowly and settle to earth even more slowly. Clouds reflect light from the sun back into space thus cooling the planet. During the period after 9/11 that commercial flights over the US were canceled there was a significant rise in temperature across the US. So, if anything, high altitude jet traffic is masking the effect of CO2 emissions on global warming.

Answer 3

There still aren't enough airplanes to be anywhere near the problem cars and electric power plants are. Scientists don't guess, they measure this stuff, and know for a fact what's most important.

Plants just can't keep up with us.

Look at this graph.

http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/graphics_gallery/mauna_loa_record/mlo_record.html

The little squiggles are nature doing its' thing. CO2 falls a bit during summer when plants are active, and rises during the winter. The huge increase is us, burning fossil fuels. The natural carbon cycle buried carbon in fossil fuels over a very long time, little bit by little bit. We dig them up and burn them, real fast. That's a problem.

Man is upsetting the balance of nature. We need to fix that.

Answer 4

You left out a major polluter...the spacecrafts. If you've ever seen one take flight you know that everything turns to huge clouds of smoke as it takes off. Also, there are literally thousands and thousands of airplanes flying every day but our government has conveniently ignored them.

There is no scientific proof that the earth is warming. For thousands of years the average temperatures have varied from year to year. The major contributor to pollution is the hot air coming from Al Gore and the likes of him.

Nobody has mentioned that, before automobiles, there was pollution when everyone burned wood and coal to heat their homes and cook their food. They burned off their gardens; they burned off the farmland in order to make the grass grow to feed their cattle, and they burned the "woods" around their property to remove the bushes and undergrowth so the free-roaming animals could have food to eat.

The whole idea of global warming sounds to me like the story of the Little Red Hen who ran around screaming, "The sky is falling; the sky is falling."

Answer 5

Actually this is recognised, particularly in europe.
check the hidden fees in your air tickets and often there is an environmental tax.
this is done to bump the price of tickets up to make it less appealing for short causal trips, like from France to UK.
some airlines do have some off set programs but i don't know much about them.

Answer 6

That is a good question and Massive tree planting would be a great solution. But all the money and good soldiers are wasted on Iraq and Afghanistan.