Well done Tom for once again raising some good points and challenging “conventional” green wisdom!
I havnt really tried to disprove your figures- they seem entirely believable. I suppose the wider issue is how air travel has, by an order of magnitude, increased massively the amount of miles-per-person actually travelled. So although compared to a single person in a car it isnt so bad per mile, the fact is that people are travelling many times as far because they can in aeroplanes very cheaply. Air travel is therefore by far the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emmissions in the UK, nearly twice that of emmissions by private car transport once you have multiplied by three for the effects at high altitudes (Mayer Hillman, “How to Save the Planet”). By your rckoning, greenhouse gas emmissions per person are less by car once you have more than 2 people in the car.
Of course, you are right: the best thing is to stay at home, or possibly cycle and hang-glide across the Irish sea! In any case, using “less” does not create sustainability- any extra CO2 emmisions will make things worse, just as any amiunt oif fossil fuel use is the last time that particular litre of fuel can ever be used…
Glad you liked Kunstler, also. But remember, that is America. Its different here. I just heard the Green TD what’s his name mention Peak Oil on the radio.

It would appear that flying averages out to about something like driving in a car by oneself. A brilliant answer to this with lots of links and a nice story about a Dutch couple is here:

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=48121

However whilst one might consider driving across parts of Europe it would seem slightly crazy (if possible) to drive to LA by oneself (from a fuel point of view, think how many times you would need to fill up).

Ultimately from an eco point of view it comes down to how much carbon is being emmitted. A return flight to NY seems to emit about 330kg carbon per person (from above reference) and an average years car driving around 1100kg. At the moment average UK carbon emmisions per person are about 10,000kg per year. Sustainable levels are said to be about 1000kg per person per year (http://www.actionearth.org/carbon-footprint.php).

Although I would imagine that estimate is still on the high side it is interesting to note that if there were no other carbon emmssions, sustainable levels could be maintained whilst everyone in the world took 3 return flights from London to New York each year! What an image…

Thanks Mike and Graham - I totally agree - it’s the distances that planes make possible that is a big part of the problem. In answer to your point Graham about planes making ‘an order of magnitude’ greater distances possible than cars, I suggest that cars did this about 30 years ago and we’ve just got used to it. People think nothing of their car averaging 15,000 miles a year! So in conclusion I stll think that the best thing is not to travel too far (unless there’s a good bus / train service), but also that carbon campaigners must remember to paint the car as just as evil as flying.

(PS Love the story about the Dutch couple Mike - that’s what inspired this post - Ruth was giving me a hard time about booking a cheap flight to Gatwick - so I thought I’d find out if it would have been better if I’d gone by an alternative route…. couldn’t find figures for passenger ferries though.)

Not too sure about passenger ferries but here’s one for all you cruise ship lovers:

A question we had in trivial pursuit this christmas:

Q. How many inches to the gallon does the QE2 do?…

A. Six.

I’m involved in a carbon footprinting project in Bishop’s castle. The figures we use for CO2 emissions are 360kgCO2 per 1,000m for an average petrol car, 260 for an average diesel and 290 for flying. However this is just CO2 and flights also produce massive amounts of other greenhouse gases and emits them at high altitudes, hence the tripling often done to flight emissions by Hillman etal. So according to that you’d need 3 people in an average diesel car to bring it down to a similar level to flying but if you were driving the sorts of distances people fly there would be a great temptation to put the foot down and drive the emissions higher than the average (and no-one would drive to LA and back lightly).
As to boats we use the figure of only 12kgCO2 per 1,000miles, but that’s allowing for a car and 4 people so a foot passenger would be a fraction of this so it’s got to be by far the better option.

sorry i had a touch of the gobbleydygooks last night. If you multiply the CO2 figure for flying by 3 you get to 870kgCO2equivalent/1,000miles. If you’ve got 3 people in an average petrol car it’s only 120kgCO2/1,000miles each. No competition really.
The other things that haven’t been mentioned are the phenomenal growth in flying which will cancel out all other energy efficiency attempts if we’re not careful, the problems of aircraft noise and airport expansion plans, Dave Green.

This thread was thrown up by Google as an answer to the fuel consumption of the QE2, but Mike (and presumably Trivial Pursuit’s answer) is WRONG. Two other web links quote about 50 feet, which seems more plausible, although I can’t say if it is before or after the refit in 1986 when the consumption was halved.

50 feet/gallon is about half a tonne of fuel per mile or say 2000 tonnes to cross the Atlantic. At 6″ per gallon the fuel would weigh three times more than the ship!

That said, I very much doubt if cruising is a very “green” way to travel from A to B.