Yeah, this can't be some prank by a renegade flight crew, it can only be a farewell celebration act with a much-off meeting, a budget and a dozen people who signed off. But I'm not criticising, by that measure we'd have to question any resource expenditure that exceeds the bare minimum for sustaining life.

Well this admittedly cool looking stunt represents more than 5 persons worth of annual sustainable co2 budget (estimated at 3T/year), so I‘d say it’s a smidgeon above the „bare minimum for sustaining life”.

That's why you don't do stuff like this for each and every subvariant. This is a once in half a century occasion, it absolutely pales in comparison to the amount of fuel the type has burned for trade show visits, photo opportunities and numerous other nonessentials. Arguably there isn't a single use case for jet aviation that isn't far out of the range of sustainable co2 budget.

I have no clue what I'm talking about but this piqued my interest. If I ask WolframAlpha:

   Q:how many carbon molecules in 2.4 tons
   A: 1.092×10^29 molecules

X molecules of pure carbon carbon would theoretically require 2X molecules of oxygen to turn into CO2

   Q: how much does (10^29)*2 molecules of oxygen weight in us tons
   A: 5.827 tons

So 2.4 tons of Carbon + 5.827 tons of Oxygen = 8.227 tons of CO2? Maybe? What am I missing to have 2.4 tons of fuel turn into 16.8 tons of CO2 emissions? I'm not doubting it, and I'm sure it's WAY more complicated than above, but just genuinely curious!*

Kerosene(jet fuel) has between 6 and 20 carbon atoms per molecule. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerosene#Properties_and_grades

Have fun with the math!

Hm, does that change anything? Atoms per molecule doesn’t seem important when we’re talking about the total weight. If anything jet fuel isn’t pure carbon so the math works out to create less CO2 than I calculated?

I don't think the number of atoms directly matters. However, the amount of energy that is released when kerosene burns has a _small_ impact. Because that energy was contributing to the mass of the kerosene (E=mc^2). But, that difference in mass will be tiny. Far surpassed by the mass of the non-carbon atoms in kerosene.

You also missed the carbon monoxide and water vapor that would be produced. Along with nitric and sulfur oxides. So it’s probably not as bad.

No need to ask WolframAlpha; you can do those computations yourself very easily.

Avogadro's number is the conversion factor between grams and "atomic mass units", 6.023e+23†.

1.102e-6 is the conversion factor between grams and tons.

The atomic weight of carbon is 12.01 amu.

So 2.4 tons of pure carbon should contain 1.312e+30 atoms of carbon. The concept of a "carbon molecule" is not well defined; theoretically you could arrange all of these into one big diamond, or a bunch of graphite, or whatever.

The atomic weight of oxygen is 16.00 amu. If you're making carbon dioxide, every 12.01 units of carbon mass will correspond to 32.00 units of oxygen mass, so 2.4 tons of carbon would require 2.4 * (32.00/12.01) = 6.4 tons of oxygen.

There are a few comments we can make:

- "What you're missing" appears to be that the emissions are described as "equivalent to" a certain amount of carbon dioxide by some metric, not as actually containing that much carbon dioxide.

- Wolfram Alpha, at first glance, does not appear to be capable of answering your question correctly, but it's also in the right ballpark. Something is up.

- Could be that your question is posed too poorly to get a good response.

- Could be that the mass of a carbon dioxide molecule is greater than the sum of the masses of the one carbon and two oxygen atoms that it contains. I am told that in fact these two quantities are not equal - there is energy in the molecular bonds which ultimately equates to mass - but I don't know whether the molecule or the independent atoms should be heavier, and I feel sure that, if it's the molecule that's heavier, it is not heavier by a factor of 12, which is what the WolframAlpha answer requires.

- Your second question, "how much does 2e+29 molecules of oxygen weigh in US tons", is perfectly well defined, although it is incorrect given your goals. One molecule of oxygen contains two oxygen atoms, so you only need one molecule of oxygen per carbon atom to make carbon dioxide.

But WolframAlpha should have been able to answer this one unambiguously, and it couldn't. The correct result:

2e+29 molecule_O × 2 atom_O/molecule_O × 16.00 amu/atom_O ÷ 6.022e+23 amu/g × 1.102e-6 g/ton_US = 11.71 US tons

Something went very wrong in the WolframAlpha answer. Mostly it seems to have mistaken molecules for atoms, but I can't explain the difference between 5.855 and 5.827.

A larger lesson here might be that just because an automated system (or a human!) claims that it understands you, that doesn't mean it actually does.

† I just checked wikipedia and they have 6.022e+23. This doesn't make a significant difference to this calculation, so I'll ignore it.

This was a fantastic answer, thank you!

Or the average annual carbon footprint for one person in the US.

> The average US household produces 7.5 tons of CO2 equivalents per year.

https://www.ccfpd.org/Portals/0/Assets/PDF/Facts_Chart.pdf

Or 15.52 tons according to worldometer. Not sure who's right here.

https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/us-co2-emissions...

Yeah good question. To add to the confusion, this paper published PNAS says "2.83 ± 1.0 t of CO2-equivalents per capita". Per capita is different from per household but might be a better metric

It also states that using just national energy statistics (this study actually analyzed 93 million households instead) you'd arrive at 3.19 t CO2 per capita which falls in line with their results

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1922205117

And, either way, this maneuver seems like it generated CO2 emissions roughly equal to those that would be saved by 10 people line drying their clothes for a year. Which 10 people are we gonna pick?

I think you misplaced a decimal point on that fuel tonnage, they probably burned around 27 tons of fuel for that pattern.

If my own napkin math and google searching is correct, the daily worldwide consumption of jet fuel is (in very round numbers) a million tons a day. A bit less than the total daily consumption of gasoline in the US.

You're absolutely right. I wish I could edit my post, but I'm too late!

I was thinking along those lines as well, but:

1. For context, this was the final delivery flight of a 747, ever. It's a pretty momentous occasion.

2. If we're going to criticize something like this, then we probably should be criticizing a lot more about the waste in our own lives. Everyone generates a lot of unnecessary waste, even if we don't think about or consciously acknowledge it.

Arguably, the stunt is a symbol. Critizing it for also being a symbol for the inconsiderate waste of co2 budget is fair.

…I mean, building a 747 in 2023 is really not a reasonable thing to do given our remaining co2 budget, even if some techies feel sentimental about that plane.

That's equal to the average CO2 emission of one US citizen per year. I don't think this is particularly noteworthy. There is a cost to this celebration, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth doing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...

Fun is a good thing to spend some of our CO2 emissions budget on. We need fun. A joyless society isn't worth saving.

some fun is more expensive than others. That's ~2.24 years of energy usage by the average US household

And a sendoff to the hard work of tens of thousands or more people.

Oh. No.

That’s a fair sentiment, but in this particular case the portion of society that will be aware that this even happened, much let get joy from it, is a rounding error above none of society.

And 17 tons of CO2 is a rounding error above none of society's total emissions -- the US alone is around 5 billion tons per year.

I, personally, don't believe this easter egg provides any valuable joy.

I enjoyed it.

Exactly. It's why I have a truck, actually. Sure, I could drive an electric Nissan Leaf, but come on. Is that life worth living?

Sure, if that is important to you. You are welcome to make sacrifices elsewhere. We will need to make sure you make them though, probably by taxing your petrol through the roof.

You’re welcome to try.

Both Boeing and I will win.

Win what?

The tax fight thing. He’s not going to get gas taxes increased. Anyone who tried would be wrecked in elections. No one gives a damn about “the climate” dude. We’ve got fun to have. And the power to keep that fun cheap.

Sure. Nothing will change unless enough people want it to change. And you are only able to reason with the reasonable. And maybe petrol taxes are not looked on favorably by the reasonable in your region, so you need a different method of fairly distributing costs. But berating people for wanting fun things is not a great way of getting people to see reason.

Or put in another way, the equivalent of ~2.24 years of energy usage by the average US household

Do you also track the CO2 consumption of all the guys who want to save the environment by going with private jets to Davos?

The only thing these people want to save is their class privilege, just so we're clear...

I wish to make a climate confession. I drove to the beach yesterday for recreation despite it not being necessary to keep myself alive and paying taxes to the climate gods. How many fraudulent carbon credits do I need to buy from rich people to absolve my sins?

Yes. I agree. But it's a joke compared to what happened in Europe during the pandemic [0], when thousands of empty flights happened to secure their airlines landings slots. This could have been a checkmark in an Excel-sheet and did by far not draw the attention and ire of the public it should have last year.

[0] https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-business-hea...