Background

What is the impact of my flights?

My Flights

I scraped all my flights, converting it into a graph. Bottom figure, the number of times a route has been taken increases the thickness of the line.

Impact

The great circle distance between each of these points is the minimum distance travelled, it is entirely likely that while in holding patterns or on non-ideal routes, the actual distance is significantly greater. However, calculating the total distance gives $$ d_{\text{flown}} = 811411 \ \text{[km]}. $$ Now, assuming that each km has a CO2 release of $$ e_{\text{emission}} = 0.15 \ \text{[kg/km]}. $$ Then the number of tonnes of CO2 released is approx $$ e \times d /1000 \approx 121.712 \ \text{[}10^{3} \ \text{kg]}$$ Assuming that these flights were taken over a 10 year timeframe, gives the kg per year as \(12.2\) tons of CO2 per year. Noting now that the number of and type trees can vary a lot per location, it is suppoed that roughly \(15-83\) trees are needed to capture 1 tonne CO2 in average per year, from seedling till an adult adult tree. In the tropics there will be fewer trees needed to store 1 ton of CO2 than in the northern hemisphere,because trees grow faster around the equator. Nevertheless, assume that \(50\) trees are required per year to absorb my flight CO2 emissions. This suggests I need to plant $$600 \ \text{[trees/year]}$$ to be carbon neutral.