More about the Big Blue Planet carbon calculator!
Alongside every listing for a location you will find a new carbon calculator
utility that will help you work out the impact your travel and diving could
have on the environment.
The calculator uses a number of built in assumptions for each type of impact:
For flights, it first calculates the Great Circle Distance between your
starting city and the known location. On a sphere this is the shortest distance
between two points and closely matches the routes taken by flights around
the world. The carbon impact is worked out using a simple metric based on
typical CO2 emissions generated by long haul and short haul flights. For
long haul flights this equals 0.14kg of CO2 per km traveled, whilst for
short haul (less than 3000 km) this increases to 0.18 kg/km.
The airfills are calculated on the typical fuel consumption for a compressor
to do a standard refill. This will vary depending on the actual efficiency
of the compressor used but the average we use is 0.69kg / air fill.
The boat trips are calculated based on a 6 person boat going out for a trip
that lasts 60 minutes there and back. Per person impact is 11.5kg CO2 /
boat trip. This could vary greatly if more or less people use the boat or
the trips are shorter or longer!
From using the calculator it should become quickly obvious that the actual
sport of Scuba Diving is not particularly bad at generating CO2 - airfills
and boat trips are minor compared to any half decent trip on a long haul
holiday. If you live and dive locally - then good for you!
However, any long haul flight to a popular scuba diving destination will
immediately create a large carbon impact. As scuba divers we should know
well the impact global warming has on the coral reef systems of the world
and by using this calculator you can now get a good feel for how severe
a particular holiday will be.
One option as a responsible diver, is to make an offset payment to an organisation
that will use the money to repair the carbon emmission damage generated
by the holiday. The organisation invests your money in carbon reducing projects.
One of the best we have found is Climate Care (we are not associated or
affiliated to them in any way!):