1. Total aviation-caused climate heating is 3 times that of CO2 alone. On average, a flight’s CO2 impact must be therefore tripled to account for its total climate impact.
2. Currently (2018), from oil well through flights, aviation accounts for 5.9% of all human-induced climate heating, when including non-CO2 impacts. CO2 emissions alone are 2.9%. These numbers are immense when considering that this impact is caused by a tiny part of the world population.
3. Cutting air traffic reduces non-CO2 climate impacts immediately, while CO2 will continue heating the atmosphere for hundreds of years – even if aviation was stopped right now. Reducing non-CO2 impacts is extremely worthwhile, because they are worse than CO2 for the climate, even though short-lived.
4. Technical and operational mitigation of the non-CO2 impacts of aviation is possible, e.g. through adapting flight trajectories. It is still being resisted, though.