Uncommon Sense
I think that is the understatement of the century. Power plants account for nearly 54% of all CO² emissions into the atmosphere. If we are all really serious about cleaning up the atmosphere, there is the first place to start. Unfortunately the down side to coal is it is a very dirty burning fuel. Trying to make the coal burn cleaner will mostly reduce the visible pollution that is produced but not the CO². We could try to make the power plants more efficient like we have with cars, trucks and aircraft but at the end of the day there is only so much that can be done to improve the efficiency of coal fired power plants. We are going to have to bight the bullet. Nuclear power and hydro are the obvious first steps. Other power sources are going to have to be developed. Maybe hydrogen is a possibility in the future. The only pollution produced will be H²O.
While aircraft do contribute to total CO² emissions, at 1.6%, I think our priorities need to be directed at the biggest contributors to global CO² emissions. If we don’t do this then we will never stop the damage that has already been done. Our efforts will be like trying to put out a high rise inferno by trying to piss on it when we should be trying to put it out with a fire hose.
Soopster
I think he is saying there should be a better alternative to tanking.
To give you an idea what sought of percentages we are talking about here. A flight from Hong Kong to Taipei in an A330 or A340 burns about 8000 kg of fuel each way. To carry return fuel over this distance costs us about 180 kg. This equates to about 1.1% of total fuel burn. In our total operation tankering would cost the airline less than 0.01% of total fuel burn. F**k all in the whole scheme of things.
I heard someone say that in the days following 9/11 they took samples of air for quality testing when there were zero planes airborne. 'Parantly a lot less pollution. (Just backed up by another person here in the office!)
The study you are quoting actually found that the average temperature went up 3°C. It made no mention of the total pollution level. Pollution may have gone down significantly around airports but in the whole scheme of things it wouldn’t have made a dent on total pollution. Infact it probably went up because people had to find alternative ways of getting home and road transport would have been the most likely alternative.