I'm amazed, certainly at the start of this thread, that so many "professional" people have such a selfish attitude towards polluting their environment. Surely, anyone who believes that what humans have been burning since the industrial revolution has had
NO effect on the atmosphere, must be living in cloud-cuckoo land?
Nick L (as usual), non-pc plod & others put valid points and there can surely be no doubt that, whilst climate change has been cyclical over many milennia, what appears to be happening now will (due to there being 6bn people on this planet) affect many more in a shorter time scale - certainly if we don't all take steps to mitigate our impact on the world. It is behoven upon everybody, and most especially in the developed nations, to be responsible with their use of resources - there has to be a
balance between living (and s*d everyone else) and living sustainably.
Some months ago, I attended an event where my family's carbon footprint was calculated (11 tonnes per year - quite a lot lower than the average) but I subsequently calculated that the machine I fly has a footprint of nearer 800 tonnes! Difficult to rationalise the two until I resolve the fact that it's a necessary service we provide (& my job), and I ensure that I operate only where/when necessary and don't waste time=fuel=carbon on inefficient flying around in circles!
None of this addresses the problems of peak oil (where demand outstrips supply available) - which many in the oil industry reckon is already here, and that if the developed nations don't make significant efforts to converge with the developing ones, we're going to come to some almightly oil crunch sooner, rather than later. Whether anyone's flying helicopters at all in 20 years time will be the question - although I won't care, I'll have retired to a ground pump heated, solar-power enhanced, windmill . . . nearly said water-mill, but they'll probably all be underwater!
