www.enviro.aero a.k.a Taking on the enviroterrorists

[W.R.A.I.T.H]

Initially introduced by TheSSK in JB a few days ago, however I think this deserves much more attention.

www.enviro.aero (http://www.enviro.aero)

Finally a coherent response from the industry (founding members are both A&B, CFM, RR, CANSO and IATA among others) to journos and politicians bleating about how evil and dirty air transport is and what good folks they are that they push for the £10+ tax on all UK departures. I find the website very resourceful in terms of numbers and references as an argument to use in frequent debates with my friends who only perceive the side broadcast in the idiot box and can't understand why I side with such evil as our industry is perceived to be.

[The SSK]

Just seen the website stats for the first two weeks, pprune is way out on top of the list of sites from which visitors have been redirected. Well done chaps.

[Danny]

That's all very nice but where do you see these 'stats' on their website. I don't even see a mention of PPRuNe, never mind an acknowledgement.

Considering we get around 50,000 visits a day to PPRuNe, it is no surprise that they will get more redirects from here. Not a lot of people realise that we do have such a large readership. See here the stats for the last month below.

Whilst we support the campaign to 'educate' the masses who have been duped by the great global warming scam, it would be nice to get a mention about how we are doing our bit to direct enough people to their campaign. :hmm:

http://www.pprune.org/images/Analytics_www.pprune.gif

[PIGDOG]

Speaking about stastistics on the link above. Here's one that doesn't add up to me:
Shortening routes can indeed significantly reduce CO2 emissions. In fact, every minute of flying time knocked off a journey saves 62 litres of fuel and 160kg of CO2 emissions. And everyone arrives sooner!

This was taken from the FAQ 'most direct route'.

Surely a saving of 62 litres of fuel couldn't possibly result in a saving of 160kg of CO2. Wouldn't 62 litres of fuel weigh about 50kg pre-combustion? :confused:

[Cluster One]

Surely a saving of 62 litres of fuel couldn't possibly result in a saving of 160kg of CO2. Wouldn't 62 litres of fuel weigh about 50kg pre-combustion?


Burning 1Kg of Kerosene produces approximately 3.2Kg of CO2.
Molecular Oxygen is 16x heavier than Hydrogen.

Regards

[PIGDOG]

If you burn 1kg of fuel how much does the total output weigh? Not just CO2?





Hey, that actually makes sense now. I've just checked the CO2 emissions figure for my car compared to the fuel comsuption. It burns 57 cm3 of fuel per km and produces 152g of CO2 per km. Thanks. :ok:


They say you learn something new everyday, but on Pprune it's got to be, uh, I don't know... at least twice that or something.

Edited to explain Eureka moment.

[jshg]

The next edition of The Log (June) is a 'special' on the environment, and will cover many of the points we need to make to put the environmental argument back in proportion.

[Gonzo]

Not quite sure what PPRuNe have to do with this. I've not seen it advertised at all, or am I missing something? Surely it's those who post the link or URL in a message that are more responsible?

[mrsurrey]

Sorry Danny I agree with Gonzo here. I doubt this was an attempt at free advertising and is, in my opinion, in the interests of the pprune readership. After all pprune receives 727 incoming links from other webpages http://www.google.co.uk/search?as_lq=www.pprune.org without returning the favour for free ;)

Considering we get around 50,000 visits a day to PPRuNe

I'll take that as meaning 20,000 to 40,000 then? ;)

MrS

[Danny]

MrS, it's actually around 30,000 visitors a day which turns out to be around 50,000 visits a day. Note the subtle difference between visits and visitors.

The point I was actually trying to make is that there have been plenty of links on PPRuNe to the www.enviro.aero website but I didn't see any from there referring back to PPRuNe. No big deal and glad we finally have a lobby out there looking after our interests.

Now, about hyping the number of visits we get a day... anyone considering advertising here might want to be aware of the figures. Just haven't spent enough time or effort marketing my website. :ouch:

[11K-AVML]

Hence the reason why weight really isn't the issue, but mass.

The trouble with Enviroterroists I suppose - most of them don't know what they're talking about.

[mrsurrey]

Another angle for defence here (against global warming in general rather than aviation's contribution to it) that I didn't see on the website are the temperature fluctuations on other planets in our solar system. The fluctuations seemed to mirror Earth's temperature variations suggesting that changing sun activity is a major factor - can anyone lay their hands on the relevent statistics/graphs?

MrS

p.s. Danny - fair play to you, that'll teach me for teasing :ok: Having been involved with advertising for another website the sad fact is that people just won't approach you very often to buy advertising - it's best to just pay a salesman to drum up business. It's kinda depressing to pay someone for an 'unproductive' job but your overall profits will increase for sure. (are we allowed to talk about pprune and profits in the same sentance? :E:p)

[Benny Lin]

MrSurrey said "Another angle for defence here (against global warming in general rather than aviation's contribution to it) that I didn't see on the website are the temperature fluctuations on other planets in our solar system. The fluctuations seemed to mirror Earth's temperature variations suggesting that changing sun activity is a major factor - can anyone lay their hands on the relevent statistics/graphs?"

The paper that has caused a stir on this recently is this one:
Hammel, H. B., and G. W. Lockwood, 2007. Suggestive correlations between the brightness of Neptune, solar variability, and Earth’s temperature, Geophysical Research Letters, 34, L08203, doi:10.1029/2006GL028764.

However, before anyone gets too excited, the authors state in the paper:

"An important caveat is that even for the well-studied Earth temperature variability, the steady rise in temperature since the mid 1970s is not fully understood, but has an anthropogenic component due in part or entirely to rising greenhouse gases, in combination with changes induced by sulfate and volcanic aerosols, and/or other forcing factors. Total solar irradiance seems to be ruled out as a driving factor in temperature variations, although other components of solar output may still play a role.

[N1 Vibes]

W.R.A.I.T.H

to go back to your original point, very valid to mention the £10 tax, let's put it in perspective with one of the perceived biggest polluters - private road transport. If you imagine that UK air transport is estimated to be responsible for 5% of the UK's CO2 production, 2002 UK Gov emissions stats, and that 200 million people flew from the UK in 2005, than that's a revenue of about £2 billion per year for UK Gov with the new tax.

And that in the same survey about 8% was due to private household vehicles, i.e. private cars. Tax on petrol say 70%, total consumption in 2003 73 million litres a day, lets say half is for private cars, 36.5 million litres a day, 95p a litre. Means the UK gov takes £24 million a day, about £8.9 billion a year.

So if this £10 is an 'environment tax', £2 billion revenue, on an industry causing 5% of the problem. Then for private cars, 8% of the problem, the industry will need to pay an additional £3.2 billion a year. Making petrol £1.28 a litre.

Can't wait for the next budget!!

Brgd's,

N1 Vibes - currently digging myself a hole in the sand somewhere in Iraq...

[W.R.A.I.T.H]

Good point N1,

the £10 tax is paid by all domestic and UK departures economy, £20 business.
Longhaul pax pay 4 times as much.

The breakdown of air traffic in 2005 was 129 mil. Europe, 26 mil. domestic. 22 mil. US and 25 mil. the rest, both of which would be longhaul. Estimating that F+C take up, say, 4% of all flight capacity on shorthaul and 10 % on longhaul, that gives you over £3,6 bn on annual revenue. Nifty.

There might be a caveat in that only outbounds are taxed which would bring my figure to £1,8bn, close enough to yours.

And yet all I hear is that's not enough, the tax won't arrest the growth of CO2 production by UK aviation and an argument that the impact will be borne by poor starving black kids in Africa, thrown in for good measure.

Anyone else holding their breath about taxation of Jet A1 being kicked about anytime soon?

[Wiggly Bob]

If business class passangers and economy class passangers fly on the same plane, their CO2 contribution is equal. Why then £20 tax for business class and only £10 for economy? Does the Champers in Business / First class cause the passangers to emit more CO2? Flatulence?

[Benny Lin]

The rationale is very loosely based upon the energy required to move you and the proportion of the aircraft that is carrying you.

Taking British Airways as an example, in J the seat pitch x width is 73" x 20" = 1460 square inches. In Y it is 31 x 17.5 = 542.5 square inches. Quite simply, it requires more energy (and thus more emissions) to move the floor area of the J class passenger than the Y class passenger. Or, put it another way, if all the J class passengers sat in economy seats then a smaller aircraft could be used to transport the same number of people, thus reducing emissions.

In reality given the disparity between J and Y class floor areas, the J class passenger should be paying more in relation to the Y class. This is of course even worse when F is taken into account (1683 sq inches). The innovation of flat bed seats in J and F has driven up this differential in recent years.

That is of course the rational argument, although it is also arguable whether a simple floor area claculation is appropriate - more complex formulae could be used easily. The more cynical view might be that J class passengers (or actually in general their employers) have deeper pockets...

[N1 Vibes]

Could it be to do with the fact that the seat weighs about 5 times the economy seat and they probably use real china plates, steel cutlery, vast quantaties of alcohol in real bottles, not the mini ones, etc, etc. I could mention the size of some individuals derierres that fly in business class, but that would no doubt bring the fatism brigade out!

Brgd's,

N1 Vibes - given up diggin the hole - gone on an Atkins diet instead...

[11K-AVML]

Don't forget that if you can fit fewer Business Class Seats in the cabin, then there are fewer business class seats to carry along with less cutlery and china and booze, etc. I'm not saying this makes it the same as would be economy seating configurations, but it is a figure that needs to be subtracted.

In the same vein, don't forget that the UK Airport Departure tax is charged to flights departing UK airports and that the higher rate applies to any class higher than the lowest class on board that aircraft, so premium economy classes also pay the higher rate, yet all those business class-only flights are only liable to the lower rate.

Back to the transport industry as a whole; it's worth remembering that aviation is self funded including the infrastructure, whereas road transport relies on government investment (including the regular occurrence of car manufactures being paid subsidies). Railway transport used to be self funded, with infrastructure originally paid for by the private companies involved, but then governments took control (during the war), gave it back after a lack of investment (understandably) but then imposed tax charges for the land the railway companies owned!

[jabird]

We have a long way to go to redress the PR balance, but this site is certainly one that is well worth linking to.

My biggest gripe with the £10 APD is that it is levied in both directions on domestic sectors. Try telling a family of four living in Belfast that they should take a weekend break in (already expensive) London (£80 goes to Gordon), when they could drive down to tax-free DUB, and fly three times further to AGP, paying a mere E5.78 each for the return journey.

I don't think that global warming is a hoax, but I do like to try and understand as many angles to the argument as possible. One thing I am sure of is that there are more effective ways of reducing CO2 output than going after aviation.

We might be an easy target, but how many politicians realise that they can only ever exercise limited control over an industry that is inherently international. Perhaps that's why we've suffered here at CVT, but that's for another thread.

If even a fraction of the extra billions raised from APD was diverted towards investing in better facilities for walking and cycling - including safe routes to school, then we'd all be better off. For all the unproven talk about radiative forcing at higher altitudes, vehicle emmissions at ground level are indisputable, and one way to limit these is to make the walking environment as safe and attractive as possible.

That's what the Dutch and Swiss do, and it is no wonder that their levels of obesity are a fraction of ours. Unfortunately, both countries tend to operate under a much gentler form of democracy, whereas we have to sex everything up to keep the tabloids busy.

Sex up self powered transport anyone? Somehow the walk-a-mile-a-day club is never going to be as salacious as bashing the mile high club.