Aeroplanes to be outlawed
 

Well ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I've oft wondered when this moment might arrive and now it has. Lateline on ABC tonight have dared to go where no-one else has gone before and asked the question:
"how much pollution do we shove into the atmosphere with our aircraft and what should be done about it?"
There followed some data regarding the amount of carbon poo yer punter throws up doing a SYD-LHR. Answer? apparently about as much as the Ford commodore/Holden Falcon /Manaro or whatever, does in a year.!!!
Now, being a (sort of) conspiracy theorist, I say now is the time to fess-up about all that fabulous electro-gravitic propulsion technology championed by the late Townsend Brown (and flogged from the Germans post WWII), and stop using this positively medievil fossil-fuel burning technology to push these powered-gliders through the air and save some of the stuff upstairs that stops us getting a collective Hiroshima-tan courtesy of the sun.
Thoughts?
Over.

Yeah....most of what a jet puts into the atmosphere is water vapour....and global warming is a crock of ****.

C'mon Chimbu, you can do better than that.
Besides, you're 2 hours behind me

Well that's about the time it'd take to get from SYD to LHR in one of the aforementioned vehickles, so what's the problem? :}

Begs the question: What % of air travel is essential?

I would argue that medivac, medical clinic, fire-fighting, SAR, some survey ops, some maritime patrol, things along that line are..... but what about all those airliners....?

If you didn't have a vested interest (like me!) in it continuing to grow forever, what amount of those bums in those seats really need to be there? Tourism? "Business" trips? Military Transports to fly politicians around?... The Roulettes? Exporting live Crayfish? Importing Beef TO Australia? Transporting F1 Racecars or Racehorses from Dubai?

Put it this way - if oil gets to $150+ a barrell quickly, I guess the market may well determine it all for us.

How will the taxpayer then feel about a Government 737 flying John Howard, his advisors, and the Australian Press to Washington to get a farewell photo opportunity with ..... the guy who helped a great deal in getting the oil price so high!?

Perhaps the pure economics of flying may solve the environmental problem.

hoping for a bit of a sedgeway
 

Never mind that, what about electro-gravitics??
Ya DON'T need wings to fly.(note to self:now that outta do it.):}
By the way, that is PER SEAT, not the aircraft, sheesh.
Bloggs, ya must be drinking as much as I am.

it all depends what you consider esential....stop all non essential air travel and put about a billion people world wide out of work and onto the dole....that's the option....see how much political will there is when the real costs involved in saving what is demonstably not endangered are tallied up...then suggest the fluffy, lovey, tree huggers might just **** off.

Type 'Global Warming Desenters' into google and have read what scientists at MIT, NOAA and other such august centers of knowledge say about it....a non event.

After 3 hrs sleep in the last 30..and that in crew rest enroute Inchon before turning around and fly straight back home that's all ya get....2 hrs behind or not:ok:

and
 

CSIRO notably absent from that list Chimbu.
I would posture that checking some of those referenced think-tanks is akin to logging into the Republican Party site and looking for weapons of mass destruction. Holy Sh#t, those Iraqi's really DID have 'em.
Global warming is fact. I don't wanna give up my petrol-burning terrestial-transportation device, but I'm beyond denial now.
So do you think the Chinese will give me a command soon?

Chuck - true. (But my argument on what is essential is based on he cost of it - not the environmental impact)

However if oil gets to $150/barrel it will be more than a billion out of work. The sharemarket will have started to disintegrate.... in fact its such a doomsday scenario I dont really want to think about it. (I am not alone - none of the Western governments want to talk about it either)

As far as the environmental impact of air travel is concerned, any reduction in emissions would be voluntary along the lines of a Kyoto type protocol. Now with China due to receive 1600+ new airliners, I wonder if they will be signing up? And if they don't I wonder how voluntary the other signatory nations would be?

The question is rhetorical of course.

A lot of Asia stopped caring about air quality a long time ago anyway.

Whilst I lean towards the David Suzuki view on the worlds environment - I am not convinced that Global Warming is a fact - (I noted the not very recent public announcement that 2005 was no longer the hottest year - it has been renounced and 1998 is still in front). The data simply is not good enough (the error of margin is in excess of the trend). Nonetheless - anyone can see that continuously pumping all that crap into the atmosphere can't be sustainable.

Poke around here and see what you think.

http://mclean.ch/climate/global_warming.htm

I fly around a big portion of the globe...more often than not at night. What really has made me think is looking down at city after city after city burning MILLIONS, nah BILLIONS, of bulbs while the bulk of the populations is asleep.

India as just one example is almost a continuous sea of electric lights from coast to coast.

How much better off would the world be, on any number of levels, if cities went to minimum lighting between 2200 and dawn LT?

It is just BIZARRE how much energy is wasted globally on electricity....the vaste bulk of which is produced by coal fired generators.

YUP
 

Your dead right there CC. But we can burn as many lights as we like provided the source is cleaner. Bulbs per se do little to chew ozone and warm the rock we live on.
The oil is running out, that's fact. Burning oil(and the search for the last few fields of it), is shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic. The foreign policy adventures of the Dubya administration illustrates that starkly. Why go looking' fer something that's so insanely hard to get? (Lives don't count in this equation). These septic lunatics are throwing the baby out with the bath-water.
I say again; electro-gravitics.:E

Just had a squiz at that site. Who is the author? No glossary/bibliography/accreditation as far as I could see. Very Suss header page-title. Where d'ga find it?
Later: Had a good look now, that is a dodgey place my man. Viva la interobfuscationnet!

Crossbleed we can't burn as many lights as we like. Chimbu is spot on the money. Coal is the major source of electricity around the world.

"According to Greenpeace, coal produces over 40 percent of the world's annual carbon emissions. It's hardly a sundown industry. Between 1973 and 1993, global coal use rose by 36%. Coal burning exploded in Asia during those two decades, expanding 162%. Analysts predict Asia's coal appetite, mainly fed by Australia, will grow by 14 percent a year"

from this sight (did not search too long but i don't think the figures would be far off).. http://www.ecoshock.org/2006/01/end-...rth-burns.html

Cheers,

R-S.

By the way, I'm all for your idea of hover cars and any new technology that will bring improvement.

When they compare an airliner that travels half way across the world in terms of hours to a "further down the food chain" motor vehicle I just have to laugh :)

The car comparison is impractical as it's not designed to go great distances and even if it did it'd take about a year to get there anyway. Also the biggest factor here is many hundreds are transported by the aircraft and whereas a car will transport (inefficiently) a small handful of people at the most.

Air travel is efficient and all this global warming stuff is without substance. What is it that we've been shown or educated about with regards to this new trendy new phenomena. "Just take our word for it", it's happening but how, where and to what extent, etc ....

Crossbleed

I love it when this little gem of a debate sticks its head up because quite frankly it's rubbish. Aviation is the easiest of targets to pick on because it's so visible but the reality is it isn’t the polluter some would lead you to believe. To prove my point these are the official world wide air pollution figures for 2002.

Total Air pollution Emissions in 2002.

• Energy Industries = 53.8%
• Transport = 21.3%
• Manufacturing Industries & Construction = 11.7%
• Fugitive Fuel Emissions = 8.1%
• Other Sectors = 5.0%

Now let’s break down the transport sector to find who is the most polluting there.

Transport Emissions in 2002.

• Passenger Cars = 54.9%
• Other road Transport = 33.4%
• Aviation = 7.4%
• Railways = 2.3%
• Navigation = 2.0%

If we extrapolate this further for Aviation,

7.4% x 21.3% = 1.576%

In other words aviation accounted for no more than 1.6% of total air pollution in 2002. If we are to do anything about worldwide air pollution I think we should look at the energy industry first as it is by far the worst offender. Aviation is a piss in the ocean by comparison.

Right-o
 

Taking the broom to some of the last slopiness (my own):
Oooright; firstly comparisons between the family car and the 744 or whatever. Weight/time/distance equations yield a mathematical truth, in that the Jumbo is as efficient as a moped. Given, the entire population of Syd however doesn't go to LA everyday and therefore the economy(or lack thereof) of scale doesn't apply. We could, after all, get on the QE II and adjust our filofaxes/PDA'S accordingly, but that's unrealistic. Or is it? Aaah Fu#k It, let the next gebeartion sort that out.
Boogie-Nicey's point is obtuse, I'm talking about the fundamentals here: conversion of chemical potential energy into carbon unit (human) travelling a certain distance. Doesn't matter how. As for the legitimacy of the global warming phenomena, well, I wish I shared your conviction.
"It's hardly a sundown industry." Oh yes it is.
We all know burning the coal is no good.
Checkout book written by a staff writer of Jane's Defence Weekly, Title: "The Hunt for Zero Point".
You'll sell ya car and buy into wind-farms but quick.
(Note to self:that outta fire up the QF SO training-wheel intellects) hee ehehehehh
7.4x21.3 does not equal 1.576.

but if the greenies banned flying how would they ever get to their protests!

I think once the greenies get a hold of this, it will be squashed . ( cant imagine them paddling all the way to china to protest the dam that was built can you ? )

Crossbleed
I didn’t say that. I will admit to a typo but my point stands. What I wrote was:

7.4% x 21.3 (not 21.3%, Typo) = 1.576

Sorry to shoot down your argument but they are the facts. Maths doesn’t lie.

I think one of the question marks over aviation pollution relates to its' release in the upper atmosphere directly and the relatively high proportion of NOx compounds, contrails etc. and whether these more than compensate for its small, albeit growing proportion of emissions.

Sadly, this is not true, each tonne of fuel we burn creates 3 tonnes of greenhouse gases!!

Nobody is saying ban Aircraft, it is the responsibility of all people who live on this planet to take care of it.

Clearly as evidenced above, aircraft and other forms of transport are far from the worst offenders.

Obviously our biggest problem is with power generation. My opinion is that the sooner we move the majority of power generation to nuclear the better off we will be, the greenies are hypocritical being against nuclear power, when it is clearly the cleanest high volume option available a the moment!! I concede there is definately a problem with the waste, but surely an answer to that problem can be found...:ok: