Longer-range aircraft: a good thing? 15 February 05

I heard the discussion and listened again later using the BBC website which is very good. You managed to get a number of key points over and getting the last word on carbon rationing was great. Parris avoided dealing with the argument and raised spurious points. I was disappointed to hear him “argue” like that because he’s not a stupid man. I’m afraid it’s all too common to find people not willing to engage honestly and directly. The GW/CC debate is based on science, has a very clear political dimension but also has a strong psychological aspect to it as well. We need to bear this in mind when making the argument.

Douglas Coker

.. and not just for sounding so lucid so early in the morning!

I’ve read quite a lot of Matthew Parris, and seems a very interesting person. He also gave quite a balanced opinion, in my view, of someone who is not particularly aware of the long term threats to the health of the planet.

These days, I am drawing great encouragement from the large number of books that are just coming out, often by American writers, that are challenging everyone to re-consider their assumptions about the impacts we are placing on the planet – and the implications about Long Term Planning for travel, energy etc.

I am hopeful that a lucid and reasonable commentator like Matthew Parris would not respond in the way he did in a year or two’s time.

Peter

PS. In terms of seeing your family in New Foundland, and other such journeys, I think the way ahead is to use good planning with boats, trains & more environmental transport methods as they become available. It would likely take longer – but with a laptop and the Internet, you could have a mobile office. You could plan a 3-month trip of North America! Good planning is crucial.

It cheered me up no end to hear you argue so convincingly this morning on ‘Today’. Climate change is an equity issue, as the people who will be most effected by climate change are, and will be, the poorest people in the world.

Mark, I am deeply confused about your approach here. I listened to the interview and I noticed your answer to the question of cheap flights with many passengers as being worse as actually taking away from your point about the longer range planes.

If I was the other person being interviewed, I would have quickly pointed that out but he was a lightweight only making a case for personal options which you actually concurred with him at some level as being relevant.

Your answer to the question about loaded flights was based on the fact that these cheap flights loaded with passengers are of short interval and that more fuel is used during take offs and landings.

Now, would not a nonstop flight eliminate a take off and landing, and use less fuel? So, would not a non-stop flight be more fuel efficient? Or would carrying the extra fuel for non-stop flights in a larger plane require more fuel in flying the longer distance? Better questions which were not raised in that interview since your opponent was clearly not a Lomborg!

With regard to flights which have more passengers, would it not be better to compare one flight between 2 cities with a plane loaded and one which is not loaded. What are the environmental costs for travel under these circumstances?

Since the decision to fly or not fly is based on a specific destination, then what are our best options when we decide to fly? Would a fully loaded plane or one that is not fully loaded make a difference?

What about the decision to fly on a plane non-stop to eliminate an extra fuel-consuming take off and landing? We have that choice easily. Should we choose the non-stop flight or do the airlines achieve a better balance by making sure more planes are more fully loaded using the stop-over approach. I do not know!

If we look at a fully loaded plane and consider the effect of the weight of one person, then what would that effect be? If we went on a diet and lost 10 pounds, would that make any difference? How do the emissions and contrails compare to other forms of transportation available? For example, how does is compare to using our own cars, fully loaded buses, or not so fully loaded buses? Using the bus here is an awful experience and the trains are more expensive than the airlines right now. I just do not have a way of comparing my options and if you could help this process or provide some links, then I would be more informed at least.

These are more relevant questions for people to make choices between flying or not flying and weighing the benefits. This is one area where I saw agreement between you and the other person being interviewed. Both of you agreed that prudent people should weigh choices based upon the environment. Even the climate scientists flying to their meetings must do this as you indicated. You just added that you want these choices based on carbon credits. The other person being interviewed mentioned that fuel economy should be a consideration when it comes to travel. These ideas are congruous with the basic principles of prudent personal choices.

Now, what is the difference between the Airbus and Boeing? I am not sure, but I checked your references and found that Boeing at least claims a 20 percent fuel reduction. So, if you or a climate scientist must attend a meeting, would it not be better to go non-stop and take the more fuel efficient Boeing plane? The link to the Boeing stats below from your own cited reference:

http://www.newairplane.com/en-US/787Dreamliner/Efficient.html

Mark, I think it would be most useful for the prudent people to have as much knowledge about our viable options and to understand these issues better. Even if we do not have a Kyoto in force here in the states, I am not getting enough guidelines from you other than do not fly?

Sometimes, I may fly and it would be helpful for me to know for sure if a loaded plane is better than a non-loaded plane and which planes use the less fuel, etc. Sometimes, planes are more fully loaded than at other times depending on the season of the year. Which Airline’s have higher capacities than others? Which Airline uses the least fuel per passenger? I do not know. But, what if I did decide to fly? I would like to know what options I had to reduce my own environmental impact. Otherwise, I would then choose the cheapest flight and rationalize that they may also be the most efficient! So, your opponent argued the same and this is congruous to how most people think, yet you offered nothing to indicate an alternative strategy.

Now, is the nonstop flight better or not? Based on your answers and references, I am not sure. If you had to go to Sydney and you had various options to choose from including the Airbus and the Boeing plane which one would you then choose based on the least harm to the environment? Can you find any numbers to share with us which would validate your choice?

So, your original question: Longer-range aircraft: a good thing?

All I know is that your answers in that interview did not answer that question at all and based on your critique of shorter flights being less fuel efficient, your own points would suggest that Longer–range aircraft are indeed a good development since a non-stop flight would use less fuel from less take offs and landings!

OK, I guess I am getting bored with no incompetent skeptics to argue with after we chased them away so I thought I would take a fair shot at you Mark! Besides, you have to face Mr. Lomborg soon enough and I just want to keep you on your toes! ;-)

That other guy was a lightweight who seemed to know nothing about climate issues and he did not even seem capable of using simple logic to argue against your points which were mostly against flying rather than a case against a specific aircraft which was the whole point of the discussion to begin with!

Your turn!!!

Best, Dan

What alternatives does your group offer to road building?

OK, I am playing devil’s advocate to generate discussion. People who propose to build roads or to widen roads often promote this to ease traffic congestion. Traffic congestion increases higher fuel use and better roads systems allow travelers to maximize their fuel efficiency.

This may be the argument for the side who favors more roadways as a way to reduce emissions. Sometimes, I find the argument correct if the new roadway eliminates a longer more inefficient route between 2 points. This is often true for bridge construction.

I just wonder if your group proposes alternative strategies to ease congestion. I say this because we have similar issues over here and alternatives have been proposed and pursued to ease congestion by offering other alternatives to reduce miles traveled by motorists without more roadway construction.

These ideas also ease congestion by increasing fuel economy by reducing traffic. These concepts are about proper planning of communities to make building roadways less important. The concept here is called Smart Growth promoted by our Sierra Club. Site below:

http://www.sierraclub.org/

The idea attempts to solve these problems locally where I live by providing incentives to developers to build higher density communities near mass transit stations and enabling people to walk by providing paths to nearby places of interest.

Also, over here, many people cannot afford to live where they work and are forced by economics to move further away and commute longer distances. This seems to be the root of the congestion problem. Maybe the roadways encourage this practice but there still may be a problem in how communities are developed. Communities seem to be designed by income level yet people of all backgrounds should be able to live and work in the same community.

Does your group simply protest roadways by blocking construction sites or do you actually do something more constructive? I am interested to hear more about what your group does.

Best, Dan

Dan,

I was trying to get across a more general message in a very short time. Most people haven’t the faintest idea that flying is the most climate-destructive thing they ever do, so I wanted to mention this whilst simultaneously sounding reasonable about the opportunities that it offers for travel and so on. My point about short-haul flights being worse is because proportionally per mile travelled they use more fuel because more time is spent taking off than cruising. Also there are more easy alternatives for short-haul travel by rail and so on rather than flight. I think the most important thing here is not to try and find the most fuel-efficient journey, but – given many tonnes of CO2 will end up in the atmosphere either way – to reassess the need to fly at all.

Cheers, Mark

Mark,

Your point about any air travel having a high environmental impact is correct. I found a website calculator which helps someone determine the greenhouse gas calculations for flying based on the trip, the number of passengers, etc.

http://www.chooseclimate.org/flying/mapcalc.html

I may run my own numbers comparing other modes of transportation using this site’s methodology and post later.

I guess I felt the discussion should have been more focused on the long-range aircraft versus flying in general since the focus was about those planes being developed.

I still think that the Boeing aircraft would be an asset if it uses 20 percent less fuel and avoids a stop over since many people have few viable alternatives other than flying when considering a long distance trip.

Travelers can still limit their flying or eliminate it. Unless we ban all air travel, I think the long-range planes will help more than hurt if they are more fuel efficient. We promote hybrid vehicles because of fuel efficiency.

This discussion has merit since as your said the GW/CC impact of flying is not common knowledge. I encourage others to visit the site I posted above to satisfy any curiosity about air travel emissions.

Hopefully, I can run some numbers that can be of use for you and others when discussing transportation choices.

Best, Dan

I read through the website below (posted earlier):

http://www.chooseclimate.org/flying/mapcalc.html

It appears that flying is approximately 3 times the equivalent of driving mile for mile. The website also converted any plane trip to the equivalent electricity used.

I flew last New Years (about 1000 km) on a short flight and I helped my friends replace ten 60 watt bulbs for compact fluorescent bulbs at 13 watts each. This made a difference to offset some of my plane trip emissions.

It appears that my activity helped reduce the global impact of my flight by one third based on an average use of 4 hours per day of each CFB for an entire year. So, in 3 years, that flight would have been traded off by those carbon equivalents.

Please note that I used 25 watts instead of 13 watts based on the power factor of these bulbs in my calculation.

So now I have a better understanding of the GW/CC impact of flying.

So, you just walk down the street and replace all the incandescent bulbs with CFBs of a few of your neighbors to make your flight an equal carbon trade.

See, I told you more information would be beneficial. Compact fluorescent bulb trading credits to justify your plane flight!

Hey, I sold 60 bulbs at the last Sierra Club meeting. That is equivalent to 2 local plane trips per year! Interestingly, this is true for about 7 years which is the lifetime of these bulbs so 14 plane trips over 7 years.

It took me only 10 minutes to sell all those bulbs after I provided the exact energy savings to the group so they had total clarity of what these bulbs will do to lower their electric bill and their long life made it an even better deal than they ever realized.

This is just one option of how we can take advantage of cheap flights and make good on the environment! I like options. Helping thy neighbor seems like a good idea. I can fly and do this for less cost than taking a train or driving. Most people reimburse me anyway.

The point here is that it is better to help thy neighbor by helping reduce their emissions than simply denying yourself from ever flying again.

Helping others reduce emissions does more than what we can do by ourselves. Maybe that is the real point to be gained from this exercise.

Dan

Hello Dan,

Had to make a comment now that road-building has come up. Fully agree with your point about better integrated spacial planning making most new road development unecessary. When the mayor of London introduced congestion charging in Central London 2 years ago there was uproar: the pundits predicted the economic demise of the city and universal bankruptcy plus enormous, displaced congestion outside the charging zone. I well remember the immense satisfaction of hearing the embarassed silence from this myopic motley crew when the scheme worked far better than anticipated. The charges have been ploughed back into improving public transport and provision for walkers and cyclists. A 30% traffic reduction has been maintained and the city’s still in business!! For the latest report summary see this link: http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/cclondon/pdfs/impacts-monitoring-report-january-2005.pdf

In recent years several UK cities have managed to evade central government financial restrictions and re-introduce tram or light rapid transit systems. These have been almost universally successful with substantial transfer of users from private cars to public transport and yet our government says they do not provide a cost effective return on public investment (?) It seems we in the UK always have to re-learn the hard way what our European neighbours have known, practised and enjoyed for decades when it comes to transport systems.

Which brings us to rail….... no I’m not even going to start!; Suffice to say that shortly our new high speed rail link from central London to the Channel tunnel will be completely opened: giving city-centre to city centre journeys to Paris, Brussels and onwards to many other European capitals at 186mph. Point to point times faster than air travel (given transfer times from airports) far better energy efficiency of rail (low rolling resistance, regenerative braking etc) and a choice of generating medium to supply the electricity. France Germany, Spain, and Belgium are about 20 years ahead of us in developing a network of internal high speed lines which are faster, cleaner and more convenient than internal air travel and, with recent talk of an EU aviation fuel tax, may even soon be cheaper.

If you want to discuss sustainable transport, I suggest we adjourn to someone else’s blog or we’ll be censured from here. I have several more interesting links for you should you want.

kind regards

Colin Keyse

Colin,

I love it when you post here because I always learn so much. I consider all your posts to be of very high value.

I do not believe that your posts on this subject would ever be censored. I am not aware of anyone being censored. Smart Growth concepts are totally in line with saving energy and reducing emissions.

In fact, I think Mark would appreciate any posts about preventative ideas. Those are my favorite posts. We can all become climate-science experts but that knowledge is not sufficient by itself to help us slow our carbon output.

I know of people here in the USA who are involved in local politics on the concept of Smart Growth to ease congestion.

I will now bookmark and read with interest the websites you provided me. Hopefully, I may be able to put this information to good use.

I have posted many times that what we do to help others has greater benefit than are own reductions. My latest example was how supplying 60 compact fluorescent light bulbs to others was roughly equivalent to 14 plane trips for me over a time period of seven years (assume a 1000 km round trip at 80 percent full on each flight).

Likewise, if the USA reduced its per capita emissions to the same per capita rate of the UK, then it would be equivalent to the UK reducing to zero emissions by a factor of 4 or the EU reducing by 70 percent.

My point is that the EU would do better by helping the USA reduce emissions rather than trying to lower it more themselves. The same is true for the UK.

By you helping me to understand what we may be doing wrong here and what works better in other countries, you are doing exactly what I have been saying all along.

Thanks Again, Dan

Colin,

Go ahead and post on Mark’s site the other links you mentioned. All of what you shared so far I have found to be very relevant to the discussion and debate on Mark’s site.

I like the one you gave me on the Central London Congestion Charging Scheme and I intend to read it with interest.

Thanks, Dan

Hello again.

Thanks for your comments I am very interested in small practical steps that each of us can take and in sharing knowledge of best practice; successes and failures. Our planet is such a wonderful place that it seems to me that there should not be a conflict between living responsibly and sustainably and having a great time. I would like to think that our friend Norbert could agree with this. There are two principles that can be applied across the board which help enormously. 1) the proximity principle and 2) BPEO, the Best Practicable Environmental Option. On the first: in everything we do, there is often a great advantage in doing it locally within our neighbourhood or community (I am not condoning parochialism or isolationism here!) This morning on TV we had a lead story on how millions of pre-prepared meals (TV dinners) have had to be recalled across the UK because they may contain a carcinogenic dye used in shoe polish that has been illegally added. So much of our food production is industrialised that we have no idea what goes into it at all. The issues of embedded energy (food miles: the distance the final product and its ingredients have travelled) artifical additives, salt, fat content, unecessary packaging etc.etc all come into play here. There is an enormous and growing demand for fresh, locally produced and organic food here which the supermarkets cannot keep pace with. The organisation I work for has provided funding for several groups to set up community agriculture projects, farmers markets and local produce ‘green box’ schemes. These involve people in training, employment and social interaction. They result in more people understanding how the food chain works, getting active in the outdoors (which has preventative health benefits), providing food produced in a known way ( word gets around about who grows/raises what , where and how) and keeps more money in the pockets of the local economy and less in the pockets of remote shareholders. The link between composting of green waste and soil improvement is also strengthened, reducing costs in another part of the cycle. The success of most of these projects has been phenomenal.

BPEO: This means taking issues of cost, economic vaiability, convenience and acceptance by consumers very much into account. There is no point in trying to force a change on people that results in higher costs, more hassle and a lower standard of living. Making the kind of improvements that would turn the US economy into a thriving world leader in sustainable development and low-impact living should actually result in a lifestyle that is overall cheaper, healthier and more fun than what you’re doing now!!! Most people will go for a better solution if they are given sound reasons for it and shown the benefits: however we are told what to think, do and buy all the time by vested interests who do not want us to ask what is really going on. ‘Climate of Fear’ is a great title: it’s what global capitalism is creating to keep us all just where they want us!

In terms of recycling. Rather than thinking of waste management as dealing with a problem, we have several groups that are running successful collection schemes in partnership with their local authorities. One of the leading groups has just started publishing their emerging data. Because they are a local community group that provides 52 jobs and 28 training places for those with difficulty gaining employment and they are non-profit distributing; they have a high level of support. There is a clear proposal with the householder/local business: If you separate your waste into different types, keep it clean & dry and donate it to us on collection day each week, we will keep your local taxes down, and create more economic benefits in your city. In more than half of the streets they are working, there is now 100% voluntary participation in this scheme. The project is on target to capture over 70% of household waste within 3 years. The costs of waste collection across Welsh Authorities vary between £130 and £300 per ton collected and disposed of. Our group is costing the taxpayer £40 per ton and this is set to reduce. As Oil prices increase, the cost of transport, production and packaging will soar. This will make recovered materials far more valuable in relative terms so the gains in materials sales will actually increase the savings to the taxpayer.

I thought these were free-market principles? Keep public expediture & taxation down, reduce waste, improve efficiency, increase choice by the user, involve your customers in your business’ success?

I know we Brits are famous for being organised amateurs, and I am not proposing that the community sector take over everything, or that there is not a place for the risk taking, for-profit entrepreneur, just that we are suffering from a systemic economic imbalance and that global capitalism and greed are forces which protect inefficiency, promote growth and waste instead of wealth creation, and are criminally simplistic in that they only account for half of the processes involved in any transaction.

A proper free market is based on good information, real freedom of choice, sustainability and improving the quality of life for as many as possible.

I hope that I will be able to publish a lot more of the results from our pilot projects in due course. At the moment, they are going before the regional government to inform their decision making and so I can’t say much more.

There are similar gains to be had in transport, social housing, heritage & culture, local food production, renewable energy etc.

You asked for more links to browse. I have attached two that I hope you will find interesting. One is the Transport 2000 site This is for an emminent transport lobby group in the UK which is fighting the profligate expansion of roads and airports and trying to promote high quality, sustainable transport at low cost in the face of rampant profiteering from the private sector. The other site is from an environmental centre not far from where I live which is successfully expanding into sustainable living education on a regional and national scale. They have an enormous skills and resource base built up over several decades and have largely discarded the wooly jumpers and dreadlocks for sharp suits and business briefings with decision makers, but without losing their priciples.

1)http://www.transport2000.org.uk/ 2)www.cat.org.uk/

Happy reading

with kind regards

Colin Keyse

Hello Dan,

further to your comments on the link I posted to the Australian site that was proposing to build a prototype solar-powered atmospheric CO2 scrubber and methane production plant:

I came across a very informative site dedicated to current research into Carbon sequestration. In particular is this paper which deals with the science behind the air-scrubber concept. The potential performance compared to natural carbon sequestration by photosynthesis looks very promising.

http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/proceedings/01/carbon_seq/7b1.pdf

The rest of the site is also extremely informative and deals with more methods of carbon sequestration than I knew were possible!

What strikes me at first glance through several of the papers is the similarity in the range of responses to atomspheric CO2 reduction, to that of ‘waste management’ in general. The conventional response ‘is capture it in bulk from the power station chimney and bury it deep underground’ or: ‘lets seed the oceans with iron to increase the adsorbtion rate’, The similarity to the landfill mindset with solid waste is clear. In contrast, the atmospheric scrubber concept is a neat recycling solution. Use the biosphere as a global CO2 pool, site your plant where there is abundant solar power and a sustainable water supply and away you go, creating liquid methane, ethanol or hydrogen and capturing CO2 at 8x the rate of a forest.

As ever, the trick will be developing a working prototype that is commercially attractive, but it could be viable if, in addition to the sales of oxygen and liquid fuel products, you count the value of traded carbon emissions credits!!

with best wishes

Colin Keyse

Hi Colin,

I am interested in these ideas because they seem they will be necessary. If I ever get a chance, I may review some of these concepts and see if I can do a rough energy-balance calculation using the first law of thermodynamics.

Converting CO2 to fuels would require more energy than the energy the fuels can produced and that method would definitely need a non-carbon source of energy or it simply would not work. Likewise, the amount of energy in the fuels would be less than the solar energy input. The amount of fuel produced is directly related to the solar input and that is directly related to land surface area, location, and annual cloudiness.

One drawback is when these fuels are burned, then the carbon would go back into the air so it would not reduce the current buildup. To use a method to sequester carbon directly out of the air but not produce high energy fuels but a low energy compound may in fact be able to use a carbon source and yet take more carbon out of the air then the carbon put back into the air to run the system. An energy balance would be interesting to calculate on that based on a reference I read from the author of the article on the solar idea.

It would always be better to use a non-carbon source, but I wonder if it is possible and worthwhile to use a carbon source if the efficiency is high enough. The benefit there is it may not need a big footprint of land which solar would require. Well, we always have nuclear as a source too.

I am book marking the site you gave me to read and for future reference and may get back to it one day. Sequestering carbon seems to be an important aspect to emission reductions and preventing climate change.

Thanks for keeping me up to date!

Maybe one day I might make a trip to the UK and meet you, Mark, and others I have had the pleasure of corresponding with on Mark’s site.

My vision is that the carbon required for the trip will have no consequence because somehow and someway we got it right and effectively met the challenges ahead. I have to remain an optimist. It is no fun thinking any other way.

BTW, have you ever seen the movie Apollo 13? If you never have, I recommend you rent the video if you can do that. I think that you would enjoy watching it. If you decide to do this, please let me know your take on it. I always think that if we had the same attitude depicted in that movie, then we will be able to solve our climate problem.

Best, Dan

Could these “scrubbers” produce enough H2O to serve as commercially viable source of renewable water for draught stricken parts of the world…ie- NW Africa?

Also what would the cummulative effect of say 5 or more of these plants on the total CO2 content of the atmosphere? Could this techknowlogy in conjunction with emmision controls and other environmental initiatives serve as an effective tool against the building green-house effect?

Could these “scrubbers” produce enough H2O to serve as commercially viable source of renewable water for draught stricken parts of the world…ie- NW Africa?

Also what would the cummulative effect of say 5 or more of these plants on the total CO2 content of the atmosphere? Could this techknowlogy in conjunction with emmision controls and other environmental initiatives serve as an effective tool against the building green-house effect?