Off_Field wrote:
I hardly describe environmental modelling as rock solid.
Solid enough that it hurts if you hit it.
I find a lot more issues with the proposed solutions than with the problem they are trying to solve. Like the 500 frank tax per private flight. Eliminates around 0.01%-0.03% of overall CO2 production through destruction.
Off_Field wrote:
So why waste so much time an energy in first world advanced nations who have already made significant reductions? Go for the major sources as I’ve already said.
Logic is not the strong point of those people. And of course they would, but any of our nations government has preciously little to say about what those do. So they hit who they can hit.
That in the end they will achieve a very opposite scenario is beyond them. If they destroy the Western Economy, China and others will be willing to take up the slack and buy the destroyed nations and rebuild them after their liking. And then Greens will end up in the Gulag and make consumer goods for their new bosses when they only say one wrong word. It does not occurr to those who want to destroy us that by doing that they comit high treason against the very society who supports their right of free speech.
I think the geopolitical intent of these nutters (and more specifically their friends in government) is to restrain the counties that still have fossil fuel resources from using them, by political means based on limiting CO2 production worldwide, using themselves as an example, and thereby put themselves on a more even competitive footing. It’s a naive point of view and while Mooney_Driver lays out an extreme version, I think it’s the more likely general direction.
The other half of the political agenda is domestic energy independence which relative to controlling a disinterested world via politics seems more likely to occur given time, effort and (assuming non-hydro renewables) acceptance of a lower domestic living standard. The French have already gone a long way in that direction with nuclear, and while nuclear is a limited resource itself it does give them the power and relative independence they want with little practical downside.
Peter wrote:
Can it really be as short as 25 years?
I wouldn’t be surprised. Offshore turbine repairs
These have only been a few years. and I believe in cumbria they found eroision to all of the turbines. I think Siemmens set aside 500 million to fix them.
e:spelling
Gearbox maintenance is a big deal.
It’s a tax that won’t help the environment one bit,
If it were ring-fenced for tree growing, it would.
I don’t think that denial, dismissal, anger and disrespect does the aviation industry any credit or benefit. It would be better if we could demonstrate that we wish to be part of the solution, rather than denying there is a problem.
LeSving wrote:
Many previously hard core environmental activists have given up. They think it’s already too late and have started to prepare themselves for the inevitable (to them) collapse of the society (they believe the environmental damage will cause a collapse of the society first).
Living in Scandinavia, I agree. We are going to see a mass exodus of people living closer to the equator before we have any real problems here, the migration crises and related wars we have seen so far will be nothing in comparison.
This means to live as self sufficient and off the grid as possible.
It is actually quite possible that climate conditions in Scandinavia will improve due to climate changes. (Improve in the sense of better conditions for agriculture, less need of heating etc.) But that won’t help us when the displaced millions start to move.
I have to say that I am somewhat surprised to see so many climate change deniers or at least -sceptics on this thread.
Normally I would regard us pilots as a type of person of the more rational nature with a solid grounding in the physical world and a strong appreciation for the laws of nature. It’s physics that keep our planes in the air and anyone who doesn’t show the required respect for its inescapable mechanics of cause and effect will not fly for long.
Man-made climate change is exactly such an inescapable mechanism. If we, as mankind, pull gigatons of hydrocarbons, that have deposited over many million years, out of the ground and burn them over the course of “a few” years (geohistorically speaking) the production of massive amounts of CO2 is inevitable. And since the biosphere and oceans cannot simply absorb these amounts (as very basic measurements show) they remain in the atmosphere.
And since CO2 is a proven greenhouse gas the temperature on the earth’s surface is inevitably going to increase.
Nothing in this very basic chain of cause and effect is hard to understand or somehow debatable.
What is much less obvious and thus requires a great deal of solid scientific work is predicting the magnitude and time-scale of this temperature increase as well as its effects on the many aspects of our natural surroundings and our livelyhood as humans.
But a lot of work has been done in this field and the results are crystal-clear: There is absolutely insurmountable evidence that the effects are going to be significant, the ETA of them is negative (i.e. we are already feeling them today) and the chance that they will spiral out of control very soon is high.
So, the positions “I don’t believe in man-made climate change” or “It’s all still up for debate” is not a credible position that anyone can stand on, let alone in a community of rational, physics-appreciating individuals.
Announcing that you don’t believe in man-made climate change puts you in exactly the same spot as the flat-earth society and disqualifies you from any serious further discussion!! In the same way that it’s impossible to have a meaningful conversation about astro physics with a flat-earther it’s impossible to have a meaningful discussion about climate politics with a denier.
It really is that simple!
We cannot have a discussion about facts. Facts must be accepted and incorporated into one’s world view, not discussed.
And of course none of this up to here is in any way a political question! It’s plain and simple laws of nature. Period.
What we can and absolutely MUST have is a discussion about how to deal with the effects of man-made climate change and what we can do to curb and reverse the developments. And here, of course, political views very much come into play. After all it is about protection of privileges, distribution of cost and “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité”. But all discussions here MUST be firmly rooted on the facts and scientific evidence.
Now, how does all this affect us as lovers of General Aviation?
It affects us very much and for several reasons:
1. GA has been under fire for a long time already and our fellow citizens are less and less willing to accept the emissions, pollution and cost that GA puts on them for little benefit to the public. Heightened awareness about sources of environmental impacts will only accelerate the problem and increase its magnitude.
2. As pilots we tend to belong to the very upper crust of our societies. For the most part we enjoyed the best education, we’ve been at least somewhat successful in our professional careers and we have the means to afford a costly hobby. This means that we have more leverage and influence on local and non-local politics than our average fellow-citizen. We tend to know more of “the right” people and we tend to understand better how “the system” works.
This puts us in a position of relative power! And with power comes RESPONSIBILITY!
If you don’t agree with the “power == responsibility” relationship you are simply not a nice person, euphemistically speaking.
So, how should we as GA pilots participate in climate change politics?
First, of course, we should use our position of relative power and try to influence our local branch of politics to take the right kind of actions to address the challenges posed by climate change. For actions must be taken.
What exactly the right kind of action is depends on your political view.
But saying that no action must be taken because climate change isn’t real is not a politcal view. It’s simply stupid.
But more concretely, how can we help to protect our beloved General Aviation from getting thrown under the bus in the increasingly heated (pun intended) political discussion that we are definitely going to see in the coming years?
Well, first we must accept and acknowledge that General Aviation is in quite a dire state!
For the most part we are flying around using airframes and propulsion technology that are more than half a century old and as such utterly unfit for today’s, and even less so for tomorrow’s, environmental standards.
How come we are happily lugging around hundreds of kilograms of metal that could be replaced by much more lightweight modern materials and designs, burning many gallons of LEADED hydrocarbon per hour, where leaded gasoline for automobile use was banned pretty much worldwide roughly 40 years ago, for very very good reasons?
How come most of our planes haven’t really achieved a degree of noise reduction that is at least somewhat comparable to what automobiles have achieved over the past decades?
We are flying dinosaurs and we are going to get extinct if we don’t evolve.
And with climate change moving more and more into the center of politics the pressure for evolution rises dramatically.
I for one would never buy or routinely fly an aircraft that burns leaded avgas. Period.
And auto fuel STCs aren’t really a great alternative either, as you are still burdened by these ancient, heavy heaps of reciprocating iron under the cowling.
We as pilots and owners simply must move to modern planes, with modern engines.
But even the Rotax 915is (IMHO the best GA engine available today) can only be a stepping stone into the future.
What I really want is getting rid of combustion propulsion altogether.
Whether it’s an axial flux engine + small battery + fuel cell + liquid hydrogen or some other electrical power train I don’t know.
But its going to be electrical propulsion or die.
When I talk to the mayor of my local city who is facing increasing pressure to simply shut down our local airfield due to emissions, pollution and space requirements then the only thing that might convince him to try to keep it open a few more years longer is the prospect of a major shift of technology towards a new age of much more environemntally-friendly aviation that is “about to happen”.
We as General Aviators must embrace change and push innovation forward whereever we can or our hobby will simply die a silent death.
If this means to pass on this super cheap deal on a lyco-saurus from planecheck and maybe downsize to a modern two-seater with at least contemporary power plant, so be it.
Cheers,
Mathias
