No condensation trails!

[poddle]

I couldn't agree with you less Red.

I don't know what you do for a living, but from your posts about renovating your house, you appear to live and exist in a rural idyll. Although I live in the countryside too, the couple of weeks a year that I can take my family away from beautiful, rainy Cumbria really are a rain free treat.

Mass air travel has opened the world up to ordinary people, and I for one will be very sorry if, for whatever reason, that is denied to us.

Cheers, Michael.

Too right, and I have never met such boring people as those that have never travelled.
Sounds like Man Made Global Warming Sympathy to me, something that I simply reject.

 

[British Red]

Sounds like Man Made Global Warming Sympathy to me

That's the funniest thing I have read in months - thank you

 

[Tengu]

Isnt it QUIET?

I for one can live without the silly things, we should all go back to Tiger moths.

 

[phill_ue]

Now would be the perfect time to visit Kew Gardens; when I went a few years back, planes were flying over every few minutes and it spoilt it for me a little.

 

[Harvestman]

You know what, I was out today and I didn't notice that there were no aircraft or trails, but now that you mention it, it was glorious. I almost took a photograph of the clear blue sky, so there must have been something in the back of my mind about it.

Long may it continue! I imagine the environmental benefit from this huge no-fly zone is considerable, if short term.

 

[locum76]

I imagine the environmental benefit from this huge no-fly zone is considerable, if short term.

It's possibly completely offset by all the mess spewing out of the volcano. I heard a report that this might send some of the smaller airlines into financial trouble. This event might be another nail in the coffin for cheap air travel.

It's time to book that 'sabbatical' to Goa now folks.

 

[Melonfish]

the good: on thursday morning i was up on the Sandstone trail, lay on my back looking up at this amazingly unspoilt clear blue sky and loving it.

the bad: we're on Asthma watch with my eldest son, the ash is already affecting his chest.
Pete

 

[poddle]

I think its funny that this volcano has in a few days, belched out more CO2 and pollution than all the UK's cars will create in the next 100 years, and here we are celebrating the fact that there are no co trails in the sky.


At least it highlights what a futile mission we are on when we try to control C02.

The skies are not clear blue, they are full of volcanic ash and sulphur. You can see the stuff in the air here., its all over the cars too

 

[jonajuna]

no planes will mean an increase in pollution from global transport as more will need carrying by ship which burn heavy oil and contribute infinately more to global pollution than all the other forms of transport added together

every cloud (wether volcanic ash filled or not) does not have a silver lining

 

[andy r]

It's not all strawberries and cream with no planes in the sky !!! I'm waiting for parts t come in for my Tig welder, which means I either turn work away or hire one, and have parts stuck in the USA and a new knife in Sweden !

 

[Adze]

no planes will mean an increase in pollution from global transport as more will need carrying by ship which burn heavy oil and contribute infinately more to global pollution than all the other forms of transport added together

Is it panto season yet? Never mind...

"Oh no it doesn't"

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/03/shipping_vs_air.php

When this author was working out a carbon offset scheme for a previous employer, using Climate Care's calculations, shipping 1.5 tonnes of product by ship to the UK created 0.124 tonnes of CO2, while shipping only 0.5 tonnes of the same product by air created 4.5 tonnes of CO2.

Using very very simple maths that makes air transport 108 times more polluting per ton carried than shipping. Nice try though

 

[BorderReiver]

Clear blue skies, no contrails or any of Hillbills conspiracy vapour trails!

The Evil Ones aitn't stoopid: they will have stopped whatever it is they're doing so that we don't notice.

 

[milius2]

I think its funny that this volcano has in a few days, belched out more CO2 and pollution than all the UK's cars will create in the next 100 years, and here we are celebrating the fact that there are no co trails in the sky.

And this is based on what research?

 

[BorderReiver]

Is it panto season yet? Never mind...

"Oh no it doesn't"

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/03/shipping_vs_air.php



Using very very simple maths that makes air transport 108 times more polluting per ton carried than shipping. Nice try though

Rough oil combustion shoves much out more SO2 and micro particles than aviation fuel, so it's more qualitatively polluting.

 

[Adze]

Rough oil combustion shoves much out more SO2 and micro particles than aviation fuel, so it's more qualitatively polluting.

Micro particles which aren't ejected straight into the jet stream to be spread planet wide.

According to a new scientist article (this one apparently: "Green sky thinking", New Scientist, no. 2592, 24 February 2007, pp.33) pollutants emitted at altitude are four times worse than those at ground (sea) level.

No longer 108 times worse then, now 432 times. Fair enough, qualitatively more polluting per ton of fuel used perhaps. But not, in fact, in real terms more polluting at all. There's sulphur in aviation fuel, if there's 432 times as much sulphur in bunker oil then air freight and sea freight would still only be level pegging.

So much for 'infinitely more polluting'

Cheers,

 

[BorderReiver]

Micro particles which aren't ejected straight into the jet stream to be spread planet wide.
According to a new scientist article (this one apparently: "Green sky thinking", New Scientist, no. 2592, 24 February 2007, pp.33) pollutants emitted at altitude are four times worse than those at ground (sea) level.

No longer 108 times worse then, now 432 times. Fair enough, qualitatively more polluting per ton of fuel used perhaps. But not, in fact, in real terms more polluting at all. There's sulphur in aviation fuel, if there's 432 times as much sulphur in bunker oil then air freight and sea freight would still only be level pegging.

So much for 'infinitely more polluting'
Cheers,

To me, the pollution that harms people directly is a damn site worse than the stuff in the upper atmosphere.

SO2 and micro particles play merry hell with the respiratory systems of air breathing mammals; this is much more immediately damaging than global warming.

 

[Adze]

I think you've missed the point Mike... they don't STAY in the upper atmosphere, they have exactly the same effect on the respiratory systems of all living things (plants, fish, crustacea and insects included), only because of the increased range, they affect a good deal more of them than stuff emitted at low level.

Some more figures by way of exercising some Google Fu.

Average sulphur content of aviation kerosene worldwide = 0.05%
PEAK sulphur content of Marine = 4.5% (average is considerably lower)

That's less than 100 times which ever way you slice it - which means transporting freight (passengers included) by air puts more sulphur into the air than doing so by ship or sea per ton of cargo moved.

As I said before, the fuel might be more polluting, but so much less of it gets used per ton of whatever you're moving, that the overall pollution is lower.

Cheers,

 

[BorderReiver]

I think you've missed the point Mike... they don't STAY in the upper atmosphere, they have exactly the same effect on the respiratory systems of all living things (plants, fish, crustacea and insects included), only because of the increased range, they affect a good deal more of them than stuff emitted at low level.

Some more figures by way of exercising some Google Fu.

Average sulphur content of aviation kerosene worldwide = 0.05%
PEAK sulphur content of Marine = 4.5% (average is considerably lower)

That's less than 100 times which ever way you slice it - which means transporting freight (passengers included) by air puts more sulphur into the air than doing so by ship or sea per ton of cargo moved.

As I said before, the fuel might be more polluting, but so much less of it gets used per ton of whatever you're moving, that the overall pollution is lower.

Cheers,

I know Adam, we're just comparing bad with bad.

It's a pity that Walker Wind Sails went belly up; that's the sort of thinking we could do with now.

 

[wingstoo]

I think it depends on who's truth one wants to believe.

I had a dig around and found numerous articles saying that shipping produces twice as much CO2 as aviation.

Here's one.

I naturally assumed that travel by ship is better for the environment than travel by aircraft (mostly because i thought it must take more energy to sustain a plane’s altitude against the force of gravity than to propel a boat along the water) but as some of my friends have pointed out, this is not necessarily a correct assumption. Freighter boats require a lot of energy and are responsible for a substantial amount of the world’s CO2 emissions. Indeed, a recent article in the Guardian opened with the line: </SPAN>"Carbon dioxide emissions from shipping are double those of aviation and increasing at an alarming rate..."

So i did some research on the internet to find some comparisons between boat-travel and plane-travel and try to determine which is less harmful to the environment. And the main conclusion that i came to is that nobody really knows which is better or worse. There have been some studies done on the environmental effects of the aviation industry (for example, see the thorough report, The Plane Truth: Aviation and the Environment) and there are some statistics on the CO2 emissions of the shipping industry but there is very little reliable information that compares the environmental effects of the two modes of transport.

The best sources i could find were the Guardian article, a response to that article on treehugger.com, and an article on planetark.com. But even these articles provide insignificant comparative data; their benefit lies in their attempt to explore an issue and raise awareness in the face of a dearth of facts and figures. Indeed, i found the comments to these articles more illuminating than the articles themselves because they demonstrate how little we know and how the available information can be interpreted in a number of different ways.

Ceretain elements of society will say Aircraft are bigger contributers toi CO2 because they just don't like planes, but forget that 90% of world trade in goods goes by ship.

I guess we shouldn't let too many facts get in the way of a good tale though.

Wings

 

[Kerne]

Back to school today so I took my tutor group (Year 8) outside for registration and told them to look at the sky. While they were doing so I told them that this is the sky that virtually all of their ancestors saw - until their grandparents' generation - and which they have never seen and will probably never see again.

Their reaction?

"Are you on drugs, Sir?"

We can only try...