The title was from a comment in the London Times on this story about Carbon Taxes on air travel to/from Britain. h/t to Leif Svalgaard.
Passengers face new tax to halt rise in air travel
Tens of billions of pounds will have to be raised through flight taxes to compensate developing countries for the damage air travel does to the environment, according to the Government’s advisory body on climate change.
Ticket prices should rise steadily over time to deter air travel and ensure that carbon dioxide emissions from aviation fall back to 2005 levels, the Committee on Climate Change says. It believes that airlines should be forced to share the burden of meeting Britain’s commitment to an 80 per cent cut in emissions by 2050.
The Times has learnt that it may challenge the Government’s decision to approve a third runway at Heathrow, suggesting that this would be inconsistent with that commitment.
The committee was established under last year’s Climate Change Act. It has a strong influence on government policy and proposed the 80 per cent target accepted by ministers.
…
Industry estimates suggest that the average passenger would pay less than £10 extra per return ticket when aviation joins the EU emissions trading scheme in 2012. This would depend on the price of allowances to emit CO2, which is expected to rise over time.
Read the complete story here at the Times
BBC are pushing this story hard this morning. No balance in their treatment of the piece. Although I thought it funny that one of their interviewers asked whether people reducing their carbon footprint on a day-to-day basis could mean we could still fly.
Every day they have more and more propaganda. I complain often but get the repeated mantra that the consensus of scientists say the science is settled.
Oh, no, rowing a boat would cause a great deal of heavy breathing, and you know what that creates. . .
Therefore, if Heathrow receives MORE visits from the rest of the world than any other airport – Britain should be compensated by all its visitors for damaging poor Britain’s environment??
“to compensate developing countries for the damage air travel does to the environment,” – not only barking mad, but pure insanity. Just for a start, their attitude of using other people’s money for their wishes gets right up my nostrils. For a second, they have no concept of the economic and transport disaster that they wish to impose.
From the Blog Istapundit, is a relevant quote, ” … lower living standards for you are a small price to pay in exchange for more power for the political class — whose living standards won’t be going down at all . . . .”
UK Climate Policy is a disaster.
On the one hand we have the Secretary of State claiming that Global Warming is the greatest danger to face humanity ever. We have the Guardian and New Scientist claiming that one study and conference after another are providing irrefutable evidence of coming floods, plagues, volcanoes, famines.
We have the Government in response leading the world in the adoption of aggressive targets in CO2 emission reduction, proposing to build 8,000+ windmills all around the coast and engage in large scale industrial development for windpower all over the previously protected wilder areas of the country.
On the other hand, we have the same Government proposing to build a third runway at Heathrow, while taxing air travel with the aim of reducing the air traffic that will supposedly make it necessary. We have the Government subsidizing the purchase of new cars with a view to rescuing the auto industry in the UK. It also cuts back on Government funding for home insulation. And it proposes to build new coal generating plants.
Some of us in the UK stare at this with total bemusement. What on earth do they think they are doing? If we really do want to cut carbon emissions, we could. Not that it would make any material difference to the level of global carbon emissions, we are too small a country for that, but we could do it. We would have to return to being a country in which car ownership was rare, heating bills for homes and offices lowered (either by insulation or just high fuel costs), the bicycle was a major means of personal transportation, as it was in the thirties forties and fifties. In which air travel was a hugely expensive luxury, and farming labor intensive and non-chemical, and the train, often crowded but always well filled, was the only means of long distance in country travel.
We could do it. It might not be necessary or wise, but it would lower carbon emissions.
However, the mishmash of policies we are currently being subjected to will neither lower carbon emissions, nor give us enough electricity to meet demand, nor will it address the problem of 3,000 deaths and 20,000+ serious injuries on the roads, the impossibility of living in much of the country without a car, the impossibility of cycling safely almost anywhere. It will wreck the UK environment for no gain at all. It will deliver neither sustainable economic growth nor lower carbon nor a protected environment nor less winter deaths from the cold among the poor and elderly.
Whatever you think about Global Warming, this is a total nonsense. Its the politics of the well meaning but totally ineffective gesture. But, its being done on a massive scale, and with increasingly scarce resources. Idiocy.
What about the Chunnel? Is there a Chunnel tax? Would that be a Chax or a Chunnax? Arf, arf.
The sickening thing about this is that they are convincing a younger generation that their “carbon footprint” is something to be worried about. They parrot this stuff as if it is truth. In the meantime, in the US, every single attempt to restart nuclear capacity building save one has failed due to “environmentalist lawfare”.
We have the technology to eliminate most of our CO2 production. We can recycle the fuel. The reprocessing facility can be co-located with the power plant complex. There is no need to ship stuff around. Fuel goes in and never leaves for 100 years.
It is purely asinine. How well will solar generation work in the wake of a c. 535 volcanic eruption? Solar will be dead for YEARS. Nuclear will keep on working. These “environmentalists” are absolute idiots. And China today announced they are going to destroy 25 square miles of Mongolian habitat in order to build a solar plant. And that is GREEN?
Idiots, every swinging one of them.
Lucky for me and my family that we left the UK for Australia many years ago else we would be unable to leave now. We came here to this fabulous land by ship, but they will be next as they are dirty, filthy, oil using devices.
PS to my last post. Where will the British government scuttle the Queen Mary 2 and the Queen Victoria? They will make excellent wrecks for divers to explore.
It’s a cliche, but could the last person to leave the UK, please turn off the lights – we’re trying to cut our emissions
PS I’m building an Ark, just in case we’re not allowed to fly out of the UK
Wouldn’t it be simpler to shut down the airports, and have done with it?
Absurdism at its most absurd…
Political left worldwide behaves as self-harm inflicting psychiatric patient.
What blows me away is that a lot of the AGWers will claim that policy shifts to reduce carbon emissions will have minor economic impact. Perhaps they did not notice the impact of the minor policy shift in the US to generate more biofuels, and what it did to grain prices. The flow on effect from that policy to neighbouring Mexico where corn is a staple was remarkable.
As for the ole homeland, I think the Brits should start blowing CO2 down the Chunnel (Channel Tunnel) and blaming the French /nod.
As an aside… if they are going to tax air travel, then lets be rational about it. The tax should be based on weight, because larger passengers and those with more baggae will require more CO2 to move from point A to point B.
Sadly I think there is a very real possibility of an ETS-GFC should Copenhagen send us down the permit path. Then again, I am far from being the first person to suggest this possibility. The financial types must be rubbing their hands in glee and dreaming up all kinds of weird and woinderful derivatives markets.
Since my butt is too big to fit in the modern coach aircraft seat, I hardly fly at all anymore. I love teasing my Green friends about how much CO2 they produce when they vacation overseas. “What you are vacationing in Japan, this year? Do you know that flying coach to Tokyo roundtrip produces 2.5 metric tons of CO2?”
Try it. It’s fun!
http://www.chooseclimate.org/flying/mf.html
The UK government are as much use as a one legged man at an arse kicking party.
How can you expect political sanity from a country where as BS legal precedent has elevated warmism to a status equal with religion?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/sep/06/employment-tribunal-dismissal-climate-change
“F Rasmin (23:55:13) :
Lucky for me and my family that we left the UK for Australia many years ago else we would be unable to leave now. We came here to this fabulous land by ship, but they will be next as they are dirty, filthy, oil using devices.”
There is a growing level of this AGW lunacy happening here in Australia too. KRudd747 (As he spends most of his time “working for the county” on a plane) is keen to “show the world” how to do it.
Hah !
No historical knowledge bites the political class again.
Gordon Brown, the Milibands and all the rest of the hacks spent their youth knifing their way to the top of the New Labour tree and missed seminal historic waysigns like the “Yes Minister” series !!
Fools – you never set up a committee without knowing what answer it will deliver in advance. Almost the entire English Parliament outsourced their decision-making on climate policy to the Committee on Climate Change and, surprise, surprise – the philosopher kings of the CCC are now wielding the policy whip hand !!!
Let’s see them all sell this one at the next election to the teeming hordes of Brits who have learned to love holidaying overseas.
Oh please Britain – fillet your economy in a pointless plunge into irrelevance before we Aussies do it first ?
Well, we had the same system until last July for over a year over here in Holland. Problem was that Holland is about 4 time Rhode Island State, so a lot of people went to airports in Germany and Belgium to avoid taxes. (LOL) The result was a declining turnover on Dutch airports.
The real problem in the UK is not the environment but the Government needing funds.
Can we all get it into our heads that CO2 is the source of our life. We do not need to reduce it, bury it, compress it, pot it, pipe it, sequester it, store it or otherwise call it into question – a completely farcical, dead-brain idea.
It seems to me that a great deal more publicity and education is required for the benefits of CO2; it should not even come into any question regarding pollution – which it is not.
Who cares what policy or other will effect CO2 when it is so beneficial – as long as more of it it produced.
I can’t believe this generalised hard-on against CO2 when it is the sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide and other particulates which should be highlighted.
It seems the populace and many commentators are following the fraudulent line of CO2 as a pollutant, or at least accepting it has some merit; they have been bought and sold after taking the bait completely hook, line and sinker.
We know the UK goverment has an agenda to sell – I’m not buying.
The planet needs more CO2 not less.
I run a small restaurant in the Philippines and have posted on the walls tribute to CO2. You would be amazed how many ill-informed people there are; every bit of information we can get out is to the good, either on walls or by comments.
Only by NOT accepting CO2 reductions and infantile storage solutions to a non-problem and sending rejection comment to the compliant MSM over its Climate madness reportage will the message get throughto biased editors.
No CO2 – No life. To think otherwise is gross ignorance.
The fact that massive geoengineering schemes are being contemplated to try and effect global temperature is very frightening. The mad cabals in the WhiteHouse and Westminster could threaten the future of our very species and biosphere with their insan sun-reduction ideas. It’s doubly frightening because they actually BELIEVE the garbage!
The world of the ruling class has gone mad.
The most important point is, that the politicians and climate scientists can fly several times a year to their useless conferences. Because the poiticians have their own planes and the tickets of the scientists are paid by the tax payer.
I demand total ban on flights of politicians and climate scientists!
Hey Britain, why don’t you green blokes just build a bloody wall around Britain? You could name it the Green Concentration camp inside the Brown Wall.
Well, I’ve been invited to talk on “An Alternative View of Climate Change” on 13 October, and if it goes well, and if I’ve done a presentation by then that others can use (especially the UK wing of the Resistance), I’ll publish it for all to use. It’s only a tiny local talk, but it’s a start. If you don’t know my views, click on my name and enjoy.
REPLY: Lucy, I’ve reposted your Circling the Arctic here, Nice Job. Props to Paul Vaughn too. – Anthony
Human sacrifice anyone?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/richard-alleyne/6146656/Maybe-religion-is-the-answer-claims-atheist-scientist.html
New tax?
They have already levied a ‘fuel supplement’ for the last few years. I have been keeping a record with the intention of suing the govt in the small claims court for the return of my money once co2 is off the hook.
Well said one & all. As I commented on previous posts, it is now happening at an ever increasing rate (probably faster than my expert first predicted) the bombardment is coming in almsot daily now with at least one AGW story/day.
I can’t speak for your government in USA/Australia/NZ/SA, et al, but over here in the damper UK, our political masters play that wonderfully taxpayers cash wasting game of creating an group, committee, agency, department, completely independent despite being set up using public funds, who carry out research into issues dictated by government, & low & behold, the report they produce conclude that the governemnt should carry out certain practices, laws, taxation, that just happen to support the governments (bhind closed doors) policies! It was tobacco previously, they won that one, then I sadi to a friend at a party that it would be alcohol next, which it is, but of course they’ve quite class A drugs as they were on to a hiding to nothing in that dpeartment! Of course they never ask the question that why is it under this government so many young people “allegedly” want to drink to excess. AGW is the big daddy of all scares, from which all manner of taxes can be raised, without actually takling this non-problem. I think the people can see what is really going on here.
You can be sure that Gordon Brown will first dither over any decision thus driving up the cost of whatever assinine “solution” he eventually decides on, and then he will (eventually) make what will be the most clearly and patently wrong decision to everyone but his closest colleagues. Its his M.O.
Sadly the Tories, our Government in waiting, also seem to be smitten with a desire to self-harm.
Well, I’m sure that all politicians and members of the media will immediately agree to a death sentence as the penalty for either of their group ever flying to any event, anywhere in the world, ever again.
These are the folks pushing this madness.
Well hit them so hard they won’t recover if they transgress.
Still up for it Mr Miliband?
haha, In the Netherlands the minister of finance came up with a similar tax. Result: People just drove there cars over the border and fly from the nearby airport and making Schiphol airport one of the most expensive in the world. The tax is now reversed.
I saw a car advertisement on TV yesterday where together to the miles per gallon they gave the CO2 footprint!! I was late in noticing it so I do not remember the units.
People are being brain washed with this” CO2 original sin” guilt from all sides.
ADVERT
First world country seeks to exchange places
with third world country.
Please apply to; G Brown
10 Downing Street
London
Great new vacation/lose weight plan:
See France, swim the channel.
The ever increasing avalanche of environmental propaganda is entirely related to the forthcoming climate conference in Copenhagen. The greenies are desperately trying to compensate for an inevitable increase in the number of ‘denying’ scientists attending the conference. I do hope that sufficient will attend to outnumber ‘the warmists’ and pass a resolution rubbishing AGW. At least the MSM would have to report that; or would they?
The ‘Committee on Climate Change’ is a re-run of the ‘Committee to Save the Gay Whales’
Never mind the BBC and Guardian idiots. This is for the “oil is dwindling” “peak oil” and “the oil is running out” brigade:
Another massive oil strike for BG.
BG, the UK-based international oil and gas explorer, said today its Guara oil find in the oil and gas-rich Santos Basin in the south Atlantic contains between 1.1 to two billion recoverable barrels. The latest find by BG in the deep water off Brazil is a “supergiant” field. The Tupi find in the region is reckoned to hold as much as 30 billion barrels, though the recoverable amount will be much less.
…Meanwhile demand for oil and gas plummets.
The UK’s third titan of oil and gas after BP and Royal Dutch Shell said that weak demand for gas worldwide has forced it to cut its targets for 2009 from 680,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day to between 656,000 and 662,000. Demand for gas from industry has slumped because energy-hungry companies in the manufacturing and construction sectors have suffered. Sales of oil, gas and liquefied natural gas fell 28% to £2.3 billion, while its debts have doubled to £2 billion in the past six months. BG has reduced its funding for its Nigerian liquefied natural gas project because its government is prioritising its gas infrastructure for domestic use. BG has shifted its focus, most notably to its lucrative coal seam gas projects in Australia.
Why don’t they do it the Norwegian way? There the food is so expensive (a REFILL for a coke sets you back 8$ in a restaurant) that people simply cannot afford to travel. The government then tells its voters that they are the smartest people of the world because of that, and the people, never having seen anything else with their own eyes, believe it, too.
Go Snoopy – you go get that red baron!
Look, it’s simple.
The peasants shouldn’t be allowed to leave the country, drive their own vehicles, or leave their homes without an official pass.
Only rich people and those employed by Government (Preferably the EU!) should be permitted to travel freely.
Others lack the sense of responsibility needed and won’t do the necessary carbon-offsets.
The big problem is, that when the current bunch of useless idiots are thrown out at the next General Election, the next Government will carry on with these idiotic policies.
jeroen (01:36:50) :
“haha, In the Netherlands the minister of finance came up with a similar tax. Result: People just drove there cars over the border and fly from the nearby airport and making Schiphol airport one of the most expensive in the world. The tax is now reversed”.
jeroen,
The Dutch people and the entire Government have gone mad on climate change.
The Dutch will loose there freedom and their prosperity if they don’t wake up quickly.
The new Delta Plan to defend the country against a sea level rise of 7.5 meters?
Massive Solar and wind projects that will skyrocket electricity prices, etc, etc.
Alan the Brit (01:17:11) :
You’re right about alcohol:
Doctors want booze marketing ban
20 years, they’ll be banning alcohol from pubs. Just you watch.
Has anyone done a study of lunacy since all this AGW business started? I suspect it would show a sharp up-tick in the past 3 or 4 years from the previous 10k years of more or less stable levels of lunacy. Another Hockey schtick?
Re: Mike D. (23:48:13) :
What about the Chunnel? Is there a Chunnel tax? Would that be a Chax or a Chunnax? Arf, arf.
—
Plug the ends, turn it into a CO2 dump. Post-Copenhagen, could be far more profitable than running trains through it. Would face competition from BG’s old gas fields though.
As for more air travel tax, that’s ok, we in the UK love being taxed. As others have said, presumably people travelling to our airports will also be charged for polluting our airspace.
So less people will fly, generating less tax to help pay those poor developing countries. Shame some of those countries are developing tourism, but the tax from unsold air tickets will pay for that, won’t it?
Now I think I’ll give big Al a call and see if there’s a business plan in converting oil tankers to passenger ships..
Australian’s are nominally ruled by the big wheel in British royalty, Betty Windsor who still commands some respect.
However, next in line is her son, Charlie the Chump, a right royal dimwit and whacko in the eyes of most Australians.
Most of us here down under are just starting to realise that Charlie the Chump is not a one off as we fondly hoped but is a full on, compelling example of a the whole of the barking mad British ruling classes.
When Mother finally totters off that throne for the last time and Charlie the Chump takes over, the link to the poms will become very nominal indeed for most Australians with the strong possibility that we will just simply say, we’re outa here mate, and leave the poms to slowly disappear down their own gurgler.
ps; Close to one quarter of the current 22 million Australians are foreign born and have migrated to Australia since WW2.
It’s high time we took the Great off the front of Britain. Governed by knaves and fools, with an opposition not worthy of the name, but with the same policies.
When are we and the rest of the 1st world countries going to wake up and realise that we are on a suicide course?
If you’re not convinced, read this terrific narrative by John Brignell. It’s spot on! It should be required reading for all our legislators. They should all first be reminded of the old maxim “Read Mark Learn and Inwardly Digest”.
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/2009%20September.htm
Have a look at who is behind this: http://www.theccc.org.uk/about-the-ccc/the-committee
Adair Turner: http://www.specialistspeakers.com/?p=202
Professor Jim Skea: Research Director at UK Energy Research Centre
UKERC is funded by three Research Councils and is part of the Research Councils’ Energy Programme. NERC council members include Andrew Watson, UEA, Robert Watson, Chief Scientific Advisor to DEFRA and former advisor to Al Gore.
Professor Michael Grubb is Chief Economist at the UK Carbon Trust, previously Professor of Climate Change and Energy Policy at Imperial College, home of one of the Grantham Institutes.
Dr Samuel Fankhauser is a Principal Research Fellow at the Grantham Research Institute, also on the CCC sub-comittee to advise govt. on mitigation measures, along with Professor Martin Parry, co-chair of IPCC AR4 WGII and Visiting Professor at LSE Grantham Institute
http://www2.lse.ac.uk/ERD/pressAndInformationOffice/newsAndEvents/archives/2008/Grantham.aspx
The London School of Economics and Political Science has received over £12 million from philanthropists Jeremy and Hannelore Grantham to establish the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
The Institute will be chaired by Lord Stern of Brentford, author of the 2006 Stern Review, It will work closely with the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College, London established last year also with a donation of £12 million from the Grantham Foundation. A common advisory board will oversee the work of both Institutes.
The Grantham’s total investment of over £24 million, made through the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, is one of the largest private donations to climate change research.
Board Members include Carter Roberts, President and CEO of World Wildlife Fund and Fred Krupp, President of Environmental Defense.
So aviation accounts for 3% of CO2 and yet it is the No1 culprit for AGW. So with CO2 at 387ppm aviation is pumping out an enourmous 12 ppm. Now, I know the argument that planes put all this CO2 into the part of the atmosphere where it is alleged it does the most ‘damage’, but even the IPCC report on avaiation admitted it could not differentiate which CO2 came from which source, and had to use projected figures of aviation growth so as to show the threat from avaiation. I can understand to some extent, but no other source of CO2 received this treatment.
So, we have statements like ‘Avaition is the fastest growing source of CO2’ which is said repeatedly without challange or quantification. For example, a couple of years ago Heathrow had a 3% increase in passenger numbers, while only a 1% increase in aircraft movements. So it is passenger numbers that get used to show how bad aviation is, even though this is an indication of moving more people with fewer planes, which for any other mode of transport is considered good.
The number of airliners in the world is around 20,000. It might be 18,000 or 22,000, not sure. The number of road vehicles is around 800,000,000. The world was producing (perhaps not now with the current recession) around 60,000,000 vehilces per year. That is just under 2 a second, along with all the tyres. The worlds road vehicles are projected to reach 2.5 billion. So how bad is a 2% increase in aviation, and is it passengers or flights?
There is an ‘environmental protester’ in the UK called ‘Swampy’, and when challenged about the numbers said “I don’t care about the numbers, it’s the symbolism”.
“Adam Gallon (03:15:46) :
Look, it’s simple.
The peasants shouldn’t be allowed to leave the country, drive their own vehicles, or leave their homes without an official pass.
Only rich people and those employed by Government (Preferably the EU!) should be permitted to travel freely.
Others lack the sense of responsibility needed and won’t do the necessary carbon-offsets.
The big problem is, that when the current bunch of useless idiots are thrown out at the next General Election, the next Government will carry on with these idiotic policies.”
Soilent Green, coming to a city near you.
“Ron de Haan (03:17:36) :
jeroen (01:36:50) :
“haha, In the Netherlands the minister of finance came up with a similar tax. Result: People just drove there cars over the border and fly from the nearby airport and making Schiphol airport one of the most expensive in the world. The tax is now reversed”.
jeroen,
The Dutch people and the entire Government have gone mad on climate change.
The Dutch will loose there freedom and their prosperity if they don’t wake up quickly.
The new Delta Plan to defend the country against a sea level rise of 7.5 meters?
Massive Solar and wind projects that will skyrocket electricity prices, etc, etc.”
This would have nothing to do with the smokes and cakes you can indulge in there aye?
“Archonix (03:27:42) :
Alan the Brit (01:17:11) :
You’re right about alcohol:
Doctors want booze marketing ban
20 years, they’ll be banning alcohol from pubs. Just you watch.”
Will never happen. Too much a tax cash cow for Gummint. In the UK, three things get rooted every tax year, ciggies, beer and………….petrol!
“ROM (03:49:39) :
Australian’s are nominally ruled by the big wheel in British royalty, Betty Windsor who still commands some respect.
However, next in line is her son, Charlie the Chump, a right royal dimwit and whacko in the eyes of most Australians.
Most of us here down under are just starting to realise that Charlie the Chump is not a one off as we fondly hoped but is a full on, compelling example of a the whole of the barking mad British ruling classes.
When Mother finally totters off that throne for the last time and Charlie the Chump takes over, the link to the poms will become very nominal indeed for most Australians with the strong possibility that we will just simply say, we’re outa here mate, and leave the poms to slowly disappear down their own gurgler.
ps; Close to one quarter of the current 22 million Australians are foreign born and have migrated to Australia since WW2.”
British ruling classes (Royalty)? They are German.
Looks like I won’t be visiting the UK any time soon. Time to cash in my extra pounds I had from my last visit.
So let me get this right. The Government here in the UK are increasing taxes to the tens of billions to deter air travel at the same time as expanding airports – Heathrow isn’t the only expanding airport – in order to meet projected future increase in air travel demand.
“Stephen Skinner (05:13:39) :”
You forget concrete production and use far outweighs all other systems producing CO2 in the UK. Facts don’t matter, remember, the science is settled, Al Gore says so.
http://www.politics.co.uk/news/environment-and-rural-affairs/govt-committed-to-airport-expansion-$461043.htm
Lucy Skywalker 01: 10: 32:
Where is this talk you’re going to give on October the 13th? Can anyone attend?
“H.L.Mencken wrote:The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
tonyb
Thanks Lucy,
I clicked on your name and I’m enyoying what I’m reading. You’ve put together a great bunch of data and organised it in a very friendly way.
Although I’ve never seen AIT, and have no desire to do so, my story is similar to yours. I became alarmed (yes, that word again), after reading the AR4 summary report for policy makers. Resolving to discover as much as I could I found my way to Climate Sciencec Climate Audit then WUWT and my education began. When I visited sites like RC, I realised that most of their criticisms of sceptics were little more than ad hominems (like political dirt digging), or merely focussed on some minor error. I saw that while the bloggers on sceptical sights were clever people discussing science, those on the AGW sites seemed little more than pompous fools and bullies.
Sorry if a bit OT.
http://www.politics.co.uk/briefings-guides/issue-briefs/transport/airport-expansion-$366575.htm
DennisA
That was good work. I assume you are British-where are you from?
tonyb
michel (23:38:50)
Agree with your assessment, but it is not well-meaning. It is pure politics both for personal gain (e.g. subsidizing car purchases) or for political correctness (subsidizing windmills or solar panels in Britain of all places). It would be just as useful to send rain barrels to the sahara. If you want to really be P.C. give each homeless person a solar panel to sleep under and keep the rain off.
“P Wilson (05:37:15) :
So let me get this right. The Government here in the UK are increasing taxes to the tens of billions to deter air travel at the same time as expanding airports – Heathrow isn’t the only expanding airport – in order to meet projected future increase in air travel demand.”
That is the paradox. How can a Gummint “grow” an economy (Presumably “wealth” money) and at the same time “shrink the thing that grows it” (CO2)?
Clive Graham Smale (01:04:07) :
“The mad cabals in the WhiteHouse and Westminster could threaten the future of our very species and biosphere with their insan sun-reduction ideas. It’s doubly frightening because they actually BELIEVE the garbage!
The world of the ruling class has gone mad.”
No not mad. The world of the ruling class have been fattening us sheep for the last few decades, and they are ready to start fleecing us. I can almost hear sound of the shears being sharpened…
The world of the ruling class
Alan the Brit – there’s an awful lot of those fake pressure groups/charities around. It’s yet another taxpayer funded scam to squeeze more money out of us poor taxpayers. Talk about a slap in the face! It’s a government wheeze that not everyone has caught on to. Quite a few of the scammers are listed here:
http://fakecharities.org/
The Royal Society gets a deserving mention for its stance on “carbon tax”:
http://fakecharities.org/pages/posts/royal-society-of-london-for-improving-natural-knowledge9.php
Treble vested interests all round…
jeroen (01:36:50) :
haha, In the Netherlands the minister of finance came up with a similar tax. Result: People just drove there cars over the border and fly from the nearby airport and making Schiphol airport one of the most expensive in the world. The tax is now reversed.
______________
That is, of course why we need one world government. To eliminate such inequities.
TonyB: Yes I am, Land of my Turbines, Wales. I forgot Lord Robert May, seeker of religion to keep the masses under control, but he’s there in the committee link.
This is yet another example of world governments continuing to be deaf and blind about the growing evidence against AGW. The express is on the rails for a historic agreement in Copenhagen.
Short of Al Gore publicly admitting that he has been wrong (or being caught on candid camera laughing about AGW cultists), it’s hard to see what can be done to stop the madness.
John A (00:09:32) :
Wouldn’t it be simpler to shut down the airports, and have done with it?
It’s no flying for the common person. Our leaders and our betters still need to be able to jet off somewhere any time they wish. They have important business to conduct, you know. You don’t expect them to work hard on the people’s business and not be able to get away to Switzerland for a ski weekend, do you? How will they get to Caanes?
Archonix (03:27:42) :
Alan the Brit (01:17:11) :
You’re right about alcohol:
Doctors want booze marketing ban
20 years, they’ll be banning alcohol from pubs. Just you watch.
————————————————————
News headlines: Restaurants no longer allowed to offer food.
Well, there is a certain segment of the population which would like to dictate exactly what we can and cannot eat. A lot of Brits are already brainwashed into purchasing overpriced ‘organic’ foods because anything else is just bad for you – which destroys their own economic health.
Regardless, any tax imposed on anything simply drives a greater wedge between the haves and have-nots. The ‘rich’ will always be able to afford whatever they want (mostly because of mobility), while the underclass is taxed further into poverty. Then the finger pointing blames the ‘rich’ for the actions of the government.
“Wade (05:32:16) :
Looks like I won’t be visiting the UK any time soon. Time to cash in my extra pounds I had from my last visit.”
Go to Lanzarote. Full of Brits, better weather, but you will need Euros.
Patrick Davis (06:15:34)
Financially ambitious governments need to make extra tax sources, so by cashing in on the carbon and air transport – they stand to make a hefty amount. Increasing travel taxed at the source for an increasing commodity. If they put it like that – ie, the truth – , people would be angry. If they blame it on the climate, people will comply.
Prevent travel first, then regulate the internet… what’s in it for these European leaders to sabotage their own countries and pay billions to the “developing” ones?
“Stephen Skinner (05:13:39) :
So aviation accounts for 3% of CO2 and yet it is the No1 culprit for AGW. So with CO2 at 387ppm aviation is pumping out an enourmous 12 ppm.”
Aviation is responsible for 3% of human emissions, but the 387 ppm include all the natural CO2, too. And you cannot set off what is there at the moment with what comes additionally.
Alexej: to put in in perspective, its 3% of Anthropogenic c02. Anthropogenic c02 is 2-3% of all c02. all c02 is less than 0.04% of the atmosphere, so we’re talking of nothing here.
However what is interesting: It takes the same emissions to fly 200 passengers on the same plane as 10 passengers: This tax isn’t at all in proportion to emissions at all: Its inproportion to how many people can be taxed
80% cut? they will be equivalent to North Korea….
Archonix (03:27:42) :
Alan the Brit (01:17:11) :
You’re right about alcohol:
Doctors want booze marketing ban
20 years, they’ll be banning alcohol from pubs. Just you watch.
Are you sure it will take that long? With 1 rural ppub alone closing every week, the very essence iof village life will be lost forever, then we will all have to move into towns & cities, thus ensuring our rural businesses, or farms as I like to all them, go altogether, so that we depend netirely upon the EU for our food production.
UK Sceptic (06:32:09) :
Alan the Brit – there’s an awful lot of those fake pressure groups/charities around. It’s yet another taxpayer funded scam to squeeze more money out of us poor taxpayers. Talk about a slap in the face! It’s a government wheeze that not everyone has caught on to. Quite a few of the scammers are listed here:
http://fakecharities.org/
The Royal Society gets a deserving mention for its stance on “carbon tax”:
http://fakecharities.org/pages/posts/royal-society-of-london-for-improving-natural-knowledge9.php
Treble vested interests all round…
I totally agree with you. They used to be called “sleepers” under the old Soviet regime, now they’re callsed intellectual marxist socialists or “concerend scientists”. They infiltrate everywhere, get apponited to positions of influence, & the coup is complete. OT – Even the NSPCC has soiled its hands & sold its soul to the government & takes “grants” for research into new policies on children for home education – solving a non-problem that never existed.
I tell you guys & gals, once the brown smelly stuff starts being flung all over everyone gets a share!
The LSE have the answer! Its not aviation at all, or even shipping and forestry. Its all about contraception
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/6161742/Contraception-cheapest-way-to-combat-climate-change.html
My first trip to England was by car, from Spain nonetheless. I took the ferry from Santander to Plymouth. It ‘only’ takes 30 hours and you go up and down for most of the tom, uh, sorry, the cruise.
Now you can go to Kings Cross station in London and, apart from looking for the train to Harry Potter’s school, you can also take the train to Paris, through the eurotunnel.
so in keeping with the doom and gloom of Copenhagen: Lets just stop living and breathing. Those who refuse and continue to live have a great onus of guilt on their heads and will burn in a governmental hellfire, pay more for ordinary things and feel guiltier for venturing out their own front doors.
i think depression and mass depression is going to be the biggest world illness in years to come
I learned two things from this atricle:
1. The labor Government is history come the next election.
2. What a quango is (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quango). What a truly frightening concept. Of course, that is what MoveOn and ACORN are becoming. Quangos. Gee, I miss Thomas Jefferson.
Energy is the life blood of every economy. If we used our brains to promote nuclear and particle free coal we could easily save (US) figures, 400 billion a year. The man made energy crisis over a year ago cost another 300 billion for over a year. We are now spending additional billions bailing out bankers instead of promoting inexpensive energy and creating real jobs.
A developed energy abundant society can far better deal with real problems such as potable water, particulate pollution etc; and will naturally have less population growth.
I think we have gone insane.
Urederra
If you live in London that is a very good way to get to Paris. The vast majority of people don’t. It’s a completely impractical way for me to get there
Its horses for courses-
tonyb
There’s the “Top Gear” solution: Cross the Channel in a car, at an estimated 150 MPH.
Oh it can get worse…
http://minx.cc/?post=292012
PS–proceed to the comments, gently.
AoS regulars are rather ‘salty’ in their contempt for ‘warmists’ and tend to be rather ‘blunt’ with their views.
P Wilson (07:37:58) :
“However what is interesting: It takes the same emissions to fly 200 passengers on the same plane as 10 passengers:”
Not sure that is correct as 10 passengers weigh a lot less than 200 and less fuel is required, or burnt.
By the way, I came across this quote some time ago:
“You can travel up and down the UK for years before you use up your share of petrol in a single plane journey”. I did argue with the author on this but I didn’t sense any realisation of the wrongness of this statement.
OT: Eco-conscious pianist in Cincinnati…
“Tuesday, September 08, 2009
Eco-conscious pianist to encore in concert at Xavier Oct. 4
Contributed By Don Bedwell | ShareThis
Xavier’s Classical Piano Series welcomes back Soyeon Lee for a concert at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 4, in the university’s Gallagher Student Center Theater.
The 27-year-old pianist will perform selections from Beethoven, Chopin, Brahms and Scarlatti.
She has appeared with the Cleveland, London and Seoul Symphonies and others, earning a cover profile in “Symphony” magazine and an invitation to perform for a second time at the Van Cliburn International Competition earlier this year.
Lee, who moved from South Korea to the U.S. when she was nine, remained in this country five years later when her piano skills earned a scholarship to the Interlochen Arts Academy. She progressed to the Juilliard School, winning a Concert Artists Guild competition that earned her a debut at Carnegie Hall’s Alice Tully Hall in February 2008.
Passionate about the environment as well as her music, Lee turned that “Re!nvented” concert into an eco-event. In cooperation with her husband Tom Szaky’s Terracyle Co. and an organic tea company, she performed in a concert gown fashioned of recycled aluminum drink pouches collected by school children.
She performed some of the numbers from that “Re!nvented” concert – featuring“recycled” works from the masters – during her Xavier concert last year. “Re!nvented” also became the title of her latest CD.”
Sorry. …200 passengers and their luggage…
“Tens of billions of pounds will have to be raised through flight taxes to compensate developing countries for the damage air travel does to the environment, according to the Government’s advisory body on climate change.”
First, prove that there is damage from air travel, then we’ll talk.
Come to think of it, I was following an Amish buggy the other day in my F-150 SuperCrew. I was so busy getting the photo that I forgot to feel guilty about spewing CO2. Let me now take a moment to reflect on my environmental sin…OK, time’s up.
Slightly off topic, but the UK Telegraph has a truly great article: ‘Contraception cheapest way to combat climate change’ at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/6161742/Contraception-cheapest-way-to-combat-climate-change.html
Other than ignoring that most European countries are no longer maintaining their populations by reproduction but rather through immigration; the article also includes this wonderful bit of arithmetic: “UN data suggests that meeting unmet need for family planning would reduce unintended births by 72 per cent, reducing projected world population in 2050 by half a billion to 8.64 million.”
A Marxist Coup, destroying our entire society, is taking place as we speak and nobody is protesting!
It’s incredible.
For some reason, this seems apropos:
Hurlingham Park, alas, is now far too small a venue to suffice for all the potential contestants. I suggest making this a daily event and moving it to Rungrado May Day Stadium in Pyongyang.
Mick (01:14:07) :
Human sacrifice anyone?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/richard-alleyne/6146656/Maybe-religion-is-the-answer-claims-atheist-scientist.html
Of course!…The GREEN RELIGION!
and why not green shirts and green concentration camps?
Lucy Skywalker: That’s brilliant. I look forward to reading your reearch much more thoroughly. Keep up the good work!
Ron de Haan (09:43:53) :
A Marxist Coup, destroying our entire society, is taking place as we speak and nobody is protesting!
We are waiting for the US cavalry !..They are at the UN, its assembly president is the nicaraguan sandinist guerrilla man: MIGUEL D’ESCOTO who recently gave a UN prize to the cuban dictator Fidel Castro.
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2008/bio4022.doc.htm
Price Carbon Offsets crashes to $ 0.25
http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2009/09/plunging-prices-at-chicago-climate.html
Via Climate Depot
A Marxist Coup….where do we start? There is so much nonsense on so many fronts. I can’t believe what is happening in this country (the UK); and nowhere is safe from it. This AGW nonsense is everywhere; nowhere will escape the Fear, Control and Taxes regime, but especially not in the EUSSR.
Will those of us who do not believe in AGW be able to claim that it is our philosophical belief and therefore deserving of being respected as a religion? Or are we to be persecuted as heretics?…in our supposedly free modern society.
Ron de Haan (11:39:04) :
From the link you gave:
The $416 per tonne… multiplied by 5500 tons of carbon sequestered by one forest hectare = US$2′ 288,000 vs. amount offered by NGO’s to amazon natives, US$3.- per hectare. Then gross profit per hectare equals 2288000-3=US$2287997 (two millions, two hundred and eighty seven thousand, nine hundred and ninety seven dollars).
This is the simple reason of all this climate debate…and here we are…discussing Kelvin degrees, volumetric heat capacities, sunspots, solar minimums…
WUWT?
Annei (11:53:02) :
Or are we to be persecuted as heretics?…in our supposedly free modern society.
What do you think is more probable to happend?
Google for “whatsupwiththat” and look the links which appear below. We are already!
As fortold by the goracle, a plague of dog days shall beset all of mankind…
But this can’t be sirius!
Annei (11:53:02) :
“A Marxist Coup….where do we start? There is so much nonsense on so many fronts. I can’t believe what is happening in this country (the UK); and nowhere is safe from it. This AGW nonsense is everywhere; nowhere will escape the Fear, Control and Taxes regime, but especially not in the EUSSR.
Will those of us who do not believe in AGW be able to claim that it is our philosophical belief and therefore deserving of being respected as a religion? Or are we to be persecuted as heretics?…in our supposedly free modern society”.
Annei,
You start here: http://green-agenda.com
and here: http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/
Many of the planes in the sky over the UK (and in UK air space) are not realted to travel to and from the UK. They are, nevertheless, ‘polluting’ our airspace with their nasty CO2.
I think the government should insist in them paying a passage toll tax and enforce it by threatening to blow them out of the air. After all the nature of the problem is so important than any method used to reach the objective is entirely justified.
Isn’t it?
UK Greenee scared: “We must prevent the US Chamber of Commerce from putting Climate Chance on trial”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/sep/07/chamber-commerce-climate-change-trial
From Climate Depot.
Have you seen Plan B?
http://www.ippr.org.uk/pressreleases/?id=3710
That’s why I’ve stopped regarding the NYT a serious newspaper a long time ago.
Liberal journalist believes China’s Communist Regime is a better Government solution.
http://heliogenic.blogspot.com/2009/09/elitist-liberal-envies-one-party.html
Kevin (00:58:49) :
“Fools – you never set up a committee without knowing what answer it will deliver in advance. Almost the entire English Parliament outsourced their decision-making on climate policy to the Committee on Climate Change and, surprise, surprise – the philosopher kings of the CCC are now wielding the policy whip hand !!!”
The English Democrats party will be delighted to know that their number one objective – a Parliament for England – has now been met. But where does it meet? And who is the leader of the largest party in the “English” Parliament? It’s also good news to know that us Scots no longer have our foreign policy decided by those nice people who meet in Downing Street.
Or was “English” just that typical English slip of the tongue (or pen) when what they really mean is British?
Sound like in the UK you will soon have to apply for and carry a travek permit if you go more than a pre-determined number of Kilometres from your home. I suppose this will generate a whole new class of bureaucrat and police to check that everyone is following the law, a perfect way to ensure full employment.
George Orwell could not have scripted it any better.
Keep rising the prices of air travel and all those uppity proles that want holidays abroad will have to stay at home.
Therefore there will be much less crowding at airports and the really important people who actually matter will be able to get on with their lives without the impediment of the unwashed getting in the way.
It’s really a marvelous suggestion.
/parody
……this was their worst hour……..
There will come a moment in time when the Brits wonder why they ever took the effort to fight the Battle of Britain, beat the Nazi’s keeping the Russians out of Western Europe, let alone fight the Cold War!
I hope it happens before the next elections.
Hi Lucy Skywalker – glad to hear you are taking the debate to the streets. The WA (or was it Australian) Institute of Geoscientists (or some such organisation) recently had a debate in Perth (western Australia) which attracted hundreds.
in the one corner we had a geologist who had formerly worked for the Big Fella (BHP) and converted to AlGorism and politics – Gary Warden. In the other corner we had another geologist, probably known to a few of you – Prof Ian Plimer.
Needless to say all Warden could do was repeatedly point to IPCC quotes and profess a lack of personal knowledge on the subject. Plimer basically tore apart the debate (but politely I might add) on every single point. I wish there was a transcript of the night.
Plimer certainly had some memorable quotes, and if you email him Lucy, I am sure he will be happy to provide some ammunition. I certainly liked the one in which he likened the IPCC to putting climate change on the rack and making it confess to AGW… or words to that effect.
PS> Personally I don’t see that Plimer has a lot of answers either, but he certainly asks a lot of good questions, and that is what science is all about, no?
Might be urban myth, but there is a story from China under Mao that there was a plague of rats. Mao declared that each person would be required to hand in X rat tails a week to a depot and be paid a small fee for them, or a large fine for failure.
In next to no time, entrepreneurial Chinese had set up rat farms, to sell tails to those who had failed to hunt their own. Maybe the rat population increased.
People as a group can invent quite perverse responses to laws they dislike.
On this very theme, what happens to the money that is collected from emission imposts? Why, it is spent by the new recipients on more electricity, more air travel, more cars and car miles – the GHG level scarcely changes unless you do something daring like build a large nuke plant. It’s a scam.
There is a very serious point here. The UK is about to sign up to lowering emissions by 90% from 1990 levels. This is necessary, because the previously proposed 80% was not enough, given the amount that the airline industry is contributing.
So think about it. This is a proposal for having two and only two sources of emissions at some point in the future. We will leave our unheated houses, unwashed since our last weekly bath, and make our way by bicycle through fields plowed by teams of horses, to an airport, where we will fly to a warm country. All around us will be parking lots full of cars which, thanks to their subsidized prices, cost the buyer almost nothing, but which thanks to restrictions on emissions, cannot be driven.
We will have achieved our three objectives. We will have kept manufacturing and selling as many cars as possible, which will ‘save jobs’. The fact that no-one can drive them is irrelevant. We will have kept the airline industry going in pretty much its present form. And we will have reduced emissions by 90% from 1990.
You cannot get there from here. If you really are going to make the kinds of reductions the UK is talking about, home heating in winter is the priority. This means air travel and car travel and the auto industry have to go. Along with a lot else.
Quite why we have to make these kinds of reductions, or what effect they will have if we do, well, that’s a different matter. But it is simply idiotic to think you can make them and still keep the car and airline industries as we have them today.
Some people from the developing world (and developed) world practise the art of walking over hot coals. Surely this must leave a hefty carbon foot print.
ROM (03:49:39) :
“Australian’s are nominally ruled by the big wheel in British royalty, Betty Windsor who still commands some respect.
However, next in line is her son, Charlie the Chump, a right royal dimwit and whacko in the eyes of most Australians.
Most of us here down under are just starting to realise that Charlie the Chump is not a one off as we fondly hoped but is a full on, compelling example of a the whole of the barking mad British ruling classes.
When Mother finally totters off that throne for the last time and Charlie the Chump takes over, the link to the poms will become very nominal indeed for most Australians with the strong possibility that we will just simply say, we’re outa here mate, and leave the poms to slowly disappear down their own gurgler.”
“The Right Charlie of Clarence House.” The British monarchy has in the past shown a tendency to oscillate around Kings “Charles.” Also, “Charles the third” seems to show a striking mental resemblance to George the third.
—-
The Committee on Climate Change has for some time been monitoring the activities of the tooth fairy. They are about to issue recommendations that it be required to reduce its uncalcium emissions by 3004.1% by the year 2025, otherwise the universe will implode to something the size of a ferret’s testicle.
In addition to the current scheme for monitoring the flatulation fairy, an additional group will begin, at the taxpayer’s expense, to monitor the activities of the micturation fairy, with a view to also reducing it’s emissions. This is expected to boost the clothes peg and rubber bung industries, leading to a massive economic recovery.
At present, our brown Prime Minister, oops, sorry, our Prime Minister, Brown*, has been unable to develop strong enough magic spells to tackle the serious problem of Bowel Magic, but the necessary statistics are sure to be “developed” in the next few years.
* Brown by name, and brown by nature.
THEY ARE REALLY THIS CRAZY!
But the trick they will never learn (people who are never wrong never learn) is only to be insane when you want to be!
RE: NGO’s and similar organisations
Although the story is a little old now, it still illustrates how key elements of the “climate crisis” operate in the UK (and no doubt in the US soon, if not already). For the quick version head to page 2 “All aboard the gravy train”
And from a separate story
Greg S (14:43:12)
Orwell was particularly prophetic. In the novel 1984 – written in 1948, cctv was watching everyone. Yet this was science fiction as the cctv didn’t come until the 70’s
Ron de Haan (13:06:23):
Thankyou for links. Scary to see it all together in one place.
They seem to be motivated by elitism and hatred for the rest of the race, don’t they?
Alexej Buergin (02:20:42) :
Why don’t they do it the Norwegian way? There the food is so expensive (a REFILL for a coke sets you back 8$ in a restaurant) that people simply cannot afford to travel. The government then tells its voters that they are the smartest people of the world because of that, and the people, never having seen anything else with their own eyes, believe it, too.
I give you that food is expensive here, but you are speaking complete nonsense wrt. traveling. Norwegians travel a lot abroad. There is much to criticize the Norwegian authorities for, and especially its climate policies. But what you say is just silly.