Air travel will destroy the world
Story submitted by Eric Worrall
Southampton University in England has published a hilarious study, which calls for the implementation of a global strongman authority with “teeth” to stop us from travelling by air. According to the study;
“The analysis shows that forecasts for strong growth in air-traffic will result in civil aviation becoming an increasingly significant contributor to anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Some mitigation-measures can be left to market-forces as the key-driver for implementation because they directly reduce airlines’ fuel consumption, and their impact on reducing fuel-costs will be welcomed by the industry. Other mitigation-measures cannot be left to market-forces. … A global regulator with ‘teeth’ needs to be established, but investing such a body with the appropriate level of authority requires securing an international agreement which history would suggest is going to be very difficult. … the ticket price-increases necessary to induce the required reduction in traffic growth-rates place a monetary-value on CO2 emissions of approximately 7–100 times greater than other common valuations. It is clear that, whilst aviation must remain one piece of the transport-jigsaw, environmentally a global regulator with ‘teeth’ is urgently required.”
Source: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231014004889
One thing for sure, this has got to be one of the most bizarre calls for totalitarianism I have ever read. If our civilisation acts upon this advice, one thing we can be certain of is that puzzled historians in future ages will devote entire chapters to strange circumstances surrounding the “Southampton Solution”.
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It seems as if Professor Ian Williams is no stranger to the joys of travel himself:-
https://twitter.com/EnviroTaff/statuses/469417587122905088
And not averse to fellow academics enjoying them:-
https://twitter.com/EnviroTaff/status/448883031211003904
Also, he seems to be a bit of a green activist:-
https://twitter.com/EnviroTaff/status/470145624969846784
https://twitter.com/EnviroTaff/status/460367563550380032
……quelle surprise.
It’s a tough life being a scientactivist grant seeker:-
https://twitter.com/EnviroTaff/statuses/488804299225722880
Hm, maybe we can start with the annual Progressive Fundamentalist Hajj. No air travel to the next COP meeting. 20,000 economic jihadists who gather solely to exact revenge on the very people who make their luxury travel possible shouldn’t be flying anywhere. No planes, ships or cars. Let them use sails to cross the ocean, and since it’s their opinion that the Northwest Passage is ice-free, I’d suggest that route to demonstrate its navigability.
It would be a bold move and would have the additional benefit of extending the meeting for weeks and lots of free publicity as the rest of the world mobilizes the effort to rescue thousands of climate lemmings from the ice.
Alan the Brit says:
August 12, 2014 at 6:20 am
They want to put the world back 50 years +!
###
Off by a couple orders of magnitude.
These academics and activists could possibly save a little money, emit a little less CO2 and make a small symbolic sacrifice if they were issued bus tickets instead of airfare to go to their conferences and speaking engagements.
What releases the most co2 – a fully loaded airbus A380 or the same number of people driving the same distance?
Just wonderin’
James at 48 says:
August 12, 2014 at 8:46 am
Prices being what they are, it’s mostly 5%ers and above doing air travel. Air travel is not in a growth mode any more.
What are you basing that on James?
The jets are getting bigger, numbers are increasing, they are flying higher and further as well as lower and shorter, and everywhere in between. there are scores of new jet models appearing, in the mid size and small jet categories as well. The national air spaces in all western countries are in a rapid capacity expansion phase and the numbers of new jets being ordered is not slackening at all. Large new orders are being placed almost daily. And the fares are steadily becoming cheaper with the economies of scale effect.
And this largely ignores what’s occurring in the BRICs states, as well, which has been much larger again.
Go to any large domestic or international airport and just watch the activity, it is frenetic and it is not the 5%ers, it’s the top 50% of the income bracket that’s flying.
Got to any supermarket here in OZ and the very first thing EVERY checkout person asks me is “do you have frequent flyer points?”. They ask everyone that.
But does flying lead to an end of the world heat-death of Gaia? Nope.
Who’s going to get the money?
@Tim Obrien
>Lords and Serfs. Only the enlightened and privileged are worthy…
That’s how the Soviet Union worked for decades. According to the social model, some comrades will still be more equal than others for some time to come.
“the ticket price-increases necessary to induce the required reduction in traffic growth-rates place a monetary-value on CO2 emissions of approximately 7–100 times greater than other common valuations”
Relax, as CO2 is worth virtually nothing these days even a value of 100 times virtually nothing is still chicken little.
as per an earlier comment – who funded this?
Amongst others (quite likely) the British taxpayer. Time to ask for your money back lads.
@Vince Causey
What releases the most co2 – a fully loaded airbus A380 or the same number of people driving the same distance?
++++++++
Nuclear powered electric trains are really hard to beat on that score.
“This would translate to a yearly 1.4 per cent increase on ticket prices, breaking the trend of increasing lower airfares,” says co-author and researcher Matt Grote. “The price of domestic tickets has dropped by 1.3 per cent a year between 1979 and 2012, and international fares have fallen by 0.5 per cent per annum between 1990 and 2012.”
‘increasing lower airfares’. What kind of gobbledegook is that?
Of course. Only the privileged, rich, and tax payer funded people should be allowed to fly.
You know, the superior ones.
I’m not sure we should gripe about papers like this. Perhaps if more people started thinking about flights being 100 times more expensive or banned for anything non essential, perhaps they’d be less eager to blindly embrace the consensus and start asking some hard questions.
No warmist should ever be left in any doubt that seriously cutting CO2 is both near impossible and very unpleasant.
We have a good test case in the Ukraine. The local regulator has “teeth”, but most of the normal world would like to see those “teeth” knocked-out.
Regulators with teeth, have a habit, of chewing up the middle class, and not enjoying the taste of the aristocracy. The poor are not on the menu, because they are too lean and grisly.
So “saving the planet”, is just a smoke-screen, for putting the productive population, back in the bus. And the upper crust, and the bureaucrats, will travel in private planes, or airlines that cater to the new order.
we need is less regulators and more lecturers with something useful to add to their students CAGW fevered brains…
Stories like this are amusing, but nothing to get worked up about. I don’t care how “progressive” some politician might be, few are likely to even suggest something like this because they understand the role of tourism in the world economy. And the few who don’t will get laughed at or shunned.
Ahh, the return to serfdom. Who would have thought the liberating effects of fossil fuel would one day be used as justification to take it all back.
The moron-who wrote that-stupid-excerpt from the study-didn’t know how to use-dashes.
Perhaps it is time for scientists with clout to lean on the pseudo scientists in these ‘climate science’ departments. How can a university allow such nonsense to be broadcast under their name?
Yes! Let’s start with Air Force 1. Maybe the President would stay in the White House a while and do some work.
/snark
Or you could live in my neck of the woods and never want to go anywhere else.
Of course such a recommendation would exclude anything green!
JRM,
“We are allowing one group to teach our kids their beliefs in our schools. If we wait 20 years before taking some action to stop it, it will be too late.
How true your statement is!
Check out these links, probably indicative of the whole western world right now.
http://thedemiseofchristchurch.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/exemplar-3-2008-exam.pdf
(found at .
http://www.nzqa.govt.nz/ncea/assessment/view-detailed.do?standardNumber=90812
our official government education web site
What is perhaps more shocking are the examiner’s comments which are in red over each page.
This barely if at all can be defined as education. No prizes for guess which way these children will vote when they become of age.
Cheers
Roger
http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
There is an upcoming solution to stop air travel.
.
Ebola.
Gary Pearse wrote August 12, 2014 at 6:30 am: “Not so funny. The fact its comfortable for them to publish this stuff says loads. Substitute any other thing “needing” regulation and you have the plan. Things start with someone having such an off-the-wall idea.”
This reminded me of a nearly 30 minute program that I heard last night on my earphone radio (courtesy CBC, which carries broadcasters from various parts of the world). I believe that this came from Radio Australia (if not, Deutsche Welle), a program about the supposed benefits of “geoengineering”, the addition of SO2 or SO3 to the air to produce sulfates to reduce our present horrendous rate of warming. (If anyone can detect any warming in the eastern part of North America I’d like to hear from them! Here in NB it is a typical or wet summer, and I read recently that New York City had not had a single heatwave this year.)
Getting back to geoengineering, there was not one questioning sentence about whether the world is actually warming and if geoengineering would accomplish a thing.
Ian M