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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***we all know how well this experiment worked out for the EU?
March 2010: Jeremy Rifkin: The Empathic Civilization
An Address Before the British Royal Society for the Arts
Two spectacular failures, separated by only 18 months, marked the end of the modern era. In July 2008, the price of oil on world markets peaked at $147/ barrel, inflation soared, the price of everything from food to gasoline skyrocketed, and the global economic engine shut off…
The European Union is the first continental governing institution of the Third Industrial Revolution era.
***The EU is already beginning to put in place the infrastructure for a Europeanwide energy regime, along with the codes, regulations, and standards to effectively operate a seamless transport, communications, and energy grid that will stretch from the Irish Sea to the doorsteps of Russia by midcentury…
http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/cultureheritage/cwe/EmpathcCIV_EN.pdf
“Other mitigation-measures cannot be left to market-forces. …”
These guys are just leftists plain and simple. There faith in “market forces” to the limited extent that they understand such concepts has a depth of about 1/2 of .001″.
Idiots .. its wrong and so stupid on so many levels one does not know where to start ….
Justa Joe says:
August 12, 2014 at 7:22 pm
Practical every day ‘economics’ (not the stuff of textbook fairytale) when left to do what it does (sans ideological warpified interference and dictat), generally produces a situation most people want or prefer and wish to maintain or else develop further. Including as one commenter said, above, the economic desirability of international travel and tourism.
On wonders what world it is the eco-warrior loons want to preserve or conservem or put to rights ‘n stuff? Last I looked we still live in a situation where survival of the fittest, of each life form, rules. Just look at the ebola contagion if you doubt this, we’ll either survive by wising-up, or we won’t. Nothing has fundamentally changed due to digital modernity, the same rules apply as always and the same natural processes are proceeding.
Which necessarily means humans must and will manage the ‘environment’s’ health and viability, as a natural requirement and prerequisite of their attempt and desire to survive, and remain fit to do so.
So whence any need for eco-heros self-appointing as Pontifs for Gaia when we’re necessarily already ensuring that we survive, along with the requisite global biota functioning which works for us, as well, and for our global survival niche?
We already are massively managing and moderating our own actions and conserving the parts of the biota which we have already recognized are valuable to that end and which a human will also value to the extent they will get on a jet and fly around the world to visit it in the flesh.
So it seems self evident (to me) that our mutual survival need and our associated economic processes are already doing this job which the eco-heros want to lobby for the right to self-appoint themselves to.
If employment is based on merit, then our survival needs and economic processes already have that job. So lets let it do what it does best and it will automatically maintain and evolve self-moderating mechanisms that changing human action and priorities, as necessary, sans eco pontif thought-farts and its tedious childish heroism.
excerpt from original post: ” … the ticket price-increases necessary to induce the required reduction in traffic growth-rates …”
But that growth has its own structural and industry limitations already that are non-monetary and non-interference, they are based on airspace safety requirements, namely the national airspace in most western countries (North America and Europe especially) is currently near full capacity-utilization and radical technical measures are being introduced currently, and a quickly as possible, to relieve the traffic congestion pressures, as the various national airspace systems, as in the case in particular, is currently and constantly struggling to accommodate ~5,000 flights on jet routes, during the busiest parts of the day.
The reason why radical technical innovation and new airspace architectures are being developed and implemented is because of flight-shedding time delays, caused by federal airspace regulators making excess to airspace capacity airliners to stay waiting on the tarmac until an airspace ‘slot’ become available for it to take off. So these uneconomical delays already apply a powerful incentive to aircraft operators to reduce the number of scheduled and unscheduled flights (usually by buying bigger jets that hold more people and get better mileage per head, thus need fewer aircraft and flight crews, etc.) to make them more economically efficient and also fuel and time efficient.
Have a look at this novel propulsion efficiency and fuel solution that’s currently being developed and is now entering production, it is flying right now:
http://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/news/Airbus-Commits-To-E-Fan-Production222348-1.html
Else we can listen to the professors of Gaia pontificate about how ‘economic’ incentives must be given teeth and imposed imposed, for no reason whatsoever. Well guess what professors, businesses operates on a profit incentive, and that IS NONE OTHER THAN THE STRONGEST POSSIBLE INDUSTRY-WIDE INCENTIVE TO EFFICIENCY AND ON-GOING SURVIVAL!
So if one stupidly and arbitrarily imposes uneconomic measures as feigned “economic incentives” then what you’ll get instead is an unprofitable industry that’s totally ruined, and does not innovate to solve any material issues of efficiency, at all. Because it is no longer profitable to do so.
duh!
But that has been the unstated agenda, all along with such proposals, and such an outcome would fill the High-Pontifs of Gaia and global saviorism, with tremulous inconsolable waves of glee regarding their disproportionate counterproductive effects on humanity, and its best interests.
These ignorant left-greenish professors need to shut it and keep their snouts out of economic discussions for they have nothing constructive to contribute in them and are just serial proposing enervating and surplus-to-requirement ‘solutions’ to non-problems, because the natural curtailing and modifying economic and profit incentive solutions are already in act of process at any given moment, sans such foolhardy useless inputs to economic and socio-political ‘debating’.
Professors, don’t operate profitable businesses, because they can’t. The reason is they have virtually no clue as to the nature of such a strange and alien contraption as a profit-making business sector. First thing they would want is to lobby government to bailout their pet airline project as an economic ‘stimulus’ measure, for that’s all many of them have ever known, and thus have no operating concept of value and efficiency in business, not the mechanisms of self moderation and efficiency dividends that already exist to limit actions and excess, or damage to global ecological systems.
Take that douche bags.
I’m just waiting for some progressive to come up with a plan that includes mandatory counselling before you can complete a booking for air travel.
Anybody else irritated by the odd over-hyphenation in this drivel? (“mitigation-measures” etc.etc.).
Being charitable, maybe the authors are not native English speakers (they would no doubt prefer that as “not-native-English speakers”, or maybe “not-native English-speakers”).
If so, I bet they flew in…
Stopping the masses from using air travel is just an extension of stopping the masses from using car travel. In Britain, there is a tax to travel into central London (congestion charge – see the way it is framed). There is also a proposal to charge extra for diesel vehicles – more particulates (after promoting their use to save CO2) and there is the continuous exhortation to use bicycles which must be the most dangerous way to travel in large towns, with many people killed every day.
All this, just to keep the roads clearer for the people who matter?
SteveT
Unmentionable says:
August 12, 2014 at 9:24 pm
———————————–
The eco-left don’t understand market forces as a mechanism for innovation. They only extol “market forces” when they believe that these forces will make some product or activity prohibitively expensive for the average Joe. When they don’t believe that the average Joe will be rapidly and sufficiently restricted by pricing him out of the market then they want the Govt to put the hammer down on the little guy.
Funny you should mention that Steve, that same topic became the latest scandal in Australia just today.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-13/shorten-seizes-on-hockeys-poor-people-dont-have-cars-comment/5668468
I was quite staggered by the arrogance of Joe Hockey. He says his budget’s fuel excise increase will not affect the poor at all because the poor are already unable to afford to buy fuel, or buy a car, so it won’t be a problem for them, because they can’t drive.
Well, if we put a side the unforgivable arrogance, I will ay that he and I are the same age and in the Australia I grew up in the widely accepted concept of “a fair go”, for everyone in society was the backbone and sinew of the entire Australian cultural mentality, and way of life. Joe Hockey is the only person I have ever heard express such total disregard for that unifying common principle and openly promoted direct unfairness and inequality of policy application, and national and social division that leaves people out, and exposes them to deliberately regressive policies against the poorest section of the population.
The assertion that the poor won’t even be affected is of course incredulous, for if they don’t have a car they must use cabs, buses and trains, all of which use fuels with the increased excise taxation and they also receive all of their life’s consumables and food via transportation, which again uses the same fuel.
So obviously the costs will be passed on to the poor due to the excise rise and they will be thus disproportionally affected even if they don’t have a car, and can’t afford to buy fuel already, because they are already reduced to abject poverty.
—
Note for Joe Hockey: You’re an antagonistic arrogant ingrate mouthing narcissistic and xenomorphic out-of-step conceits which no Australian government minister has been stupid enough to say even once during my entire lifetime. You seem to be in the wrong country there sport, that or you’ve fallen on your head one too many times. But I guarantee you one this, you’ve just blown your chance of ever becoming PM mate.
In his own words to camera:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-13/joe-hockey-fuel-excise-comments/5669096
RE Joe Hockey. The rich are able to save and invest because their income exceeds the cost of life’s essentials (food, fuel). The percentage of their income devoted to essentials drops with increasing income. Any tax on an essential is regressive. Joe’s stupidity is beyond words.
Pay an indulgence fee and climb aboard or donate funds quid pro quo for your ACA-style waiver from the WH.
JimS says: “Was this study sponsored by a consortium of cruise ship companies?”
No, it was Amtrak. Part of the Intercontinental Railroad, you know.
You scratch a shiny green progressive and underneath there is a dark totalitarian.
ALWAYS.
Laws are the only thing between them and perfecting everyone else.
Blogged Not Science. Not Engineering.
I’m guessing frm the article that the authors have no working Engineering (or physical science) understanding: The plausible, nett radiative effects of CO2 at 10 to 12 km above the surface (cruising altitude for inter-/continental flights) are as a coolant.
But that guess is wrong: Matt Grote has a BEng in Aeronautical Engineering and has worked as an airline pilot. So he has NO excuse for writing crap other than bowing to the wishes of his masters: Selling his soul for a PhD.
Ian WIlliams has a degree in Chemistry and is the head of the Centre for Environmental Sciences.
John Preston who runs the Civil, Maritime and Environmental Engineering and Science Academic Unit and Professor of Rail Transport doesn’t appear to have any science of Engineering qualifications. His claim to infamy appears to be “He has held almost 130 research grants and contracts, worth over £5.5 million”