Happens all the time - especially on shorthaul flights. It can pay to carry fuel either from base for the return trip (as opposed to refuelling at the destination) or vice verca.
It is environmentally worse because more fuel is burnt to carry the extra fuel - roughly 3% is used per hour to carry the amount of fuel (ie a 12 hour longhaul flight uses 36% of the extra fuel carried) and it can still be economical to do this!
Andy
You should try a cross channel ferry sometime ;-)
Yep.
It's insignificant. That's why the greenies like to talk about the rate fo increase rather than absolute numbers.
Err, no. All other fuel is "unnaturally" (there's nothing "natural" about tax) expensive.
Governments don't actually GAS about the eco stuff. All they're interested in is the tax.
right?
Clint Sharp wrote in
And that's why there are very few fuel stations close to the northern side of the border.
BTW - if you're thinking of crossing that particular border to buy fuel, I wouldn't recommend using the phrase "Southern Ireland" once you're over the other side ;)
OK so I might be wrong about the magnitude of the effect, so I've been doing some googling to try and pin down the facts, with rather limited success. The sources seem united in saying that the main controllable causes of global warming are
burning fossil fuels deforestation
and they also agree that the main greenhouse gas is CO2, with methane etc being of secondary importance. They agree that the ways to control global warming are (predictably I suppose) to decrease the amount of fossil fuels burnt and to plant trees
What I would like to know and have failed to get a clear answer on is
- The relative importance of fossil fuels and deforestation
- A breakdown of how the fossil fuels are used, how much is used as fuel and what is being fuelled, how much to make plastics etc, because if decision makers and/ or I knew that then it might be possible to direct our efforts in the most useful way. Eg it is hardly worth driving to the tip to recycling my yogurt cartons if only 0.001% of oil is used to produce them and 95% of oil is used as vehicle fuel.
And to TNP who said ..
I am putting my nose in the air and being highly offended by that! I may actually have been a child of the sixties but not in the way you mean because I was more focussed on my nappy and being milk monitor than on saving the world.
Anna
As you've probably realised by now, Anna, focussing on nappies and being milk monitor is at least as effective as the other methods proposed for "saving the world"
...
Anyone who makes such insulting statements is best ignored. It reflects badly on him/her rather than you.
You're regarded in very high esteem by most of us, especially
Mary
Although these contrails reflect a little sunlight away from earth, they reflect back to earth much more invisible infra-red (heat) radiation which would otherwise escape to space -and therefore they have an overall warming effect. This is hard to measure accurately, because the contrails eventually spread out and become indistinguishable from natural cirrus clouds.
Not all of the water vapour forms contrails, but water is itself a "greenhouse gas" which also traps this outgoing infra-red radiation. Each water molecule traps much more heat and also survives much longer at this height than it would do at sea-level.
Don't get caught in the trap of comparing one transport method against another. We shouldn't be transporting most of the stuff anyway and should eat seasonal foods. It likes saying it is ok to manufacture wasteful packaging because it can be recycled. Every litre of bottled water takes 6 litres of water and one litre of oil to produce!
Yes, you're missing the fact that aircraft consume only a small proprtion of the fuel used globally, and that the hardened eco-weenies tend to inflate the fuel usage in order to get it to look larger than it is. Last time I checked commercial, passenger and general aviation accounted for about 1% of CO2 emissions. The greenies claimed it was closer to 2%. To get a figure of 2% the greenies had added all military aviation fuel use to the non-military use, *including the fuel used by aircraft carriers, military ground support vehicles, etc.*
[snip]
Well, anyone involved in the use of lime is being a tad short-sighted if they point the finger at other people's CO2 emissions.
Lime and cement production account for 5% of global CO2 emissions, five times that released by aviation. Converting entirely to the use of lime, rather than cement would save some CO2, but not a significant amount.
Glass house, stones they don't go well together.
Well, you're certainly wrong about who said that, apparently attributing it to me.
Fossil fuel is a few million years of forests.
Roughly 30% heating 30% power gen, 30% transport. Plastics < 5% IIRC. Aircraft around 5% I think.
I had some figures somewhere..the givernment publishes the UK stats look it up.
because
Correct. In a nutshell that is roughly the situation.
Ah.
An interesting thread ! Wasn't there something called the Chicago Agreement, back in late 1940's, when all of the western nations agreed never to tax fuel for commercial aircraft? Note that if you have a 'plane which burns Avgas, ie, petrol - powered, piston - engined, like all light aircraft, then in Europe at least, I think you will pay same tax as road fuel. As its a cleaner fuel, more refined, probably around =A31.40 / litre by now.
The message from 4square contains these words:
I am sure there is a long standing International agreement not to tax jet fuel although I can't vouch for the name but you wrong about avgas.
A quick search brought this up:
"The proposition for avgas is that as of November 2008 it would be charged at the minimum European rate, which is little more than the current rate of 28.84ppl."
Although it has a cheesy T Bliar intro, the rest is whilst a lot more careful in what it says, saying broadly what I have been saying. Here and elsewhere..
One factoid is it seems to take 6-9 years to get planning permission for ANYTHING, be it windfarm, a row of pylons, or a power station.
Their commenst on windfarms 'costs have been higher than anticipated' is a classic.
They have also completely missed te potential of the BEV (battery electric vehicle) and the whole report is low key; I think that the issues will get more important than they have considered them to be.
However there are SOME of the facts that are relevant to power/CO2 and the problems and costs of infrastructure devlopment and technologies.
This is a nice short from of what energy we use where. Saly it doesn;t break energy out into things like aviation versus road versus rail.
Where the energy goes basically.
To save energy stay at home and shiver. Not really the sort of political slogan that will inspire you to vote for them tho is it?
I suppose my slogan is 'stay at home and shiver, or build nuclear power stations and electric cars: Your choice'.
And I am going to bed now,
TTFN.
Thanks NP That is just what I wanted to find It will take a while to read ...
Not at all, it just has to be marketed properly. Farmers markets, Slow Towns eg Diss, Save the planet
I see
Anna
The planet is OK. Its the population, and law and order, and the consumer lifestyle that its at risk..in short 'civilization as we know it'
The last time we lived 'sustainably' in this country was around the time of the Black Death.
To maintain our population levels we utterly depend on being able to access energy and technology: With respect, those that think they don't use that technology are fooling themselves: they are simply blinding themselves to the infrastructure that they don't even think they use, that supplies them with almost everything.
Without constant supplies of energy, the fens would flood, the sewage works would cease to operate, clean water would be unavailable, and disease would be rampant. And food would cost 10-100 times what it does now.
If all domestic heating lighting and the personal car vanished, we would STILL need around 30% of the enegy to just produce the food and goods we need.
Thats still about 10 times what can be done 'sustainably' by my reckoning. Which might be wrong...
I am not sure you do, but there ya go...
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