Author Topic: Global warming and aviation  (Read 20009 times)

Offline Mike

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Re: Global warming and aviation
« Reply #30 on: August 14, 2006, 01:11:09 AM »
Wow, this sure is an interesting conversation...

Seems like everyone has a slightly different agenda and worries about different things.
I for one must admit that I am thoroughly confused on this issue. Coming back to forest fires
and their impact and the impact we made on the forest I used to be a big fan of "just let it burn" because
it needs to burn anyways since it has burned for thousands of years. Now I just read that juniper trees are actually producing a lot of oxygen and that we now don't want them to burn...
At least we'll always have gin this way, eh?!  ;)

There are so many theories on global warming and how it happens and how we are or are not affecting it. I guess we won't know until later (maybe even until it's too late)
My big thing is TRASH!!
That is something we CAN do something about, even us little un-influential average citizens. I am amazed that in Vegas in most communities there is no recycling. In a city of several million people!
It's scary!
The other thing that scares me more than makes me mad is being on the freeway and seeing how many cars are stuck there at the same time with only one person in each car. A whole city with no public transportation system!!
The list goes on...

I am not sure if I am helping or hurting the environment flying and aircraft that puts out fires on one hand but uses 45 gallons per hour to do it (a crane uses 500 !! gallons per hour).
But I sure don't think about it while I am in the pilot seat......
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fireflyr

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Re: Global warming and aviation
« Reply #31 on: August 14, 2006, 04:28:10 AM »
YAAA, logn liv thr Junispersh (wish flavors gin) of wich i yam sppin on now. (hiccup -belch) :-X

I'm with Mike on trash and recycling, it's mind boggling when I see people wasting valuable resources and I believe that any effort, no matter how small, has value. |:)\

Offline spacer

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Re: Global warming and aviation
« Reply #32 on: August 14, 2006, 02:09:35 PM »
Oooh, Mike... that mention of 'public' transportation sent a chill...
I used to ride the trains. Never again. I'd rather take my bicycle.
Government run transit systems I've ridden have all sucked, and never
really paid for themselves... the ones I've ridden, at least.
Besides, I watch these guys (the bus drivers, anyway) for a living, and the public drivers on average
are pretty bad.

Offline Frank N. O.

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Re: Global warming and aviation
« Reply #33 on: August 14, 2006, 02:31:58 PM »
Jim: Recycling has been well-evolved here in DK, just sometimes they can't agree on what things go under what catagory even in the same city (more than one center per city) and some times in the past seperated garbage for recycling have been picked up in the same truck, and compartment. Still those are mainly in the past or being worked on, and to my knowledge at least, recycling has been proven to reduce overall material and energy use.

About public transport then here's a funny but real tidbit: A city in DK, can't remember which one, found out it was cheaper to make the busses run free of charge for passengers than charge money since the income was smaller than the pay to cover the administration fees for the ticket income :D It is very noise though with all kinds of rude passengers and narrow bus-seats and some, not all, but some bus-drivers drive very roughly so any person that doesn't walk perfectly is in big risk of falling well before reaching a seat.

Frank
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."
— Leonardo da Vinci

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Re: Global warming and aviation
« Reply #34 on: August 14, 2006, 02:33:48 PM »
Yep. Those grab handles have to be pretty sturdy  :D

Unfortunately, their idea of 'free' means the money was stolen from other people.
Hey, someone's gotta pay for it, why not wring out the taxpayers (again).

Offline tundra_flier

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Re: Global warming and aviation
« Reply #35 on: August 14, 2006, 04:46:59 PM »
Well, I guess I can be proud of my home town then. 

We have a sorta recycling program for paper, it's recycled into fuel pellets for the airforce's power plant.  Better than filling a land fill with it and digging more coal I guess.  I read once there was more paper turned in for recycling, than there was demand for recycled paper products.  Don't know if that's still true or not.

Also, the busses are free in the winter, the only time we have a polution problem (not counting forest fire smoke in the summers ;)).  The main reason we have winter polution problems is the very very still air, so it just collects here.  And people who let their cars warm up for an hour so the interior is nice and cozy.  Everyone here has electric preheaters to warm the engine block and oil, you only need a couple minutes of idling before going.  Put a parka on for god's sake!  On a side note, a friend of mine who's an EMT tells me they frequently have problems with accident victims getting frost bite.  They come out of a warm garage, or run the car for an hour so they're not wearing a coat, then when they get trapped in the car, with the windows busted at -40 temps...  Idiots!  Grrrrrr.   >:(

OK I'm done again.  :p

Phil

Offline happylanding

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Re: Global warming and aviation
« Reply #36 on: August 14, 2006, 05:15:21 PM »
About public transport then here's a funny but real tidbit: A city in DK, can't remember which one, found out it was cheaper to make the busses run free of charge for passengers than charge money since the income was smaller than the pay to cover the administration fees for the ticket income :D It is very noise though with all kinds of rude passengers and narrow bus-seats and some, not all, but some bus-drivers drive very roughly so any person that doesn't walk perfectly is in big risk of falling well before reaching a seat.

Frank

Well, I presume that the drivers get anyhow a salary and do not drive free for all the free riders, so they probably should learn to be a little bit less rude! :)
About public transport, I do not live in a part of Lugano that's well linked. or, better, there is a bus every hour (fm 8 AM to 7 PM), but for a trip that would need 7 minutes by car, you need 30 minutes via public transport and also have to change and thus wait for another bus. the price then, isn't really fair - at least until you do not get a general/year long ticket - compared to the other zones and the bus is really small and mainly used by children going to school. so said, no space, too expensive and too long. when I decide to leave the car at home I need less time to go to the center walking, given that it takes 25 minutes and at least is an healthy thing. coming back, on the contrary takes more time, since I live on a hill!! :)
I give that landing a 9 . . . on the Richter scale.

Offline tundra_flier

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Re: Global warming and aviation
« Reply #37 on: August 14, 2006, 06:18:13 PM »
Happy, I'm in a similar situation as far as public transportation goes.  There's a bus at least every hour stopping just a couple blocks from where I live, to just a block from where I work.  But there are so many stops in between it takes over an hour!  It's only 4.5 miles, so takes less than 10 min to drive, 20min on a bicycle (I really need to start riding it again) and about an hour to walk (when the snow's not too deep).  So the only time I consider using it is when it's -45 or colder and I don't want to subject my car to that kind of abuse.

Phil

Offline happylanding

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Re: Global warming and aviation
« Reply #38 on: August 24, 2006, 09:00:10 PM »
Mates, here Summer already was over at the beginning of August when, with a thunderstorm, it was - from one day to the other - completely.....cancelled. temperatures dropped to sping/autumn levels.
today we had another big thunderstorm and ice grains. Damn, if we are not causing any big harm to our planet, it's anyhow sure that it's not behaving anymore as it used to. That's a picture I've taken of the outside. And the other one...the power of the water was so high that it destroyed a window that's below ground level, and we had a small...tsunami in the house. I spent the afternoon cleaning an entire floor from the water.... :) ....and since a toast bread always fall on the buttered side, the water entered into the room in which we have the electricity panel and decided to invade the rooms where we have white tiles to the floor!! I could have passed for Cinderella!  ;)



« Last Edit: August 24, 2006, 09:04:53 PM by happylanding »
I give that landing a 9 . . . on the Richter scale.

Offline happylanding

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Re: Global warming and aviation
« Reply #39 on: August 24, 2006, 09:13:01 PM »
......And that is me at work........ :) :)
could you imagine that the floor had to be white?  ???
I give that landing a 9 . . . on the Richter scale.

Offline Plthijnx

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Re: Global warming and aviation
« Reply #40 on: August 26, 2006, 06:24:57 PM »
damn girl! looks like you had you're work cut out for you! everything back to normal yet?
The three best things in life are a good landing, a good orgasm, and a good bowel movement. The night carrier landing is one of the few opportunities in life to experience all three at the same time. - Unknown

Offline happylanding

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Re: Global warming and aviation
« Reply #41 on: August 26, 2006, 07:15:40 PM »
damn girl! looks like you had you're work cut out for you! everything back to normal yet?

Hehe! A backbones-breaking work, but everything was more or less back to order at evening! On the contrary, the grains of ice are still outside even if today the temperature was about 27 degrees C, something that was not seen since the beginning of august, when a "spring/autumn like" climate began. I think that the fact that the street where I live is a really steep one (if I'm not wrong on how to measure it should be around 16 degrees sloop) everything just collected on the lowest point, that means in front of the door....causing all the mess it caused with the water inside the house!
And the tiles....they are more or less back to their original white......... :D :D :D :D
« Last Edit: August 26, 2006, 07:17:43 PM by happylanding »
I give that landing a 9 . . . on the Richter scale.

Offline tundra_flier

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Re: Global warming and aviation
« Reply #42 on: August 28, 2006, 03:29:53 PM »
Quote
Damn, if we are not causing any big harm to our planet, it's anyhow sure that it's not behaving anymore as it used to.

Sure it is Happy, Just like it's behaving like it did 250 years ago, when Europe was in the coldest part of the little ice age. ;)

Offline Baradium

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Re: Global warming and aviation
« Reply #43 on: August 31, 2006, 04:00:20 AM »
I admit glossing over most of the discussion, so apologies if this has already been hashed...

Global warming, as much as the PC crowd wants it to be, still is just a theory.  In fact, there was a time when France banned wine imports from *england* which had much higher temperatures than today.

The global temperature rises and falls in cycles.  There is plenty of evidence of much warmer times before humans were making these "greenhouse gasses."

BTW, you know what the biggest greenhouse gas is?  Water vapor.  Think of that every time you see a cloud.  That is why clear nights are colder than cloudy nights.

Volcanoes produce an untold amount of carbon dioxide (the gas touted by environmental groups) each year, more than humans produce.  Our actual production is negligable.   Now, there is air pollution, but that's not global warming... that's air pollution.

I have national geographic magazines from the 60s and 70s.  They are worried about global *cooling,* especially caused by jets as they saw the contrails up high.

We can't take 10 or even 100 years of data and actually *know* what's going on.  We can only guess.  Right now there is a lot of public pressure on scientists to simply agree with the idea.

Think of this, we know glaciers weren't always there because there is stuff under them.  They also are growing, now if they are growing, that means that they weren't always so large (since they get bigger each year).  See where I'm going with this? 

Temperatures can rise dramatically and still be within historic patterns.  England was a temperate zone!  If it was just a global temperature that was going to make the world end, then how did we survive when England was like that?  And why wasn't it under water?  There are records of the *wine* industry in England... it's too cold for the grapes now.

I still hear that for the past few centuries we've been in a mini ice age.  That we should expect to experience warmer temperatures as we come out of it.  That national geographic article actually worries about whether we *would* come out of it (IE, "will it get warmer like it should?").

I only wish I had the thing with me so I could quote it directly.   Funny how in 30 or 40 years we can conviently forget what they knew then.  Some people want so badly to be right, they don't actually care if they are or not, they just want everyone else to say they are.

Then there are those who pretend just to try to make other people agree with what they want done.  I talked to a group of environmentalists on the north slope about a month and a half ago.  They were looking to oppose drilling in the ANWR (btw, the area in the ANWR they intend to drill is tundra, not the mountains and streams you'll see from them but the flat nothingness like they already pump oil from).  I asked them about it and they freely admitted to me that they didn't really think the drilling would harm anything, but they had to say it to try to keep it from happening... to reduce oil supply with the idea of reducing usage of gasoline.  And not for global warming, but becuse of the *other* effects they believe come from combustion.  This is the only time I've ever had a group like that talk so freely, but they did seem sincere.  I guess they felt I'd agree with the reasoning.

Anyway, that's getting a little off on a tangent.  What I wonder is how many people out there spouting stuff really see it as a "ends justify the means" thing.

In any case, even if the weather isn't *normal* there has always been abnormal weather, some storms are 100 year storms for that reason, they don't happen that often.  Well what's a 1000 year storm then?  Just because it happens doesn't mean that we caused it too, it could just be a rare occurance.

Storm cycles also vary.  For a while we were in a cycle (that can be traced back through records) of lower numbers of hurricanes and other storms.  Now we are back in the upswing.   I don't know if we are topping out now or not, but they had tracked a cycle. 

I've been told many times now that this is the coldest summer on record in Alaska.  That doesn't mean there's global cooling though.  Just like hotter than normal temps don't mean there is global warming.

BTW, someone tried to tell me that in global warming some places would be hotter and some colder.  If there is a shared relationship, how is it global warming if the averages are going to stay the same? Wouldn't that just be global sameness?

Oh, and they had trouble getting the fuel barges to barrow this year because the ice pack didn't recede nearly as quickly (or as far) as normal.
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Offline happylanding

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Re: Global warming and aviation
« Reply #44 on: August 31, 2006, 09:10:47 AM »
Think of this, we know glaciers weren't always there because there is stuff under them.  They also are growing, now if they are growing, that means that they weren't always so large (since they get bigger each year).  See where I'm going with this? 

Baradium, you're sure about that?!?!? Since in switzerland all the contrary applies. Glaciers are disappearing and the Cervino (the Toblerone chocolate form) is crushing.....
I give that landing a 9 . . . on the Richter scale.