What they are all too aware of is when the people can no longer afford to drive resentment of their jet-setting ways will be fierce. They're working hard to keep the house of cards standing but the wind is picking up.

The worlds 3rd largest oil field, Cantarel, is in decline and Ghawar, the largest, looks like it may be next.

Red clouds.

Put the Carbon Back

(but definitely most biofuels are a boondoggle)

For sure, the average celebrity/business tycoon/(insert upper class derogatory term here) travels more than most, but in the planes I have been on (ooh, eco sin, I flew somewhere once!), the vast majority of the people are middle class families or regular joes travelling for work.

I appreciate the class-rage, but flying is a reality in this world, and while telemeetings and other efforts to minimize uneccessary travel are laudable, the growing middle class of countries like India and China will certainly want to have their opportunity to fly too.

I would rather go to the mountains nearby than to an all-inclusive resort, but I do love to visit new countries.

Instead of guilting people into flying less, we should create incentives to reduce travel, and make the airplanes that do fly more environmentally friendly.

Of course, the 'incentives' would likely be in the form of higher fuel taxes, etc., so you have the problem of excluding the less rich.  Unless capitalism is seriously reinvented or abandoned, I don't really have a good answer for this (allocated flights per year for every person?).

As far as "regular joes traveling for work" goes, that again is determined by the rich who allow the management of their corporations to subsidize environmentally destructive practices.  When stockholders and citizens and donors demand that businesses, governments, and NGOs track and report their greenhouse gas contributions, we'll see change.  Meanwhile, a whole parasitic industry (aviation) exists at the scale its at because it is able to externalize its costs onto those who already suffer from the Jet Set.

As far as flying being a reality, so is 385 ppm CO2, increasing AT AN INCREASING RATE.  I bet that reality hits harder than the reality that people who can afford to fly want other people to take the brunt of that activity.

We had a discussion of flying a while back and I repeat the query I made then:  What are you willing to stop doing in order to allow mass jet travel to continue?  Because if we can't even get our arms around an activity that really didn't even become a widespread phenomenon until the 1970s then it's hard to feature how we're going to do much else.

Coal may be the enemy of the human race, but at least coal provides lights and refrigeration and other vital services.  What does most "business travel" and all tourist travel provide?

Few working people would fly for work trips if not compelled to do so.  So, yes, stiff upstream taxes--especially stiff for aviation fuel, as befits an especially destructive mode of travel--would have a good result, as organizations are the ones in the best position to dispense with travel and to take advantage of the alternatives.

It's not a "problem" to exclude the  "less rich" from destroying the earth.  The problem is how to get the rich to stop doing it too, and how to make them pay through the nose when they won't (and to direct the money to benefit the rest).

The 5% Project

Solid oxide fuel cell plugin hybrid turbofan aircraft engines.  They could  run on fuel and battery power.  Not to mention a microwave laser beam during takeoff.

Algae solar collector biodiesel for aircraft, the hybrid engines would run great on it.  And the collectors sequester cO2 from fuel cell power plants.

Plugin hybrid kite sail/wind generator hydrofoil ships.  They could compete with aircraft on overseas flights with speeds over 100 mph in favorable wind conditions without any fuel expended.  If the wind dips battery power could take over.  And fuel cell/turbine backup could take over if the batteries run out.

Is the future here yet?  Hehey.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

_

Frankly, there's not much choice in the matter anyways.

Little known thing, but all of our military infrastructure runs on Jetfuel.

And if they aren't going to get their Jetfuel from biofuels, then they are going to get it from coal and natural gas.

So like many things in politics, it's a choice between the lesser of two evils.

_

Luckily electric is proving the best for passenger cars.  So we may avoid the largescale biofuels hoopla yet.

For instance, I'm looking forward to the late 2008 Prius which gets 94 mpg.

or the Dynalifter which is trying to revive the airship. http://www.dynalifter.com/

I can't find any data on fuel consumption for dirigibles but hypothetically they would use less than existing aircraft.


Put the Carbon Back

We will probably be using planes and driving around in cars and trucks for our foreseeable future. We should take practical steps like investing in biofuels, and improving efficiency in all types of vehicles.

Global warming is a concern as is the future of our oil supply. But neither is going to happen tomorrow, and the effects of both problems are very much overplayed in the media.

We can't continue to expand our use of fossil fuels like we are currently doing, particularly in the far east, but where we currently are is a decent place to be. Control and limits on growth are the keystone to a good environmental policy, but we can't turn back the clock or get into panic mode.

Panicking over energy, and insisting we drop our carbon dioxide emissions now dramatically is only going to force us into dangerous technologies like nuclear that will have serious effects on our world in the future.

We can do better with energy consumption right now with practical steps -- like using technology and building smart cities.

Yep, the Top 3% will figure out a way to take it from you.

Get a Guillotine T-Shirt and really save the planet, by reaching for the low hanging fruit.

Texeme.Construct(function(x)=Participation(x))

Despite hysterical claims of various iterations of new age luddites, current over-engineered generations of extant nuclear power plants are   quite safe. But new generations are even safer.  Had we continued development following TMI, we would now be enjoying the onset of more abundant power with less transmission loss and watching stores of spent fuel diminuishing.  

Abundant electrical power empowers development of a flexible mass transit system around all major urban areas.  Today, the auto serves mostly to provide door-to-door convenience.  A mass transit system providing the same convenience will supplant it.  Moreover, the more ubiquitious such a mass system becomes, the more popular it becomes, and the more pressure to expand it arises.  

 Expanding nuclear power cleans the air and water by reducing pollutant discharge, true. But it also frees abundant domestic natural resources for fuel production for segments of the economy requiring mobil power.  Building the interestate highway system jumpstarted a increasingly stagnant economy.   Building power and mass transit will do the same for many succeeding generations.   >MW

millwright

What I actually wrote---contrary to the text in your comments, which you put between quote marks despite, apparently, that you made it up---was this: "jets pump tons of water vapor into the atmosphere where it has no natural presence."  Although I admit it was imprecisely written and could cause a careless reader to err.  I will revise it to add "at a level" after the word atmosphere.

What you may not be aware of is that the water vapor from jets is uniquely harmful, because jets pump millions of tons of water vapor up into the atmosphere WAY up there (6 and 7 miles high).  

That is why jets do far more to destabilize the climate than their 2% share of greenhouse gas emissions suggests they would.

See this Christian Science Monitor story:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0212/p13s02-litr.html

"Jet engines burn kerosene, which gives off carbon dioxide (CO2), a leading cause of global warming. Airline flights today make up less than 3 percent of man-made CO2 emissions, though they also spew nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide, soot, and water vapor that may double their total warming effect on the climate."

Or this about a study published in Nature
http://environment.about.com/b/a/256757.htm

"Overall, aviation accounts for only about 2 percent of carbon dioxide emissions globally, according to the International Air Transport Association, but at high altitudes jet exhaust may cause a warming effect that is two or three times greater than that of carbon dioxide.

Contrails, trails of ice that condense when the hot exhaust from jet engines hits the cold air at high altitudes, can last in the atmosphere for hours and spread to cover thousands of square miles before they eventually dissipate. The icy contrails act like giant mirrors suspended in the sky. By reflecting the sun's radiation, they cause some cooling, but they also block heat rising from the Earth's surface, which contributes to the greenhouse effect and global warming.

At night, the warming effect is magnified, because there is no reflective cooling effect to help counter it. And the problem becomes worse in winter, when cold, moist air is more likely to exist at all elevations. According to the researchers, contrails are almost twice as likely to form in winter than in summer.

The research study, which was reported in the journal Nature, found that night flights accounted for only 25 percent of the daily air traffic but contributed 60 percent to 80 percent of the warming caused by commercial aviation. At the same time, winter flights accounted for only 22 percent of the annual number of commercial flights, but they contributed half of the annual warming effect."

The 5% Project

First off, it's cheaper than nuclear.
Second off, it can be done much more quickly than nuclear.
Third off, nuclear is not sustainable (either by resource [uranium] or by geopolitics [plutonium])

Lastly, Geothermal looks like it could offer all the benefits of nuclear.  Without all the downsides.
And what with new high torque drilling motors (designed from iron, rather than expensive magnets)
And high tech exploration software and tech.

Geothermal could easily field the longer term baseload we need.

It's whether it finds it's way up to the ozone layer.  (i.e. the stratosphere)

http://www.greyfalcon.net/watervapor.png

  The second issue is speed. Such large, slow objects won't blend well into the air traffic structure. And the (im)possibility of creating dedicated airports boggles the mind.

Finally all such aircraft are altitude limited. Most of their operations would be confined to the troposphere where most of the weather/wind exists.  Not a good ride for passengers, not even so good for some cargo.  Yes, there is technology to improve the ride - used on all modern conventional aircraft, BTW - but mass,  control authority and structural limits exist, too.

 IOW, a nifty idea that could find niche employment.  Most likely on long distance over-water routes such as exist in the Pacific.  >MW
 

millwright

There's also the issue of nighttime contrails.

On routes with low passenger load, some oxygen bottles underneath cabin seats were yanked off, a typical B747 aircraft, which have between 400 to 500 passengers seats but usually have a load ranging between 250 to 300 passengers. British Airways simply took out some excess bottles. It is important to state here, that when flying over the Himalayas, airlines are advised to retain the excess oxygen bottles.

Also, portable water and excess water in aircraft tanks are being reduced. Recently, American airline technicians devised a gadget that lets ground crew know when tanks are three quarters full. Quoting one of the technicians , "we took 25 per cent of water off the flights, which saved the airline $2million a year".

What's more interesting is to think about ways to REALLY cut the wasted fuel, like a mandate that no commercial jet flight can take off unless at least some level (90%?) of the seats are full.  Or apply a stiff tax on empty seats.

The 5% Project