Fuel This Will You!
Here's a good answer and a "sort of" answer to a question I've had for a long time: How many international flights are there each day and how much fossil fuel is needed to power them?
Well, okay. The good answer only deals with transatlantic flights and the "sort of answer" only speaks to flights occurring over American skies, but you get the drift. If this is what takes place in the US on a daily basis, imagine what sort of traffic occurs world-wide.
And then tell me, oh AGW wise ones, how can we replace the carbon based energy required to fuel all of that activity, ALL OF WHICH contributes to the global economy? Wind farms? Solar energy? What? Maybe they'll come up with airplanes with wings that flap automatically using solar power, but they'd still need something to propel them high enough to be above the clouds, especially for the longer flights. As one of the commenters on the first site linked above says, the new more fuel efficient transatlantic flight initiative will reduce CO2 omissions by a staggering 0.0005%.
And that's just one tiny bit of our fossil fuel dependent civilization that will go bust when we run out of oil, unless someone somehow finds a replacement powerful enough to propel hundreds of thousands of flights to and fro across various parts the planet every day. If that mode of transportation goes poof, it's not just the jobs associated with flight (from manufacturing them, to serving meals on them, to investigating crashes and on and on) that will disappear. All the goods and services transported by or associated with those flights will be grounded and legions of other people supply or are dependent on those goods and services be out of work, too. We're looking at major economic collapse.
The comments are kind of interesting in that some of them seem to reveal a profound level of naivete, like this one: "Think of the domino effect though. They save money in fuel, which translates to more money for the airlines, to re-invest in cleaner technologies, or in bringing the ticket price down. Should be interesting to see what this does."
Yup. That should help. Lower the price and what you'll get is more passengers and more traffic. It's a zero sum game, sweetie.
Well, okay. The good answer only deals with transatlantic flights and the "sort of answer" only speaks to flights occurring over American skies, but you get the drift. If this is what takes place in the US on a daily basis, imagine what sort of traffic occurs world-wide.
And then tell me, oh AGW wise ones, how can we replace the carbon based energy required to fuel all of that activity, ALL OF WHICH contributes to the global economy? Wind farms? Solar energy? What? Maybe they'll come up with airplanes with wings that flap automatically using solar power, but they'd still need something to propel them high enough to be above the clouds, especially for the longer flights. As one of the commenters on the first site linked above says, the new more fuel efficient transatlantic flight initiative will reduce CO2 omissions by a staggering 0.0005%.
And that's just one tiny bit of our fossil fuel dependent civilization that will go bust when we run out of oil, unless someone somehow finds a replacement powerful enough to propel hundreds of thousands of flights to and fro across various parts the planet every day. If that mode of transportation goes poof, it's not just the jobs associated with flight (from manufacturing them, to serving meals on them, to investigating crashes and on and on) that will disappear. All the goods and services transported by or associated with those flights will be grounded and legions of other people supply or are dependent on those goods and services be out of work, too. We're looking at major economic collapse.
The comments are kind of interesting in that some of them seem to reveal a profound level of naivete, like this one: "Think of the domino effect though. They save money in fuel, which translates to more money for the airlines, to re-invest in cleaner technologies, or in bringing the ticket price down. Should be interesting to see what this does."
Yup. That should help. Lower the price and what you'll get is more passengers and more traffic. It's a zero sum game, sweetie.
posted by Louise at 6:51 am
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