Climate Change - Airshows

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Andyph
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Climate Change - Airshows

Post by Andyph »

I was reading an article on climate change and the need to reduce emissions - How 'we' are missing the Paris pledges and the need for URGENT action.
Made me wonder about airshows - not that there is very much emitted but that they could be seen to have no (little?) benefit for the emissions they do use.
They are certainly a highly visible demonstration of our lack intent to change our ways
Certainly makes me feel a bit guilty travelling to and watching them. Wonder how much CO2 is produced by aircraft and visitors travelling to Fairford for example?

Perhaps aerobatics teams might be seen as bad PR? How much CO2 does a Red Arrows display use?

How does everyone else feel?

What if the government regulated airshows away to meet their emissions pledges? They could be 'low hanging fruit' - gone with a swish of a pen.

Personally I'd be sad but would totally understand.

Please - if you don't think climate change is real please don't post! - this is not the place.

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iainpeden
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Re: Climate Change - Airshows

Post by iainpeden »

I see the point but that would lead to the banning of any mass gathering which involves transportation; football matches, music festivals etc. etc.
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tuska2
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Re: Climate Change - Airshows

Post by tuska2 »

If you are that worried about CO2 emissions, ban volcano's! Whilst I agree we must take a great deal more care over our planet, the actual reality is 7 billion
people enjoying a reasonable lifestyle cannot fail to have some impact on the environment. Other than a return to the stone age or a massive reduction in population, the only way forward can be in technology such as Nuclear fusion or Zero Point, neither of which are likely to come to fruition in the next twenty years or more, although research and development is ongoing in many countries. Another reality is, for better or worse, our economies and lifestyles are inextricably linked to fossil fuels until the above technologies come on stream, and even then governments and financial institutions will resist. So, its up to you,
but I would suggest saving your angst, and continue to enjoy airshows guilt free, as I will. After all, when its just drones or F35,s they won't be worth attending!

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Ouragan
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Re: Climate Change - Airshows

Post by Ouragan »

Andyph, you raise a valid and interesting point.

Airshows may indeed be seen to be lowhanging fruit in the way that music festivals, county shows and big sporting events are not, simply because they are not seen to be as significant in terms of culture, the economy or even prestige. They do not feature on television, are not the subject of conversations in the workplace and do not have the mass cultural appeal of many other events. In addition the basic factor of having polluting aircraft travel great distances and then display at the venue may, in this increasingly environmentally aware society, be come to be seen as an unwelcome activity -no matter that the entirety of activity of one week in July at Fairford is still probably less polluting than a typical day at Heathrow.

There should not be any complacency. My Model Club is raising the issue of all that single-use scrap plastic from model kits and what could be done with it, and we as aviation enthusiasts should not think that those events we enjoy attending will not one day come to the attention of a government that is keen to be seen to be trumpeting the fight against climate change.

frank
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Re: Climate Change - Airshows

Post by frank »

Crickey
where does one stop - formula one, holiday flights, holiday cruises, horse racing ( methane !), Goodwood Festival of Speed, any gathering of people - the list would be endless.
What is emitted purely by the aircraft is not even a spit in the ocean compared to 7 B people existing on the planet.
I read Limits to Growth by Meadows and Meadows in the 70`s which basically said that we couldn't grow our population anymore and that was nearly 50 years ago. We are doomed anyways. Enjoy what you have now :shock:

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smokey
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Re: Climate Change - Airshows

Post by smokey »

Wonder what the carbon footprint of the world cup is..? It must out way all the airshows in the UK put together I would think!
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CJS
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Re: Climate Change - Airshows

Post by CJS »

Probably the most practical thing most of us can do is try to limit our day to day carbon footprint, then as others have said enjoy ourselves, knowing that we at least try to do our bit.
"There's only one way of life, and that's your own"

frank
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Re: Climate Change - Airshows

Post by frank »

Andy can you past the link to the article please.
I would be interested in the "we are missing the pledges" comments. Are they referring to we in a global sense or we in a UK sense.

FarnboroJohn
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Re: Climate Change - Airshows

Post by FarnboroJohn »

CJS wrote:Probably the most practical thing most of us can do is try to limit our day today carbon footprint, then as others have said enjoy ourselves, knowing that we at least try to do our bit.


Actually the most practical thing you can do is not breed. Then at least your carbon footprint is your family's last.

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toom317
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Re: Climate Change - Airshows

Post by toom317 »

If it bothers you that much, stop travelling to look at aeroplanes. There's a small start in reducing the carbon footprint. Funny how everyone wants the carbon footprint reduced, but only as far as it doesn't impact their own lives to much.
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Beefy
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Re: Climate Change - Airshows

Post by Beefy »

tuska2 wrote:If you are that worried about CO2 emissions, ban volcano's!


I hope you realise that the earth wouldn't actually be habitable for species such as ourselves if it wasn't for volcanoes :dizzy:

Volcanoes are estimated to produce 200 Million tons of CO2 per year... Automotive and industrial activities generates 24 BILLION tons of CO2 Worldwide per year. Your comment is ignorantly stupid!


frank wrote:Crickey
where does one stop - formula one, holiday flights, holiday cruises, horse racing ( methane !), Goodwood Festival of Speed, any gathering of people - the list would be endless.
What is emitted purely by the aircraft is not even a spit in the ocean compared to 7 B people existing on the planet.
I read Limits to Growth by Meadows and Meadows in the 70`s which basically said that we couldn't grow our population anymore and that was nearly 50 years ago. We are doomed anyways. Enjoy what you have now :shock:


All of those activates you've listed should be stopped if we wish to save our home for future generations, but people are too fickle and not interested. It is too late.

Indeed where does one stop? But hey, screw it, Just continue living as you are, don't bother trying to do anything about, just consume, consume, consume :up:

I assume that the majority of you out their with Children and grand-children have really given their futures some thought and are adjusting your lifestyle to help? No, so why bother having them then :dizzy: Their future is extremely bleak but it needn't be if everybody made the effort, but hey why should we? "Not in my lifetime" - what a great attitude most people have :wall:

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CJS
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Re: Climate Change - Airshows

Post by CJS »

FarnboroJohn wrote:
CJS wrote:Probably the most practical thing most of us can do is try to limit our day today carbon footprint, then as others have said enjoy ourselves, knowing that we at least try to do our bit.


Actually the most practical thing you can do is not breed. Then at least your carbon footprint is your family's last.


I assume you mean the royal 'you' rather than it's just me who shouldn't breed. :-p
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FarnboroJohn
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Re: Climate Change - Airshows

Post by FarnboroJohn »

CJS wrote:
FarnboroJohn wrote:
CJS wrote:Probably the most practical thing most of us can do is try to limit our day today carbon footprint, then as others have said enjoy ourselves, knowing that we at least try to do our bit.


Actually the most practical thing you can do is not breed. Then at least your carbon footprint is your family's last.


I assume you mean the royal 'you' rather than it's just me who shouldn't breed. :-p


Actually I was worrying after posting that you might end up out of work.... :lol:

Marathon Milkshake
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Re: Climate Change - Airshows

Post by Marathon Milkshake »

Its all pointless, we will go the same way as the dinosaurs eventually, then the planet will recover and continue, we are our own worst enemy. Although now its been said and airshows get banned for being to smoky or noisy or whatever to help with some gas or other, how is that going to help with the smog problem in China? or some tin smelter in India? or that tundra place in Russia thats melting?

For every action there is an equal and opposit reaction. So no airshows, that means then that the F-16 that would fly for 10 minutes is now going to go on a mission for 90 minutes creating much more used fossil fuel gasses! The nine former Sparrow's Hawk's that used to fly in your display for around 10 minutes now fly for 60 minutes training new pilots.

So whats the answer? simple really and very very logical but hard for people to swallow, the human race must become extinct.
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vulcan558
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Re: Climate Change - Airshows

Post by vulcan558 »

More co2 is emitted from people travelling to away football games in 1 week then an airshow. The likes of the co2 tree huggers that visit Glastonbury and then sit around a log burning camp fire.

As long as you live on high ground you will be ok, bit diffrent if we went back to the ice age thou.

verreli
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Re: Climate Change - Airshows

Post by verreli »

This is an interesting topic. I don't think CO2 is the cause. How many believe that CO2 is the cause of average global temperature rises over the last half century?

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toom317
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Re: Climate Change - Airshows

Post by toom317 »

vulcan558 wrote: log burning camp fire.


Oh that reminds me of another bit of middle class angst, wood burning stoves in houses. Apparently you are supposed to use dried wood on these, so what do they buy, kiln dried logs. Really, using a kiln to dry wood so you can burn it, that's not a waste of energy then.
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tuska2
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Re: Climate Change - Airshows

Post by tuska2 »

Indeed verreli, I guess science rather than belief would provide an answer, but the research so far can't conclusively explain large climate swings in the pre industrial age, so more unbiased science/research needs to be done. Unfortunately, as its such an emotive subject, both sides of the debate tend to support the research sponsored by the side they agree with. There's no doubt that of course we have had an impact and need to exercise more thought/care/restraint, but
Andy's point was regarding Airshows and as Ouragan pointed out they are just one of the thousands of activities that impact the environment, should we cease them all? if not,then which ones? I would also note that we are all using computers/smartphones and must be aviation enthusiasts so isn't there more than a dash of hypocrisy in some of the responses?

verreli
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Re: Climate Change - Airshows

Post by verreli »

tuska2, your post is not a million miles away from my own thoughts. I think a lot of people have 'faith' in things that they haven't fully thought through on both sides of an argument. I like to mix things up by trying to get people to think for themselves.

So regarding climate change, what's more likely - temperatures are rising because of heat release or because a gas that is 0.041% by volume is trapping heat? Occam's razor!

Since the end of the second world war the global population has increased by c.5bn people. The first law of thermodynamics tells us that energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only change from one form to another. Each of those people consume on average 2000kCals or 8374 KiloJoules per day so the net effect of those extra people being on the planet is the release of 15.3 Trillion MegaJoules of heat per annum. To put this in perspective, the Hiroshima bomb was 63 Terra Joules so there's the equivalent of 660 Hiroshima size bombs of heat being released into the atmosphere every day just from those extra people being alive.

Now add modern living - Heating, Air conditioning, transport, industry, etc, etc and I've estimated this to be about 1.65x10^20 Joules. Very crude calc.

The amount of energy needed to increase the atmosphere by 1 Centigrade can be calculated.
The mass of the atmosphere is 5.3x10^18 Kg
Its specific heat is 1.005 KJ/Kg
Therefore it will take 5.33x10^21 Joules to increase the atmosphere by 1C.

If you compare these two figures it suggests the temperature will rise by slightly less than 0.1C pa which is not far off what you see from the data.

The other point to make is that most of the sources of heat creation, human, electricity, etc have CO2 as a by-product so you would see CO2 as a trailing indicator.

Coming back to the original point about airshows. It won't make a scrap of difference on global temperatures so I say the more afterburners, the better.
Last edited by verreli on Sun 17 Jun 2018, 7:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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CJS
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Re: Climate Change - Airshows

Post by CJS »

vulcan558 wrote:More co2 is emitted from people travelling to away football games in 1 week then an airshow. The likes of the co2 tree huggers that visit Glastonbury and then sit around a log burning camp fire.

As long as you live on high ground you will be ok, bit different if we went back to the ice age though.


Pointless comparison, the average Premier League attendance last season was 35,838 per match, but you have 10 matches per week (if each team plays). RIAT attracts, what, 50,000 per day? But it's only one airshow. If you held 10 RIATs, you'd get significantly more people (allowing - roughly - for those at RIAT who attend more than one day, and for those home fans who walk to the game) attending airshows than football matches.

It's frighteningly obvious to point out that more people attend football matches in one week than go to an airshow (the Premier League is the most attended in Europe and even our Championship has the 7th highest attendances on the continent). It's as silly as saying that more people attend church each week across the country than visit my local pub on a Thursday night.

tuska2 wrote:I would also note that we are all using computers/smartphones and must be aviation enthusiasts so isn't there more than a dash of hypocrisy in some of the responses?


Not sure I agree with you. You can be anti-something whilst still using or experiencing it. Examples:

I am very much against the crazy proliferation of single use plastics, especially because of what they are doing to our wildlife, but of course I use them, because at the moment it's pretty much impossible not to. Doesn't mean I don't do what I can to campaign against their use and donate to funding for alternatives.

I was happy to take nearly 20 flights in one year when I went travelling in 2014, but have very deliberately not taken any since to try and mitigate, in some small way, the impact those flights had.

Heck, I don't even really agree with the reasons that most of the aircraft I'll enjoy watching at RIAT in a few weeks were developed and used for, but that doesn't mean I don't find them fascinating and beautiful. If a B-29 was to come to the UK? I'd go out of my way to watch it fly if I could. And yes, the fact that they were used in such an appalling way in 1945 would be very much in my mind. Personally, I love aircraft for the way they look, sound (and sometimes even feel :shock: ) when they are displaying, not for what they have done or might do, so I donate to causes that might help lessen the need for them in the future. I don't think that makes me a hypocrite, but maybe I'm in a minority of one on that!

I know what you're saying, but I don't think it is (necessarily) hypocritical. In the words of one particular Co2 producing, gas guzzling, plastic producing multi billion pound global enterprise (which yes, I use on a weekly basis), 'Every Little Helps'.

Edit: verelli, I consider myself baffled by science :hypno:
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verreli
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Re: Climate Change - Airshows

Post by verreli »

The corollary or what I'm saying is that short of reducing the global population to manageable levels, the future isn't great. It'll be long after I'm gone though. In the mean time we'll be taxed by a false premise. Maybe they'll give it all to the NHS? I hear Tess is looking for a few bob.
Last edited by verreli on Sun 17 Jun 2018, 8:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Climate Change - Airshows

Post by sylvancatharsis »

Aviation, on the whole, accounts for approximately 3.5% of all CO2 emissions. Aggressive steps should be taken to reduce the impact, but your conscience ought not to be too heavily weighed upon.
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Re: Climate Change - Airshows

Post by Airshowhammer »

For god sake. :surrender:

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CJS
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Re: Climate Change - Airshows

Post by CJS »

verreli wrote:The corollary or what I'm saying is that short of reducing the global population to manageable levels, the future isn't great. It'll be long after I'm gone though. In the mean time we'll be taxed by a false premise. Maybe they'll give it all to the NHS?


Could education have a little bit too please? Y'know, trying to teach the next lot to be a bit more careful, that kind of thing. :grin:
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frank
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Re: Climate Change - Airshows

Post by frank »

Airshowhammer wrote:For god sake. :surrender:



Agreed - 24 posts is 24 too many on this subject
:grin:

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