Slashdot Mirror
FAA Plans to Clean Up the Skies
coondoggie writes "On top of its recently announced plan to reduce flight delays, Federal Aviation Administration officials today launched what they hope will be pan U.S. and European Union joint action plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions from aircraft. Specifically the group announced the Atlantic Interoperability Initiative to Reduce Emissions or AIRE — the first large-scale environmental plan aimed at uniting aviation players from both sides of the Atlantic."
> With China the new carbon dioxide emissions leader
The US is still winning by far if you look at emissions per capita, which is the more relevant figure. You would expect a country with twicce the population to give out about twice the emissions, everything else being equal.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
India and China are still developing and couldn't give two shits about all of our initiatives if any cost them money.
;)
Of course they will, if continuing emissions will in the long run be more expensive, and lead to a decrease in living standards.
For instance - much of Asia gets it fresh water from snow melting in the mountain ranges during the summer. Last couple of years, less snow has fallen, and much of it melts during the winter. Then when spring and summer comes, and it is time to plant crops - droughts.
I'm still waiting on a testable model (no, not a replica of the globe, trolls) before I jump on this "global warming is both horrible and human-mediated"
Do you reject all science that doesn't have a complete testable model behind it? In science we can never be 100% sure about anything, but there are other ways to tackle a problem. For instance, we can discover that some gases absorb solar radiation better than others (180 yrs ago), postulate that if this warms stuff on a small scale, perhaps it might also affect thing globally, (110 yrs ago) then we can discover that climate is really really complicated, and we can continue to examine interactions and say with increasing confidence over many decades that humans do in fact effect thing globally (too much to link to, sorry).
that so many people seem to have blindly latched onto, drawing absurd conclusions after equating correlation with causation and screaming as shrilly as the most terrifying of harpies
Yeah, you are clearly the rational and un-biased one here.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
I loath flying in the commuter planes; slow, noisy, cramped.
Unfortunately for you, (and me) most flyers care more about schedule convenience, and perceive all aircraft as the same noisy, cramped environment.
I would think that larger planes would also improve efficiency.
Sure, I'd prefer to stuff medium to high density routes with nothing but 767s, 787s and 777s flying 1-2x a day instead of the 5-6 flights each day between say, SJC and DFW. But it ain't gonna happen. It's easier to sell a ticket on a 50-seat Canadair to someone who wants to leave in mid-afternoon than to convince them to wait several hours to take a more efficient, larger jet. And the efficiencies of scale aren't all that bad for small jets, either.
(Even when I did try to shoehorn my schedule around so I could fly United's 777 service instead of yet another aging 737 or claustrophobic 757, United screwed up and I got to watch the 777 push back as the jet I was in taxied to the gate over an hour late. I ended up on the smelly, cramped 737 I was trying to avoid.)
Most people don't fly high density routes because the hub-and-spoke system puts lots of people on lots of planes going to a handful of airports. It's easier to service the system with lots of small to medium sized airplanes.
Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of twilight model experts and the crowd of diluted citizens that believe the numbers predicted by their models. Of course they say I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak.
Do I detect the smell of burning martyr? Let me guess, another one who takes scientific scrutiny of his claims as attempts at censorship.
It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds.
Lie, some countries have kept records of climate ever since the invention of the meteorological instruments in the 17th century, today we have over 7000 stations that measure land temperatures, we also use satellites to measure sea levels, water and troposphere temperatures.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
Is global warming going to kill us? No. Is it the end of civilization as we know it? No. But what is the cost of doing nothing? If you americans need to evacuate long island, who is going to pay indemnities? Who will decide which houses get protected by dikes and which ones are given up? Are you going to tell all these sea-side home owners "too bad, shouldn't have been driving that SUV around.."? Because if you do, I can't predict the climate, but I can predict the lawyers are going to be more busy than the engineers... This has NOTHING to do with tree-hugging. This is like choosing whether we pay for fire-insurance. We can choose to pay a little now, or run the risk of paying a hundred thousand times as much 30 years from now.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Cutting our planes' emissions will do nothing but place further financial strains on us, leading to a relative inability to compete with other countries less concerned about the illusory monster of global warming.
this is a ridiculous argument that keeps being brought up as a reason to defer or cancel any planned control of pollution.
It's flawed in two ways. One, it presumes that any prevention of pollution benefits us only globally, if at all. That if we reduce our pollution by damaging our economy we do it to ward of the *possible* spectre of global warming, and that other nations that might ignore our work (thereby gaining an economic advantage) will damage the environment just as much as we would have done. This is ignoring the fact that pollution may end up being global, but it starts local. Countries with the strictest controls on pollution have the cleanest air, the cleanest water, the lowest incidences of environmental disasters. The benefits aren't that you *might* reduce global warming (if it exists or not), but that you *will* increase the quality of your citizens lives.
Flaw number two, is that we will be damaged economically by reducing CO2 through legislation. For a start, the US has seen a decrease in CO2 per GDP dollar over the last few decades. Americans are making more money, and doing it cleaner. And it can't be blamed solely on the loss of manufacturing jobs from the US either, as Germany is the worlds largest exporter, and has a much lower pollution level per dollar of goods exported than the US or China.
in the EU, where environmental legislation is toughest, CO2 per GDP is the lowest in the world. The top rankings show that the countries with least CO2 per GDP are also those with highest productivity in the world. Norway and Luxembourg both have higher GDP per hour worked than the US and still manage to have much lower CO2 per GDP unit.
The fact is, that it is ABSOLUTELY possible to have stricter pollution controls in place, and yet to be competitive with countries that do not comply to the same high standards.
This is more government micromanagement that will do nothing but further bring us down.
As a fellow living in one of the most micromanaged, government intrusive counties in the world, and also one of the richest, cleanest and with the highest standard of living in the world, I would like to say that it is clear to me the US could do with some more open government intervention and less supposedly invisible hand market control. If anything has bought the US down in the last decade, it's been corruption and abuse from large corporations not kept in check by government.
What kills me about these arguments is pretty basic. IF there is an impact from our emissions on our planet, which MAY be negative, and which CAN be avoided, or perhaps lightened, by the decrease in output- why not decrease output? The economic argument is hogwash- these same companies (auto/truck manufacturers, jet engine/aircraft manufacturers) spend millions of dollars in R&D on their products; the spur of forced investment into this field will encourage economic growth, as this cutting edge field matures in whichever country pioneers it. In addition to creating an entire new sector, much as the Ethanol push has done in the USA, and while some companies may suffer, much as with the Prius and other hybrid cars, offering an alternative to the standard high emission models will appeal to some consumers and drive the development of this field and the advancement of technologies and the companies bringing them to market. Forced adoption of these technologies will further spur growth and investment. Again, while some incumbent companies may suffer due to their lack of foresight or corporate dexterity, any loss to these companies in jobs will be made up, likely with gains, in the new industry.
The argument that other nations are advancing and will surpass our output is also pointless. As a market leader, the USA has the ability to establish products worldwide. The adoption of these products here will spur copycat import products, and likely will result in their use in these developing first-world nations. In addition, the USA can use it's trade imbalances and leverage with these countries to spur their adoption of these technologies- where they're not already leading us, that is, as in India with their 100% natural gas taxi and bus fleets.
A few technological innovations which could help stem or prevent the devastating impacts of global warming are listed below; some are really basic concepts, too.
-Zero-emissions gasoline engines via gas/emissions recovery and storage (exchanged for empty containers at gas stations)
-Biodiesel-producing algae capable of processing the CO2, waste heat, and other emissions from coal-fired power plants and growing from it (already under testing in labs)
-Battery-powered cars (big capacitors, big nanotech batteries, potentially fuel cells, no problems)
-Zero-emissions factory environments (heat, water vapor, co2, etc recovered and reused/processed/stored)
All of these technologies can bring American companies into the 21st century and revolutionize the entire world's concepts of how to deal with emissions- and potentially save a large percentage of the human race while doing it, and reaping enormous profits.
I like to show people this chart: Wikipedia CO2/Temp Chart because most people, when they see exactly how far off of the normal scale we are, understand that doing ANYTHING is better than saying 'we don't know enough to do anything about it yet!' We all bear a shared responsibility for this planet, and we should do what we can to attempt to preserve it for our descendants.
love and peace.
In all probability they can recertify with a combination of electronic ignition and the same 100LL formulation but without TEL, and they can do that relatively inexpensively. If the feds made every aircraft owner who replaced their engines eligible for fuel tax rebates for a period of, say, 5 years from date of installation, that'd probably get the job done to get the fleet converted. But nobody is in a rush to do this because nobody at the EPA sees a public health problem here.
But its a catch-22. Aviation piston engines cost anywhere from $18,000 - $60,000 to replace, as is. No tax rebate is going to cover the cost of engine replacement; especially once you add in the cost of a newly certified engine technology. Certifying an engine with the FAA easily costs $1,000,000 and up. Because the FAAs moto is, "We're not happy unless you're not happy", they keep various technologies unavailable simply because the price for entry is far, far too high, despite it being a proven technology. Worse, most of their regulations are based about 1940s and 1950s technology assumptions; as that's the technology base most of the guys that created the regulations could relate to. The Beech Starship is a classic example. They truly innovated but the FAA tied them up with red tape for so long during the certification process, it was cheaper for Beech to buy back every plane and DESTROY THEM than it was to hope they could make their money back on their investment.
Heck, manual adjustment of the air/fuel mixture is common place in GA. Something as common as fuel injection is still considered a big step up and the fuel inject is decades behind what is commonly found in cars. And, even with fuel injection, manual control of the air/fuel mixture is still the norm.
Another example is something as simple as a clock. The FAA regulations require a certified clock (think of time/distance navigation where time is very important for safe operation). That made sense during the 1940s and 1950s when a precise time piece was uncommon. Likewise, it made sense as a clock to be mounted is required to maintain accuracy with various vibration and pressure changes, and would be hard to find back then. These days, the FAA certified clocks cost hundreds of dollars yet are less accurate, BY FAR, than what most people can pick up for $5 bucks at the local dollar store. Some of the old certified clocks will actually lose a minute or more over a four hour flight. And they can get worse with age. Worse yet, they are renowned for their unreliability. As a result, most pilots violate the regulations because they want something that is accurate, safe, and reliable rather than something that is certified. And yes, the FAA does ding people for using something that is safe and reliable rather than something that is certified.
Long story short, the ONLY thing preventing piston airplanes from becoming faster, cheaper, safer, and more environmentally friendly is the FAA. If the goverment would clean house and restructure the FAA, forcing them to revamp their certification process, the world of air travel would be a much, much better place.