>You have to look at air travel in terms of energy use per passenger >kilometer travelled. Then the plane does not look quite so bad. Yes, they >use tonnes of fuel on takeoff, but not a lot once cruising. I think jets are >in the same range as passenger cars - not great, but not a lot worse. > However there is concern that their emissions have a greater contribution >to the "greenhouse effect" due to their placement higher in the atmosphere, >I believe. Of course, if the passengers are on their way to a day at the >races...uh... > > >Edward Beggs >www.biofuels.ca >
Hi Ed It's not just the fuel consumption. Figures we had previously put the fuel economy per passenger at a bit worse than a car, better than an SUV, about half as good as a train. Yes, there is concern about the worse effect of the emissions, and about much besides. This is from piece by Mike Tidwell in The Washington Post, Sunday, September 9, 2001: "No Glaciers in Glacier National Park?" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56850-2001Sep7.html ... Air travel and transport alone, for example, add more than 500 million tons of CO2 to the Earth's atmosphere each year, according to the IPCC. And as people travel more, courtesy of ever-rising Western affluence, the problem only gets worse. By 2050, a full 15 percent of the world's CO2 could come from travel and tourism, according to Green Globe 21, a Bournemouth, England, trade association. "We're loving the planet to death," says John Berger, author of "Beating the Heat: Why and How We Must Combat Global Warming." "You look at the IPCC findings and you realize tourists and travel businesses just like all people and all businesses in the developed nations have to reduce their contribution to the problem or perhaps say goodbye to places and things they've always considered eternal." ... Here are a few ways travelers can reduce their contribution to global warming: Consider taking the train. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, rail travel emits about half the planet-warming carbon dioxide per passenger mile as car and plane travel. [more] This is an informative article: "Airports and Cities: Can They Coexist?" by Ed Ayres,WorldWatch Magazine, July 2001 - Free download if you register, PDF 1.5Mb http://secure.worldwatch.org/cgi-bin/wwinst/EP144B Some points: - Air transport accounts for an estimated 13 percent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions from all transportation sources. - Carbon dioxide combined with other exhaust gases and particulates emitted from jet engines could have two to four times as great an impact on the atmosphere as CO 2 emissions alone, says a recent U.S. government study. - Jet contrails have also been implicated in the development of enormous heat-trapping clouds, which may be escalating the planes' impacts on climate. The exhaust from a single plane may spread to cover as much as 13,000 square miles. - For each passenger on a trans-Pacific flight, about a ton of CO 2 is added to the earth's atmosphere. - At Denver International, up to 23 planes may be running at "high idle" simultaneously, waiting for takeoff, and some wait up to 40 minutes. On the ground, jet engines operate at extremely poor efficiency and the fuel is burned very incompletely. Instead of being converted to energy, vapor, and carbon dioxide, huge amounts of fuel are blown into the ground-level air in the form of carbon particulates and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). - Studies of neighborhoods near airports such as Chicago's O'Hare and Seattle's Sea-Tac have shown that jet exhaust is subjecting residents to extremely high concentrations of the carcinogens benzene, formaldehyde and 1,3-butadiene, and at least 200 other toxic compounds. - In the first two minutes after a 747 takes off, it emits as much air pollution as 3,000 cars, says a study by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). - Earth Island Institute reports that in the first five minutes of flight, a commercial airliner burns - turns to CO 2 - as much oxygen as 17,000 hectares (44,000 acres) of forest produce in a day. - According to the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), a Boeing 747 spends an average of 32 minutes landing, taxiing, and taking off. In that time, it can generate 87 kilograms of nitrogen oxides (NOx) - equivalent to over 85,000 kilometers of automobile emissions. - According to the National Science Foundation's National Center for Atmospheric Research, each gallon of jet fuel burned pollutes over 8,400 gallons of air to a level of toxicity that would be dangerous, if not lethal, to breathe. - Fresh water supplies near airports are often contaminated by de-icing chemicals, cleaning fluids, solvents, and fuel-dumping. [more] But the original question talked about helping poor countries, and that was part of my reason for mentioning air transport and tourism - especially tourism. Concerns about the effects of tourism will be a major topic at the Johannesburg Earth Summit later this year (the United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development). This is a summary of Chapter 5 of the Worldwatch Institute's State of the World 2002, "Redirecting International Tourism": Today's travelers are trading in over-commercialized mass tourism for new cultural and nature-based experiences, many of which are found in the developing world. One in every five international tourists now travels from an industrial country to a developing one, up from one in 13 in the mid 1970s. In the last decade alone, international tourism arrivals worldwide have increased by nearly 40 percent. This tourism boom has generated much-needed revenue and employment at many destinations. But it has also brought a host of environmental, social, and cultural problems. On average, half of the tourism revenue that enters the developing world "leaks" back out, going to foreign owned companies or to pay for imported goods and labor. Many participants in the tourism industry-including businesses, governments, local communities, and tourists-are beginning to take important steps to redirect tourism, from implementing regulations to boosting tourist awareness. World Summit Priorities: Formulating comprehensive, multi-stakeholder plans for tourism development; balancing large tourism investments with smaller-scale, locally-run tourism initiatives; and developing stronger regulations and policies to protect destinations against unsustainable tourism developments. http://www.worldwatch.org/pubs/sow/2002/ Worldwatch Institute: State of the World 2002 http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2002/2002L-01-11-03.html State of the World 2002: The Road to Johannesburg Better yet, read Jamaica Kincaid's "A Small Place", or Malaysian poet Cecil Rajendra's famed and widely travelled poem "When the tourists flew in", where shanty towns were preserved as tourist attractions - "chic eyesores" (Bones and Feathers, 1978, Heinemann, Hong Kong, ISBN 0686603338). In fact I'll scan it, it's worth it, and Cecil won't mind: "My poems find themselves in all sorts of places, and I am most pleased about it," he told me once. An Internet discussion group on biofuels should be a first... When The Tourists Flew In The Finance Minister said "It will boost the Economy the dollars will flow in." The Minister of Interior said "It will provide full & varied employment for all the indigenes." The Ministry of Culture said "It will enrich our life ... contact with other cultures must surely improve the texture of living." The man from the Hilton said "We will make you a second Paradise; for you, it is the dawn of a glorious new beginning." When the tourists flew in our island people metamorphosed into a grotesque carnival - a two-week sideshow When the tourists flew in our men put aside their fishing nets to become waiters our women became whores When the tourists flew in what culture we had flew out of the window we traded our customs for sunglasses and pop we turned sacred ceremonies into ten-cent peep shows When the tourists flew in local food became scarce prices went up but our wages stayed low When the tourists flew in we could no longer go down to our beaches the hotel manager said "Natives defile the sea-shore" When the tourists flew in the hunger & the squalor were preserved as a passing pageant for clicking cameras - a chic eye-sore! When the tourists flew in we were asked to be 'side-walk ambassadors' to stay smiling & polite to alwavs guide the 'lost' visitor ... Hell, if we could only tell them where we really want them to go! The poem was actually written about Haiti, but it was intended to apply to Malaysia just as much, and the Third World in general. See also: http://journeytoforever.org/keith_cecil.html Cecil Rajendra Best Keith Addison Journey to Forever Handmade Projects Osaka, Japan http://journeytoforever.org/ > > From: Keith Addison <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Reply-To: biofuel@yahoogroups.com > > Date: Mon, 04 Mar 2002 17:23:33 +0900 > > To: biofuel@yahoogroups.com > > Subject: Re: [biofuel] car racing-grand prix etc > > > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > >> is car rcing important? too much air pollution. waste of fuel. why > >> not send this fuel to developing countries for their economic > >> development ? any thoughts from anybody? > > > > I doubt that would be the most effective way to use the money it > > would cost, better use it to support some local grassroots > > development groups. > > > > Racing used to be a test bed for advanced stuff that later found it's > > way into production models, but I don't think that's been the case > > for quite a long time. A lot of the fuel's ethanol or methanol > > anyway, less polluting. But it's just a drop in the bucket. Transfer > > that thinking to air transport and tourism and you're onto something. > > I heard a Boeing uses about as much fuel on takeoff as a whole Grand > > Prix (is that true?). Then there's what happens at the other end. For > > instance: "The average 15,000 cubic metres of water needed to > > irrigate one hectare of high-yielding modern rice is enough for 100 > > nomads and 450 cattle for three years, or 100 rural families for > > three years, or 100 urban families for two years. The same amount can > > supply 100 luxury hotel guests for just 55 days." (UN Food and > > Agriculture Organization - FAO.) And so on. > > > > Keith Addison ------------------------ Yahoo! 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