PowerSwitch

Just had a wierd fantasy. My daughters boyfriend has just got back home after a 3 month travelling trip to SouthEast Asia - you know, see the world before all the global warming etc kills it all - global warming that's partially because of - da daaaa - air travel.
So since he's OK about global warming I have ths intense desire to go round there with some high pressure hoses and flood his house - after all, floods are one consequence of global warming.
You ruin our environment? OK, I'll pop round and ruin yours.

I remember posting on one of the worlds largest hippy forums a thread about stoping traveling by air and getting practically every faux enviromentalist going but I need to travel by air, or I need to go to india to get enlightened .

I'd say well why not walk or travel by boat

but man I havent got time man

or are you crazy there are planes I can be there in hours .

anyway the whole bunch of them helped mold the jonny2mad you see today, a harder meaner less hopeful man, the worlds doomed and we will return to barbarism and slavery .

Most likely your daughters boyfriend will be one of the doomed and maybe your daughter if shes daft enough to take up with him, I haven't met him but I'm already riled with him and would like to beat him with a large wet fish, you have my sympathy .

There is a whole set of people who talk in an environmentally concerned way but its more about being able to say "I'm greener than you, ner ner ner ner ner" rather than actually trying to fix the environment.

And people like to be able to say, "its the evil governments/oil companies destroying the environment", in denial of the demand side of the equation.

"why do we still use petrol for cars?
because they have to keep their money and destroy the environment, we could be using hydrogen but they stop us.. eventually scientists will invent non polluting cars.."
(if you really cared, you'd be cycling or walking already)

Hmm.

Ten years ago the defence of ignorance could plausibly have been pleaded. I went on a 'wildlife safari' to Africa, on the pretext of supporting sustainable tourism and promoting local conservation efforts with hard cash, but it was obvious then it was hopelessly unsustainable and nothing but a cover for government level fraud and green washing. I suppose people will still claim the sustainable tourism ticket rather than open their eyes to the obvious damage they are doing. I remember writing along these lines in the mid -1990s.

I am being bullied by the other half into flying to Cyprus next year to visit aged aunt before she pops off, and I have run out of excuses.

If you live inside the matrix, it can take a lot of reality before you can drag your eyes open.

PS_RalphW wrote: I am being bullied by the other half into flying to Cyprus next year to visit aged aunt before she pops off, and I have run out of excuses.

Hire a hit-man

If you don't fly, then the oil that you don't burn will be burnt by somebody else. (On the margin, oil price drops as you exit the market allowing other, poorer, player to enter the market.) So it makes no difference to global warming whether you fly or not.

I never fly, what with the above analysis being too simplistic.

PS_RalphW wrote:I am being bullied by the other half into flying to Cyprus next year to visit aged aunt before she pops off, and I have run out of excuses.

This is the way I'd prefer to do the journey.

In 1963, a young woman from county Waterford got on her bike and cycled to India. She went on to be a prolific, honest, incisive and endearing writer, travelling in such diverse places as Cuba and the Balkans in the '90s. I believe she still cycles today.

emordnilap wrote:
In 1963, a young woman from county Waterford got on her bike and cycled to India. She went on to be a prolific, honest, incisive and endearing writer, travelling in such diverse places as Cuba and the Balkans in the '90s. I believe she still cycles today.

i'd love to do a trip like that (well, just across europe or something), but figured (a) I would waste far too much money staying in hotels (b) whilst i can consistently cycle good distances on a daily basis, i tend to be quite clumsy/disorganized and struggle with lifes' practicalities.. I'm sure I'd have some major catastrophes along the way.

You might not be able to travel so fast but everyone could certainly see a good chunk of the world by bike in their lifetime theoretically.

could it be economical ? like a migratory bird, 'travel south for winter' (the energy for a second home vs the energy for heating in winter).. or some crazy crowdsourced international cycle courier network ...

Counter intuitive, but my understanding is that air travel is preventing temperature rise. This is from the number of contrails produced. When the air transport was shut down in 2001, the US temperatures went up,to fall when when air transport was resumed.

So if the aircraft keep flying, global temperature rise will be held back, until............., they stop flying permanently, then .................

Counter intuitive, and wrong.

woodburner wrote:Counter intuitive, but my understanding is that air travel is preventing temperature rise. This is from the number of contrails produced.

I dont think global dimming is the solution to global warming
its not like cancelling it out
its like a different type pollution, damaging in its own way.

i've heard that long ago , they saw the effects of smog, and predicted dimming/cooling , also they knew the greenhouse effect, so they knew pumping crap into the atmosphere would bugger up the environment *somehow*, but they didn't know which effect would be stronger... hence all the 'new iceage' scares that globalwarming deniers like to point out (as evidence of climate change being a fabricated scare story)

Global Dimming is all very well but it doesn't cancel out acidification of the sea.

biffvernon wrote:Counter intuitive, and wrong.

Yeah? Says you?

Correct.

Biff, you may not be rgr but a reference would be really useful here.