Great news! I have invented a truly working perpetual motion machine. The perpetuum mobile is now reality! What? You do not believe it? Never mind. You are then one of those people who will not buy a Hybrid drive car and who also do not stand in awe in front of those aberrations ruining the countryside, wind turbines claiming to be THE solution for renewable energy.
But there are others, including governments, who believe in both, what is more, subsidize them to make the show even grander… Alongside Hybrid drive cars and wind turbines, my perpetual motion machine has a real chance. But what does this have to do with air traffic management?
First, a few facts.
Wind turbines are impressive and they do produce electricity… when there is wind. At other times, nix. We are a long way from being able to store the energy produced on windy days and so the power generating capacity built into traditional power stations cannot be reduced at the same rate wind turbines are being built. It is also not possible to just switch generators on and off as the wind blows. The best one can do is to run them at a lower pitch when wind energy is being fed into the grid. The end result? Ruined landscape, huge sums invested in wind turbines, zero emission saving when there is no wind and traditional power stations still spitting out emissions as they partially idle during windy days. Add that up end to end, including the energy needed to build and maintain the damn things and you will see wind turbines for what they are, profit for the makers and politicians riding the environmental agenda, little or no help for the environment.
And then those Hybrid cars! Their second generation now on the roads is almost usable for more than just picking up the morning paper from the porch but the claims for low emission is a myth. Their myth content is no different from that of electric trolley cars you see in some cities in the US which proudly proclaim: ZERO EMMISSION VEHICLE. Zero emission indeed… The coal or oil fired power station belching smoke a few miles away apparently does not count. People with a real interest in the environment have calculated the end-to-end lifetime emission level of a hybrid and it comes in higher than that of a modern, traditional engine that can actually move a car a respectable distance at a respectable speed.
So, what is the relevance of all this to air traffic management? Plenty!
You cannot have failed to notice that when it comes to environmental issues, aviation has been forced to be on the defensive for many years now. While the actual contribution of aviation to the total amount of emissions of all kinds and from all sources is less than 7 %, the treatment aviation gets is out of all proportions. People who believe in Hybrid cars and wind turbines seem to be unable to believe that aircraft are not the environmental monsters they are often made out to be and, even worse, that airlines have done a lot, perhaps more than most other industries, to reduce emissions even further.
Airframes and engines can be made more efficient, reducing emissions. But the way traffic is managed plays a significant role in the final equation of how much dirt gets spewed into the atmosphere. Optimized routings, reduced holding and new separation methods all have great potential to make the environmental footprint of aviation smaller.
Until quite recently, inefficient air traffic management was seen as problem for the airlines and the connection with the environment was rarely made. SESAR and NextGen are hopefully going to change all that.
Unlike Hybrid cars and wind turbines, a streamlined, efficient air traffic management system results in a net saving in environmental impact which, added to all the other steps aviation is taking (think synthetic fuels for example) will make a big difference.
Unless of course the new air traffic management projects run up against the same problems that plagued similar initiatives in the past. Parochial thinking, short sighted decisions, wrong priorities are still with us, unfortunately…
In the meantime, anyone interested in buying my perpetuum mobile? It is (I sincerely hope) your last chance…
Thanks for a very interesting post. I just found your site and look forward both to catching up on the older contributions and enjoying more such postings in the future. LSP
Steve,
Couldn’t agree more an awful lot of rubbish is being talked in the great environmental ‘debate’. For a balanced view on climate change issues I can’t recommend too highly ‘Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air’ by David Mackay, available for free download at http://www.withouthotair.com/,
But Mackay only deals with the energy side of the question, there is more to it. This week here in the UK, our National Rail authority launced a ‘plan’ for a new High Speed line to duplicate the existing West coast main line between London Manchester and Glasgow. I say ‘plan’ because it is more of a wish than a serious intention to actually build anything, not least because the cost is a modest £34 billion, say around €40 billion. The line would enable lucky travellers to travel between say, London and Liverpool, in about 90 minutes. To do the same by air, of course costs nothing in building costs, as the air is still free. Everyone living within about a mile of the line en route would be seriously affected by noise, and since the route inlcudes England’s 2nd and 3rd largest cities Birmingham and Manchester, that is a lot of people. Travelling by air creates noise nuisance too, but only at the ends of the route. Oh, and suppose people no longer WANT to travel between those two points any more, tough, you can’t just roll up the line and lay it somewhere else, but by air, you just connect two points they DO want to travel between,
So there is more to the Air Rail debate than just energy, but it isn’t being shouted from the roof tops. Aviation is eminently scalable and flexible, rail isn’t.
Of course, climate change is important, but measures to tackle it need to be effective and sensible, not just political knee jerks like banning incandescent light bulbs. If aviation is banned totally, 97% of the problem remains, not a very good trade-off when its benefits are taken into account.
Alex
a dela
ok, who is interested in PERPETUUM MOBILE ?
write on tine204@yahoo.com