Thursday, January 24, 2019

They never heard of teleconferencing?

I mean, speaking of hypocrites:

David Attenborough might have urged world leaders at Davos to take urgent action on climate change, but it appears no one was listening. As he spoke, experts predicted up to 1,500 individual private jets will fly to and from airfields serving the Swiss ski resort this week.

As they say...I will start to think about believing the Climate Crisis is real when those who tell me it is start acting (and adjusting their lifestyle) as if it were.

1500 private jets. about 450 to 500 gallons of Jet-A per hour at a little less than 500 knots.(figures are for a G-IV) 
How many jet hours per average flight? Lets say 5. So each plane (say 3 passengers) burns 2200-2500 gallons of fuel. So say 750 gallons per passenger or more. Each way.

That's more carbon than the average person causes (in the US) for 8 months or so.
For ONE trip. times, of course 4500 (3 per airplane).
Lots of carbon there. Plus aerosols from the jet engine.
That's a lot of carbon for a few lectures and presentations that could ahve been watched via videoconferencing, doncha think?

Do what I say, not what I do.

But, I suppose, if they didn't make the trip (on whose dime?) then they wouldn't find ways to fleece the world governments for more money...


3 comments:

DTWND said...

1500??? That has to be an exaggeration. Perhaps 500, at most. The FAA has published the NOTAM for Super Bowl LIII at superbowl.faa.gov. The first line there is "Over 1,100 additional general aviation (GA) aircraft are expected..." And there are at 5 that sell Jet-A in that area. I don't know how many airports are in that Swiss area, but I don't think there is that many, let alone one large enough to service 1,500.

I think your source for that number is flawed. And we've already discussed what happens with the news media slanting both left and right with their biases.
And when we use these slanted stories as a basis for one's argument, then it is begun with erroneous information and lessens the basic point one is trying to make.

When I worked the Super Bowl here in Detroit in 2006, there were nearly 400 GA planes of all types: piston, turboprop, jet. And those were spread between 4 airports (DTW, DET, YIP, and PTK). Near you is SBN. Even with that huge ramp area and using one runway for parking, I don't think you can park more than 200 aircraft there, even for a ND football game. See, I just gave you another reason to go flying. Fly to SBN, take the courtesy car for lunch/dinner and see for yourself. You could even ask the personnel there about the number of aircraft that show up for a Saturday in the fall.

The point of your contention is valid though. It is hypocritical for them to lecture about conservation and then turn around and waste more resources. It's just the argument you are making is based on conjecture using opinion rather than fact.

Just trying to be factual.

Dale

B said...

Dale: Here's the original source:

Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/jan/22/record-private-jet-flights-davos-leaders-climate-talk?CMP=share_btn_tw

Not conjecture. But don't let that get in the way. Those inconvenient facts are a bitch, aren't they?

Actually, there were over 1200 flights at the Bali conference last year...so many that they had to refuel them and park them at other airports hundreds of miles away.

There were about 1700 flights to Davos in 2015 (https://money.cnn.com/2015/01/19/luxury/davos-private-jet-flight/) so that must be more "conjecture".

Copenhagen, which is a smaller conference, has over 250 airplanes parked and, again, has to send the rest for temporary parking elsewhere. They send special trains to other airports for the Not-so-Special attendees. Really special people could park, the rest had to disembark or use a train or a limo or a helicopter to get there from other airports.

Look those other two up yourself....Facts, not conjecture.

The number is valid. I don't think you realize the numbers of people that come to these conferences, nor how important it is (for prestige) to be able to say you flew there.



BTW, that's what they do at SBN during college football games (also CMI, where they use the U of I flight school ramps for additional space to park as well) and likely (but I can't say for sure) elsewhere. If one does not already have a parking space reserved for that event, then you deplane your passengers and park at another airport. And a very low percentage of those attendees fly in.

Been in and out of SBN many times. The very first towered airport I flew into. And it is where my avionics shop is....I'm probably more familiar with it than you are.




Old NFO said...

Yep, hypocrisy writ large...