Do planes have any effect on climate?

Dj_Jestar said:
It's not a boolean scenario... You are allowed to say "It needs more research" you know?
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If I told you that black was white you wouldn't believe me without proof, would you?

(Especially if the organisation in question had a history of lying out their behinds, but that's another argument for another thread)
 
Overnight climate change?? Is that a serious question?

If you've noticed a temperature drop and instantly linked it with a placebo affect of no planes flying, you are wrong. There's a far bigger force at play than man-made fossil-fueled jets, its called WEATHER. This includes such discrepancies as CLOUDS, AIR PRESSURE, HUMIDITY.

As a serious question, I wouldn't put it past you to put on a sweater and think global warming has just happened. :p
 
I take it all you people dismissing human influenced climate change have at least some knid of qualification to comment? ;)

I also hope you weren't the people who jumped on that Climategate scandal" were you? The one that was subsequently independently reviewed and the scientists exhonerated and shown to have not lied or been deceitful? ;)

(Just to clarify, having studied it I'm still on the fence, however to dismiss it out of hand is stupid...)
 
Tute said:
If I told you that black was white you wouldn't believe me without proof, would you?

(Especially if the organisation in question had a history of lying out their behinds, but that's another argument for another thread)
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You still haven't got the point. I'd have thought my spelling it out would have shown this... It needs more research before we can say one or the other. We do not have enough evidence for either case. :)
 
I'm after driving for almost an hour, when I left the house it was all sunny and warm, now it's all cloudy and cold. Has driving my car affected the climate?

:p

I doubt very much that grounding planes would make a noticeable difference, and certainly not over such a short time frame, to the environment (especially given the reason for grounding) since they probably only account for a fraction of a percentage of global CO2 production.

Note: The above is based upon no scientific insight and may contain traces of wrongness.
 
Dj_Jestar said:
You still haven't got the point. I'd have thought my spelling it out would have shown this... It needs more research before we can say one or the other. We do not have enough evidence for either case. :)
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Actually you're missing the point.

If there was sufficient evidence to even consider that AGW might be more than media spin and a poor attempt to brainwash the public into paying more taxes, I might well retract my words.

Sadly there just isn't - and I doubt there will ever be. :)

I get what you're trying to say, but simply stating that something "might exist" because "the government says it does" is quite misguided, with respect.
 
There's a strong suggested correlation between planes and global dimming. After 9/11, the skies were noticeably clearer and warmer. Likewise, we're having quite clear, nice skies at present.

As for those outright denying that it's a possibility again... :rolleyes:
 
Tute said:
Actually you're missing the point.

If there was sufficient evidence to even consider that AGW might be more than media spin and a poor attempt to brainwash the public into paying more taxes, I might well retract my words.

Sadly there just isn't - and I doubt there will ever be. :)

I get what you're trying to say, but simply stating that something "might exist" because "the government says it does" is quite misguided, with respect.
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I take it you've never actually read any scientific papers on the issue then? And by scientific papers I don't mean random ones linked to by random websites but those published in respected journals (and i'm not even talking about nature and science here, but the more specific ones). If you haven't a good site to look at is http://www.sciencedirect.com/ ;)

There is plenty of unbias data on the subject, which both suggests we are causing warming and not causing warming. It tend to ignore the mainstream press for scientific information because they only report the extremes and have no idea what they are talking about (and it ends up way to politicised, which pollutes the scientific worth and research).
 
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Nix said:
There's a strong suggested correlation between planes and global dimming. After 9/11, the skies were noticeably clearer and warmer. Likewise, we're having quite clear, nice skies at present.

As for those outright denying that it's a possibility again... :rolleyes:
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As for those sheep who will believe anything they're told... :rolleyes:
 
Tute said:
As for those sheep who will believe anything they're told... :rolleyes:
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LOL yeah, I'm a sheep. Pull the other one.

I've studied this and that's where my opinion comes from. What exactly merits yours?

You're not better than any other bigot on any other subject. It's just that your blind refusal to see any facts revolves around environmental issues as opposed to say... immigration or religion.

You are just like the militant atheists/theists who live on the fringe. There's middle ground here, which is closer to reality. I suggest you reacquaint yourself with it.
 
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We should be more worried about the poisonous sulphur from the volcano rather than any reduction in CO2 from grounded planes, CO2 is a key element to sustaining life on this planet.

Can't tax the volcano nvm. ;)
 
Nah, we should just tax Iceland instead, they're obviously releasing too much CO2! :p

That's why they're dreading Katla, it's going to cost them so much tax...
 
I asked my bloke about pollution caused by aeroplanes (he works in the industry) some time ago and he sent me the following - interesting stuff:

Hello,

This is a quick collection of links on what I hope are reasonably
neutral sources for the effects of air transport relative to other
things.

First up a pdf from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's
(IPCC) fourth assessment
(http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg3/ar4-wg3-ts.pdf).
Page 29 gives a nice breakdown of the contributing sectors, in which
all of Transport comes to 13.1%, compared to all of power to say
25.9%. Later on page 49 we have a sub-split of transport and in the
year 2000 Air accounts for about 1/2 Gt CO2 out of 5 Gt of CO2, making
it very roughly 10% of 13.1%, so ~2% if we're being harsh of global
emissions. Road transport was more than 80% of the transport sector.

There is the added point that these emissions are being added to the
atmosphere at high altitude which is probably not helpful, but...at
the same time that's not damaging air quality on the ground either.
Depends what you consider to be the worse type of pollution, global
temperatures, air quality, noise etc or some weighted combo of these?

This link is something that I've seen before as a pretty up to date
estimate on how to work out the impact of aircraft. Please note the
size of the error bars on the contributing parts of the Radiative
Forcing on Page 7 and the comment on the level of understanding of
each one. (http://www.jpmorganclimatecare.com/media/documents/pdf/aviation_emissions__offsets.pdf).
We need a lot more atmospheric chemists, but there appears to be
little money in it and it's a hard subject.

As to the question is it a good trade, well the Royal Aero Society
thinks so (bias warning) which claims that it contributes
significantly to global GDP
(http://www.raes.org.au/assets/Uploa...n-Paper-Aviation-Emissions-Climate-Change.pdf)
We'd probably find ways round it if we couldn't fly, so I don't
really see that as a big argument.

My big complaint really is that aviation has made itself a dumb
target. Almost everyone can agree that flying less is good, because in
reality people fly only a few times a year and before low cost
carriers even less. So what's one less long weekend in Prague?

But if it came to building a massive new and efficient power station
down your road (*cough*nuclear*cough*) you'd not be pleased. Because
of this aviation is an easy target for politicians and doesn't offend
any voters. Please see the confusion on wind farms (as useless as they
might be). If we could improve energy generation but just a small
amount (5%) we'd completely obliterate the impact made by aircraft.
Not that they aircraft industry isn't trying, it's made massive
improvements, more than any other, since the 70s. But even if we made
aircraft 50% more efficient than now, an impressive feat if possible,
then it'd only take a bit more power generation to completely
eradicate that.

I'm not saying flying is all good, it's not, but compared to some
other things it's a really stupid small and ineffective target.
Actually that's turned out to be quite long, hope you enjoyed it.

H
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Oh and there's a wiki link which would probably help:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_and_the_environment

Here they think about 3.5% total global emissions.

H
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Tute said:
Actually you're missing the point.

If there was sufficient evidence to even consider that AGW might be more than media spin and a poor attempt to brainwash the public into paying more taxes, I might well retract my words.

Sadly there just isn't - and I doubt there will ever be. :)

I get what you're trying to say, but simply stating that something "might exist" because "the government says it does" is quite misguided, with respect.
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You're far worse than anyone else on this subject because you think that an absence of conclusive proof means that it must be conclusively wrong. Such a closed mind is not worth arguing with.
 
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