Aviation: a grossly polluting industry

[dArKeR]

By Sophie Hares

Sydney - In Sydney airport's crowded international terminal, passengers make last-minute passport checks or fret over toddlers in prams as they wait in the snaking queue to check in for the 23-hour flight to London.

But few of the 400 passengers crammed on to each jumbo jet taking off over Botany Bay ever consider the environmental impact of their 17 000km intercontinental trip.

Passengers will consume at least 1 600 meals in plastic containers, but each plane travelling to London will guzzle more than 200 tons of jet fuel and pump out more than 500 tons of carbon dioxide, as well as other greenhouse gases.

"Beneath the glamorous high-flying image of aviation is a grossly polluting industry," said Paul de Zylva, head of Friends of the Earth in London.

http://iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=31&art_id=vn20040524074826349C853745&set_id=1

[Dogmudgeon]

1. One word

Dirigibles.

--bkl

[NNadir]

2. If you work this out, the fuel cost is, 60 miles per person per gallon.

200,000 kg of fuel for 400 people is 34 kg per person. The density of gasoline is 740 kg/m^3 meaning that the fuel for one person is contained in 0.676 m^3 or 676 liters or, converting, 178 gallons. The trip is 17,000 km or 10600 miles. Dividing miles by gallons gives 60 miles per gallon for each person. It's not really bad when when compares the cost of doing this trip by most other means.

The energy advantages derive, of course, from low wind resistance, economy of scale, and the absence of stops.

Attempting to do the trip by car would be very expensive in an environmental sense. A train, however, might be cheaper environmentally, if one could justify the environmental and economic cost of the time lost.

Of course, if one had lots of time, one could sail to accomplish the same trip. Better would be if in a swords to plowshares kind of move, the US Navy converted the Aircraft carrier Nimitz, which is nuclear powered, into a cruise ship. As a pacifist, I couldn't think of a better outcome.