FAA Plans to Clean Up the Skies 249
coondoggie writes "On top of its recently announced plan to reduce flight delays, Federal Aviation Administration officials today launched what they hope will be pan U.S. and European Union joint action plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions from aircraft. Specifically the group announced the Atlantic Interoperability Initiative to Reduce Emissions or AIRE — the first large-scale environmental plan aimed at uniting aviation players from both sides of the Atlantic."
Re:The cult of Global Warming (Score:4, Informative)
So just maybe, if the "models" are accurate with regards to greenhouse gases, if we try really hard to produce more every year, we can reverse part of the eventual global cooling trend. Somehow I doubt that's likely.
However, 15 years from now we'll have the FAA talking about their plan to increase greenhouse gas emissions from planes at the behest of the environmentalists and their allies in big oil who want to regulate people into not using so many alternative energy sources that don't produce enough carbon dioxide.
Re:Lead In Fuels? (Score:2, Informative)
Seriously though, the biggest problem with avgas is the huge 'install base', which - if you replace TEL with ethanol which absorbs moisture and can cause rusting of fuel lines, etc - tends to fall out of the sky, rather than break down by the side of the road.
Many high performance aviation engines require higher octane gasoline than is available in motor gasoline form, although a number of lower compression engines which were originally certified for 80/87 avgas can obtain a supplemental type certification for 87 octane motor gas (fuel lines, fittings, etc. have to be upgraded). Some airport fueling stations do carry mogas and it has the added benefit of being a bit cheaper.
Re:Lead In Fuels? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I'm all for cleaning up (Score:3, Informative)
The waste per passenger, but most of all the method and place (high in the sky) of combustion ensure that greenhouse effects of aviation fuel are far worse than those of motorcars' combustion engines.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0210/p14s02-sten.ht
If you're planning to travel, want to do it the way that's most environmentally friendly and the consideration whether to drive instead of fly is a realistic option (e.g. both take about a day of travel, no large body of water to cross), then drive.
Re:Galileo? Stupid example (Score:2, Informative)
And because it contradicted the Bible he got in trouble.
This is the exact opposite of Dyson, who is so arrogant that he assumes that he can completely master something as large as climate modelling and then reject it, without in fact knowing much about it at all.
He's the guy that invented the Dyson sphere and has a good record of being right about physics. His comment is not based on him mastering anything. He knows the limitations of the models the climatologists are using. Just like Galileo he gets flack from pointing out the flaws in people's beliefs because those beliefs are based on faith, not on reason.
Even if you don't agree with the comparison, is shouldn't be that hard to figure out.
Please, take your head out of the sand... (Score:5, Informative)
1. The US is by far the biggest polluter per capita.
Compare apples with apples, instead of of apples with oranges, by looking at per capita figures. The CIA World Factbook [cia.gov] lists the population of China as 1,321,851,888 (July 2007 est.) and the population of the US as 301,139,947 (July 2007 est.).
You wouldn't compare the carbon dioxide emissions output of the US with that of a tiny nation like Bermuda, so play fair and use the most sensible measure to compare who's contributing how much.
A quick mental calculation will show you that, in carbon dioxide terms alone, the US produces four times as much domestically as China does.
2. China makes goods for the US, not the other way around.
All those goods that China makes that the US consumes (clothing, electronics, etc) have an associated cost in terms of carbon dioxide and other pollution. But, of course, the figures that you've latched onto don't attribute those to the country of consumption, only to the country of origin.
Put simply, when a Chinese factory makes something that an American will buy, it's at least partially (if not fully) pollution caused by the American consumer. So, a large chunk of the pollution caused by China, etc is due to the US (and other consumer nations) as well.
The US has five percent of the world's population. The US consumes roughly 25-30 percent of the world's goods, and hence is responsible for 25-30 percent of the pollution. To sustain everybody on the planet at the current US level of consumption would take five to six Earth's worth of resources and create a similar amount of pollution.
Now do you see why the US plays such a big part in this and should be taking positive, proactive steps to try to address the issues instead of trying to shift the blame to others?
As for your closing complaint that "This is more government micromanagement that will do nothing but further bring us down", well, I could not disagree more. The free market alone will never make the necessary steps to do what's necessary by itself, no matter what you might think. Want an example? Then just look at how car manufacturers fought tooth and nail against mandatory installation of seatbelts in cars. Same shit, different decade, that's all.
Please take your head out of the sand for a minute to think about it.
Re:The cult of Global Warming (Score:2, Informative)
Personally, I think most people will be disappointed in your post because "in my life" tells them you don't care much for any future generations.
Re:Lead In Fuels? (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed it should. We'd be a lot better off without the filthy menace of unleaded petrol pumping benzene vapours into the atmosphere. Lead is toxic - massively toxic in certain compounds (lead acetate was what did in the Romans, from making a sweet by boiling wine in lead pots), but practically inert in the form that comes out of petrol engine exhausts. Furthermore, the lead carbonate that you get mostly settles out on the first 18" or so of exhaust pipe.
By comparison, unleaded petrol uses benzene instead of tetraethyl lead as an anti-knock agent, which is highly toxic and carcinogenic. Then on top of that we've got the eco-disaster that is catalytic converters, belching out dense clouds of hydrogen sulphide unless they're run at extremely high exhaust gas temperatures - which produces massive amounts of nitrogen oxides. By a nasty little quirk, catalytic converters make car exhaust *more* polluting when driven at low speeds (such as in towns, where they'd be most useful) than when driven at motorway speeds.
Re:Yes (Score:3, Informative)
Magnetos aren't as reliable as you think they are. Why do you think there are two of them? ;)
Detonation is really the key driver for 100LL, and while electronic ignition can help (by adjusting timing) you'd sacrifice engine power to prevent detonation - same thing that happens in autos when the ignition is retarded and just the nature of current piston engines - there's a direct (and potentially significant) trade-off between timing and power/fuel economy.
The big reason for detonation in small aircraft engines is cylinder geometry - very high displacements with low engine speed (e.g., large piston area) is a prime contributor to detonation. Most "high compression" aircraft engines only have a compression ratio of around 8:1, which is not "high" at all - yet they are still quite susceptible to detonation. Sometimes this is due to high air-charge temperatures due to turbo charging. It's also related to the fact that most of these engines are air-cooled, which means much higher cylinder temperatures than automotive applications (typical "do not exceed" temperatures are 450 to 500 degrees F - the liquid cooling in automobiles keeps heads down in the 250 degF range.)
Re:Happy to see government agencies doing right (Score:3, Informative)
there are many planes that take off half full every day
There is a flight every hour Ottawa-Toronto it is usually less then half full.
I took a flight from Seatle to SF that was less then half full.
Calgary to SF was about 3/4.
Re:Yes (Score:3, Informative)
And you really need to compare torque figures to compare automotive engines to airplane engines. RPM is a factor in HP calculations, but it really screws up the comparison. Airplane engines like to run at lower RPMs than car engines, giving them a disadvantage. Most are very comparable on torque, and comparable on hp as well if run at similar rpms.
Re:Yes (Score:3, Informative)
Magnetos just have a generator built into them. Kettering figured this out in the early 1900's, split the power generation from the spark generation, and dropped the price of electric ignition to levels that normal people could afford. The magneto is a heavy Rube Goldberg device that tries to pack to much into to small a space. The only thing that has kept it in airplanes is a lack of vision and burdensome regulation.
Luckily, there is a solution...experimental aviation. My rotary installation will have two Ford EDIS ignition systems that will be powered by a permanent magnet generator (the same thing powering those magnetos). Loss of the engine controller will put the EDIS in it's natural state, which is to run 10 degrees of advance.
Automotive gasolines in general aviation are utterly laughed at and incredibly discouraged, any pilot that thinks he's saving money is just spending it rebuilding his engine a couple hundred hours of flight later. Finally, an electronic ignition system is no help for detonation of other fuels at altitude and in high performance engines. Spark is spark, and magnetos are already timed for best, safest power.
You have just proven beyond a doubt that you know absolutely nothing about how an ICE operates, beyond maybe what you heard from some old fart hanging out in front of an airport. Try going down to a local race track (where real men coax the absolute maximum power out of an engine) and try to tell them that "spark is spark". You'll have to just tell them, 'cause they won't talk to you. They'll laugh at you. But not try to engage you in a conversation. If you actually owned an airplane engine, you'd know that lead clogs the valves and can cause misfires in the plugs. Many, MANY engines will run much better if mogas is mixed in to reduce the amount of lead. The EAA sales a $50 STC that allows a wide range of aircraft types to run on mogas, and it is the most popular STC for a GA craft to have.
In short, you haven't a clue.
ALOFT program in Australia (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.ministers.dotars.gov.au/mv/releases/20