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GUEST COLUMN: Reality is a perception
Dave Orner orginally comes from Zimbabwe and has lived in Grantham for around five years. He regularly returns to Zimbabwe, where he owns a number of businesses including a magazine publisher, a pub and construction firms.
Dave Orner orginally comes from Zimbabwe and has lived in Grantham for around five years.
He regularly returns to Zimbabwe, where he owns a number of businesses including a magazine publisher, a pub and construction firms.HAVE you noticed that on long haul flights we are charged more for emissions?
The presumption being that long haul flights have a bigger carbon foot print than short haul? Possibly in terms of total C02 discharged, but something does not make sense here and a little bit of research was called for. Check any online flight C02 usage calculator…
A trip from London to Cape Town in a full 747 will impart 860kg of C02 per passenger for the journey. The journey is 9642km or 0.089kgs of C02 per passenger kilometer..
Let's go further a field to Perth Australia, the same plane will belch out 1293kg C02 per passenger, the trip is 14711kms therefore using 0.087 kgs of C02 per passenger kilometer. Roughly the same C02 per passenger mile as the Cape Town trip..
Now I'm absolutely sure that all this means something if you are a polar bear, and this is not to make light of their predicament, however I am not a polar bear and do travel occasionally on long haul flights, and so a little miffed at paying the extra surcharge for long haul flights when some short haul flights cost less than the beer long haul passengers can't afford at the airport!
To see why short haul flights belched so little of the bad stuff, I looked at a few, the ones you can get for a couple of pounds plus airport tax.
London to Rome is around 1570km and emits 178kg of the nasty stuff per passenger or 0.11kgs per passenger kilometer! 123% more, per passenger mile than used on a long haul flight?!
This of course does makes sense as the majority of the bear scarer being emitted must come on take off..yes? So the plane to Cape Town takes off in London belching out dirty great holes in the ozone then settles back for the next 10 hours making only small contributions to the bear's discomfort, per hour that is.
The short haul flight however, blows holes then a short while later lands, turns around fairly quickly and heads back scaring the polar bears again?
It's only an hour or so for the flight so presumably they can do this three or four times a day? So three or four ozone chomping take offs in the same time that the long haul, overly taxed, passenger is idling along at 33 thousand feet safe in the knowledge that he is contributing to the happy short haul travelers holiday budget whilst at the same time being a lot nicer to the bears?
And that does not make sense, but then of course reality is a perception?
What do YOU think? E-mail us at: comment@granthamjournal.co.uk
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Thursday 09 February 2012
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