Wednesday
22Aug2007
AIR TRAVEL TO BE BANNED IN THE UK?
Wednesday, August 22, 2007 at 01:09PM
I wonder how long it will be before some on the environmental left start calling for the end to Air Travel here in the UK? I note that the cost for an average family to fly away on holiday could increase by more than £100 under plans being considered by the Brown junta. This comes on top of Gordon Brown's doubling of Air Passenger Duty in his final Budget as Chancellor. The price of Air Travel in the UK is being rocketed, and all three major UK political parties vie to see which can increase it most, and the consequence will be that many people start to review whether they can afford to fly any longer. Choice and freedom is being curtailed in the name of environmentalism and our political class are going along with this. How long before laws are passed prohibiting us to travel by air? Do we care or will we accept the limitations on our ability to travel where we want, when we want, as we want?
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Reader Comments (32)
David Vance -
Back in early July, just before driving 1500 to southern Spain in the 4.2 litre V8 Supercharged Range Rover Sport, I wrote: I believe that even with the case for AGW growing weaker by the day, if we Britons don't put politicians back into their boxes and tip the balance of power between Parliament and People back in our favour, there's a better than even chance that our ability to travel freely will be severely curtailed in my lifetime.
I must have been in a rare optimistic mood that day. Yes, laws will be drafted to curtail the freedoms of Britons to travel. It will happen soon and yet again the usual suspects will support it. Especially, the middle class, London-dwelling liberals will support it, a group which hates the white working-class venomously.
As usual, the great majority of Britons will oppose such a law to some degree, but government long ago freed itself of the shackle of public opinion. Sofistikated liberals are contemptuous of what they regard as provincial views.
No, the little people must be told what to do, which is the main point always and the environment doesn't come into it. This will again be about those in charge showing us who's the boss. Dissent, and the little people will have the full force of violence-backed liberal law brought down on them.
Pete - your comment makes depressing reading.
What, if anything, can be done to reverse this creeping fascism and give us back the freedoms that my father's generation went to war to defend?
Pete,
You paint a dismal picture. I hope to God you are wrong but at the same time I can follow your reasoning. We need to take back our country. I agree that the case for AGW is now beginning to weaken but we will have to combat the pervasive propaganda of the media if we are to return to reason.
Pete Moore wrote:
I believe that even with the case for AGW growing weaker by the day,
[...]
I must have been in a rare optimistic mood that day.
Indeed you were!
Am I reading that the global warming theory is somehow the idea of "the environmental left" instead of the mainstream. I don't mind if someone wants to challenge global warming as a theory, but they can't (if they want to be honest) really pretend that it is some fringe theory.
I don't think we'll see bans for a long while. There's too much revenue in air taxes.
Thats a big amount.
If you think this is an environmental tax think again.
this is demand destruction and part of an overall strategy to reduce energy consumption, of us, as usual the end user.
but dont take my word for it.
Stream this by right clicking the link and copying the URL into a media player.
(tested with VLC Player and Firefox)
Efforts such as this were disussed at the G8 summit, with the emphasis on energy supply and NOT global warming.
Mahons - although AGW is not a theory of 'the environmental left' it certainly appears to have been exploited by them.
Pete Moore - The link below is in the general spirit of your comment. I think you'll enjoy though I doubt Frank will.
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/religion.htm
They call the infidels “deniers” – a cheap and quite despicable verbal reference to the Holocaust.
Now divination has returned with, for example, the examination of the entrails of ancient trees. Though the methods used are invalid (they wrongly assume linearity) and have been comprehensively shown to be irreproducible and misleading, the results have been paraded before the world in defence of draconian sacrificial policies.
The main form of modern divination, however, is computer models. Forty odd years ago an instruction passed round the Faculty of Engineering of the University of London that no PhDs were to be awarded on the basis of computer models unsupported by measurement. As T S Eliot asked in Choruses from The Rock
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
Now, huge and generously funded university and government departments do nothing but develop computer models, involving assumptions about physical interactions that are still not understood by science. Their dubious (to say the least) results are used by the new international priesthood to frighten the people into conformity.
You might think that any philosophy of life would involve swings and roundabouts, good and bad, but think again. Virtually everything you enjoy is now sinful – holidays, driving your car, having a comfortable temperature in your home, being free from the stink of rotting garbage, and on and on.
Yet the sun is clearly the driver for climate – if it stopped shining, the earth’s temperature would drop to near absolute zero. In the establishment dogma the sun is barely mentioned, while the puny efforts of mankind are gratuitously magnified out of proportion. In a scientific approach to climate, a full understanding of the behaviour of that solitary driver would be the first prerequisite, but this is waived in the interests of piety; so leading solar researchers have been deprived of funding.
The human spirit is sick. It soared during the enlightenment of the eighteenth century. It flowered during the nineteenth. It beat off the tyrants of the twentieth century. Now, at an alarming rate, it is surrendering its freedoms to a concocted religion based on fraudulent science.
Guardian: Perhaps, although I am not sure by whom and to what end (if by exploited you mean they are taking some undue advantage of the situation).
GA,
"They call the infidels “deniers” – a cheap and quite despicable verbal reference to the Holocaust."
Rubbish. Destiny's child sang "survivor" and Gloria Gaynor sang "I will survive" but nobody thought they were claiming to be Holocaust survivors.
What the AGW 'skeptics' (denialists) the Holocaust deniers and the creationists have in common is that they are in denial, and no amount of evidence will convince them otherwise.
Rubbish. Destiny's child sang "survivor" and Gloria Gaynor sang "I will survive" but nobody thought they were claiming to be Holocaust survivors
That's some mighty weird logic you've got there Frank. I could try my best to make sense of it but I think I'll watch England v Germany instead.
The main form of modern divination, however, is computer models. Forty odd years ago an instruction passed round the Faculty of Engineering of the University of London that no PhDs were to be awarded on the basis of computer models unsupported by measurement.
[.....]
Now, huge and generously funded university and government departments do nothing but develop computer models, involving assumptions about physical interactions that are still not understood by science. Their dubious (to say the least) results are used by the new international priesthood to frighten the people into conformity.
Stop talking about things you clearly know nothing about.
That's some mighty weird logic you've got there Frank.
stick to the football.
GA,
"That's some mighty weird logic you've got there Frank"
Coming from someone who copies and pastes logical fallacies to parade on front of us almost daily I take that as a compliment.
But OK, Mr Logic Whizz...here's one of those surface station audit photos you're so fond of.
Can you figure out the problem?
GA -
Thanks for the link. Very interesting stuff. Numberwatch is a first rate place that's always worth going back to.
Faced with opponents incapable of realising you're quoting an article even when you link to it, victory is assured.
Is the R2 droid on the other side of the carpark is leaking coolant?
Faced with opponents incapable of realising you're quoting an article even when you link to it, victory is assured.
he is quoting an article in order to support his argument. i think im safe in assuming that he is in agreement with what he quoted.
Frank, why do you have to resort (quickly) to insults? Is it a defensive measure employed when you perceive your arguments as being trumped?
Mr Logic Whizz? At least that made me smile after the torturous evening I've just spent watching England (I blame Gordon Brown).
What logical fallacies are those Frank?
I'm not sure what point you are making by linking to a picture of a station shaded by trees. Surely, with so much at stake, every endeavour should be made to try and ensure that the most accurate measurements of temperature are made.
Daytripper - Not necessarily. I have enough humility to admit I really don't know what the *truth* is regarding AGW. I do consider alternative opinions though and the reason why I link to them is to encourage debate from which I might just become a little wiser.
GA,
"I'm not sure what point you are making by linking to a picture of a station shaded by trees."
Do you think the trees shade it at night? Will it show warming at night, or is the AC installed backwards?
"What logical fallacies are those Frank?"
The ones that have been pointed out to you, e.g. the notion that small(-sounding) causes have small effects.
"Surely, with so much at stake, every endeavour should be made to try and ensure that the most accurate measurements of temperature are made."
Sure, but you'd have to be horsing back the kool-aid to believe that is what those guys are trying to do.
Allan@Oslo,
"Frank, why do you have to resort (quickly) to insults? Is it a defensive measure employed when you perceive your arguments as being trumped?"
Why do you so often resort (quickly) to questions based on false premises?
If my arguments have been "trumped" why don't you skip the bullshit and simply quote those arguments and state the rebuttals?
I would certainly be interested to hear your rebuttals of physics that has been known for a hundred years and more, and I'm sure many others would too.
Do you think the trees shade it at night?
No, only during the day when the sun's shining.
Will it show warming at night, or is the AC installed backwards?
Possibly, depends on the temperature.
"What logical fallacies are those Frank?" The ones that have been pointed out to you, e.g. the notion that small(-sounding) causes have small effects.
We've been over that one Frank, although I think you were trying to claim that I didn't understand that miniscule causes can have quite a sizeable effect ie that a 0.009% increase in CO2 has warmed the world by around a half a degree. I also thought comparisons between fish food and CO2 (ie that a 0.009% increase in the normal amount of food given to the fish will adversely affect them) and the planets climate and a fish tank were ludicrous. I still do. All I ever stated was that seeing the article made me think and question the consensus that I'd wholeheartedly believed up until then. Anyway, that's fallacy singular. What other fallacies were there?
"Surely, with so much at stake, every endeavour should be made to try and ensure that the most accurate measurements of temperature are made." Sure, but you'd have to be horsing back the kool-aid to believe that is what those guys are trying to do.
It doesn't matter though does it Frank because if by their efforts they come to agree that the surface temperature measurements and their processing are now 'above board' and as effective as possible then that's to everyone's benefit. If a rise in temperature is still shown then that is only going to be helpful to AGW theorists.
GA,
"miniscule causes can have quite a sizeable effect ie that a 0.009% increase in CO2 has warmed the world by around a half a degree."
Where on earth do you get these figures?
Frank - If you'd actually read what I wrote you'd see it was contained within the original comment that you described as a 'logical fallacy'. I always suspected you didn't read it. Again, I must stress, I don't claim that this figure is true; I have no idea. The only thing I ever said was that reading it made me think and question a bit more, where previously I had completely accepted the whole AGW theory.
I'll find the original link later when I'm on my laptop.
GA,
It's OK, I found it. I knew it was from some blog you'd quoted before (and yes I did read it) - however it is (sort of) accurate in context but not at all accurate when you quote it out of context above.
CO2 has gone from 280ppm to 378ppm. Your source calls that going from 0.0280% to 0.0378% (correct) and then calls the difference 0.009% (sort of correct).
The problem is that the raw difference is 0.0098% (which is actually 0.010% to three sig figs, and not 0.009, but what the hey), however the % change in concentration is much larger.
CO2 has increased by 0.0098 from 0.0280, which is a 35% increase. Since the response is logarithmic, that's equivalent to about 44% of the response we'd get from doubling CO2 at 560ppm. And we haven't even seen all that warming yet as it takes a while for the oceans to heat up.
So Frank, are you saying that man has added 98ppm CO2 to the atmosphere? That is approx 35% yet how much is the amount of CO2 usually quoted against man\s activities?
Allan@Oslo,
"So Frank, are you saying that man has added 98ppm CO2 to the atmosphere?"
Almost all of the increase is due to human activities, yes.
"That is approx 35% yet how much is the amount of CO2 usually quoted against man\s activities?"
Over 500 billion metric tons, most of which is now in the atmosphere because we produce it faster than the ocean and other sinks can absorb it.
Evidence that it is anthropogenic CO2 includes the distinctive carbon isotope ratios that our activities result in, compared to natural sources of CO2.
link
Thanks Frank. Most informative.
I like your blog, it’s always fun to come back and check what you have to tell us today.
Flying is the most subsidised form of travel in the UK and Europe, it's about time the airlines started paying their own way. Bans on air travel? That's unlikely that the middle-class Londoners would support it. These are the people who own second homes in Croatia, Spain and Bulgaria, remember.
The bottom 40% of income earners only account for 20% of air travel, mostly short trips. source: http://www.lowcarbonlife.net/default.asp?page=39