And yet how many climate change hysterics, including some regulators and elected officials, will quote them as authority anyway? Geena has an answer…
Researchers at the University of Cambridge announced their solution to the contribution of air travel to world-ending carbon emissions: force airplanes to fly more slowly. Reducing flight speeds about 15% would add an average of 50 minutes to flights. The measure would slash fuel burn by 5 to 7%, reducing the 4% industry contribution to overall climate change. These findings will be presented to the science-savvy delegates at the United Nations.
The scientists argue that longer flights could be offset by more efficiently organized airports with fewer holdups. Apparently these people haven’t flown recently. Can distinguished scientists also be deluded morons? It’s a rhetorical question.
These kids of absurd, impractical and impossible policy recommendations result from tunnel-vision, an incompetent method of analysis in which basic factors making a result useless because it cannot be achieved in isolation from related factors. Yet these scientists are no different from the one driving climate change policy madness generally.
Come to think of it, if we eliminated planes and automobiles completely and went back to horses and air balloons, the whole problem could be solved! Let’s do it! Of course, the projections may be wrong, like all of the other climate change projections….
In related news [Pointer to Curmie], the two climate activists, Phoebe Plummer, 23, and Anna Holland, 22 who threw soup at Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers painting in London’s National Gallery were sentenced to prison.
Plummer told the court, “It is not just myself being sentenced today, or my co-defendants, but the foundations of democracy itself.”
And that makes exactly as much sense as scientist recommending that commercial airlines should fly more slowly.
Ethics Alarms 
“went back to horses and air balloons“
Would a FART TAX need to be levied against the horses…?
PWS
https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?&q=i+cant+drive+55+youtube&&mid=01123FA796BC0C8749EF01123FA796BC0C8749EF&&FORM=VRDGAR
It’s back to the Jimmy Carter era! Cue Sammy Hagar!
https://www.youtube.com/embed/V83JR2IoI8k
Hilarious. “Science!” I remember that from 1982. We’re dating ourselves.
And then there’s Boingo Boingo:
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=weird%20science%20song%20youtube%20videos&FORM=VIRE0&mid=F6586B6FD9A89B4253FDF6586B6FD9A89B4253FD&view=detail&ru=%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dweird%20science%20song%20youtube
Exactly when did “democracy” come to mean “every lefty gets every crazy assed thing they want to get all the time?”
The measure would slash fuel burn by 5 to 7%, reducing the 4% industry contribution to overall climate change.
Anyone who thinks that airline Ops Control, Crew Scheduling, and Maintenance departments are leaving 5-7% of their fuel bill laying on the table is either impenetrably stupid, or equally ignorant of how airlines and airplanes work.
Airliners can reduced their burn per hour by operating at the speed corresponding to the lowest sum of form drag and lift induced drag. This is max-endurance.
However, since airliners are built to go places, the speed that produces the greatest amount of fuel remaining at the destination, on account of reasons because so that’s why, is about 20 knots faster. This is max-range speed.
Pro-tip: besides their conceptual difficulties, they know nothing about how airplanes fly. Operating at cruise altitude and max endurance speed is dangerous, because getting slower than that speed is entering the region of reverse command — it takes more thrust to go slower, and the slower you get the more thrust is required. At altitude, airliners have very little excess thrust, so getting even 10 knots below max endurance will require sacrificing altitude to regain speed.
Why does anyone listen to fools like these?
Great DC-3 publicity photo. From wiki:
“The history of Delta Air Lines began with the world’s first aerial crop dusting operation called Huff Daland Dusters, Inc. The company was founded on March 2, 1925, in Macon, Georgia, before moving to Monroe, Louisiana, in the summer of 1925. It flew a Huff-Daland Duster, the first true crop duster, designed to combat the boll weevil infestation of cotton crops. C.E. Woolman, general manager and later Delta’s first CEO, led a group of local investors to acquire the company’s assets. Delta Air Service was incorporated on December 3, 1928, and was named after the Mississippi Delta region.”
The Mississippi Delta. Faulkner country!
If those savings were real, we’d already be flying at that speed. Air carriers are an extremely low-margin business and they optimize for cost down to the most minute detail. The fact that current cruise speeds are used means that this is exactly the sweet point where fuel is used at the most efficient rate with the current ground support (everything from ATC to gate agents and baggage handlers) to make it the cheapest (and unintentionally, but naturally, least polluting) possible.
Let us not forget what these people stand for.
See this answer by Michael Gogin.
https://www.quora.com/Should-climate-change-denial-be-considered-a-crime-against-humanity-when-a-world-leader-uses-false-claims-to-undermine-and-overturn-environmental-protections-they-know-will-have-devastating-consequences-for-much-of/answer/Michael-Gogins?comment_id=116344871&comment_type=2&filter=all&nsrc=notif_page&sncid=56957600623&snid3=76562277523
I feel another statement by plummer is even worse than the one you quoted for sheer idiocy.
“Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting, or the protection of our planet and people? The cost-of-living crisis is part of the cost-of-oil crisis.” And his policies would undeniably INCREASE the cost of living for everyone…. It’s totally incoherent.
I feel like Lewis Black… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73GKhOwhPzs about a minute and 20 seconds in.
Now, years ago, they found that they could reduce the amount of fuel burned by switching to turboprops from turbofan engines. I think it reduced the fuel consumption by 1/3 or so (it was a lot). However, turboprops increase noise and vibration significantly. That not only drives away passengers, it causes increased wear to other parts.
Since no one ever even tried it, I always assumed the costs outweighed the fuel savings (or some budget carrier would have done it).