"Oliver Keating" wrote in message
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"nightjar .uk.com" nightjar@insert_my_surname_here wrote in message
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"Oliver Keating" wrote in message
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So, massive expansion planned for Heathrow, Stanstead and Luton:

One new runway for the least useful airport for the bulk of the
population
of SE England is hardly a massive expansion. Luton gets to use its
current
ruwnay a bit more and Heathrow might get a new runway, if it can meet
pollution levels that it cannot achieve with the current ones.

Considering there are less than ten runways in the SE, one extra one is
quite significant.

Not if you build it where it is least needed. Stansted could cope with a 50%
increase in traffic using the existing runway alone. Heathrow and Gatwick,
which have much more populated catchement areas, are both working at over
90% capacity.

But also there was talk of Heathrow terminal 6 (!) and a third one.
Basically expansion across the board, except for Gatwick.

All ringed around with so many provisos that it is unlikely that any of them
will come to fruit. Personally, I think that the government is just creating
a smoke screen, while they wait until they can give Gatwick its second
runway, by which time it will be too little, too late.


This seems deeply concerning. If air traffic growth continues at it's
present rate, then in 50 years time air travel will account for 40% of
all
CO2 (greenhouse gas) emmissions.

These minor expansions will not give anywhere near the capacity to
achieve
that sort of level of growth.

Admittedtly the USA is responsible for much of this, but even so, air
travel
is the fastest growing source of CO2 emmissions, and that is something
everyone should be concerned by.

However, long term predictions are notoriously unreliable. If you believe
past forecasts on that sort of timescale, we ran out of coal last century,
have no more oil and are all using clean nuclear fuelled electricity.

The next generation of airliners will use 20% less fuel and I have little
doubt that the designers are working on ones that are even cheaper to run.

.....
There is no "need" to have massive expansion in air travel, most
expansion
comes from people going on budget holidays, i.e. things that are not
essential for the general operation of our society.

A lot of people would argue that holidays are essential for the
successful
operation of our society. However, according to Newsnight, the main
growth
area is now in the middle-to-high income bracket travellers.

This is dubious. 50 years ago hardly anyone went abroad to go on holiday,
and we got on fine then.

50 years ago, virtually nobody had a TV and few houses had central heating
but people's expectations of the minimum standard of living change.

....
I find people who claim not be green quite amusing. By ignoring the
problems
they somehow feel immune to the situation, or worse yet, simply deny any
problem exists because they are unable to face the truth.

Or, those of us who recall the London killer smog, have a different
perspective on what constitutes a problem.

Colin Bignell