Normal Contrails: Some Sanity

[foot_soldier]

Once again Jay "Domination Through Intimidation" Reynolds wrote:

Originally Posted by From the Document 'Chemtrails Over America"(Editor- 'foot_soldier'
"We encourage our readers to investigate atmospheric pollution, global warming, ozone and ultraviolet radiation stituations. The news media is not reporting the serious nature of these events. In this application, man-made, aerosol cloud cover is a poor, temporary “patch” with health consequences and not an acceptable fix to those problems. The solution is to ground airplanes, shut down industry, close fossil fuel generating plants, etc., and alter our way of life. So you see, an economic collapse would ensue if the source of the problems were directly addressed.
I have finally determined that the above-excerpted paragraph is taken from an expanded version of the original document with which I had nothing whatsoever to do. Those are not my words and in fact I had never even seen them before they were posted here.

You must have a lot of time on your hands, Reynolds, to be continually combing through years-old Web material and posting selected excerpts out of context into completely unrelated venues for the express purpose of character assassination.

Whatever it is you're trying to accomplish I hope you find it rewarding.

You are pathetic.

[halva]

If BC does not take a position on this matter, she is something worse than pathetic.

I would not accept the hospitality of a person who fails to defend YOU from years-long stalking and harassment by this animal Reynolds.

Of what value is all BC's peace-loving blather when measured against this betrayal?

Aren't women in America supposed to be more emancipated than they are elsewhere? To stick together against male predators?

It is probably counter-productive that I as a male am intervening in this way, but there it is.

[jayreynolds]

Innoculating Kids against Nephelophobia:
I was speaking to a friend at NASA last week about how to best describe why geoengineering isn't happening. One of the office jokes there is about how Dr. Lin Chambers, who runs the S'COOL program for children to learn about atmospheric science, is being accused by chemmies of being a 'Goebbels' and creating a "Chemtrails Youth Disinformation Corps". That's just silly, but the reality is that sound information dispells fears about the unknown.
http://www.chemtrailcentral.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=79944&sid=a3ac5abbc7d548282bc7472764069f23
http://www.carnicom.com/nasa1.htm

Dr. Lin Chambers:
http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/5-8/features/F_Lin_Chambers_Interview_5-8.html
===============================
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060104/NEWS01/601040361/1002/NEWS
5th grade spots clouds for NASA


Students' data helps interpret satellite information


Meaghan M. McDermott
Staff writer


(January 4, 2006) — IRONDEQUOIT — When students in Linda Bryson's fifth-grade class at Laurelton-Pardee Intermediate School stop what they're doing and stare out the window, chances are they aren't daydreaming.

Indeed, it's far more likely they're taking a moment to observe and record outdoor weather conditions so they can send that data to NASA. Their work is part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System program. The CERES project, called S'COOL (Students' Cloud Observations On-Line), studies how clouds affect the planet's climate.

"Every day, we put the thermometer out the window, check the clouds and do a worksheet," said Ryan Youngs, 10.

"We need to check if it's muddy or wet outside because that shows if it was raining or snowing before we checked," said Brannea Johnson, 10.

Bryson said the students make their observations of the type, amount and features of clouds in the sky at specific times each day, depending on the location of NASA satellites. Those observations are sent to NASA via computer, where scientists compare the land-based data to satellite data.

"The satellite can't tell clouds from snow because they're both white," said Nicole Ussia, 10. "So what we do really helps NASA."

Bryson's students have learned the difference between high, mid- and low-level clouds. They check to see if there's a cloud cover and determine what kinds of clouds are in the sky and if the clouds are opaque, translucent or transparent. They check to see if there are leaves on the trees, and measure surface temperature and barometric pressure.

They even check to see if there are any contrails left behind by aircraft.

"When a jet plane flies by, it leaves a misty cloud in its path," said Devin Sullivan, 11. "A contrail is a big long strip of cloud."

The weather work helps students bolster their knowledge of earth science and mathematics and gives them a better understanding of weather and our variable local conditions, said Bryson, a teacher in East Irondequoit since 1974.

Her students have participated in the NASA project for the past three years, since Bryson attended a NASA weather training program for science teachers at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.

The students say keeping their heads in the clouds is helping develop their interest in science.

"I think I might want to be a science teacher," said Nicole.

"I really like things like looking at the weather and watching tadpoles grow into frogs."

MCDERMOT@DemocratandChronicle.com

[Boomer Chick]

FS, here's a link I posted over at the Peak Oil thread. It keeps a running "tab" on states and their energy situations. It's run by the Pew Center.


http://www.stateline.org/live/ViewPage.action?siteNodeId=82&languageId=1&contentId=-1


I'm sure some aviation emissions legislation and atmospheric pollution laws would be covered as well. Seems to be quite comprehensive as well.

HAGD!!!

[whitemajikman]

bump

[foot_soldier]

January 9, 2005

Arab air traffic and tourism booming
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/displayArticle.asp?col=&section=business&xfile=data/business/2006/January/business_January126.xml

DUBAI — Passenger airline traffic in the Arab world grew strongly in November 2005, up 14.4 per cent on the month of November 2004. This follows strong growth of 9.9 per cent in October 2005 compared to October 2004, according to the latest figures from the Arab Air Carriers Organisation.

The figures show that in November 2005, passenger traffic within the Arab world and other regions grew by 16.4 per cent, while passenger traffic inside the Arab world increased by 10.7 per cent compared to November 2004.

The significant growth in passenger numbers between the Arab world and other regions was a result of growth in passenger traffic with all world regions, especially with the Far East and Australia, which recorded growth of 24.1 per cent.

The reason for the 10.7 per cent rise in passenger traffic inside the Arab world, compared with November 2004, reflects the increase in passenger traffic throughout the region, except within the Arabian Peninsula where traffic declined by 1.1 per cent. The biggest growth in air traffic numbers was between the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa, with passenger volumes 48.9 per cent higher in November 2005 compared to November 2004.

The air transport industry worldwide recorded a 2.5 per cent increase in November 2005, compared with the same month in 2004. This was down however on October's increase of 5.2 per cent. All regions of the world experienced an increase in air passenger traffic, with the exception of traffic between the US and the Far East. The biggest increase, at 41.1 per cent, was seen within the mid-Asia region.

Arab airlines increased the number of their offered seats in the Arab world by 33 per cent, while other airlines increased the number of seats offered by 39.7 per cent. The result was a 35 per cent year-on-year increase in the overall number of seats offered in the region.

The increase in passenger seats offered to the Arab world coincides with the projected growth forecasts for the Middle East travel and tourism sector estimated by the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC).

According to the council's latest report, this sector is expected to generate Dh808 billion ($220 billion) by 2015 for the Middle East, with total demand in 2005 representing 2.1 per cent of world market share.

Growth in travel and tourism demand is estimated to be 4.8 per cent last year and the annualised rate of increase in real terms (inflation adjusted) is forecast to be 4.4 per cent between 2006 and 2015.

Up until 2012, the Middle East's market share of world total demand for travel and tourism is forecast to be just above two per cent.

Capital investment in the Middle East travel and tourism industry was estimated to be Dh72.3 billion ($19.7 billion) last year or 10.4 per cent of total investment in 2005. Capital investment is expected to total Dh124.5 billion ($33.9 billion) by 2015 or 10.9 per cent of total investments. Government expenditure in the sector will also rise substantially to reach $6.8 billion by 2015.

The number of people employed in the sector will also grow over the next few years. Middle East travel and tourism economy employment is estimated to at nearly 4 million jobs in 2005, 9.1 per cent of total employment — or one in very 10.9 jobs. By 2015, this should reach nearly 5.5 million jobs or 9.9 per cent of total employment.

[foot_soldier]

December 27, 2005

China's air traffic growth to slow in 2006
http://news.airwise.com/story/view/1135689408.html

China's air passenger and cargo volume growth should ease off in 2006 as the market reverts to a more stable pace of expansion following the post-SARS rebound of 2004 and 2005, state media and the industry's watchdog said.

About 15 percent more passengers, or 159 million people, will fly next year, the country's aviation regulator said in a statement posted on its web site.

Cargo volumes are expected to rise 10 percent to 3.36 million tonnes in 2006, it added.

That compared with passenger traffic growth of 33 percent in 2004 and 20 percent this year, partly because people took to the skies following a 2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome that grounded planes around the region, the official Shanghai Securities News said on Tuesday.

Freight volume grew by 25 percent and 20 percent in those two years, respectively.

China, the world's fastest-expanding major aviation market, is a pivotal battleground between Airbus and Boeing.

Airbus signed a USD$10 billion deal to supply 150 single-aisle A320 jets to China during Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's visit to France earlier this month.

That followed a Chinese commitment last month to buy 70 Boeing 737s, part of what a Boeing spokesman said were plans to sell 150 of its jets to the country.

Now, domestic carriers such as Air China, China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines plan to keep acquiring planes, spurring concerns of overcapacity.

Boeing has forecast that China will need to pick up more than 2,000 planes over the next two decades.

Chinese airlines will gain 142 jets in 2006 through deliveries, the newspaper added.

(Reuters)

[foot_soldier]

University of East Anglia - Norwich, UK

Global Dimming over Europe –
The contribution from aircraft contrails
(M525 coursework & dissertation topic proposal)
http://www.uea.ac.uk/~e063623/

Introduction:

Global dimming refers to the widespread and significant reduction in global irradiance Eg↓, the flux of solar radiation reaching the Earth’s surface; both in the direct solar beam and the diffuse radiation scattered by the sky and clouds. A downward trend in the amount of sunlight reaching the planet’s surface has been noticed since measurements began in the late 1950s (Stanhill 2005).

Subsonic aircraft generally cruise at an altitude range of 9 – 13 km, close to the tropopause; the sharp transition between the troposphere and the stratosphere. Here these aircraft emit gasses and particles, where they have an impact on atmospheric composition (Fahey et al 1999). These gasses and particles alter the concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gasses, including CO*2, O3 and CH4 which trigger formation of condensation trails (IPCC 1999). Contrails are visible line-shaped clouds that form in the wake of the aircraft, when the relative humidity in the plume of exhaust gases mixing with ambient air temporarily reaches liquid saturation, so that liquid droplets form on cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) and soon freeze to ice particles (Schumann 2002).

Contrails, or contrail-induced cirrus cloud, affects the Earth’s radiation budget by reflecting and absorbing solar radiation and emitting and absorbing infrared radiation (Minnis et al. 1999, Ponater et al. 2002). As such, the aerosols and dust in the air may have been shielding us from the worst of global warming. It is unknown how extra solar radiation will affect future temperatures; in a recent assessment, contrails and their effects were recognised as one of the largest outstanding uncertainties in the air traffic impact on the atmosphere (Penner et al. 1999).

Societal & Scientific subject significance:

In 2004, European air transport carried more than 307 million passengers, 35 billion tonnes of freight and contributed approximately €500 billion to the total European GDP. Air transport also employs, directly or indirectly, approximately 3 million people in Europe (EUROCONTROL 2005). European air traffic is forecast to grow by 2.3% – 3.3% on average pa between 2004 – 2005, resulting in up to 17.2 million flights pa by 2025 (EUROCONTROL 2004).

Article 24 of the 1944 Chicago convention provides for aviation fuel used for international air transport, to be exempt from taxation. It is uncertain what impact oil prices or environmental / climate change / carbon taxes will have on the industry. The Kyoto Protocol committed countries to work through the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in limiting or reducing emissions of greenhouse gases from aviation fuels, but international aviation emissions are not covered by emissions reduction targets in the Kyoto Protocol (IPCC 1999).

As air traffic grows, contrail cover will increase, mainly in the upper troposphere where contrails form preferentially. Increases in cirrus cloud cover are found to be positively correlated with aircraft emissions (IPCC 1999). The global mean contrail cover was estimated to increase from 0.06% in 1992, to about 0.14% in 2015 and 0.22% in 2050, with larger regional values (Marquart et al. 2003). However, these scenarios envisage a warmer climate as expected during the twenty-first century (Houghton et al. 2001) and so contrail coverage would be greater, which form preferably in a sufficiently cold environment (Sausen 2000), if forecast climate change was neglected..... (continued)

There are several images and reference publications included with this material.

[jayreynolds]

University of East Anglia - Norwich, UK

Global Dimming over Europe –
The contribution from aircraft contrails
(M525 coursework & dissertation topic proposal)
http://www.uea.ac.uk/~e063623/


Somebody needs to let Jarlath Molloy know that his proposal for a Masters dissertation
is likely to be found ill-advised.
Global Dimming is, in fact, not occurring.
http://www.ariannaonline.com/forums/showthread.php?p=477185#post477185

From Dimming to Brightening: Decadal Changes in Solar Radiation at Earth's Surface
Martin Wild,1* Hans Gilgen,1 Andreas Roesch,1 Atsumu Ohmura,1 Charles N. Long,2 Ellsworth G. Dutton,3 Bruce Forgan,4 Ain Kallis,5 Viivi Russak,6 Anatoly Tsvetkov7

Variations in solar radiation incident at Earth's surface profoundly affect the human and terrestrial environment. A decline in solar radiation at land surfaces has become apparent in many observational records up to 1990, a phenomenon known as global dimming. Newly available surface observations from 1990 to the present, primarily from the Northern Hemisphere, show that the dimming did not persist into the 1990s. Instead, a widespread brightening has been observed since the late 1980s. This reversal is reconcilable with changes in cloudiness and atmospheric transmission and may substantially affect surface climate, the hydrological cycle, glaciers, and ecosystems.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/308/5723/847?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&author1=wild&searchid=1137728208828_21660&FIRSTINDEX=0&fdate=10/1/1995&tdate=5/31/2005&journalcode=sci

Cool how, even with all those contrails, earth's sky is getting cleaner and clearer!
Where's the beef, 'footsoldier'?

[foot_soldier]

I can see the difference in our skies over the last 6-7 years as more and more of what would normally be blue-sky days are obliterated by noon due to the presence of dozens of persistent, spreading contrails aka aviation cirrus. It is no longer at all unusual to see four or five days a week featuring what the meteorologists are now openly referring to as "limited sunshine", particularly under heavily-traveled flight corridors.

It has occurred to me many times that there are children being born today who may never know what the skies used to look like.

How can we let this happen?

I can also see the differences in regional weather patterns over the last 6-7 years. I think the overloading of our troposphere with aircraft emissions is directly contributing to the extremes in temperature and precipitation we're seeing in some regions of this country.

Is unlimited economic growth really so much more important than leaving a living, liveable environment to those coming up behind us?

[halva]

Jeremy Rifkin was here a couple of days ago, talking about 'the hydrogen economy'.

He claims to favour production of hydrogen using 'green' (i.e. renewable) energy sources, and he says that Greece is a 'green Saudi Arabia' in that it is a natural for development of both wind energy and solar energy.

But in Greece too we see diminution of our skies' natural blueness, and of the potential that Rifkin wants to make us feel hopeful about.

It is wrong to become engaged in naive dialogue with those who claim insincerely to believe this diminution is not occurring. Such people must be dealt with politically. That is to say, interaction with them, if any, is to be initiated under conditions and in a manner, of our own choosing, and always in such a way as to be to their disadvantage.

We 'are letting' the degradation happen if our interaction with such people (and the interests with which they have identified) remains UNPOLITICAL i.e. reactive, moralistic, emotional. Being like this means consenting to a situation in which they are the political players and we the objects of their manipulation.

It is unfortunate that here at Arianna's we are not all agreed on a political approach (we have not all agreed to ignore-list [or even "ignore-list"] Reynolds and supporters). As a result, the best that can be achieved here is a holding operation. The board is not surrendered to their side, but on the other hand, people of quality with something to say and naive supporters of our positions, are both driven away, the former by BC, the latter by me. We cannot afford to have fools here 'supporting' us, but by the same token no intelligent person is going to put up with the debunkers here for very long, if he or she doesn't have a very serious reason for staying.

This is what makes BC's habitual welcoming ceremonies so very grotesque.

Yes, I know, when friends have babies, bringing children into this deeply horrible world, we congratulate them and react with happiness. And as the babies grow up we still keep behaving towards them as if we [and they] are autonomous agents and masters of our destiny. This is the grammar [the etiquette] of everyday, non-political, social interaction.

Some people are also privileged to be members of networks, mostly on the internet, but for the truly privileged in real life also, in which things can be called by their true name, and reality confronted. Anyone so networked seeks to expand and protect the network.

But In fact both life contexts need protection, the apolitical and the political alike. Here in Europe there is some elementary instinctive social defence against influences like that of Reynolds, even if political defences are underdeveloped and fragmented. In the United States you appear to be unprotected at any level and I deeply pity you.

[jayreynolds]

I can see the difference in our skies over the last 6-7 years as more and more of what would normally be blue-sky days are obliterated by noon due to the presence of dozens of persistent, spreading contrails aka aviation cirrus. It is no longer at all unusual to see four or five days a week featuring what the meteorologists are now openly referring to as "limited sunshine", particularly under heavily-traveled flight corridors.

I can also see the differences in regional weather patterns over the last 6-7 years. I think the overloading of our troposphere with aircraft emissions is directly contributing to the extremes in temperature and precipitation we're seeing in some regions of this country.

And yes, when those trails build up and spread out to cover the sky with the now-familiar blanket of fake cirrus there's a very big difference in the amount of sunlight that reaches the ground. I'd call that dimming. Why, even the regional meteorologists are now routinely commenting that 'those high clouds' - you know, the ones that 'tend to hold the heat in at the surface', are also 'filtering the sun'. ]

"But the *intensity* I am referring to is not the same thing. I have noticed since December 1999 that the sun appears more intense - and much brighter - than usual - at ALL times of the year. This last year - especially since fall 2001 - this amplification of brightness and intensity has been particularly noticable.
I am not the only one making this observation.
I don't have time for superficial chat about trivial matters. I'm genuinely concerned about the increasing intensity of the sun and am simply sharing consistent, direct observation on the subject.
I cannot currently occupy a particular section of my studio at a certain time of day because the sun is too intense. I've been living here for 14 years now. This is something new THIS YEAR.
Just like the fact that I start to burn in less than 5 minutes under direct sunlight on a clear [sic] day *this time of year* is something NEW.


Reiterating, which 'footsoldier' do we believe?

The 'footsoldier' for whom the sun has gotten dimmer, or the one for whom the sun has become so intense as to be unbearable after five minutes?

Should we believe the one who edited the hoax docxument "Chemtrails Over America", which claims that contrails are actually military jets spraying aluminum and barium, or the 'footsoldier' who also says contrails are merely water vapor?

Think about it.

[jayreynolds]

It is wrong to become engaged in naive dialogue with those who claim insincerely to believe this diminution is not occurring. Such people must be dealt with politically. That is to say, interaction with them, if any, is to be initiated under conditions and in a manner, of our own choosing, and always in such a way as to be to their disadvantage.

It is unfortunate that here at Arianna's we are not all agreed on a political approach (we have not all agreed to ignore-list [or even "ignore-list"] Reynolds and supporters). As a result, the best that can be achieved here is a holding operation. The board is not surrendered to their side, but on the other hand, people of quality with something to say and naive supporters of our positions, are both driven away, the former by BC, the latter by me. We cannot afford to have fools here 'supporting' us, but by the same token no intelligent person is going to put up with the debunkers here for very long, if he or she doesn't have a very serious reason for staying.

Wayne Hall wants to maintain his failed dogma that "geoengineering chemtrails"are a reality.

The advantages of accepting a dogma or paradigm are only too clear. One no longer has to query the foundations of one’s convictions, one enjoys the many advantages of belonging to a group that enjoys the comfort of ignorance, one can participate in the benefits that the group provides, and one can "ignore list" questions of responsibility and accountability.

In brief, the moment one accepts a dogma, one stops being an independent analyzer of fact.

The downside of this orthodoxy is that self-correction of untenable ideas is negated, and one is easily drawn into folly. This can only result in the group, as a whole, discrediting itself and it's individual components. It is inevitable that, as a result of this folly, the group and the individuals become irrelevant in society as a whole.

Sorry to break down the walls of your glass house, chemmies, but this is a truth you had better get used to, or change your ways and enjoy the benefits of progress.

[foot_soldier]

Jeremy Rifkin was here a couple of days ago, talking about 'the hydrogen economy'.

He claims to favour production of hydrogen using 'green' (i.e. renewable) energy sources, and he says that Greece is a 'green Saudi Arabia' in that it is a natural for development of both wind energy and solar energy.

But in Greece too we see diminution of our skies' natural blueness, and of the potential that Rifkin wants to make us feel hopeful about.

I wonder about the potential for a transition to use of more solar-powered infrastructure given the increasingly overcast condition of the skies in certain regions of the world. Aviation cirrus is contributing to this situation. This is directly-observable - and it's definitely not a "natural" phenomenon.

It is wrong to become engaged in naive dialogue with those who claim insincerely to believe this diminution is not occurring. Such people must be dealt with politically. That is to say, interaction with them, if any, is to be initiated under conditions and in a manner, of our own choosing, and always in such a way as to be to their disadvantage.

I'm finally beginning to understand what you're saying here, halva, and I do agree with you.

However, I don't think I'm even attempting a "dialog" here. Rather, I'm just trying to maintain a process of updating a topic-specific thread.

We 'are letting' the degradation happen if our interaction with such people (and the interests with which they have identified) remains UNPOLITICAL i.e. reactive, moralistic, emotional. Being like this means consenting to a situation in which they are the political players and we the objects of their manipulation.

I agree.

It is unfortunate that here at Arianna's we are not all agreed on a political approach (we have not all agreed to ignore-list [or even "ignore-list"] Reynolds and supporters). As a result, the best that can be achieved here is a holding operation.

I don't, and never did, expect anything to be "achieved" here. As we both know, the most effective progress is made offline in cooperation with like-minded individuals and groups organized around common goals.

The board is not surrendered to their side, but on the other hand, people of quality with something to say and naive supporters of our positions, are both driven away, the former by BC, the latter by me. We cannot afford to have fools here 'supporting' us, but by the same token no intelligent person is going to put up with the debunkers here for very long, if he or she doesn't have a very serious reason for staying.

People who care about the issues being documented here will find ways to channel their concern offline. I admit that I'm primarily an "informational" poster but I think it's important to maintain some continuity on certain issues and that's what I've been trying to do. The time I spend on this effort is actually quite limited at this point, as much more of my time is spent on directly communicating with interested parties offline.

This is what makes BC's habitual welcoming ceremonies so very grotesque.

Yes, I know, when friends have babies, bringing children into this deeply horrible world, we congratulate them and react with happiness. And as the babies grow up we still keep behaving towards them as if we [and they] are autonomous agents and masters of our destiny. This is the grammar [the etiquette] of everyday, non-political, social interaction.

We are, of course, "masters" of exactly nothing. I've always believed that we are here on this, the most beautiful planet in the universe, to contribute as best we can to making life better for all of us. It is the actual process of striving for this common goal that is what makes life here in this often frustrating situation worth living. There is no reason why so many people on this earth should be consigned to lives of hardship, exploitation and deprivation in order that the fortunate few may live in comfort and denial. It isn't right.

I'm going to become a first-time grandmother in about five months. While I look forward to this event with pure joy, I also worry about the kind of world my new grandchild and so many other precious new beings are going to be entering. All I can say is that I think all children are "universal" and that if adults can learn to stay out of their way, most children will naturally evolve with a sense of place in the world that includes a deep caring for all of their fellow human beings and not just those who are "like them."

All of the adults in a child's life can help to contribute to this process. In fact, adults who are genuinely involved with children they care about learn just as much from the children as the children do from them.

Some people are also privileged to be members of networks, mostly on the internet, but for the truly privileged in real life also, in which things can be called by their true name, and reality confronted. Anyone so networked seeks to expand and protect the network.

Yes.

But In fact both life contexts need protection, the apolitical and the political alike. Here in Europe there is some elementary instinctive social defence against influences like that of Reynolds, even if political defences are underdeveloped and fragmented. In the United States you appear to be unprotected at any level and I deeply pity you.

I wouldn't say it's altogether true that we in the U.S. are completely "unprotected." I think we are dealing with an unprecedented ascendancy of concentrated power as well as some pretty appalling abuse of that power, and I think a lot of people have been kind of in shock about this despite the fact that they have seen it coming.

But I also think that people are starting to find their bearings with this difficult situation and that a lot more people are now speaking out, and in no uncertain terms, conveying their displeasure and their intent to do something about it.

Thank you for a beautiful response, halva. You are a good man.
.

[Boomer Chick]

What wonderfully expressed sentiments here on our little forum!


FS, congratulations on your new grandchild to be!!! Love what you expressed about children and appreciated reading your other responses to Halva.

Jay, thanks. Halva, thanks, even though I see you barking in a bag..... my offer still stands.

WORLD SOCIAL FORUM TODAY !!!!!!!! Rejoice, Halva, all is not gloom and doom!
By www.globalexchange.org (http://www.globalexchange.org/)

Tens of thousands of peace and justice advocates from throughout the Western Hemisphere are gearing up for the 2006 World Social Forum, an inspirational gathering that brings together peace activists, fair trade crusaders, environmentalists, and advocates of indigenous, workers’ and women’s rights from around the globe.

This year the World Social Forum is being held in Caracas, Venezuela from January 24 – 29, where some of the amazing featured speakers will be Nobel Peace Prize Winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel; Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez; Gold Star Mother Cindy Sheehan; renowned author Eduardo Galeano; and Global Exchange and CODEPINK Founder Medea Benjamin. Created as an alternative to the World Economic Forum, a gathering of economic and political elites, the World Social Forum is a place where activists from around the globe come together to envision a better world – one where people’s basic human needs are met, where international cooperation replaces war and militarism, and where governments and corporations respect the earth and its inhabitants - and share ideas about how to create it. Past World Social Forums have spawned important global collaborations, including the largest public mobilizations in human history - the February 15, 2003 demonstrations against the Iraq war.

Global Exchange is proud to have organized the largest US delegation to the Forum. More than 200 people from all over the United States, Canada, Australia and England are traveling to Caracas with Global Exchange’s Reality Tours program and then staying on in Venezuela to study the transformation that the country has been undergoing under the leadership of Hugo Chavez.

CHECK OUT OUR WORLD SOCIAL FORUM BLOG!

For the latest updates from the World Social Forum, check out our new blog, http://www.worldsocialforumlive.org (http://www.worldsocialforumlive.org/), where GX staff and delegation participants will be sharing their experiences with people around the globe. Tune in on January 24th and find out what’s happening live from Caracas! (Note: Mac users of Internet Explorer may have problems viewing the blog, but we’re working on fixing those problems right now.)

To find out more about the World Social Forum, you can read the article below or go to the official WSF website, http://www.forosocialmundial.org.ve/ (http://www.forosocialmundial.org.ve/)

Thanks as always for your hard work on behalf of peace and justice,
Global Exchange

************************************************** ****************************

[Boomer Chick]

World Social Forum: US Activists Study Bolivarian Revolution
By Katherine Stapp, Inter Press Service, January 13, 2006
http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/americas/venezuela/3693.html (http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/americas/venezuela/3693.html)

NEW YORK - U.S. activists are heading to the Sixth World Social Forum (WSF) with a renewed sense of optimism and international solidarity, despite Washington's animosity toward the hemisphere's growing slate of leftist governments.

Up to 100,000 visitors are expected in Caracas, Venezuela from Jan. 24-29, while parallel forums will take place in Bamako, Mali from Jan. 19-23, and Karachi, Pakistan in March.

The WSF was founded in 2001 to counter the unabashedly neo-liberal agenda promoted at gatherings like the World Economic Forum, held annually in Davos, Switzerland. It has grown larger every year since, drawing thousands of trade unionists, anti-debt campaigners, environmental and fair trade activists, peasants' groups and others representing economic and social justice movements around the world.

Although the WSF has a relatively low profile in the United States, groups that attended in the past are sending more people this time around, and others are planning their maiden voyage to the conference.

Global Exchange, an international human rights group headquartered in San Francisco, California, is sending 200 people -- nearly four times the number it sent to the WSF gathering in Porto Alegre, Brazil last year.

"The main purpose of the trip is to educate people to look deeper into the realities of Venezuela, so they can come back and fight the media blitz and put pressure on the government," said Zach Hurwitz, the "South America Reality Tours" coordinator for Global Exchange.

Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez has been painted by both Washington and the mainstream media here as a demagogue and a threat to regional stability, with the George W. Bush administration going so far as to support a failed coup against the government in 2002.

His populist "Bolivarian Revolution" has rejected the model of corporate-led globalisation, instead promoting grassroots political participation, poverty alleviation and economic self-sufficiency.

The Global Exchange delegations will meet with representatives from all walks of Venezuela's political and economic life, including the Afro-Venezuelan Network, women's and indigenous groups, agricultural cooperatives, grassroots media and student activists. They also plan to speak with officials involved in projects like the Cuban doctors' programme and Mision Habitat, which addresses urban housing issues.

The groups are focusing on four themes: gender, cultural diversity and new political voices; people's development and the Venezuelan social contract; youth leadership; and oil, natural resources and sustainability.

"A lot of people have asked what Venezuela is going to do when the oil runs out in the next 50 to 75 years, so we're looking at what is being done to create a forward-thinking, green economy -- although the first step is to cut down on consumption of oil in this country," Hurwitz told IPS.

This time last year, the world was grieving for the victims of the catastrophic Indian Ocean tsunamis, and Bush had just won re-election, to the dismay of anti-war activists here and many people abroad who questioned the U.S.-led "war on terror".

But now, the outlook has changed, Hurwitz and other U.S. activists say.

"There is a huge sense of optimism about the possibility for change in the United States," he noted. "Many things have happened over the past year that worked in favour of this optimism, like the incredibly low support for the Iraq war, the exposure of corruption in Congress, and the torture cases and other scandals in the administration."

"The Venezuelans want to be friends with people in the United States," Hurwitz added, noting that Citgo, a subsidiary of Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., the state-owned oil company, has donated or substantially discounted some eight million gallons of heating oil for poor communities and homeless shelters in several U.S. states.

"More and more people are catching on to the idea that the Bush administration is radically aggressive based on self-interest, while Venezuela is looking out for the welfare of people around the world," he said.

Media activism, and particularly the growth of community radio, is the focus of the Prometheus Radio Project delegation, which is sending 15 people from across the United States to visit local television and radio stations, as well as the state communications ministry.

The members of the Prometheus collective, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, started out as "pirate" broadcasters. When their equipment was seized by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, they vowed to open 10 new stations for every one that was shut down.

The group has successfully lobbied for low-power, non-commercial broadcasting here, and has also shared its technical expertise with communities in Nepal, Colombia, Guatemala and Tanzania to set up their own local radio projects.

"In the U.S., there is a fairly large alternative media movement, including people that work inside the (Washington) Beltway on media reform, but it tends to be quite specialised, as opposed to a broad social movement," said Pete Tridish of Prometheus.

"We've observed that movements to reform the media and change the information infrastructure of society (in other countries) tend to be much more tightly connected to large grassroots movements for social change, and we're hoping to learn about the connections between those movements in a context that is different from the U.S," he told IPS.

"We're particularly interested in the case of Venezuela, where the corporate media was highly complicit in the attempted coup against the democratically-elected president, Hugo Chavez."

Other groups involved with the Prometheus delegation include Third World Majority, Reform the Media, the New Mexico Media Literacy Project, Pacifica's Free Speech Radio News, Casa Guatemala and the Consumers Union.

"I see the WSF as a very hopeful development," Tridish concluded. "I don't believe that American progressives by themselves are going to steer a new course. Countries (and activists) around the world have to band together."

While most U.S. delegates appear to be headed for Venezuela, some have also been invited to Bamako, Mali, where 35,000 activists from the region and abroad are expected.

John Catalinotto, who attended previous WSF meetings, hopes to speak about issues ranging from opposition to the Iraq war, to the race and class fault lines exposed by Hurricane Katrina, the attack on workers' pensions illustrated by the recent Transit Workers Union strike that paralysed New York City's subway system, and the challenges faced by immigrants here.

"People from Africa, Asia and other regions may not know the details of the struggles that have taken place, or even that there is a real class struggle here," said Catalinotto, who will be representing the New York-based International Action Centre, a lead organiser of anti-war actions in the United States.

"At the WSF, there are different forces, and some would like to keep it as a talkfest," he added, "while others want to see it move in the direction of 'let's do something against neo-liberalism, against the war,' etc."

"I hope we will see more international days of action this year," he said.

Copyright © 2006 IPS-Inter Press Service

[foot_soldier]

Public release date: 23-Jan-2006

NJIT solar physicists report paradox: Less sunlight, but temps rise

Less sunlight reaching the Earth's surface has not translated into cooler temperatures, according to a team of solar physicists at New Jersey Institute of Technology
http://www.eurekalert.org/bysubject/earthscience.php

Less sunlight reaching the Earth's surface has not translated into cooler temperatures, according to a team of solar physicists at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). The scientists, who monitor the Earth's reflectance by measuring what is known as the moon's earthshine, have observed that the amount of light reflected by Earth -- its albedo -- has increased since 2000. The result has been less sunlight reaching the Earth's surface.

"Our findings have significant implications for the study of climate change," said Philip R. Goode, PhD, principal investigator and distinguished professor of physics at NJIT. "The results raise questions about how global temperatures can still rise when the amount of sunlight reaching the surface has decreased." The scientists find that the seemingly paradoxical result is due to an increase in the cloud cover coupled with a peculiar re-arrangement of the clouds, but are unsure why this is happening. This large variability of the clouds and albedo presents a fundamental, unmet challenge to our ability to understand and predict the Earth's climate.

Goode is the director of Big Bear Solar Observatory, California, where the observations were carried out. NJIT has owned and operated the observatory since 1997. Goode's findings are reported tomorrow in "Can the Earth's Albedo and Surface Temperatures Increase Together," published tomorrow by Eos (Jan. 24, 2006), the weekly newspaper of geophysics published by the American Geophysical Union. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration funded the research.

"Recently analyzed cloud data from the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) confirm the trend in reflectance," said Goode. "The data also reveal that from 2000 to now the clouds have changed so that the Earth may continue warming, even with declining sunlight. These large and peculiar variabilities of the clouds, coupled with a resulting increasing albedo, presents a fundamental, unmet challenge for all scientists who wish to understand and predict the Earth's climate." Co-authors with Goode are post-doctoral associates Enric Palle and Pilar Montanes-Rodriguez, who work at the observatory, and Steven E. Koonin, a professor of theoretical physics at California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech).

Climate depends on sunlight, less the part of sunlight that is promptly reflected plus how well the Earth holds heat. At any moment, more than half the Earth is swathed in clouds, and they dominate the Earth's reflectance. Both the sunlight reaching Earth and the amount of atmospheric heat trapped are sensitive to clouds, which both cool the Earth (especially low thick clouds) by reflecting the sunlight and warm the Earth by acting as blankets (especially high thin clouds).

It has been argued that an increasing albedo during the past five years would be inconsistent with the observed behavior in the global land and sea-surface temperatures because, in principle, an increase in the albedo would seem to imply that the decrease in the sunlight absorbed by the planet would lead to cooler temperatures.

The just-released update of the 20-year sequence of ISCCP satellite cloud data shows that during the first 15 years of observations, the percent difference between high lying and low-lying clouds remained steady at 7-8 percent. But in the last five years, for some unknown reason, the difference has almost doubled to 13 percent. The ISCCP data is a careful compilation of cloud observations covering the entire Earth from a range of meteorological satellites.

"That increase in the difference signals a relative decrease in the cooling effect of clouds," said Goode. "Thus, the rising reflectance of the Earth has not led to a reversal of global warming from the increase in sunlight being reflected back into space." What has happened is that the low, cooling clouds have decreased during the most recent years, while high, warming clouds have increased even more. Thus, the cloud data also reveal an increase in total cloud amount during 2000-2004. That increase is consistent with the earlier earthshine result of growing reflectance throughout that period.

Goode noted that the Earth's reflectance depends primarily on cloud properties. Recent ground-based and satellite studies of the albedo have shown a surprisingly significant inter-annual and decadal variability. From about 1985-2000, the Earth steadily received more sunlight, before the recent reversal of the trend from 2000-2004. "This is not the first time such a situation occurred," Goode said.

Ground-based radiometers hint at a similar reversal from the 1960's through the mid-1980's, which some scientists have dubbed global dimming. Thus, it seems there may be a large, unexplained decadal variation in sunlight reaching the Earth, as well as a large effect of clouds re-arranging by altitude.

"From these data and results, we caution scientists against concluding that global dimming would mean a cooler Earth, and that clouds need a better treatment in climate models" said Goode.

The earthshine studied by Goode and his colleagues can be seen as a ghostly glow associated with the moon's "dark side" -- or the portion of the lunar disk not lit by the Sun. The cloudier the Earth, the brighter the earthshine. "The phenomenon of earthshine was first observed by Leonardo DaVinci," said Goode.

[foot_soldier]

January 24, 2006

Baffled Scientists Say Less Sunlight Reaching Earth
http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/060124_earth_albedo.html

After dropping for about 15 years, the amount of sunlight Earth reflects back into space, called albedo, has increased since 2000, a new study concludes.

That means less energy is reaching the surface. Yet global temperatures have not cooled during the period.

Increasing cloud cover seems to be the reason, but there must also be some other change in the clouds that's not yet understood..... (continued)

[foot_soldier]

January Update from Holland:
http://www.contrails.nl/contrails-2006-1/default.htm

[halva]

Subject: The Aerosol Society

http://www.aerosol-soc.org.uk/default.asp

[foot_soldier]

January 28, 2006
Cheap flights threaten UK targets for carbon emissions
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article341542.ece

The boom in foreign travel generated by cheaper air fares and no frills airlines will wreck Britain's attempts to bring climate change under control, environmentalists fear.

As the travel industry prepares for record bookings in 2006, green groups expressed concern over the "failure" of the Government to curb the availability of cheap flights that have sent aviation pollution surging. Fumes spewed out by jets are expected to become the single biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

The increase reflects the steady rise of overseas travel, which is growing at between 5 and 6 per cent a year. According to a study by Mintel this month, tourism from the world's leading 15 outbound tourism markets is likely to double between now and 2020. Britons, second only to the Germans for volume of travel, are forecast to take 101 million foreign trips by 2020. Greenpeace warned that level of air travel would be "catastrophic" for climate.

The Government's stated aim is to cut carbon emissions in the UK by 60 per cent by 2050, but the figure does not include aviation, which currently accounts for about 15 per cent of Britain's carbon.

According to the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee, aviation will generate 43 million tons of carbon by 2050 - a seemingly unworkable 66 per cent of the Government's 65 million ton target.

On present trends by 2050, one green organisation, the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, estimates that air travel will account for the entire "sustainable" carbon quota of this country.

"The forecast growth in aviation represents one of the most unsustainable trends in UK society," the cross-party Environmental Audit Committee warned.

The shadow Environment Secretary, Peter Ainsworth, who chaired the Environment Audit Committee at the time of its report in 2003, is likely to push the issue up the agenda. He said aviation pollution was one of the areas being examined by the party's quality of life commission, led by Zac Goldsmith.

The combination of the amount of fossil fuel required to take off and the carbon emitted was a "cocktail of disaster," Mr Ainsworth said. "I think there's a huge degree of ignorance about this. But it's the hardest of the climate change problems to solve because people really like leaving the country and they don't care that it's bad for the balance of payments or bad for the environment."

The Government believes that a proposal to include airlines in the EU's carbon emission trading scheme will alleviate the problem - a move which does not satisfy environmentalists.

Over the next few years travellers may find themselves at the centre of an ever-louder debate about the impact of their journeys. BA already offers long-haul passengers the option of paying a levy that goes to plant trees to offset the carbon emitted on their flight. The industry magazine Travel Weekly believes other airlines may soon follow.

Another idea is for personal carbon allowances; consumers may have to wrestle with whether to experience the enjoyment of travel or to stay at home.

When package tourism took off in the 1960s and 1970s few could have imagined the phenomenal rise of air travel. Once the annual holiday was typically spent by the British seaside, now Europe, America, Africa and even the Far East are the destinations.

Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and Transport 2000 called on the Government to tax air fuel and halt the planned expansion of British airports. They urged individuals to consider switching to less polluting forms of transport, such as trains. Richard Dyer, of Friends of the Earth, said: "What's happening with low-cost travel is that it's setting up unsustainable patterns of behaviour, so people are buying property in France that they wouldn't otherwise and flying to Prague rather than taking the train to Edinburgh for stag dos. Ending or changing these patterns of behaviour is all the harder to do once they are established."

A study by the London Sustainable Development Commission in April 2004 found that five and possibly six of the top 10 destinations for air travel from London could be served by high-speed trains, which are eight times less polluting than planes.

Jason Torrance, campaigns director of Transport 2000, said: "It's undeniably attractive to travel on a low-cost flight from England to the south of Spain. But as individuals we are all actors in the crisis of climate change, and we as individuals should be questioning whether our travel is necessary. I'm not suggesting people should stop all flying but getting onto a plane and causing vast amounts of pollution is a very serious action."

[foot_soldier]

January 29, 2006

What is the real price of cheap air travel?

While the rest of us snap up £1.99 flights to Rome, a small but growing band of conscientious objectors are making a stand by refusing to fly. Is this the beginning of the budget travel backlash, asks Tom Robbins
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/travel/story/0,,1697190,00.html

Michael Gibson's new year's resolution was a tough one, but nothing to do with giving up cigarettes, alcohol or junk food. He has decided to stop flying.

'I just realised that all my other efforts to be green - recycling, insulating the house, not driving a giant 4x4 - would be totally wiped out by a couple of holidays by air,' said Gibson, 32, from Manchester. He's not alone. Suddenly and spontaneously, growing numbers of travellers are deciding they must give up, or at least cut back on, their far-flung weekend city breaks and long-haul holidays in the sun.

Melissa Henry, a marketing director from Bristol, quit flying a year ago. 'How could I look my four-year-old daughter in the eye in 20 years' time and say "There was something I could have done but I chose not to"?' she said. 'For too long, I was saying "they must do something about it", then suddenly I realised I can't expect others to change if I'm not prepared to change myself.'

And it's not just the hardcore eco-warriors who are taking a stand. Last week, one of Britain's most influential travellers told Escape he had decided to cut down on flying. Mark Ellingham, founder of Rough Guides, the travel publishing company that played a key role in encouraging the independent travel boom of the last 20 years, said he would be limiting his trips by plane, and taking his summer holiday in Britain.

'Being in the travel business, I've taken more than the average number of flights, and was used to casually flying off to Naples for the weekend or whatever,' he said.

'So I've taken the decision that I should reduce the number of flights I'm taking and take at least part of my holiday in places that you can drive to or take a train.'

Ellingham has just commissioned the Rough Guide to Climate Change and from this summer all Rough Guides will have a section warning readers about the negative effects of flying. 'Of course it's a contradiction, but we are in the unique position of being able to put information about climate change across in exactly the right context.'

What about the danger of damaging his own business, which sells thousands of guidebooks to weekend city break fans? His response is stark: 'If that happens, so be it.'

The arguments against flying are compelling. One return flight to Florida produces the equivalent carbon dioxide to a year's motoring. A return flight to Australia equals the emissions of three average cars for a year. Fly from London to Edinburgh for the weekend and you produce 193kg of CO2, eight times the 23.8kg you produce by taking the train. Moreover, the pollution is released at an altitude where its effect on climate change is more than double that on the ground.

More frightening is the boom in the number of people flying, fuelled by cheap flights with carriers such as Ryanair and Easyjet. In 1970, British airports were used by 32 million people. In 2004, the figure was 216 million. In 2030, according to government forecasts, it will be around 500 million. The trouble is that the people most likely to be aware of these figures, are the ones who probably enjoy popping over to Europe for a weekend. It makes for a large amount of guilt, and a lot of denial.

'Most people seem to say "I should cut back, but I'm not ready to yet",' said Sarah Delfont, an oncology support specialist from Devon, who stopped flying last year. 'It's not an easy decision.'

Now, it seems, we are on the cusp of the guilt turning into action. Next month sees the launch of the first formal campaign to limit flying. Flight Pledge, will focus on a website (www.flightpledge.org.uk) on which people can commit to cutting back on flying. There's a choice of a gold pledge - a promise to take no flights in the coming year - or silver, representing a maximum of two short-haul or one long-haul flight. The idea, says John Valentine, its creator, is to collect enough signatories to press the European Union into taxing aviation fuel, thus increasing air fares and stifling the growth in air travel.

But aren't there less drastic ways of addressing climate change without giving up air travel? What about carbon offsetting, where you pay a small fee per flight which goes towards tree-planting or energy saving schemes? To make your return flight to Rome carbon neutral costs just £5. A small price to pay for a clear conscience.

'It's a way of assuaging middle-class guilt,' says Liz Postlethwaite, 28, a community arts worker in Manchester who gave up flying more than a year ago. 'At the end of the day the carbon is being placed in the environment regardless of the offsetting and, if we are honest about it, the only way we can stop that happening is by reducing the number of flights we take.'

Objectively, offsetting is clearly better than nothing and has already funded some impressive schemes around the world, although environmentalists are beginning to turn against it. Friends of the Earth argues that tree-planting schemes are not reliable because it is hard to guarantee how long the trees will live. 'If there's a fire or they're cut down, you've lost your offset but you've already done the damage,' said Richard Dyer, the group's aviation campaigner.

Campaigners say energy-saving schemes, such as funding solar panels, or low-energy lightbulbs, are laudable, but should be done anyway rather than simply to offset pollution from flights.

This is bad news for the travel industry, which has latched onto offsetting like a drowning man to a life raft. 'Sustainable travel' is one of the tourism industry's favourite phrases, but there is simply no way to reconcile a business encouraging people to fly as often and far as possible, with concerns about the effects on the environment.

The Association of British Travel Agents sets the tone for the industry. It backs offsetting, and pays for its annual conference, which takes place abroad, to be made carbon neutral. At the same time, it is lobbying the government to increase runway space in Britain.

'We need more runways to cater for increased demand,' said Sean Tipton, an Abta spokesman. 'I know environmentalists are calling for a tax on flying, but that would bring about a return to the Fifties when only the well-off could fly.'

There is a positive side to this story, however. Many of those who have given up flying are finding that, far from it being a sacrifice, they actually enjoy travelling more.

'We've had some superb holidays as a result of not flying,' says Alex Smith from Balham, south London. 'Leaving Madrid on the overnight train to Paris, and having a superb meal and glass of wine in the dining car while watching the sun set over the mountains cannot be beaten as a way to finish a holiday.'

Nor is it a bar to long-distance travel. Sarah Delfont's 22-year-old Joe has also quit flying, but that won't stop him setting out in a fortnight's time on a backpacking trip to Thailand - by train. The route, involving the Trans-Siberian railway, will take far longer than a direct flight to Bangkok and probably cost more, but it promises to be much more of an adventure.

Exactly how many people are cutting back on flying is impossible to know. But it seems likely that 2006 will be the year in which the issue finally enters the mainstream. Already there has been a flurry of headlines when members of Transport 2000, the group which campaigns for more train and bus use, raised concerns about whether Michael Palin should continue as their chairman, because of the vast amount of air miles he clocks up on his travels.

The crunch is likely to be the government decision, expected later this year, on whether to allow a third runway at Heathrow. Much as we might like it to, it seems the backlash against bargain flights is not going to go away.

[foot_soldier]

February 10, 2006

Europe Emissions Scheme Would Hit Air Fares - BA
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/35020/story.htm

LONDON - Air fares will go up if a European scheme to curb pollution is extended to include airlines as expected, British Airways said on Thursday.

Europe's third-biggest airline, which backs the industry's entry to a pan-European emissions trading scheme, said some impact on ticket prices would be unavoidable.

"If the idea of emissions trading is to make energy intensive activities more expensive, then there will be some impact on ticket prices," said Andy Kershaw, Climate Change Manager at BA.

"Certainly I would expect some impact," he told an emissions trading conference. He declined to speculate on the potential size of increases.

Kershaw said BA was working on the basis that it could enter the emissions trading scheme in 2008, though he said 2010 was probably a more realistic date.

European governments have backed proposals to include aircraft in the Europe's trading scheme, which was launched in January last year as the bloc's main way to meet Kyoto Protocol goals on cutting emissions.

The scheme currently covers about 12,000 factories and power stations, imposing caps on their carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions but allowing them to trade around those caps in a market for CO2 credits.

A recent study commissioned by the British government said the inclusion of aircraft in the scheme would not have a major impact on the price of CO2 credits traded in the market. CO2 credits traded on Thursday at 26.45 euros a tonne.

BA, which says emissions trading is a better way of tackling climate change than taxation, already trades emissions under a voluntary scheme in the UK.

BA said it would want its participation in the European scheme to be restricted to emissions from flights within Europe, about 20 percent of the miles its cover globally.

The United States, which has not signed up to Kyoto, is pressing the European Union to keep US airlines out of the scheme.

Kershaw also said BA would want a centralised approach to setting targets for the airline industry, rather than a company by company approach which could distort competition.

[foot_soldier]

Update on the skies over Holland, January 2006:

Contrails and Aviation Smog
http://www.contrails.nl/contrails-2006-1/default.htm

Nice, huh?

How we can continue to just let this happen is beyond me.

[foot_soldier]

February 15, 2006

China plans to double air traffic with 100 new aircraft a year
http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1709748,00.html

China's aviation industry will buy 100 new jetliners and recruit 1,000 pilots every year for the next five years, regulators announced yesterday in a plan to more than double air traffic. The target will make China second only to the US in terms of flights and is likely to alarm environmentalists and air safety campaigners even as it delights Boeing and Airbus executives. It is estimated that air traffic is already responsible for 10% of global warming because jet emissions linger.

Senior officials from the General Administration of Civil Aviation of China (GACAC) admitted the expansion plan would put a strain on operators. "We have felt that we are walking on thin ice in safety management," said Gao Hongfeng, GACAC deputy director in announcing the new plans. "There are over 5,000 flights every day and more than 11,000 takeoffs and landings in airports, therefore the pressure on safety is very high."

China is already the fastest growing aviation market in the world. According to the government, air traffic has doubled in the past five years. Since 2000, passenger numbers have risen by 105% to 138 million a year and the combined fleet of the country's air companies rose to 863 planes from 527.

Dozens of cities boast new airports, such as the $2bn Guangzhou mega-terminal that opened last year as the first part of a two-stage plan to double capacity to 27m passengers by 2009. Shanghai has even bigger plans. A second runway opened last year at its futuristic Pudong airport. The facility, which can handle 35 million passengers a year, is in the midst of an expansion plan to quadruple the number of terminals and handle 80 million.

The biggest is the Beijing Capital International Airport Terminal 3, designed by British architect Norman Foster. The huge building site, home to 10,000 workers, is the first thing that most visitors to the capital see when they touch down. Due for completion in time for the 2008 Olympics, its operators say it will cover 420,000 square metres, overtaking Hong Kong and Heathrow as the biggest airport building in the world.

To the concern of safety officials, filling airports with passengers is a lot easier than filling cockpits with qualified pilots. At 0.42 accidents per 1m flight miles, China's safety record is better than the average, but officials warn that the lack of pilots could pose new risks. China has 11,000 registered pilots. With the growth in traffic it is estimated that it will need 1,000 more every year, but the Civil Aviation Flight University of China, the main training school, trains only 600. Airline companies are increasingly looking overseas. Yesterday, Air China announced plans to recruit its first foreign pilots.

Addicted to flying

Since 2000, aviation passenger numbers in China have more than doubled to 138 million

In the same period, the fleet of aircraft owned by major carriers has increased by 336 to 863

Every day, there are more than 11,000 take-offs and landings in China

Beijing is building the world's biggest airport terminal, which is due to be completed in time for the 2008 Olympics

....."likely to alarm environmentalists....."

Yes. Well. It's not making the atmospheric research community too happy, either.

[Boomer Chick]

Curbs on Dust in the West Targeted
By Janet Wilson
The Los Angeles Times



Wednesday 18 January 2006 The EPA wants to drop the clean-air rules for rural areas. An official with the air quality district for Owens Valley calls it "outrageous."

Bush administration officials are moving to strip significant clean-air protections from broad areas of California and other Western states, saying that rural areas should no longer have to meet federal rules for windblown clouds of dust, and that mining and farming operations also should be exempt.

The proposed rules were published in the Federal Register on Tuesday by the US Environmental Protection Agency. They would become final later this year after a public comment period.

In contrast to rural areas, the proposal would toughen rules on so-called coarse particulates in urban areas, including parts of Southern California. In Riverside and San Bernardino counties, dust from roads and construction sites has been a major contributor to smog. That part of the proposal has not been a subject of major controversy.

The pullback in rural areas, which drew praise from the mining industry and condemnation from air regulators and environmentalists, would particularly affect places such as the Owens Valley, which has the worst dust storms in the nation - a product of Los Angeles' draining of Owens Lake. The head of the regional air pollution control agency there called the administration's proposal "outrageous."

Although the rule would apply nationwide, its greatest impact would be in the Western states because the West has much larger rural areas and because dust is a greater concern in arid regions.

In a written statement to The Times, EPA spokesman John Millett said the new rule was based on "thorough consideration of thousands of studies of the health effects of particulate matter."

"The evidence to date does not support a national air quality standard that would cover situations where most coarse particles in the air come from sources like windblown dust and soils, agricultural sources and mining sources."

Millett said the EPA's science advisory panel supported the policy. But the advisory commission's report to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson showed a difference of opinion among members.

Some said the EPA should continue to regulate dust in rural areas. And all panelists said the EPA should continue to monitor the level of particles. Under the proposal, the EPA would stop monitoring in rural areas.

California air pollution regulators disputed the EPA position.

"They're saying that what's in windblown dust and soil, what's being emitted from dirt, basically, is not bad for you. And we just don't know that," said Richard Bode, chief of the Health and Exposure Assessment Branch of the California Air Resources Board.

State air board officials said they were particularly concerned that the change in federal policy could harm air quality in the Owens Valley and three other parts of the state: the Salton Sea, where a water diversion program is set to begin that could create new air pollution headaches; northern Sacramento County; and the Calexico border region.

All four areas have levels of dust that sometimes violate current federal rules but would be exempt under the proposal because they are rural.

Under the plan, the EPA would continue to regulate so-called fine particulate matter - tiny particles from soot and other sources that can penetrate deep into the lungs. Those particles are closely tied to truck traffic and have become a major problem in Southern California.

In rural areas, regulation of coarse particles would fall to individual states. California is the only state with its own rule. And even in California, air regulators said, the absence of federal rules would weaken their ability to force industries to clean up.

"What EPA has done is unprecedented" by giving exemptions for certain parts of the country and certain industries, said William Becker, executive director of an association representing state and local air pollution control officials across the United States. Exempting farming and mining "ties the hands of most states," he said.

Ted Schade, head of the Great Basin Unified Air Pollution Control District, which oversees air quality at Owens and Mono lakes, called the EPA proposal "a real slap in the face."

Federal regulations have more teeth than state rules, carrying the possibility of fines for polluters and a loss of transportation funds for state governments if pollution levels are not brought down, Schade and state air regulators said.

The administration's move "would take away that federal hammer," Schade said.

Schade said that it was unfair to eliminate protections for more sparsely populated areas, and that federal regulators appeared to be ignoring visitors to four national parks and three wilderness areas that are sometimes hit by dust storms that start around Owens Lake.

He and others disputed the EPA's contention that health studies have shown inconclusively that large-particle dust from mining or agriculture is dangerous. In some parts of the West, including the Owens Valley, the soil contains arsenic, sulfur compounds and toxic metals that can make dust clouds a potential health hazard.

Air regulators cited studies in the Coachella Valley and elsewhere that have shown that coarse dust can clog lungs and cause asthma, heart disease and other health problems. They said that although fewer studies had been done in rural areas than in urban regions, the lack of data should be a reason to maintain standards and continue studies, not eliminate the rules.

In August, the California Air Resources Board wrote to the EPA to object to a draft of the current proposal.

"We do not agree ... that the available evidence is adequate to conclude there are few, if any, adverse health effects associated with coarse particles originating in rural areas," the California regulators wrote. "Although there are only a few studies to date ... there is sufficient evidence to conclude they can induce adverse effects."

Both industry and environmental groups have sued the EPA in the past over dust and soot rules. Dr. John Balbus, who works for Environmental Defense, a national environmental organization, said his group would evaluate its options.

"Dust is dust. If you're doing agriculture in an area with high natural dust, you can have problems. If you're doing spraying of pesticides, and using cyanide in mining, they can be toxic too ... in dust," Balbus said.

Luke Popovich, a spokesman for the National Mining Assn., said that the Clinton and Bush administrations had endorsed exemptions for the industry because mining emits few coarse particulates.

"It's such a negligible impact given the overall sources," he said.

"We're talking about, largely, clouds of dust raised at mining sites deep in the middle of nowhere by haul trucks. These hardly constitute a threat to public health. We think the country's got far, far bigger problems to worry about." In addition to the 90-day public comment period, the EPA will hold three public hearings on the proposed rules, including one on an unspecified date in February in San Francisco. The agency is under court order to complete work on particulate standards by Sept. 27.

-------
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/012006EB.shtml

[foot_soldier]

February 15, 2006

China plans to double air traffic with 100 new aircraft a year
http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1709748,00.html

China's aviation industry will buy 100 new jetliners and recruit 1,000 pilots every year for the next five years, regulators announced yesterday in a plan to more than double air traffic. The target will make China second only to the US in terms of flights and is likely to alarm environmentalists and air safety campaigners even as it delights Boeing and Airbus executives. It is estimated that air traffic is already responsible for 10% of global warming because jet emissions linger.

Senior officials from the General Administration of Civil Aviation of China (GACAC) admitted the expansion plan would put a strain on operators. "We have felt that we are walking on thin ice in safety management," said Gao Hongfeng, GACAC deputy director in announcing the new plans. "There are over 5,000 flights every day and more than 11,000 takeoffs and landings in airports, therefore the pressure on safety is very high."

China is already the fastest growing aviation market in the world. According to the government, air traffic has doubled in the past five years. Since 2000, passenger numbers have risen by 105% to 138 million a year and the combined fleet of the country's air companies rose to 863 planes from 527.

Dozens of cities boast new airports, such as the $2bn Guangzhou mega-terminal that opened last year as the first part of a two-stage plan to double capacity to 27m passengers by 2009. Shanghai has even bigger plans. A second runway opened last year at its futuristic Pudong airport. The facility, which can handle 35 million passengers a year, is in the midst of an expansion plan to quadruple the number of terminals and handle 80 million.

The biggest is the Beijing Capital International Airport Terminal 3, designed by British architect Norman Foster. The huge building site, home to 10,000 workers, is the first thing that most visitors to the capital see when they touch down. Due for completion in time for the 2008 Olympics, its operators say it will cover 420,000 square metres, overtaking Hong Kong and Heathrow as the biggest airport building in the world.

To the concern of safety officials, filling airports with passengers is a lot easier than filling cockpits with qualified pilots. At 0.42 accidents per 1m flight miles, China's safety record is better than the average, but officials warn that the lack of pilots could pose new risks. China has 11,000 registered pilots. With the growth in traffic it is estimated that it will need 1,000 more every year, but the Civil Aviation Flight University of China, the main training school, trains only 600. Airline companies are increasingly looking overseas. Yesterday, Air China announced plans to recruit its first foreign pilots.

Addicted to flying

Since 2000, aviation passenger numbers in China have more than doubled to 138 million

In the same period, the fleet of aircraft owned by major carriers has increased by 336 to 863

Every day, there are more than 11,000 take-offs and landings in China

Beijing is building the world's biggest airport terminal, which is due to be completed in time for the 2008 Olympics

....."likely to alarm environmentalists....."

Yes. Well. It's not making the atmospheric research community too happy, either.
.

[Boomer Chick]

There may be some hope that citizens and scientists in China, together, may combine to effect environmental improvements as their economy grows. If it's economically advantageous the inclusion of environmental checks and balances will be more likely. China's air traffic as well as industrial pollutants contribute to their overall eco-footprint.

China's Pollution Pushes Peasants to Action
By Lindsay Beck
Reuters


Friday 03 February 2006

Xinchang, China - Mrs. Song never had much interest in politics but when factory pollution began poisoning well water and killing crops, the young mother got angry.

After an industrial park housing several chemical plants went up on the outskirts of her town in China's wealthy, coastal province of Zhejiang the water became undrinkable.

Then crops began producing vegetables that were unfit to eat. Residents say rates of cancer sky-rocketed and Song says her 5-year-old son is prone to frequent lung infections.

"We're just regular people and don't understand other issues. But this affected us personally, our lives," said Song.

She asked that her real name not be used for fear of trouble with authorities, and spoke with a group of other residents in a nearby town to avoid the attention of local officials.

After authorities had turned a deaf ear to years of petitions to stop the chemical factories, residents of Huashui took action, blockading the road to the factory complex to halt production.

"Give back the land, I want health! Give back the land, I want descendants! Give back the land, I want food to eat! Give back the land, I want an environment!" the protesters shouted.

When two elderly women were killed as police struggled to disperse the crowd, the blockade turned into a riot involving up to 30,000 people and requiring thousands of police to quell it.

After decades of all-out economic growth, China now has 20 of the world's 30 most polluted cities, the World Bank says. An estimated 300 million nationwide have no access to clean water.

But as the Zhejiang protest and others like it show, China's environmental woes are no longer just a matter of poisoned rivers and smoggy skies - they are becoming a trigger for the kind of social unrest the Communist government is at pains to avoid.

Toxic Waste

In Xinchang, where peasant riots last year forced closure of the Jingxin Pharmaceutical Company, residents lived more than decade with a river unable to sustain fish and shrimps and a population with so many liver problems they say the army rejected recruits from their village.

Down the road from the Jingxin plant, Lao Wang leans out of the back window of her small restaurant, pointing towards the factory a few hundred metres away.

"You should have smelt it in the summer. There was waste water flowing all down here," she said, gesturing toward the river running past and holding her nose.

In Pingnan County in southern Fujian province, more than 1,700 residents are plaintiffs in a case against a polluting chemical factory in what China's Caijing magazine says is the world's largest class-action environmental lawsuit to date.

With pollution problems cutting to the heart of everyday life for millions of Chinese, analysts say the link with popular protests is likely to grow.

"As the impact on human health becomes more obvious and widespread, it is leading to greater political mobilisation and social unrest from those citizens who suffer the most," Nathan Nankivell, a researcher at Canada's Department of National Defence, wrote in a recent report.

Smokestacks and Cranes

Chinese scholar Lang Youxing, who has followed the cases in Zhejiang, says the environmental protests do not yet count as a social movement.

"Presently, China's environmental resistance hasn't developed into a concept of social justice, it's still within the scope of safeguarding personal rights and interests," he wrote in a study of the two protests.

But that is likely to bring little comfort to a government facing environmental degradation that shows no sign of abating and struggling to manage ever larger and more frequent protests.

Officials have voiced concern about pollution, but environmental controls have taken a back seat to efforts to develop the economy.

In January, national environment chief Zhou Shengxian said about 100 Chinese chemical plants posed safety hazards, an admission that came just months after an explosion at one such plant poisoned the Songhua River, the source of drinking water for millions in the northeast.

Zhejiang residents said pollution was the first issue that had galvanised them into action, despite knowing that the consequences for involvement in such protests could be jail.

But they said that if they had no political interest before, they could not stand by and ignore what was affecting their lives, their incomes and the health of their children.

"If the environmental pollution impacts the production of crops and farmers' lives, of course you won't be able to preserve stability," said Lao Wang.

Song looks up from her tea and out of the window, where smokestacks and construction cranes dot the horizon. "If the environment is not protected, how can people exist?"

[Boomer Chick]

And to read more articles on the Environment, please visit the t r u t h o u t environment page (http://www.truthout.org/environment.shtml).



Go to Original (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/23/politics/23environment.html)

United States Ranks 28th on Environment, a New Study Says
By Felicity Barringer
The New York Times

Monday 23 January 2006

Washington - A pilot nation-by-nation study of environmental performance shows that just six nations - led by New Zealand, followed by five from Northern Europe - have achieved 85 percent or better success in meeting a set of critical environmental goals ranging from clean drinking water and low ozone levels to sustainable fisheries and low greenhouse gas emissions.

The study, jointly produced by Yale and Columbia Universities, ranked the United States 28th over all, behind most of Western Europe, Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, Costa Rica and Chile, but ahead of Russia and South Korea.

The bottom half of the rankings is largely filled with the countries of Africa and Central and South Asia. Pakistan and India both rank among the 20 lowest-scoring countries, with overall success rates of 41.1 percent and 47.7 percent, respectively.

The pilot study, called the 2006 Environmental Performance Index, has been reviewed by specialists both in the United States and internationally.

Using a new variant of the methodology the two universities have applied in their Environmental Sustainability Index, produced in four previous years, the study was intended to focus more attention on how various governments have played the environmental hands they have been dealt, said Daniel C. Esty, the director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy and an author of the report.

The earlier sustainability measurements "tell you something about long-term trajectories," Mr. Esty said. "We think this tool has a much greater application in the policy context."

For instance, Britain ranked 65th in last year's sustainability index, but 5th in the latest study, among the 133 nations measured. Among the reasons for the earlier low ranking, Mr. Esty said, was that "they cut down almost all their trees 500 years ago and before," something that modern British governments could not control.

The 16 indicators used in the latest study, the report says, provide "a powerful tool for evaluating environmental investments and improving policy results."

The report will be issued during the World Economic Forum, an annual conclave of business and political leaders which meets in Davos, Switzerland, this week. Mr. Esty said the report was also intended as a tool to help monitor progress on the environmental issues included among the Millennium Development goals adopted by 189 nations at the United Nations Millennium Summit.

"It's like holding up a mirror and having someone help you see what you couldn't see before," he said. But the report acknowledges "serious data gaps" that resulted in leaving more than 65 countries out of the rankings. In addition, some thorny methodological issues, like how to measure land degradation or loss of wetlands, have no widely accepted solutions, the report noted, and the authors used the best measures they had available.

Like the sustainability index produced last year, the pilot study ranks countries within their geographic peer groups, so that nations in arid regions or tropical ones can be measured against one another. So Belgium's overall ranking of 39, with a 75.9 percent score, can be viewed by region and by issue. Belgium ranks last, for instance, among European countries in protection of its water resources.

Air quality rankings tend to favor less industrialized nations like Uganda, Gabon, Ecuador and Sri Lanka. Among the countries of the Americas, the United States ranks in the bottom third on this scale.

In the Americas, the United States is at the bottom of the scale measuring agricultural, forest and fisheries management, in part because the study is weighted against countries with a high level of crop subsidies. The study's authors say that such subsidies "in agriculture, fisheries and energy sectors have been shown to have negative impacts on resource use and management practices."

In the area of environmental health, the study measured such factors as sanitation, lead exposure and indoor air pollution, a particular concern in the least developed countries, where indoor home fires may be common. In those measures, the richest countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, France, Britain, Ireland and the countries of Northern and Central Europe score near 100 percent.

On the same scale, the poorest countries fared worst, with 32 of 37 sub-Saharan African nations, along with Bangladesh, Haiti, Yemen, Tajikistan, Laos, Cambodia and Papua New Guinea, scoring at or below 40 percent. Chad and Niger rank last in the world, with scores of 0 percent and 1 percent, respectively.

"In the zone we capture as the field of play, they're at the very bottom," Mr. Esty said. "It doesn't mean that nobody there has a toilet. It means a very, very small percent do."

The energy sustainability portion of the index factors national wealth into measurements of energy efficiency and greenhouse-gas emissions. Nonetheless, all but three of the top 25 spots in the worldwide rankings are occupied by countries in economic distress, including Uganda, Chad and Myanmar. Switzerland, Costa Rica and Peru are the exceptions.

The study's definition of renewable energy resources does not include nuclear power - in part, Mr. Esty said, because countries with a high proportion of nuclear-fueled energy, like Japan, the Czech Republic and France, reaped the benefits of their energy choices by earning high rankings on the study's other scales, like the air quality index measuring particulate matter.

To create another scale that disproportionately favored nuclear-energy users would have undermined the overall reliability of the study, he said. As a result, the renewable-energy rankings tilt heavily toward countries reliant on hydropower, like tiny Bhutan.

The study shows that annual carbon dioxide emissions, measured as metric tons per $1 million of gross domestic product, average about 363 tons. North Korea, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Mongolia rank at the bottom of the scale, with amounts ranging from Mongolia's 1,992 tons to North Korea's 4,859 tons. Carbon dioxide emissions from nations with rapid economic expansion, like China and India, are more than double the world average (731 tons and 621 tons, respectively). The United States, at 171 tons per $1 million of gross domestic product, ranks well behind some other nations in the Group of 8, the major industrial powers - France (56), Japan (57), Germany (80) and Britain (118) - but close to Canada (168), ahead of Australia (209) and far ahead of Russia (914).

-------

[foot_soldier]

February 8, 2006
Lapierre to push open-skies treaty with U.S.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20050208/lapierre_us_airlines_050208?s_name=&no_ads=

OTTAWA — Transport Minister Jean Lapierre says he intends to move "faster than you think" toward a deal with the United States that would allow American airlines to carry passengers between Canadian cities.

Lapierre plans to meet with his U.S. counterpart in about two weeks to kickstart negotiations toward a so-called open-skies treaty with Washington.

The travelling public and opposition politicians seem open to the idea of allowing U.S. airlines to compete with Canadian airlines on routes between Canadian cities, Lapierre said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

Current rules permit foreign carriers to fly in and out of Canada but forbid them flying between communities, such as Toronto-Vancouver or Halifax-Montreal.

An open-skies deal would also allow Canadian carriers to fly between American cities.

"I may be moving faster than you think," said Lapierre, who represents a riding in Montreal, home base for Air Canada, the country's biggest airline.

"I have a great opportunity because we're meeting (Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta) . . . in Ottawa," he added.

"At this time, I don't feel any opposition . . . I feel a consensus in the country that we could move."

Mineta is expected in Ottawa on Feb. 24 to speak at a conference marking the 10th anniversary of the current Canada-U.S. air services agreement. He's also scheduled to meet with Lapierre that day.

An open-skies deal that adds price competition could be good news for budget-conscious travellers.

But it's not clear how much progress they'll make since there haven't been any preliminary talks yet on the issue, said an official with the U.S. government.

"How far could we go in opening up our markets to Canada and how far would Canada go to opening up its markets to us?," said the official.

"At this point, we don't know and I don't think Canada knows because we haven't sat down and actually had a negotiation."

The timing also may be difficult. Air Canada only recently emerged from bankruptcy protection.

And industry observers have said the American airline industry - struggling with huge debts, high fuel prices and high labour costs - would oppose giving Canadian competitors full access to their market.

Lapierre first talked about an open-skies treaty last fall, saying he wanted the all-party Commons committee on transport to look into its feasibility.

But the committee didn't bite, said Lapierre.

"If there's no problem, if I can interpret that as a green light, then I'm ready to go."

Lapierre just hasn't been listening to opposition concerns, says New Democrat MP Bev Desjarlais, a longtime member of the transport committee since the tumultuous days when Air Canada first took over Canadian Airlines and its crippling debt.

That contributed to huge financial problems that drove the Montreal-based carrier into bankruptcy protection last year.
"We've been very clear that we are not in favour of open skies," said Desjarlais.

"Open skies will see a situation where we will have less and less service going to small communities," she said.

It would also "destabilize" an already troubled industry throughout North American, she added.

Critics of open skies have argued that Canadian carriers will have trouble competing if large American airlines are permitted to fly within this country.

It's feared they would cherry-pick only the most lucrative popular routes, such as Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal or Toronto-Calgary. Such new competition would hurt domestic carriers, making them even less likely to serve smaller communities into smaller cities that already complain they're already underserved.

Still Air Canada has said it favours open skies, so long as the deal is completely reciprocal, allowing it to fly between big American cities.

"It must be reciprocal or it's totally illogical and will defeat the Canadian industry. Whatever is done here has to be done on both sides of the border," Air Canada President Robert Milton said late last year.

[foot_soldier]

February 20, 2006
'Open skies' air treaty threat

--Draft pact curbs UK power to fight global warming
--Restricting night flights would need US approval
http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1713677,00.html

Britain could lose its ability to impose environmental taxes, restrictions and safeguards on airlines under a draft treaty between the EU and US which curtails the power of national governments. The draft treaty, meant to liberalise aviation, includes a little noticed clause requiring EU states to reach agreement with each other and with the US before taking measures to tackle noise or pollution from airlines.

The text of the draft "open skies" treaty, obtained by the Guardian, is likely to alarm environmental activists who argue that the seemingly unstoppable growth in air travel is among the main contributory factors to global warming. Aviation emissions rose by 12% last year and now account for about 11% of Britain's total greenhouse gas emissions - the fastest growing sector. The government's chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, has described global warming as a bigger threat to the world than global terrorism.

The revelations come amid campaigns by environmental protesters to halt expansion plans at several British airports, including Heathrow and Stansted. Yesterday a convoy of more than 100 cars toured some of the villages that would be affected if proposals to build a £2.7bn second runway at Stansted, in Essex, are approved.

Article 14 of the draft treaty encompasses any environmental measures which could have "possible adverse effects" on the free traffic of aircraft. It says that signatories to the treaty must "recognise that the costs and benefits of measures to protect the environment must be carefully weighed". The clause states that any disagreement between countries must be referred to a committee comprising governments, airports and airlines. If this fails to produce consensus, the issue is referred to a three-person international arbitration panel.

Industry sources say US negotiators insisted on the clause's inclusion. America has vigorously opposed taxes on aviation fuel, or a proposed emissions trading scheme, because of fears that any extra expense will cost jobs and push several of its airlines - already under bankruptcy protection - out of business. Whitehall insiders say the transport secretary, Alistair Darling, wants the environmental article changed. A spokesman for the Department for Transport said: "We wouldn't sign anything that meant we couldn't implement an emissions trading scheme."

The treaty, however, will be subject to a vote by EU member states requiring 65% of countries to approve it. Britain will have no veto, although a senior EU official offered a cautious response yesterday: "This is a draft. There is a lot that is not yet satisfactory to the European commission and there is plenty of time to amend it."

The phenomenal success of budget airlines such as Ryanair, easyJet and bmibaby has seen the number of people passing through Britain's airports soaring by 76% over a decade, to 215 million in 2004. Critics of the aviation industry argue that it is effectively subsidised because, unlike road or rail operators, airlines are not required to pay tax on fuel. Some activists have suggested levying a fee on every airline ticket, which would be tailored according to the emissions of the flight. The proposed treaty would make any such levy impossible without transatlantic agreement. The wording of the text is so broad that even future restrictions on night flights at Britain's airports could become difficult for the government to implement without US permission, because of the impact on incoming flights from America.

Steve Hounsham, a spokesman for the green campaign group Transport 2000, said: "If this goes through, we'll have sold out to America's airlines."

A senior executive at one leading airline said: "The environment was one of the big, big issues that the two sides discussed. The European commission are much more concerned about it, much more in favour of measures to mitigate the impact, than the Americans are."

Talks towards "open skies" have been motivated by a desire to throw open routes in America and Europe to foreign airlines. Under the proposed deal, any American carrier would be allowed to operate flights between European cities. Any operator would be able to fly from Heathrow to the US - a privilege presently reserved for four carriers: British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, United and American Airlines. In return, Europe wants the US to drop a law preventing foreigners from owning more than a 25% share in any of its airlines.

Tom Brake, the Liberal Democrat transport spokesman, said: "This could be a recipe for almost the permanent stalling of any environmental advances on aviation."

[foot_soldier]

Contrail cirrus aka aviation smog

Update: Holland
February 24, 2006
http://www.contrails.nl/contrails-2006-1/magicgallery/5overflow.htm

[foot_soldier]

Looks like Not Much of Anything's going to happen until That Magic Year, 2010, when, it is assumed, the existing petroleum conglomerate will have finally completed the process of positioning itself to co-opt and dominate the alternative energy sector...

March 1, 2006
UK Wants Transport Included in EU CO2 Trade Scheme
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/35367/story.htm

COPENHAGEN - Britain called on Monday for the inclusion of the transport sector in Europe's emissions trading scheme to help curb pollution and tackle climate change.
Britain has backed existing moves to bring aircraft into the scheme but Environment Minister Elliott Morley said the UK wanted further expansion to include land-based transport - one of the biggest polluters.

"Transport emissions are a big challenge, " Morley told a carbon markets conference. "There is no reason why the Emissions Trading Scheme should not be expanded to include surface transport emissions."

The emissions trading scheme was launched just over a year ago as the mainstay of the bloc's effort to meet its Kyoto Protocol goals.

The scheme imposes carbon dioxide emissions limits on about 12,000 factories and power stations but does not currently cover aircraft or other forms of transport.

EU government and major airlines including British Airways have backed the inclusion of aircraft in the scheme though discussions on expanding to the wider transport industry are at an early stage.

The European Commission, the trading system's administrator, is conducting a review of the scheme which could include expansion to other sectors.

But Commission official Olivia Hartridge said it was unlikely any big changes such as the inclusion of more industries would be possible until at least 2010.

Morley said the UK was also open to the idea of extending the scheme beyond CO2 to include other greenhouse gas emissions.

"We have an open mind on extending the trading scheme to other (greenhouse) gases," he said.

"I think we are prepared to explore this, there is a logic to extending to other gases in due course," he said.

Morley also signalled the UK was willing to look at introducing auction of CO2 allowances traded under the scheme. Under existing arrangements allowances are handed out free to industries covered by the scheme.

Critics argue that this hands the power industry a windfall as utilities pass the cost of allowances to consumers, sending power prices soaring.

Power stations are the biggest polluters covered by the scheme.

"There is a good deal of potential to explore the idea of auctioning in phase two (of the scheme 20089-2012)," said Morley.

REUTERS NEWS SERVICE

[foot_soldier]

March 2, 2006

Telescopes 'worthless' by 2050
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4755996.stm

Ground-based astronomy could be impossible in 40 years because of pollution from aircraft exhaust trails and climate change, an expert says.

Aircraft condensation trails - known as contrails - can dissipate, becoming indistinguishable from other clouds.

If trends in cheap air travel continue, says Professor Gerry Gilmore, the era of ground astronomy may come to an end much earlier than most had predicted.

Aircraft along with climate change will contribute to increased cloud cover.

The timescale is based on extrapolating air traffic growth figures. The BBC has learned that the calculations were made as part of preparations for an upcoming observatory project called the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT).

The ELT is intended to probe planets around nearby stars and look for extremely faint objects in the Universe.

Vision impaired

"It is already clear that the lifetime of large ground-based telescopes is finite and is set by global warming," Professor Gilmore, from Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy, told reporters recently in London.

"There are two factors. Climate change is increasing the amount of cloud cover globally. The second factor is cheap air travel.

"You get these contrails from the jets. The rate at which they're expanding in terms of their fractional cover of the stratosphere is so large that if predictions are right, in 40 years it won't be worth having telescopes on Earth anymore - it's that soon.

"You either give up your cheap trips to Majorca, or you give up astronomy. You can't do both."

Climate change is also expected to increase the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere through evaporation, contributing to overall cloudiness. The increase in cloud cover would affect both optical and infrared astronomy, which would have to be carried out from space.

Radio astronomy would continue to be ground-based.

Identical appearance

Contrails often present little more than a transient nuisance to astronomers; but when certain weather conditions prevail, they can break to look like natural clouds.

Holger Pederson, an astronomer at the Nils Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark, who has studied contrails, explained: "You can recognise the jet contrails when they are young. So you can stop your observation and then restart as soon as the contrail has passed the field of view of the telescope.

"Worse is when the contrails last for hours. Then they degrade into something you can hardly distinguish from natural cirrus clouds."

Dr Hermann Mannstein, of the German Aerospace Centre (DLR), agreed astronomy would become more difficult, but said there was an upper limit on the contrail problem.

Contrails form where the air is highly saturated with ice particles, but will not form if the air is too dry.

"You don't clog the whole sky. You have a certain proportion of the sky, in time and space, that can be affected," he said.

Restriction zones

But Professor Gilmore countered: "There are places where you get relatively fewer clouds - that's where we put our telescopes - but there is nowhere on Earth that you don't get clouds and aeroplanes.

"Already, around the major observatories, there are local laws to prevent aeroplanes flying within quite large distances," he told the BBC News website.

Professor Gilmore said sites where observatories are located, such as the Canary Islands, Hawaii and South America, are also attractive holiday destinations, and likely centres for future air traffic growth.

He added that the projections did not factor in the effects of global warming, which are likely to exacerbate the problem.

Mr Pederson said too few satellites built up image data on how contrails evolved over time.

"We may underestimate the amount of contrail-derived cirrus clouds," he said.

"We know from satellite imagery that clusters of contrails can last for two days. If carried by the upper jet stream through the troposphere, they can travel hundreds of kilometres."

There are several concepts under consideration for the European ELT, but the preferred design seems to be converging on a telescope that is some 30-60m in diameter.

A location has not been decided; but, despite the difficulties of access, Antarctica may become an option. The icy region has relatively clear skies, with a climate that is somewhat separate from other continents, and, crucially, is free from overflying commercial jets.

[foot_soldier]

October 10, 2004

Air travel sets a new course for green skies
http://news.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=1179352004

THEY are a potent symbol of the jet age and a form of aerial artistry that decorates clear blue skies. With the massive rise in global air traffic, high-altitude aircraft condensation trails - known as contrails - are an increasingly familiar sight.

But airline passengers now face delays and longer flights under plans to reroute planes hundreds of miles around the giant weather systems that lead to contrail formation.

Scientific studies have shown that when contrails merge together they form the cirrus clouds that add to global warming. Eurocontrol, the Brussels-based European air safety body, is now working on plans to divert aircraft to prevent contrails forming.

They arise when the water vapour from hot aircraft exhausts mixes with the cool air of the upper atmosphere, about 32,000ft above the Earth’s surface. They can persist for several days. Meteorologists believe that by avoiding the huge patches of cold, damp air that produce contrails, pilots can reduce the air industry’s environmental impact.

Critics, however, argue that rerouting aircraft will simply lead to aircraft burning more fuel and cancel out any environmental benefits.

Eurocontrol, the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation, confirmed it was investigating the impact contrails have on global warming and measures to reduce their effect.

Andrew Watt, Eurocontrol’s environment domain manager, said: "The scientific research community is telling us that contrails have a potentially bigger greenhouse gas effect than previously thought.

"If the regulators decide this is a problem, we will have to look at our flight planning options. We could re-route aircraft. But research is still needed to look at the costs and benefits, and the trade-offs between fuel burn, emissions, mileage or delays to the passengers."

A study by Nasa scientists published in April concluded that contrails may have been the biggest factor in a rise in average temperatures across the US, where air travel is much more common, between 1975 and 1994.

Eurocontrol is now working with the European Space Agency on using satellite images to map contrail formation. Air traffic controllers will be able to use the information to ask airline pilots not to enter affected areas.

The aviation industry is under pressure to improve its environmental record because of the rapid expansion of air travel. Air traffic is expected to increase six-fold globally by 2050.

Some industry critics say that the formation of contrails may be a bigger contributor to global warming than the carbon dioxide emissions caused by the burning of aviation fuel.

Tam Dalyell, the MP for Linlithgow, and a long-standing critic of the growing impact air traffic has on climate change, said: "The idea of diverting flights is not something that should be dismissed."

However, air traffic control expert Chris Stock said re-routing flights to avoid contrails would raise concerns if implemented over Europe.

Stock, editor of The Controller - the journal of the International Federation of Air Traffic Controllers’ Associations - said: "The problem is that across the UK and central Europe the density of air traffic is so heavy, with many extremely short flights of less than 190 miles.

"In high-intensity airspace, a diversion would be a considerable problem. However, if you cross the Atlantic you can fly up towards the North Pole, or down towards the Azores, and still end up in the right place."

Roger Wiltshire, secretary-general of the British Air Transport Association, said UK airlines would not be persuaded to change flight routes until they were convinced there would be an environmental gain. "It would be rash to go ahead and develop new operating procedures, particularly as it would burn more fuel," he said.

Environment groups said they welcomed attempts to reduce the effects of global warming, but argued that more drastic measures were needed.

Dr Dan Barlow, head of research at Friends of the Earth Scotland, said: "Such discussions are nothing but a distraction from the real issue of managing aviation demand. This should be done by introducing an aviation fuel tax."

[halva]

Looks like Not Much of Anything's going to happen until That Magic Year, 2010, when, it is assumed, the existing petroleum conglomerate will have finally completed the process of positioning itself to co-opt and dominate the alternative energy sector...

Mike Ruppert has something to add to this discussion. Unfortunately it's in a "pay-as-you-read" article.
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/030706_woolseys_sheep_summary.shtml

but here is an extract:
March 7, 2006 1500 PST (FTW) – ASHLAND - "Recently, former CIA Director James Woolsey spoke to an enthusiastic crowd of tree huggers, liberals, lefties and Peak Oilists in Eugene, Oregon. According to the following story, they loved him, but there is real danger here. I know a lot about Jim Woolsey. I have interviewed him in person. He is no friend to liberals, progressives, lefties, tree huggers or Peak Oilists. He is no friend of conservatives or libertarians who are aware of Peak Oil and resource depletion either. He is no friend of sustainability or of the earth. In fact, James Woolsey is a friend of corporations and major banks. Aside from the unworkable solutions listed in the following story from Eugene’s Register Guard, (“biofuels, such as soy-based diesel or ethanol made from agricultural products like prairie grass”) Woolsey’s biofuels solutions are of direct and immediate benefit to agribiz giants like Archer Daniels Midland and Monsanto, not to mention major banking institutions. You can bet your bottom dollar (maybe one of your last) that behind these comfy-cozy, liberal-lefty, feel good, green solutions are going to come huge corporate windfalls for major corporations. What’s worse, and what must be grasped by so-called green activists and Peak Oilists, is that even non-edible plant waste must be returned to the soil and mulched. That is the only way carbon and other nutrients get returned to the soil."

[foot_soldier]

.....Woolsey’s biofuels solutions are of direct and immediate benefit to agribiz giants like Archer Daniels Midland and Monsanto, not to mention major banking institutions.....
Yes. Just as the Feed 'Em Genetically-Modified Solution is of "direct and immediate benefit" to entities such as ADM, Monsanto, etc.

Informed, observant human beings understand these things and would prefer to work on solutions that are of "direct and immediate benefit" to their local communities.

[foot_soldier]

This thread was set up to look at one single, specific issue - the issue of normal contrails and the impact of the continually expanding aviation sector on the global atmosphere. This one single, specific problem is unfortunately not going to go away whatever else is going on with Earth's atmosphere.
.

[halva]

Still, the aviation emissions campaign could acquire an altogether different dynamic if people involved in it could summon the courage and honesty to examine the possibility that the emissions cannot all be put into the same legally 'inoffensive' catego