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Living within a living, loving planet
Archive for May 17, 2013
We came, we saw and we conquered.
May 17th
We look down upon our hands and they are covered in blood. And then we remember being told that we have been made in the image of God.
Genesis 1:28
“And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”
Slow Travel
May 17th
Air Passenger Travel
1 May 2013
Iata: Air travel rises by 5.9% worldwide
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22369230
“The International Air Transport Association (Iata) says air passenger travel grew by 5.9% in March compared with a year earlier, boosted by emerging markets.”
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“I was intrigued to read earlier this month a thoughtful essay by leading British climate scientist Kevin Anderson arguing, in terms that will sound very familiar to regular readers of The Archdruid Report, that the failure of climate change activism to make any headway in changing people’s behavior may have more than a little to do with the fact that the people who are urging such changes aren’t making them themselves.”
John Michael Greer’s blog: WEDNESDAY, MAY 15, 2013 http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.co.uk/
Comment by Sky McCain
Although I am aware that air travel and air shipping is on the increase, I felt I needed to gather some facts, the latest if possible. We could guess that air travel was not on the wane nor diminished through at least two indicators. One, noting the huge success of an air show in the UK last year and a recent article on the increased profits of EADS who own Airbus, a successful competitor of Boeing Aerospace. Middle Eastern and Far Eastern countries are buying up aircraft like they were so many corn chips. So are people taking climate change seriously and switching to Rail? By no means. Following is an indication and perhaps a reason why not. People fly because it is cheap and convenient. Some of the more popular holiday spots are on islands that take a lot of time and money to reach by ferry. There are no cut-rate ferry lines like Easyjet, JetBlue, Flybe or RyanAir.
Let us compare prices for a round-trip from London to Heraklion, Crete
London Heathrow round-trip to Heraklion, Crete 122.99 plus £62.17 leaving at midnight! £115 leaving at 2PM. Lowest price £185.16
Flying Easyjet you only have to get to Heathrow.
To go by Train and Ferry, however is a vastly different story. These are round trip estimates.
1st Eurostar London to Paris £150
2nd Paris sleeper [1 berth] to Venice £424
3rd Ferry to Patras £424
4th Bus to Pireaus approx. £25
5th Ferry Pireaus round-trip Heraklion, Crete £224.77
So you see, we have a 3 day journey cost, not including meals totalling £1,023 That’s easily 5 times the cost for your flight holiday in Heraklion
We go a little cheaper by visiting off-season but pay at least 4 times more for staying out of the air. Not many people feel that strongly about staying out of the air unless to visit overseas close family.
Some statistics
There have been continual increases in travel & freight. For instance,
“From 1992 to 2005, passenger kilometers increased 5.2% per year, even with the disruptions of 9/11 and two significant wars. During the first three quarters of 2010, air travel markets expanded at an annualized rate approaching 10%. This is similar to the rate seen in the rapid expansion prior to the recession.”
“In a 2008 presentation[6] and paper [20] Professor Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research showed how continued aviation growth in the UK threatens the ability of that nation to meet CO2 emission reduction goals necessary to contain the century-end temperature increase to even 4 or 6C° …at the UK’s historic annual emission growth rate of 7%. Beyond 2012 if the growth rate were reduced to 3% yearly, carbon emissions in 2030 would be 28 MT, which is 70% of the UK’s entire carbon emissions budget that year for all sectors of society.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_aviation
Skeptical Science flattens deniers
May 17th
This article is fully supported with links to the supporting data. Hopefully, John Cook has helped us all to utterly dismiss the misconstrued and sometimes utterly false claims of those anthropogenic climate change deniers. I for one am sick of hearing the drivel. I felt it necessary to read it in association with genetically modified food only to find that there were a few “scientists” who were paid to falsify and construe what they could find as detractions. I am aware that some of those same people are now employed to do the same shameless job with climate change. Much of the blame for the false impressions on this subject has to be placed with some of the “media” who give equal time to detractors as if there was an equal chance that they may be right. Most of us have learned that “the media” by and large are only interested in sales and care less about fairness, truth and the art of conveying news.
Unfortunately, so many people make up their minds based on false information and then proceed forever with a closed mind on the issue. That’s why character assassination is accomplished with a lie that gets published and then an apology printed on page 16 in small print. People tend to remember the lie and either never see the retraction or apology or will not read further. They “know” because they read it in the newspaper or some magazine. A good friend of mine taught me that whenever reading something controversial, stop and look into just who is doing the assertions. Find out who finances them – whom do they serve. Find out who tends to gain from their point of view. People with set opinions look for someone to agree with them and then crystalize on their false knowledge like a nut that must never be cracked to see if the kernel is edible.
Their lives are crammed with precious nuts that cannot feed them when the kernels are needed. By then it is too late and they have invested their vital energy in that which does not serve them. Surely it is normal that we change as we age, as we experience the new and different, as we suffer and recover from tragedy and disappointments. We learn to regularly examine our truth nuts, crack open a few to see if they are still serviceable.
The most difficult student is one who already knows. When you give people the impression that you are not completely sure about something then you get their take which, surprisingly, often reveals something you overlooked or misunderstood. Actually, most people feel positively stroked when they get an opportunity to explain their opinions. It is a win-win because they feel good about informing you and you might just learn something.
Hopefully, anthropogenic climate change deniers now lack an audience.
Daily KOS
THU MAY 16, 2013
Skeptical Science flattens deniers: 97% of peer-reviewed papers say humans causing climate change
By Meteor Blades
Nowadays, television news shows and newspaper and magazine articles that mention global warming rarely resort to outright lies like this grotesque piece of propaganda from Forbes.
“In fact, not all scientists do agree that humans are causing global warming. As researchers under the guidance of John Cook at Skeptical Science discovered in a “citizen science” survey of 11,944 peer-reviewed articles, 1.6 percent of the authors expressing an opinion on the subject rejected or were uncertain about the consensus that the earth is undergoing anthropogenic (human-generated) global warming (AGW). And 97.1 percent of the nearly 4,000 articles in which the author(s) took a position endorsed the AGW consensus. (The survey was published May 15 in Environmental Research Letters as an open access article)”
A video