PilotDAR wrote: ↑Mon Sep 30, 2019 6:01 am
Climate change is a reality. I have observed it as a long time observer of the weather I'm trying to fly in, and the two polar research airplanes whose system installations I approve to measure it have proven it to me objectively. I see that in the last 12 years since I have been approving the climate measuring equipment, that the climate has changed.
I'm not a chemist, nor meteorologist, so I'm not asserting why the climate is changing, I just observe that it is. I can understand how low lying populated areas feel threatened, having worked in the Malidves, among other low lying places (though the Dutch and Germans seem to have secured their lowlands against sea level rise, and storm surges).
In the mean time we humans, though perhaps only a portion of the cause, cannot declare being blameless either. We waste monumental amounts of fuel (and thus wasteful carbon emissions) doing things just to save a buck. When I purposefully selected a "product of Canada" wood flooring for my house, I intended to provide work for fellow Canadians, while buying Canadian resources. I later found that the near half ton of BC native wood flooring I bought was indeed a "product of the Canada", but the labour was not. The plants were shipped to China, milled and finished, and shipped back to BC. I was angry, my house floors have a needless carbon footprint - I would have paid the extra to keep the work in Canada, and prevent the carbon emissions, if I'd known that the product of Canada was really not the labour, and the carbon footprint of that half ton of wood.
Is flying my Cessna an hour less a week going to affect climate change? Not really. But the mindset of conserving rather than being wasteful is a start. As I mentored a young lady in her family 180HP PA-18 a few years back, I told her: "Enjoy this now, because by the time you're my age, society will not tolerate people burning 8 gallons per hour of leaded gasoline to go 90 MPH." We, in GA, are happily not in the sights of the environmentalists. But when they feel that they have "fixed" the other climate offenders, they will then set their sights on us. It would be wise in the mean time to think conservation and awareness anywhere we can. Yes, one day, electric planes will have some limited practicality - if we can afford them!
So let's at least act like we care about the environment we fly over, and appear to take some responsibility for minimizing our footprint. It can't hurt....