Invisible Plane

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 22 July 2008 12:45:18

There was a story in yesterday's Times regarding the government's plans for a third runway at Heathrow. In order to satisfy the environmental constraints on increasing flights out of Heathrow the British Airports Authority came up with a great wheeze.

The government told them that they had to prove that the runway would not increase noise pollution or break EEC environmental limits. In fact they sent back the BAA's figures several times and asked them to lower the limits.

How did they do this?

They decided that the best way was to introduce twin engined Jumbo Jets - Boeing or Airbus varieties. This then allowed them to prove that noise and environmental damage would actuaaly fall, in line with EEC targets and government promises.

There was only one problem...

There are no twin engined Jumbos. There are no plans for a twin engined Jumbo. The engine manufacturers have not begun to design such engines and have no plans to do so. In fact, the engines would need to be much larger than those in production today - they'd have to be powerful enough to do the work of 2 current engines each. Look at the sizer of an Airbus 380 engine and you'll see how hard this will be - remember the 380 still needs 4.

So the government are basing their airport expansion plans on flawed and impossible figures. This is much the same as their desire not to allow planning for more High Speed Train Lines because they do not believe that the environmental costs would be worth the price.

Contrast this with our Continental neighbours. Here high speed trains are already replacing short haul airline services. So much so, that Air France are looking to set up their own train services in order to compete.

Trains have already replaced filghts between Northern and Southern France and the Paris/Brussels route has followed. Now it looks like Strasbourg will be next.

Here we have a govenment that says that there is no provable case that trains are more environmentally friendly enough to justify new high speed links. Our Transport Minister is a declared "modability agnostic", in that he sees no benefit in championing one mode over the other.

Yet this government has set, and signed up too, increasingly higher targets for reducing our Carbon Footprint and yet fails to do the required work to reduce our pollution. Maybe they think that they don't need too as it'll be a problem for the next government and not them.

Herself - I did not break Shouty Boy; he had a bad chest when I got him. Just like his lung collapsing, when he was born, had nothing to do with me.

History Today:

Now one answered yesterday's question. Alan Shepherd was the only man to play golf on the moon.

1398: Edward I defeats the Scots, under William Wallace at the Battle of Falkirk. Poor Wallace, not only was he betrayed by Scottish noblemen (including Robert The Bruce) and later hung, drawn and quartered but he had to suffer at the hands of Mel Gibsons' revisionist film. It was good though.

1812: A Wellington boot defeats the French at the Battle of Salamanca.

1847: The Mormons set up their headquarters in Salt Lake City.

1934: John Dillinger is shot by the FBI outside a cinema in Chicago - who played him in the film?

1944: The "Bretton Woods" conference of the United Nations created the World Bank and the IMF. And you thought that the Mission Impossible fims were fiction...

1986: MP's vote to abolish corporal punishment in state schools.

2003: Uday and Qusay Hussein, Saddam's sons, were killed in a gun battle with US troops in Northern Iraq.