Greenpeace at it again ;-)

Years of watching them play silly buggers for the cameras instead of getting down to the serious business of stopping polluters etc through the courts. The ACA (or whatever they are called now) did it rather successfully for years and achieved a great deal, indeed they were the most successful environmental protection organisation ever, and no-one ever heard of them but then they weren't about self publicity. Has Greenpeace ever achieved anything other than publicity for itself?

In fact, according to SAS leaflet, a jet takes 4l/100km or more per passenger, when fully loaded. It's about the same as hauling all those people in V8 landrovers. So there is a strong point to claim all sorts of fuel and environment taxes, when driving 12-seater tdi at full load.

Kalev

Please don't forget though that the Gas Turbine engine uses the fuel in a much more efficient manner in the first place by utilising a far greater percentage of the heat energy as a propulsive force instead of losses to a radiator and exhaust, and the higher the altitude the greater its economy. Badger.

ISTR that the reason LR was singled out was that one of LR's Range Rover models is the top of the chart for bad environmental emissions, so they were targetted because they produce the current worst polluting vehicle of all commonly sold in the British markets.

It is of course an exercise in line-drawing, there are plenty of yank muscle cars out there or custom cars with hulking great big engines in that would be worse, also car importers dealing with american SUVs would also have worse cars, but these cars don't feature in the charts produced in the regular media so don't have the attention grabbing value. Greenpeace invading a car importer's showroom wouldn't make anything more than the local news, and people driving more conventional 4x4s in the British market wouldn't get tarred with the same brush.

On a pro rata scale, they don't pollute as much as small motor vehicles do and certainly don't "create one third of world air pollution" or anything remotely like it.

Sorry? I don't follow this logic, even within the context of the forgoing.

Whilst it is a fact that diesels emit more heavy particles in the immediate locality of the engine, though increasingly less so with the latest designs, as far as 'earth friendly' measurements are concerned it's more about carbon emissions and this respect diesels are significantly cleaner.

Lots of ironic dualities here. The commercial jet liner is actually very economical in pure financial terms, per person mile. This though has nothing to do with the environment. High altitude jets are widely accepted to be the most environmentally damaging transports of all time. As Richard points out they are emitting carbon pollution just where they can do the most damage. I think they should convert to advanced turbo props. It'll make air travel about twice as expensive but would reduce pollution by a huge degree. I've heard by as much as 85%.

The Canadian guy who started Green peace died recently. When he started the movement almost no one accept for a few concerned scientists and lots of hippies thought there was any environmental problem. Certainly the folks living in the South Pacific thought that French nuclear testing in their neck of the woods was undesirable. The Aussies and the Kiwis certainly respect Green Peace more than any other organisation for doing something about that. Whilst the incognisant sneering rhetoric of local red necks might attain high levels of consideration amongst their own crass peers it's interesting to note how the assertions of such so called hippy environmentalists as Green Peace and the Centre for Alternative Technology have suddenly been commandeered by the establishment.

Yes Green Peace, though faulty in some respects, just like all human organisations, have been a major factor in the tortuous process of waking the world up to the environmental dangers we are facing.

Really? What does it use for anti-fouling paint then?

TonyB

Yup - WHS...

In news: snipped-for-privacy@movingvision.demon.co.uk, Moving Vision blithered:

Evidence, please. How does a Turboprop differ from a high bypass Turbojet engine?

In article , TonyB writes

Good question. Can anyone provide an answer? If I had to bet though I'd put my money on them using something alternative to the usual mere expedience of the bean counters

In article , GbH writes

I'll leave it to someone else to trawl the Internet for appropriate links but as far as I understand from technical friends the problem with jet engines is that the burnt kerosine exhaust emits many times the carbon as the exhaust from the fundamentally different nature of a turbo prop. Perhaps someone with definitive, as opposed to merely wishful, knowledge of this would be kind enough to confirm the facts.

Ok, speaking as an aircraft propulsion engineer (and putting on flame-proof mac!) the difference between a modern high bypass engine (such as the latest version of the venerable RB211) and a turboprop, is virtually none. The only difference is when actually at max power, which is only used during the initial stages of the take-off run, the engines being immediately throttled back for legal noise abatement laws. A modern high bypass ratio engine will use more fuel than a turbo-prop for a given percentage of its respective maximum thrust, when cruising at altitude, but it flies faster at that same power setting, so the fuel used per nautical mile isn't all that different as to make a significant environmental impact. FWIW, "jet" engines (whether bypass or prop, I am talking about the HP core engine now) are actually very efficient with low emissions until you get to the last few %rpm.

What is a more significant environmental issue, even more so than all the world's cars, lorries, planes and ships, is the destruction of the natural carbon-sinks (rainforests) that would have otherwise absorbed the excess CO2 that we produce!! badger.

Don't forget the power stations,

I watched a dirty diesel chugging along the railway line and then figured mile for mile an electric probably pollutes more considering the losses in transmission of electricity but that the pollution is displaced somewhere else and the public does not notice.

But hell it is the cows farting methane that are as causing as much pollution as anything else and methane is worse than CO2

In the end it is not the efficiency that matters but the absolute amount of s**te put out as 100 energy efficient vehicles doing ten times more mileage than one very dirty one cause a bigger problem.

Would I really cause less of a problem if I drove a smart car or whatever, I doubt it, with the increases in economy I would no doubt use it a lot more. Once again it is that time of the month when I look at my overdraft and think it is the bus for the rest of this week :(

Not when they take it out on landies, they have lost the plot. Now if they targetted Subaru's, Suzuki's and that apology for what used to be a jeep I might agree :)

Used to be one of that kind of nutter but hey that was back in the seventies when my landie would have been brand new and shiny.

They made the Range Rover the focus of their action as it is rated as top of the polution charts. I can't really see too much of a problem with that.

The diversity of land Rover fans is marvellous. Thanks Badger for your qualified contribution. If both engine types burn the same type of fuel and apparently emit the same amount of exhaust per mile your assessment indicates that there's no difference in environmental impact. I will have to get back to my technical friends about this. One other consideration might be cruising altitude. Do the jets normally fly significantly higher than turbo props? That would make a difference.

With regard to the carbon sinks, we've noticed that the trees around here are growing much faster than they were ten years ago. Scientists monitoring the speeding up of growth in the Amazon have calculated that there's a limit to how much forests can absorb before the limit of soil support is reached resulting in the rapid creation of a vast tinderbox and the subsequent release of all that locked carbon. It only takes a few degrees more to release the vast methane deposits currently held as liquid beneath the Arctic ocean. If that lot enters the atmosphere, and it could do so almost instantaneously, we'll all be getting the truth from the highest authority of all. Maybe it's destined anyway. As Dave Allen used to say, may your God go with you.