Debunking aviation global warming hype

The book is well summed up by lead paragraphs into the summary Chapter 18 where the authors state: “There is, in our view, so much misinformation about aviation’s true effect on climate change and the industry’s supposed lack of efforts to curb emissions that when the truth does eventually emerge, it is barely recognisable.

“The flying public is being made to feel guilty about flying and the aviation industry has become defensive and apologetic.

“The public’s perception is driven by 30 second TV news grabs or mischievous headlines – or worse, apocalyptic magazine covers, such as The New Statesman (April 3 2006) which showed a 747 spewing out black clouds with the headline proclaiming: “ ‘The growth of flying will propel us into a future of melting ice caps, spreading deserts and collapsing ecosystems. ’ ” Thomas told Australian Aviation that he had been profoundly disturbed by the lack of understanding of the issues, not only amongst the general public but also airline management.

“I attended an environmental briefing of one manufacturer in Singapore recently and the theme was the same throughout with the executive stating that the company was now doing this or now doing that. But they have always done those things, but he simply didn’t know as he was new to the industry. ” Backing that up Plane Simple Truth takes the reader right back to the mid 1950s when Douglas Aircraft Company was struggling with noise suppression of the DC-8’s engines. And the authors have even found Lockheed advertisements from 1975 touting the fuel efficiency of the Lockheed Tristar – 33 years ago! But without doubt the key chapter in the book is Chapter 5 – Clarifying the Reports, where Thomas, through nine months of painstaking research, has been able to expose a series of major errors in key environmental reports that have been used many times to back up alarmist headlines and influence politicians.

“I just couldn’t believe what I was reading,” Thomas notes. “And I was disturbed to see how these errors were compounded and even further distorted. ” Thomas sent all the findings from the key reports to the various authors, most of whom responded admitting the errors. The book prints all the responses, which make for fascinating reading.

“And we are not talking about minor errors – these were massive errors which changed the context of the entire report,” claims Thomas.

One example was the report, Fuel efficiency of commercial aircraft – An overview of historical and future trends, compiled by the Dutch National Aerospace Laboratory (NLR).

The authors of the report made some extraordinary claims such as: 1. Fuel efficiency per available seat-kilometre has not improved [since the piston engine days].

2. [Thus] Many studies on predicted future gains are rather optimistic.

3. Fuel consumption reductions were not a major design driver until the 1980s.

4. The transition from piston engines to gas turbines (jets) was made predominantly to increase aircraft speed and altitude.

Thomas was able to dismiss every claim, and when confronted one of the report’s authors admitted that the report – which has been quoted extensively – was in fact a contract report for a client and “written solely to provide answers to questions specified by the customer, and within the constraints set by the contract between customer and NLR. ” The problem says Thomas is that “these serious errors are out there and are being repeated over and over again and there is no mechanism for correction. ” One recent Australian report draws in part from some of these erroneous reports and makes similar claims, Thomas says.

“Just on publication date, an Australian report Climate Change, Aviation and Western Australia: Policy prescriptions for the WA government, made what we believe to be alarmist and incorrect claims,” Thomas said. It stated: “Aviation is one of the fastest growing sectors of the world economy.

Over the next 20 years, more than 27,000 new aircraft will be delivered, and the number of air travellers will double to nine billion over the same period. Against this background of significant growth in air travel, pressure is being placed on the aviation industry (airlines in particular) and also government regulators to address the climate impacts of aviation. ” “Well the ‘background’ is simply not correct,” Thomas counters. “While in fact, 28,600 new aircraft (including freighters) will be delivered, 12,890 will be retired according to Boeing. ” “And the numbers of air travellers cannot double to nine billion because when the report was written the number of air travellers was just 2. 2 billion. ” “And it gets worse,” claims Thomas. “In the press release from the sponsor of the report, the WA Policy Forum, it claimed the following: “ ‘We know from academic and other studies around the world that aviation has by far the greatest climate impact of any transport mode – and it is only going to increase as passenger numbers rise. ’ ” The book finds that claim almost identical to that made by the T&E/CAN Europe (2006) report Clearing the Air — the Myth and Reality of Aviation and Climate Change, which claims in its executive summary: “Aviation has by far the greatest climate impact of any transport mode, whether measured per passenger kilometre, per tonne kilometre, per € spent, or per hour spent. ” Thomas says that “to support this statement, it cites CE Delft, a Netherlands based environmental consultancy report, however that report has a European only focus and looks at air travel up to 1500km,” claims Thomas.

Plane Simple Truth has taken a third party view of the industry relying on over 100 reports from universities and government bodies, rather than industry views.

It relies heavily on reports from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Stern Report.

“The IPCC 1999 and 2007 and the Stern report (show) aviation’s CO2 is about 11 per cent of transport’s total CO2 which itself is 14 per cent of all man made greenhouse gases,” notes Thomas.

The biggest contributor of transport CO2 was road, says Thomas, with 74 per cent.

“We found in our research considerable divergence in science about the percentage growth in global CO2 emissions.

And it also appears that some of the predictions of aviation’s effect on the climate have been alarmist with total radiative forcing (RF) from aviation for 2000 approximately the same as that of the IPCC’s estimate for 1992. This is due mainly as a consequence of strongly reduced RF from contrails, which compensates the increase due to increased traffic from 1992 to 2000. ” Thomas adds that “on the contentious issue of contrails, the IPCC 2007 stated that if contrails do prove to be worth avoiding, then drastic action of reducing cruising altitudes need not be done, as it appears that according to Mannstein et al (2005), contrails can be easily avoided by relatively small changes in flight level, due to the shallowness of ice supersaturation layers. ” The book also noted that aviation’s impact on countries’ economic well being is underplayed and even dismissed.

Thomas said that “while some will try and have us believe that flying is ‘overwhelmingly an activity of the richest elements of society’, the true effect of the airline system extends well beyond pure numbers and is now an integral part of the global economy. ” In Chapter 16, the book highlights a report to the US Congress, where Waitz et al (2004) make the important point that aviation is an enabler with economic benefits that go far beyond the direct numbers and said that “aviation enables economic growth. ” Thomas notes that “aviation is critical to world economies, particularly for developing nations and anyone who suggests for one moment that it is the province of the rich hasn’t travelled for a very, very long time. ” Plane Simple Truth looks at all aspects of the environmental debate and is critical of the industry’s lack of focus in getting its message across and also of the supersonic debacle. It walks the reader both through history and into the future with many fascinating and exciting developments that will slash fuel burn and thus emissions even further.

The book is fully referenced and while highly technical it is easy to understand and magnificently illustrated. Geoffrey Thomas is joined by Aviation Week & Space Technology’s engineering editor Guy Norris, The Australian’s Steve Creedy, and Christine Forbes Smith.

Cost is $29. 95 and it will be available late June.