Good News for Ireland: New Runway in Dublin 'shelved'

Húrin

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2008/1218/1229523051614.html

I am happy to report the best news of the recession yet. Due to the need to cut costs, Dublin Airport Authority is shelving its plans to build a new runway at that airport. It had hoped to more than double passenger numbers to 60 million per year, but the oul' credit crunch has thrown a spanner in.

So why is this a big deal? It's good because it gives us more time to ensure that when the economy picks up again, they will not have the chance to build it.

According to economist Matt Harley, the new runway will cost over €13 billion, when all costs are taken into account, most of it being paid by us. This is the kind of pollution project we don't need, especially in a recession.

It will more than double the carbon dioxide emissions from the airport and thus cause €8.4 billion in climate change damage (which is part of the above €13bn+ cost).

It will put 19 schools under 70 decibels of noise every day.

Furthermore, if the runway is ever built, jet fuel will be so expensive that it will hardly be used. I imagine a tribunal would be set up to find who wasted so much money on nothing.

Happy Christmas!

lostexpectation

whats with the crossposting huh?

Húrin

lostexpectation wrote: »

whats with the crossposting huh?

It seemed to fit into both this forum and the political forum. I don't even see why there's a separate green issues forum anyway, since the vast majority of topics here are political.

baldieman

Húrin wrote: »

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2008/1218/1229523051614.html

I am happy to report the best news of the recession yet. Due to the need to cut costs, Dublin Airport Authority is shelving its plans to build a new runway at that airport. It had hoped to more than double passenger numbers to 60 million per year, but the oul' credit crunch has thrown a spanner in.

So why is this a big deal? It's good because it gives us more time to ensure that when the economy picks up again, they will not have the chance to build it.

According to economist Matt Harley, the new runway will cost over €13 billion, when all costs are taken into account, most of it being paid by us. This is the kind of pollution project we don't need, especially in a recession.

It will more than double the carbon dioxide emissions from the airport and thus cause €8.4 billion in climate change damage (which is part of the above €13bn+ cost).

It will put 19 schools under 70 decibels of noise every day.

Furthermore, if the runway is ever built, jet fuel will be so expensive that it will hardly be used. I imagine a tribunal would be set up to find who wasted so much money on nothing.

Happy Christmas!

now I understand the term "eco terrorism" and where people like you are coming from

Húrin

baldieman wrote: »

now I understand the term "eco terrorism" and where people like you are coming from

I'M A TERRORIST LOLOL

link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qVdDq3_IcU

ian_m

Húrin wrote: »

I don't even see why there's a separate green issues forum anyway, since the vast majority of topics here are political.

Yet you still felt the need to post this here. And why not over on the aviaton forum if you don't mind me asking?

This is not good news my freind. Ireland will begin to lag behind and is already doing so in regards to infrastructure and air-transport.

Maybe good news for you now but wait until the bigger picture becomes clearer in the long term. Ireland will lose out, there are many benefits to expansion of Dublin airport. One of which I would like to add is safety.

Ill say no more for now until it becomes clear if this is the right place for this discussion.

Húrin

ian_m wrote: »

Maybe good news for you now but wait until the bigger picture becomes clearer in the long term.

It's you who is not thinking in the long term. Climate change is the big picture, and if Ireland does not reduce its emissions we are going to lose out big time.

Húrin

baldieman wrote: »

now I understand the term "eco terrorism" and where people like you are coming from

Contrary to your imagination I am not a fanatic. I do not bother to claim that the science is "settled". That is an argument I cannot be bothered to have with you. It appears to me that it is likely that the world is getting warmer, not certain.

Whether the scientists are right or the sceptics are right, the consequences of inaction on climate change are much more serious than the consequences of taking action on a non-existent problem. Do you understand?

diverdriver

Ian don't invite Hurin over to the aviation forum. He is really tedious.

Húrin

diverdriver wrote: »

Ian don't invite Hurin over to the aviation forum. He is really tedious.

Don't worry I have no wish to go back there. I tried once to highlight the unsustainability of aviation industry, using peer-reviewed scientific evidence. Unsurprisingly, the tendency to bury heads in the sand of self-delusion was even higher than in this forum or the politics forum.

derry

Really stupid the whole thing .Global warming is still only a debate and nowhere near proven.Its up there with 1800 polution projections that as cities grew they would die off as the streets would be 6 foot deep in horse dropping from the exponetial growth of horse drawn traffic
Even if CO2 emmissons were an issue aircraft are something like 3% of emmisions. Then when you factor in that modern aircraft often will use about the same amount of fuel per passenger to transport passengers than cars then we cant even claim they are reckless enviorementally. A modern 737 at 80% capacity will return about ~50PG per passenger seat. A trip to London from Dublin ~300 miles will use a 6 gallons of fuel for each individal passenger. A typical car will use 12 gallons at 25 MPG . If there is two people in the car the car is the same as the plane eg 50MPG per passenger seat .If there is one person in the car it uses more fuel than the plane .If there is three or four people the car will use less fuel per passenger seat

The argument that the amount of CO2 will double over the airport is off the wall.Thats like saying the CO2 levels will double in Bus arus station if they doubled the capicity of the bus station.Sorta obvious that if you double anything like the population or cars or planes that the amount of CO2 will double.Even if we swich to using boats the new RO RO high speed ships are about the same as planes some ~30 to ~50MPG per passenger seat so thats not likely to reduce our CO2 emmisions .Its only if we re-introduce the old style 1930' slow boat which don't carry cars can we get the better ~200 MPG per passenger seat. I don't think they even still make those crappy ships anymore

A lot of future climate projections even show if we double CO2 from 380PPM(parts per million ) to 700PPM there will be no effect to the earth temperatures.Its not conclusivly proved that CO2 which is a very minor global warming gas compared to Water vapour or methane .Water vapour makes more than 50% of global warming which can effect temperatures and its very iffy science that claims that CO2 traps so much extra heat.

I can go along with the noise pollution for kids of 70 debs.I can go along with local pollution from extra cars emmiting smog in the region whatever .However those problems might have tecknical solutions in that jets may develop quiter engines and more cars might be made to burn cleaner fuels like natural gas or Bio ethanol which burns cleaner than pretty dirty petrol fuels

As for the argument that fuel costs will be high that is open to debate . Brazil in two years has found huge oil feilds and set to match Kuwait as a oil exporter if the fields do turn out to be as big as hoped for. The Oil companies probably don't tell us all the facts so we can safely assume there is no real shortage of fuel or oil in the pipe line before at least 2050 contary to the peak oil projections .Bio fuels are making bigger inroads and set to supply more fuel every year .The massive fall of the oil prices recently is a classic example of how much oversupply there is .


A government job is to supply the nesssary infrastructure for the economic activity that can be reasonably assumed to arrive within a decade.

If we look at any air traffic projections we can see partically for ROI a Island economy that air traffic growth is only one direction upwards at a steep rate.

Therefore for a Government to decide to not proceed with a second runway when the present runway is already at close to full capacity is a total derilection of duties.
This could help make international companies which employ many Irish to leave ROI due to crappy infrastrucure and create extra unemployment .
It could stunt future investment from crappy infrastrucure.
So yes we in the future we Irish might not fly so much as we sit on the dole and watch all the forgieners come as tourists to gawk at us poverty striken jobless dip sticks because we didn't invest in vital infrastructure when it was clearly needed

Happy crappy new year waiting in the mega queues at Dublin airport from this bizzare decision

Derry

Húrin

derry wrote: »

Really stupid the whole thing .Global warming is still only a debate and nowhere near proven.

http://www.logicalscience.com/consensus/consensusD1.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF_anaVcCXg

feck off troll, basically

derry

Húrin wrote: »

http://www.logicalscience.com/consensus/consensusD1.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF_anaVcCXg

feck off troll, basically

Comon lets face fact no amount of non climate experts like Obamas pontificating the debate is over will change the facts that its still a theory and the debate rages on .

You cant open a thread and expect the whole country to see you limited vision as the only solution.
If you open a thread expect others to have a differn't point of view and sometimes maybe even facts that that can disprove your theory

Your the one with the problem.You mix up global warming with one infrastructure element like a stupid runway.You mix in the oil is running out dude in with that mix..The only things we know generally for sure is that even if oil was peaking which seems to be another cooky idea the winding down of oil fuels would probably take some 100 years and wont be an overnight event. Aircrafts are also running on Bio fuels so lack of oil probably wont change aircraft flying. Each year the aircraft are returning more better MPG per passenger seat.The new airbus 380 with 500 passenger is now 90MPG per passenger seat.future versions imminent are possibly as high as 120MPG per passenger seat.New solutions for the jet engine combinig the engine with subsonic multi bladed props could return even more fuel saving and reduce noise a lot.
The only thing that can stop Irish doing more air travel as ticket prices keep dropping from more fuel efficient aircraft which have cost saving is the lack of airports and worse having to use more fuel and create more pollution to drive to Shannon or Cork Belfast to fly

The lack of a second runway is lose lose most every way best I can see.

The rest of the world is not convinced about global warming and even the so called green EU breaks past nearly all its emmision target it sets. I cant see ROI with the idiot regime we have doing better .I cant se the grens did anything to improve thing. I still cant legaly use a electric bike that isn't a pedalelec like the UK can with the 250 watt rule The green are dip sticks innocent babes in the woods working ith the big bad wolf regime that asset strips us and couldn't give fidlers about anything that isn't a kick back for them

In the 1960's most cars got 15MPG and threw out huge amounts of unburnt fuels of complex hydro carbons which were far worse global warming agents than CO2.Modern cars throw out a lot less complex hydro carbon unburnt fuel due to cats and mostly only water vapor and CO2.The water vapour is far more of a global warming agent .So even changing to clean burning hydrogen fuel which only creates water emmisions could be heating up the world more than CO2.

Once you divide the puny size of the human race into the size of the planets atmoshere you comprehend that a infinitly large number divided by a infinitly small number the chances are extremly high the result will be as close to zero as not to be important.
The CO2 global warmers have along way to go to proves that PPM parts per million plus minus a few more parts per million will have any effect.
The Global warmers therory is like saying the small kid who did a widdle in the olimpic pool off water adding his small parts per million will somehow turn the pool septic if just one more kiddy widdles in the pool.

It just doesn't stack up.Even the most best projections infer maybe at most 2 watts of extra heat per 1300 watts meter squared in the tropics is trapped..Thats at most a 0.02% increase globaly in heat for a few hours of sunlight time.Other computer models tweak in slightly more white clouds cover from the extra heat reflecting the sunlight back and bingo were entering a ice age.Go figure .
Really its a good busness model project doom and gloom for CO2 and get a good job the more the followers swollow that trip.A bit like religion cant be proved to be a false this CO2 Science in life time of most people will probably not be proved to false inside two hundred years so a safe drum to beat on CO2 will cook our goose

It strongly suggests even this CO2 traps heat at 0.02% case if it were true we are probaly looking at thousands of years to cook our goose .
The reality is a contant pressure on our pocket to pay for expensive fuel to car manufactuers has raised MPG to more like 30MPG for most cars and and stuff is in the pipe line that makes 100MPG very likely within twenty years.
Planes have gone from the 1960 era of ~20 MPG per passenger seat to near ~100PG per passenger seat.

CO2 emmissions are set to drop steadily per unit of transport .We will get a rise of CO2 emmissions for while longer as more people get more cars and travel more.Then as they demand less noise less pollutions and cheaper costs the CO2 emmissions will start to drop as other solutions come on tap such as renewables like solar power and wind power which are becoming near econonomic even now


People have more chance to pressure the airlines to fly at more suitable hours that make less noise for the hapless souls around the airport if there is more runways.It allows more planes to land at the same time and can allow for more slack time flying like no flights at late night week days or no older planes which are noisier to fly at certian sensitive times like week days nights . If the airport runway is at max capacity the ability to demand any changes to traffic is a lot less.

Its better to pressure the airliners to re-engine older planes with more fuel effiecient quieter newer engines or better still use newwer fuel efficient aircraft.Airlines often wont resist these type of demands as less fuel used means more profits .

The idea we will all stop driving to work and stop flying because a few egg heads want to spout egg head ideas based on a few thin science pontificatiions is a non starter


So relax the end of the world isn't about to cook your goose so soon as tommorow

The day I have to drive to Cork from Dublin to fly somewhere because the Dublin airport is so jammo, I will post to this thread in this forum now look what extra pollution is now being made driving a car across the island.
I along with many others will probably continue to fly for our holidays if we can afford it and are not on the scratch because the infrastructure is collapsed from carppy regime mucking it all up
Multiply lot of cross country drivers and that makes a lot extra CO2 and worse other pollution than a new runway would make

Also there is the most serious issue lack of runways often means that aircraft are forced to stack up over Dublin and they will circle for longer periods burning more fuel.Jet engine often burn more fuel flying slowly at lowwer heights stacked up as when going high and fast from point to point as the engines are nopt made to be used for extended tie flying slowly at low heights .Also the jet fuel doesn't burn so cleanly as jet engines are made to burn the most cleanly at high heights where they spend the most time .The Jet engines cant be made to burn so cleanly at low heights and at high heights as that is the way engines are made .Theyu bare made to most fuel efficient when gioing fast high up and less efiecient low and slow as they expect to spend some few minutes flyling low and slow going from high up to land at the airport .So stacking planes up over Dublin will create a lot more pollution in terms of heavy complex carbons molicules falling down on top of Dublin and more CO2 emmisions as planes cicle overghead burning fuel like cars do in traffic jams .Now a second runway will reduce stacking times and reduce pollution from low flying stacked up aircraft.
Its similar to how a motor way bi pass for a town reduces the slow traffic jam style belching polution in the town as they pass through the town and n the bipass keeps cars going at a steady speed where they use less less fuel and keeps emmision pollution outside the town .

Lets face it wanting to create stacked up planes over Dublin is like wanting a traffic jam in you own village

Its not likely to make people stop burning fuels and create less CO2 and only make probaly more bad tempers as people wait in airport car parks tempory airport tents as they wait for the word go to the airport terminal for their flight slot

But if it does happen a Dulin airport jammo they can thank they FF regime and the green twots and we can all be happy when those bunch of twots are bootrd from power never to be seen again

In the mean time the regime remains immune from jammo traffic in Dublin airport as they go private government jet from Bandonnel airport.The regime should be forced to stack up at Dublin airport like the rest of us plebs

Lose lose to not make a second runway


Derry

derry

Húrin wrote: »

It's you who is not thinking in the long term. Climate change is the big picture, and if Ireland does not reduce its emissions we are going to lose out big time.

There is a lot of good reasons without using the boogie man of climate change to reduce immissions.

Oil burning requires oil extraction.This is often in third world countries and makes lots of local pollution from regimes worse than ours who don't care about local pollution. It often wrecks local water tables for hundreds some times thousands of years with heavy metal pollution.The transporting of the oil poses hazards when there are large accidents and the clean up leaves behind many chemicals and heavy metals.The refining of the oil products requires lots of nasty chemical inputs which are often shipped back to third world countries to create even more pollution.The oil companies have certian types of issues with fuels so if they have some type of useless excess they can decide to dump the excess often with burning it badly so it pollutes everything .These excesses are to be found in petrol everyday we drive our cars mixed in the petrol fuel .If petrol was pure petrol it would have ten hydro carbon chemicals and burn cleanly and not require a cat to burn up unburnt carbon molicules.If your rich eneogh you can buy this cleaner petrol fuel and do your bit to save the planet from toxic crap going out the exhast pipe when the cat is cold and doesn't work for the first few miles .Cost like 10 euros a liter to get it to ROI.% euros a liter in the UK
In petrol refining the the oil companies could be left with a whole load of lighter and heavier oil products often closely related to kerosene but not pure enough to be kerosene such as benzene .So oil refineries add some extra crap to our petrol.This extra crap doesn't burn properly and so we need cats to clean up that mess
If we bitch about that they will supply us with more pure clean burning petrol.However the price for the petrol will increase a lot .The refineries will probably just ship the crap back to the third world and throw it into river s there or make third world petrol have more crap in it to be thrown out exhast pipes there

The refineries cant possibly use all the complex molicules that crude Oil gives as differnt crude oils have differnt qualities.Oil makes lots of stuff like plastics and food stuffs for animals and medicines
Some of the chemicals they make is insectisdes .When that stuff has accidents it kills everything .If it catches fire it makes a nerve gas agent that kills for miles around .My friend once has seen some people die from insectide factory fire accident in Africa .So nasty chemical accidents happens a lot in the third world .
Whole streches of rivers are dead or higghly toxic .Whole villages like India
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster
BHopal accident get poisened to death while they sleep. So often a few % of the now refined crude oil often toxic extremely complex carbon and heavy metal agents is dumped somewhere else either in rivers in the third world or burnt badly somewhere in the planet whatever.

Now the case for CO2 is very weak and still only a theory and nowhere near a proven fact that it creates climate change But real in your face pollution is killing thousands every day world wide with smog pollution or direct heavy metal water or food ingestion pollution . In ROI we could not drink the water in galway for some extended time .Climate change is a long way down the pollution list to be tackeled when nasty chemicals are lurking near to the food chain that can kill you today or tommorow.Even in ROI we got fly tippers tipping toxic crap into unofficial dumps and that has made some water tables full for heavy metals and toxic PCBs and used heavy fuel oils etc


Climate change if it is true might cook our goose in 10,000 years time . A poxxy astroid is more likely to hit us first and trigger a ice age

Most third world people ask us to cure todays real problems first and tackle airy fairy maybe in the future problems second

Most jeo soaps in ROI I think would rather see real in the face pollution solutions for fly tipping etc than the so called CO2 boogie man issues

For me the big piture is closer to home was that pork I ate today free from toxins
How much damage did the pork i ate in the past do to me.


Warm climates or climate change is nothing new. In the medivial times grapes grew every year in north england and wheat grew for the Viking colanies in ice free greenland . The polar bears survived that warm time and the ice cap was probaly much smaller in the medevail times than what we have now

There seems not to have been CO2 in the medival times to trigger that warm period

Big piture doesn't look like we humans can control or input it one way or the other Small piture maybe watch that pig trotter

Derry

Húrin

derry wrote: »

Comon lets face fact no amount of non climate experts like Obamas pontificating the debate is over will change the facts that its still a theory and the debate rages on .

I did link to a list of experts.

I any case your unshakeable, creationist-style certainty that the scientists are wrong doesn't matter. My points are made based on the fact that the European Union and the Irish government consider climate change to be caused mostly by man-made carbon dioxide emissions, and they have made commitments accordingly. Expanding airport infrastructure is not compatible with those commitments. That is my point.

ian_m

Húrin wrote: »

I did link to a list of experts.

I any case your unshakeable, creationist-style certainty that the scientists are wrong doesn't matter. My points are made based on the fact that the European Union and the Irish government consider climate change to be caused mostly by man-made carbon dioxide emissions, and they have made commitments accordingly. Expanding airport infrastructure is not compatible with those commitments. That is my point.

What action do you suggest we take?

Húrin

ian_m wrote: »

What action do you suggest we take?

Action for what? If you mean the task of reducing Ireland's emissions by 90% in a couple of decades, there's a book called Heat (2007) by George Monbiot that sets out a plan for Britain to achieve this goal:

"This book seeks to devise the least painful means possible of achieving this preposterous cut. It attempts to reconcile our demand for comfort, prosperity and peace with the restraint required to prevent us from destroying the comfort, prosperity and peace of other people. And though I began the search for these solutions in the spirit of profound pessimism, I now believe it can be done."
from
http://www.turnuptheheat.org/?page_id=7

Basically it is a huge rollout of renewable energy, a sort of New Deal project, which appears to be already in the pipeline of the incoming US Government. Monbiot treats this important area with some scepticism as to the claims made about potential technologies.

Monbiot also advocates fast-tracking changes in transport to reduce demand for private car use by improving intercity bus services, electric engines, etc

Another major area is improving the energy efficiency of the housing stock and tight new housebuilding regulations.

The chapter on aviation is freely available on the internet, or at least it used to be. But I attach it here. The first two pages are more or less totally polemical and not interesting. Then it gets more detailed.

There are numerous books like this. Monbiot's is only one choice. He advocates not only stopping the growth in aviation, but significantly cutting it as well. One cannot prescribe a particular figure because it depends on how much emissions cutting can be done by the rest of the economy.

ian_m

From RTÉ News today.

Air New Zealand successfully flew a test flight powered by second-generation biofuel, and hailed it as a 'significant milestone' in the development of sustainable fuels for aircraft.

The airline used a 50-50 blend of standard jet fuel and synthetic fuel made from the oil of jatropha plant seeds to power one of the engines on a Boeing 747 during a two-hour test flight.

robtri

Húrin wrote: »

Contrary to your imagination I am not a fanatic. I do not bother to claim that the science is "settled". That is an argument I cannot be bothered to have with you. It appears to me that it is likely that the world is getting warmer, not certain.

Whether the scientists are right or the sceptics are right, the consequences of inaction on climate change are much more serious than the consequences of taking action on a non-existent problem. Do you understand?

Damn... if thats the case, you better turn off your pc and save some electricity..... better for the enviroment.....

its not a good thing to loose out on this runway, Ireland would have benifited from this if it happened, more visitors mean more tourist dollars into the country...

Húrin

ian_m wrote: »

From RTÉ News today.

Air New Zealand successfully flew a test flight powered by second-generation biofuel, and hailed it as a 'significant milestone' in the development of sustainable fuels for aircraft.

The airline used a 50-50 blend of standard jet fuel and synthetic fuel made from the oil of jatropha plant seeds to power one of the engines on a Boeing 747 during a two-hour test flight.

It would be nice, but jatropha has most of the same problems that the other biofuels have.

Jatropha is a tough weed with oily seeds that grows in the tropics. This summer Bob Geldof, who never misses an opportunity to promote simplistic solutions to complex problems, arrived in Swaziland in the role of “special adviser” to a biofuels firm. Because it can grow on marginal land, jatropha, he claimed, is a “life-changing” plant, which will offer jobs, cash crops and economic power to African smallholders(19).

Yes, it can grow on poor land and be cultivated by smallholders. But it can also grow on fertile land and be cultivated by largeholders. If there is one blindingly obvious fact about biofuel it’s that it is not a smallholder crop. It is an internationally-traded commodity which travels well and can be stored indefinitely, with no premium for local or organic produce. Already the Indian government is planning 14m hectares of jatropha plantations(20). In August the first riots took place among the peasant farmers being driven off the land to make way for them(21).

If the governments promoting biofuels do not reverse their policies, the humanitarian impact will be greater than that of the Iraq war. Millions will be displaced, hundreds of millions more could go hungry. This crime against humanity is a complex one, but that neither lessens nor excuses it. If people starve because of biofuels, Ruth Kelly and her peers will have killed them. Like all such crimes it is perpetrated by cowards, attacking the weak to avoid confronting the strong.

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/11/06/an-agricultural-crime-against-humanity/

Húrin

robtri wrote: »

Damn... if thats the case, you better turn off your pc and save some electricity..... better for the enviroment..

All that will happen if I and say 1000 other people turn off their computers for the sake of the envirinment is that electricity will get a bit cheaper for everyone who isn't doing so. And nothing will improve for the environment. If we destroy our environment then our economy will collapse. This is just obvious.

Danno

So, what have the bright green sparks done? Signed up to "Carbon Credits" passing more €€€ out of the country instead of ripping up the treaty and using the money to progress alternative energy at home. Look at how the sugar factories were let go! A simple refit and we would of had two bio-fuel producing plants very cheaply!

The short-sightedness of it all is sickening.