Would you consider elaborating upon this? I don't have a reason to doubt you, but I am also picturing the people who fly airplanes as being sympathetic to older machines.
And I'm in that camp of unscientific people who figure a 23 old truck (specifically using unleaded fuel) that doesn't need to be rebuilt anew is actually kinder to the earth than the alternative.
I remember the legal precedent set during the trial of US President Bill Clinton. He claimed the law he was being sued under (sexual harassment) was unconstitutional, which it was. The problem was that he signed it into law, and not even The President can not be that big of a hypocrite in an American court room. So he lost. If someone is blatantly hypocritical, I have a great desire to hoist them with their own petard (to use their argument against them.)
Since the people who fly the largest private planes openly demand I stop driving my old pickup, I make the much more moderate demand that their airplanes meet each and every single emissions and fuel economy requirement that my old pickup has had to meet to stay on the road all these years.
I 100% support grounding all civilian air travel, world wide. I would give them the same time I would have if my old pickup failed an inspection to come up to standards, or their planes would be scrapped. Good luck to them getting catalytic converters on jet engines.
> I wish to point out that those who fly private airplanes (including those using leaded avgas) are the most likely to demand I stop driving my 23 year old pickup.
Citation needed. Did you actually experience this, or is this a hypothetical?
I do not know why pilots would be giving you a hard time with a truck given that most general aviation aircraft in operation are older than your truck.
What I have seen is people driving brand new trucks calling all GA aircraft a 'rich person's toy' even when they cost much less than their shiny trucks.
> banning all civilian air travel
If we calculate fuel economy per mile, planes do pretty good for long trips. Planes are (obviously) very aerodynamic and light. Getting up to altitude takes a lot of fuel but, once there, they sip fuel. Mind you that there are general aviation planes running with standard gasoline that are most likely more efficient than a 23 year old trucks and, most likely, even more efficient than new trucks, once you consider the speed they travel at and how light and aerodynamic they are compared to a truck.
And, since you said All civilian air travel, that includes airliners. Now we are talking efficiency per set per mile. The numbers are actually pretty good; you can look them up.
All that said, can we, collectively, stop antagonizing people that live a different lifestyle than we do, for no reason?
>> I wish to point out that those who fly private airplanes (including those using leaded avgas) are the most likely to demand I stop driving my 23 year old pickup.
> Citation needed. Did you actually experience this, or is this a hypothetical?
> I do not know why pilots would be giving you a hard time with a truck given that most general aviation aircraft in operation are older than your truck.
The airframe likely is older than the truck, but the engine is usually considerably newer. GA aircraft engines require overhauls or replacement be done every 1200-2000 hours of run time.
Overhauling an engine every 2000 hours does not change that it is a 1960s design which relies on a very rich mixture and stupidly high octane fuels to not blow itself up to make what would today be very mediocre performance figures.
Rotax has some newer designs that are fuel injected, have modern piston head designs, and sometimes have turbochargers, and those represent what a "new" aircraft engine looks like.
While this is true, the frequency and ease in which engines are swapped does allow the potential for innovation to creep into the space. We’ve made ICE engines smaller and more efficient over the last 3/4 of a century - but the FAA doesn’t seem to car about GA and likely won’t let anything innovative into non-experimental aircraft, which is a shame. Their argument is always safety, but we have ways to test for that and most of the GA engine designs we still see are from an era where they were not as concerned and were effectively grandfathered in.
A curious assertion? I don't know that many pilots anymore, but I don't recall that being an anti car crowd. They were usually mechanical enthusiast of all types.
I'd love for the plane I fly to use G100UL, which is unleaded aviation gas, but it's just not feasible. Unleaded aviation gas is truly wonderful – it extends engine lifespan and reduces the frequency of oil changes. Sadly, after talking to GAMI at Oshkosh, they said I can't run it due to the high compression ratio.
People will still travel long distances, and because American passenger trains aren't of very high quality, they will be driving. The gallons per seat per mile of airliners are way better than basically any car, for example the 747 has 91 Passenger-miles/US gallon. Even some of the better gas cars struggle to get above 30 miles per gallon.
Additionally, its not really a massive win. Air traffic only makes up 8% of less than 30% of American emissions. Cars, on the other hand, make up more than 75% of that same 30%[0]. Switching to aircraft might actually make more sense for the environment.
I wouldn't expect the ban to occur in isolation of other actions. If we're at the point where personal air travel is being axed, then fuel taxes for automobiles would likely also be prohibitive.
But here in Canada our carbon tax is facing strong opposition from populists, and I expect that the next Government is likely to axe it. The current Government is already putting in place boutique exclusions; for instance, home heating fuel is excluded for the next three years. As an alternative, to discourage a major common form of driving, we should consider ways in which to make businesses find operating office space impossibly expensive.
Why not a ban on personal travel outright? No one needs to take a vacation, and you don’t strictly need to see your family either.
Maybe we could have some kind of a permitting system where you could apply for permission to travel to see, for instance, your dying parent. But you would need to submit a letter from a doctor stating they are likely to die in the next 7-14 days, of course.
How about a ban on recreational activities like hiking and skiing? If we’re serious about this being an existential threat, this should be an easy decision.
The great thing about that idea is that I don't care about personal air travel, so a ban costs me nothing. I can feel good about myself without needing to think about my own excesses.
The airplanes this is about mostly are relatively fuel efficient. They burn a lot of gas per hour, but they also go faster than a car and so per distance efficiency is about the same as a gas car.
Jets are different - they go a lot faster. Commercial jets when full are about the same as a small car. Private jets generally have much less people on board, if you filled them to capacity with people they do well.
Most everyone I know in aviation, especially on the propeller/piston end of the spectrum, tend very much "live and let live" in mentality and politics, and many of them tend towards gear-head/old car enthusiast.
There are other demographic categories of people who are far more likely to demand you stop driving that pickup.
No need to ban it, but I'm happy to support a carbon tax on aviation equivalent to the current market cost of CCS, so something like $200/t.
So, for instance, Elon Musk's private jet is estimated to have emitted 2,112 tons in 2022. Elon would have to pay a $400,000 carbon tax.
Ideally these taxes would flow through fuel, but that presents some challenges, since planes can re-fuel in jurisdictions without those taxes, although that's certainly harder to do in the United States. I think in the US, it might be hard enough to do that that just taxing the aviation fuel is fine.
The only problem is that all the fuel used in all of private aviation is a drop in the bucket of total carbon emissions. It's not low-hanging fruit. It's not really fruit at all.
Yes, but I was commenting about the idea of a "carbon tax" on aviation fuel.
Now a lead tax might be something to think about if the non-leaded fuel costs more for some reason, lead being more of a concern than carbon in this instance. Tax the lead to make it the more expensive option.
That is the issue at hand in this story, but not really the comment I was replying to (at least primarily).
Leaded avgas is coming from piston-engine aircraft, and I don't think that was really what OP was talking about when commenting about the people flying private aircraft while publicly demanding people stop driving pickup trucks.
For leaded gas, we can simply ban the leaded gas, as the cost of performance in piston-engine aircraft. I'm not really an expert, but at a first glance I see no particularly compelling reason not to do it, so I'm not opposed to that at all.
Carbon is either a pollutant, or it's not. It's either good to put into the atmosphere, or it's not. All you can hope with a carbon tax is to shift the problem around without really accomplishing anything.
