Harrison Ford Defends His Airplanes

dmccormack said:
Remote work via telecommute was supposed to fix that.

Yeah, right -- the percentages are abysmal.

Anyway, GA makes no sense using strict Cost/Benefit analysis. Niether does marriage, children, sunsets, vacations, and a billion other things that make life tolerable.
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Too true. I was pointing out the only thing in which I thought environmentalists have even a bit of traction, and it isn't much. I do disagree however. Marriage can make very good financial sense for the partner who makes less than the other. Children can make good financial sense if they're successful and support you in your old age. Sunsets make good financial sense since they're free. Airplanes and vactations however...
 
steingar said:
Too true. I was pointing out the only thing in which I thought environmentalists have even a bit of traction, and it isn't much. I do disagree however. Marriage can make very good financial sense for the partner who makes less than the other. Children can make good financial sense if they're successful and support you in your old age. Sunsets make good financial sense since they're free. Airplanes and vactations however...
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I gave up trying to make "financial sense" out of marriage, children, and sunsets a quarter century ago...

:rolleyes:
 
steingar said:
... Get rid of people traveling an hour to work and back in their low mileage SUVs and you'd save orders of magnitude more fuel than to eliminate GA altogether....
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But why would that be an appropriate comparison?

If I use a whole crapload of fuel, and other people use considerably less, why does it make sense for me to say "well, if 10 other people all moved closer to their jobs, then they'd save enough fuel to compensate for the extra that I use"?

This seems to be the same logical flaw as if Hummer owners said "quit giving us the dirty look, we only use a small percentage of the fuel used (since there are so few of us), and if we all stopped driving our Hummers entirely that would hardly make any difference".

Clearly the argument is not about overall usage by the population subset in question, but about "usage per person". We can always make the usage attributed to a population subset look small by selecting the subset.
-harry
 
mantakos said:
But why would that be an appropriate comparison?

If I use a whole crapload of fuel, and other people use considerably less, why does it make sense for me to say "well, if 10 other people all moved closer to their jobs, then they'd save enough fuel to compensate for the extra that I use"?

This seems to be the same logical flaw as if Hummer owners said "quit giving us the dirty look, we only use a small percentage of the fuel used (since there are so few of us), and if we all stopped driving our Hummers entirely that would hardly make any difference".

Clearly the argument is not about overall usage by the population subset in question, but about "usage per person". We can always make the usage attributed to a population subset look small by selecting the subset.
-harry
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A very disingenuous argument. Part of the American lifestyle is to live away from where you work. How many of your colleagues live near their place of employment? That lifestyle is what makes us energy inefficient. It's like claiming you're going to fix the budget deficit by eliminating NPR. Sure, you'll save some money, but the effect on the problem won't even be noticed.
 
im just thankful that the census allows the feds to redistribute tax money so that states can build roads so i can drive my car a long ways to work. god bless america.
 
I just said it was inefficient. The reason Saccharomyces is so useful in fermentation (Saccharomyces cerevisiae is the organism responsible for the bulk of human fermentation, including production of beer and bread) is because it is inefficient owing to its lack of an endogenous electron transport chain. Doesn't make it bad, just inefficient.
 
steingar said:
... It's like claiming you're going to fix the budget deficit by eliminating NPR...
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Sorry, but that's a nonsensical argument.

I'm only 1/300,000,000th of the population, so it doesn't matter what I do, right? Worst case, I'm maybe only 1/100,000,000th of the problem. Go bother everybody else, they're 99.999999% of the problem. Why, for me to adjust my behavior would have hardly any effect at all!

When the argument is about "personal contribution", how does it make sense for us to argue "yes, I _personally_ use twice what other people do, but I do that as part of a population that is small relative to the overall population"?

GA planes are a small community, so their usage shouldn't count, right? Hummers are a small community, too. So are Land Rovers. If you add up all the fuel used by Land Rovers, it doesn't add up to very much, they're a small community, so why should they bother to do anything differently? So are drivers of 2007 Chevy Tahoes. You'll never make a dent in overall fuel consumption by getting all the 2007 Chevy Tahoes off the road, they're just a small part of the problem.

The point, of course, is that the entirety of the population is comprised of a large number of small subsets, each of which has too small an effect to be worthy of note. Each of these subsets is motivated to make the argument "don't bother us, we're only a small percentage of the population, go bother everybody else, they're almost the entire problem".

It's a logical fallacy.
-harry
 
steingar said:
A very disingenuous argument. Part of the American lifestyle is to live away from where you work. How many of your colleagues live near their place of employment? That lifestyle is what makes us energy inefficient. It's like claiming you're going to fix the budget deficit by eliminating NPR. Sure, you'll save some money, but the effect on the problem won't even be noticed.
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Something else to toss into the mix - around here (Boston, MA area)
buying a house close to work typically means getting far less house
for the money than if you bought 30-40 miles (or more) away.

Of course, the people who don't like large houses will be happy
with that.
 
mantakos said:
Sorry, but that's a nonsensical argument.

I'm only 1/300,000,000th of the population, so it doesn't matter what I do, right? Worst case, I'm maybe only 1/100,000,000th of the problem. Go bother everybody else, they're 99.999999% of the problem. Why, for me to adjust my behavior would have hardly any effect at all!

When the argument is about "personal contribution", how does it make sense for us to argue "yes, I _personally_ use twice what other people do, but I do that as part of a population that is small relative to the overall population"?

GA planes are a small community, so their usage shouldn't count, right? Hummers are a small community, too. So are Land Rovers. If you add up all the fuel used by Land Rovers, it doesn't add up to very much, they're a small community, so why should they bother to do anything differently? So are drivers of 2007 Chevy Tahoes. You'll never make a dent in overall fuel consumption by getting all the 2007 Chevy Tahoes off the road, they're just a small part of the problem.

The point, of course, is that the entirety of the population is comprised of a large number of small subsets, each of which has too small an effect to be worthy of note. Each of these subsets is motivated to make the argument "don't bother us, we're only a small percentage of the population, go bother everybody else, they're almost the entire problem".

It's a logical fallacy.
-harry
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We must agree to disagree. If you define your groups as those who drive Hummers or those who drive Expeditions, then you are correct. If you define your group as "those who commute in land Yachts", your group gets far bigger. If you define your group as "those who commute i.e. participate in a relatively normal American lifestyle" your group gets a boatload bigger. The one argument that you could logically make is that those who commute are at least doing so as a normal part of their existence, while we pilots fly mainly for recreation. But again there is scale, and it certainly does work hideously in our favor, to the point of obviating most environmental arguments. I would give arguments about jet contrails far more credence, there is at least data to back those up.
 
steingar said:
... If you define your groups as those who drive Hummers or those who drive Expeditions, then you are correct...
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I think the accusation is associated with the group defined as "those who use fuel wastefully" or "who use more than most" or "more than their fair share" or "more than they need to".

The group thus defined would contain Hummers and Land Rovers driving to work and Skylanes flying 100 miles for pancakes.

Our defense seems to be "well, we're special, we really like doing this, and there aren't really all that many of us, so quit looking at us funny, and go bother somebody else, like those Hummer drivers over there, who clearly don't love their trucks as sincerely as we love our planes".
-harry
 
mantakos said:
I think the accusation is associated with the group defined as "those who use fuel wastefully" or "who use more than most" or "more than their fair share" or "more than they need to".

The group thus defined would contain Hummers and Land Rovers driving to work and Skylanes flying 100 miles for pancakes.

Our defense seems to be "well, we're special, we really like doing this, and there aren't really all that many of us, so quit looking at us funny, and go bother somebody else, like those Hummer drivers over there, who clearly don't love their trucks as sincerely as we love our planes".
-harry
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Again my terms are defined quite differently. I define my inefficient group as those who must make extensive drives in order to commute to and from work. I'll define "extensive" very self indulgently as anyone who drives longer than I do, which is about 3 miles. The American lifestyle is nearly unsupportable in terms of per capita energy usage, it is hideously inefficient. Our aircraft are similarly inefficient, but as you point out we are a tiny minority.

Put another way, if we simply considered the fuel consumer or CO2 produced by all vehicles used principally for recreation, aircraft would still contribute marginally to overall usage/output, even though recreational usage itself is dwarfed by commuter usage. I am not taking issue with any particular group/class of vehicles.

I would add that we GA pilots at least have the justification that at the rate things are going, we may be the last repository for actual flying wisdom, after they automate all the airliners and military birds. On the other hand, as the rate things are going we may all be gone by that time anyway.
 
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The argument is flawed. It is flawed because the people making the complaints against Harrison Ford would appear to be motivated more by jealousy, than logic and more by politics, than facts.

Demonizing wealth is the new mantra for environmental wackos and attacking those who achieve is the new mantra of so many undesirable groups right now. Give these people a stage and they always soar from an issue to a political/social rant.

GA is made up of successful people, who achieved something that rarely included raiding the funds of a non-profit. That makes them producers and the target for the loony wacko contingent.
 
dmccormack said:
Remote work via telecommute was supposed to fix that.

Yeah, right -- the percentages are abysmal.

Anyway, GA makes no sense using strict Cost/Benefit analysis. Niether does marriage, children, sunsets, vacations, and a billion other things that make life tolerable.
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I'd love to telecommute daily. My job is such that I could do it and nobody would be the wiser. But the overall group I'm in at work has a policy that says I can only do it one day a week. It's not worth setting up the space at home. I know it works, however. I worked from home for 3 straight weeks after my surgery in 2008. Sitting in a nicely padded reliner. :D Boss had to get special permission to allow it to happen. He told them it was that, or I'd go out on short term disability and they wouldn't get any work out of me. It worked fine. I had my laptop, a high speed internet connection and a phone. That differs from my desk in the office exactly how?

Oh well...
 
Missa said:
I've never understood the logic of blaming industry for not comming up with a enviromentally freindly product that is so expensive that no consumer will buy it.
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Consumers can only choose from the products that are offered to them. Getting people to stop flying/driving/whatever will not be good for industry either. Perhaps the real problem is that we should be looking for constructive solutions instead of someone to blame.

I'm not sure, however, where you're getting the idea that the alternatives to 100LL are prohibitively expensive. At least one of the companies that are developing such alternatives says that it will cost less to produce than 100LL.
 
ClimbnSink said:
Airplanes will never pass the enviro standard of the day err hour. The only acceptable argument for airplanes is because it is a free country.
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Well it used to be a free country.
Another good reason to emit CO2 is that trees and plants need it to grow. They convert it back to oxygen as we all know from grade school. Why don't they mention this in the arguments? Us pilots are just feeding the trees.
This is why 6Y9 is such a great ecosystem,turf,trees,airplanes.
Fly a plane / plant a tree , just not on the ends of a runway:D
 
steingar said:
We must agree to disagree. If you define your groups as those who drive Hummers or those who drive Expeditions, then you are correct. If you define your group as "those who commute in land Yachts", your group gets far bigger. If you define your group as "those who commute i.e. participate in a relatively normal American lifestyle" your group gets a boatload bigger. The one argument that you could logically make is that those who commute are at least doing so as a normal part of their existence, while we pilots fly mainly for recreation. But again there is scale, and it certainly does work hideously in our favor, to the point of obviating most environmental arguments. I would give arguments about jet contrails far more credence, there is at least data to back those up.
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I recently heard that the Toyota Prius was more detrimental to evironment than a Hummer was. Fuel use is obvious, but manufacturing of the batteries, disposal etc . seemed to be the culprit. Many times the evironuts are using half truths on what's good or whats bad to further their cause. Maybe I should mythbuster this one.
Human nature always seems to be that we just use what info we choose to justify our cause or wants, not all of it just some of it.
Our old Vice president Al has made millions off his BS and should probably send back the money. What an idiot.
 
ClimbnSink said:
You sound like them. Folks shouldn't live in suburbs or drive large cars, boats, and lawn machinery so there is room for polluting airplanes.
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No. I'm just throwing it right back in their face. Their gas guzzling power boat most likely serves absolutely no practical purpose other than limited recreation on a local lake. At least an airplane can take you places.
 
el con said:
I recently heard that the Toyota Prius was more detrimental to evironment than a Hummer was.... Many times the evironuts are using half truths on what's good or whats bad to further their cause...
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The availability of half-truths is a given on any issue of political import, and I see plenty of them from each camp.

I've read the report that trashed the Prius. It was about 1/4 truth shy of "half truth".
-harry
 
el con said:
Well it used to be a free country.
Another good reason to emit CO2 is that trees and plants need it to grow. They convert it back to oxygen as we all know from grade school. Why don't they mention this in the arguments? Us pilots are just feeding the trees.
This is why 6Y9 is such a great ecosystem,turf,trees,airplanes.
Fly a plane / plant a tree , just not on the ends of a runway:D
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Why do people assume that scientists are overlooking this or that factor without actually bothering to find out whether they are taking it into account or not?
 
el con said:
I recently heard that the Toyota Prius was more detrimental to evironment than a Hummer was. Fuel use is obvious, but manufacturing of the batteries, disposal etc . seemed to be the culprit.
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What was the source of that information?

Many times the evironuts are using half truths on what's good or whats bad to further their cause. Maybe I should mythbuster this one.
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That would be interesting to see. Mythbusters are usually pretty careful to get their facts straight.

Human nature always seems to be that we just use what info we choose to justify our cause or wants, not all of it just some of it.
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So how do you find out what's true?

Our old Vice president Al has made millions off his BS and should probably send back the money. What an idiot.
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Actually, Al managed to get most of the facts right, according to those who are in a position to know:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/05/al-gores-movie/
 
Mase, so far I haven't had time to look into cap and trade. I've been more focused on the issue of whether there is a problem to be solved. (The evidence I've seen says that there is.)

I did hear a local radio personality comment that someone offered to buy carbon credits from him because his land is forested. That didn't make sense to him (or me) because the trees will be there whether he gets the money or not. But maybe there's a way to set it up that makes sense; I just don't know.
 
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Mason said:
"Climate Facts, Not Fiction"
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I don't want to burst anybody's bubble, but that's not a serious treatment on the subject.

There is a popular set of "factz" that are commonly passed around on the topic that sound like they should mean something, but which aren't even in the stadium where the fight is being held. Things like "plants like CO2" and "CO2 is such a small percentage of our atmosphere" and "climate has always been changing" and "water vapor has more effect than CO2".

The response to these are all "yes, but _duhhh_". In other words, they are all truthful statements, even obvious ones, but statements which have no bearing. They don't support the conclusion that they hint at.

The skeptic argument is "we just don't know enough, yet, to be able to accurately gauge the magnitude of this effect". It's really not all that hard to push this argument but there are a lot of people in this debate who have no scientific training and who don't seem to be able to discern between what's relevant and irrelevant. In other words, there's a strong skeptic argument, but this isn't it, and it's peculiar how seldom we actually encounter it among the words of the "populist" skeptics (i.e. people with a web page).
-harry
 
Now you are making recreational value judgments which is a lost cause. The market has spoken, chicks dig boats and so we buy boats to get chicks. Again the only viable argument for airplanes is 'it's a free country' everything else fails. Best to talk nice about the suv and boat crowd selling out fellow fuel wasters is a losing proposition.
fgcason said:
No. I'm just throwing it right back in their face. Their gas guzzling power boat most likely serves absolutely no practical purpose other than limited recreation on a local lake. At least an airplane can take you places.
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Speaking of fuel wasters, it seems to me that in order to avoid being a hypocrite, anyone who complains about flying for recreation must NEVER go on vacation in any vehicle that uses fuel, must NEVER go on sightseeing trips by car, and in fact must NEVER drive anywhere but to or from work or the grocery store. Everything else is "wasteful."
 
Palmpilot said:
Speaking of fuel wasters, it seems to me that in order to avoid being a hypocrite, anyone who complains about flying for recreation must NEVER go on vacation in any vehicle that uses fuel, must NEVER go on sightseeing trips by car, and in fact must NEVER drive anywhere but to or from work or the grocery store. Everything else is "wasteful."
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Depends on where you draw your lines.

I had a vacation a few years back where I burned about 500 gallons of avgas. Somebody who loads the kids into the car for a trip to the beach and burns 10 gallons of gas might make an argument that the "line" for "once a year splurge" should be drawn somewhere above 10 gallons, but below 500 gallons.
-harry
 
Yup. 10 gallons. 500 gallons. However many gallons a cruise ship uses. But wait we can count how many people are moved per gallon per mile/hour right? Anyway you slice it, can and will be used against you. Freedom is the only argument that works.
 
Depending on where you live and need to travel, GA can compete with all the other methods. For example, if you live 60 miles from the airport used by the carriers, and in a mid-market city (KC, Nashville, Cincinnati, Little Rock, Columbus, etc) the efficiencies are amazing.

dmccormack said:
Remote work via telecommute was supposed to fix that.

Yeah, right -- the percentages are abysmal.

Anyway, GA makes no sense using strict Cost/Benefit analysis. Niether does marriage, children, sunsets, vacations, and a billion other things that make life tolerable.
Click to expand...
 
mantakos said:
The skeptic argument is "we just don't know enough, yet, to be able to accurately gauge the magnitude of this effect". It's really not all that hard to push this argument but there are a lot of people in this debate who have no scientific training and who don't seem to be able to discern between what's relevant and irrelevant. In other words, there's a strong skeptic argument, but this isn't it, and it's peculiar how seldom we actually encounter it among the words of the "populist" skeptics (i.e. people with a web page).
-harry
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It's not only people with no scientific training who seem to lose their way. Here is an embarrassing critique of a recent book by French scientist Claude Allègre, whose credentials suggest that he really ought to have a better grasp of the facts:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/04/claude-allegre-the-climate-imposter/

Apparently he even falls for the conspiracy theory nonsense:

The truly astonishing thing though is how hermetically sealed and impervious to fact Allègre’s whole argument is. No-one is honest, every result is fraudulent (excepting of course, Allègre’s ‘true curves’), no-one is without an agenda (except Allègre of course, and possibly Michael Crichton) and any scientist espousing the mainstream view or journalist questioning him is a Stalinist. Any contradiction of his arguments is simply proof that you are part of the conspiracy. It is this error that is the equivalent of ‘dividing by zero’ – once you have convinced yourself that only your own opinion matters, you can prove absolutely anything to your own satisfaction – but, unfortunately, to no-one else’s.
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The reviewer refers to it as dividing by zero, but another way of characterizing it is "circular reasoning," which is a classic feature of conspiracy theories. It goes like this:

1. All evidence against the conspiracy is false because all the people supplying it are in on the conspiracy.

2. The conspiracy theory is true because all evidence against it is false.
 
Palmpilot said:
Consumers can only choose from the products that are offered to them. Getting people to stop flying/driving/whatever will not be good for industry either. Perhaps the real problem is that we should be looking for constructive solutions instead of someone to blame.

I'm not sure, however, where you're getting the idea that the alternatives to 100LL are prohibitively expensive. At least one of the companies that are developing such alternatives says that it will cost less to produce than 100LL.
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How much $$ did they spend to develop it and how long will it take to pay off if they do get it approved. Then more importantly how long will it take to get other people to spend the money to replace the infastructure to distribute and dispense it. There is SOOOO much more to the cost then just how much it takes to produce it.
 
Missa said:
How much $$ did they spend to develop it and how long will it take to pay off if they do get it approved. Then more importantly how long will it take to get other people to spend the money to replace the infastructure to distribute and dispense it. There is SOOOO much more to the cost then just how much it takes to produce it.
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Obviously all that will have to be amortized into the selling price initially. I'm just glad that there are at least two companies that have what appear to be viable solutions for the lead problem, because I'm not sure the EPA can be held off forever.
 
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