Gatwick's Chief Executive offers to fall on his sword

Dear Steve,

I note your brave and selfless decision to resign if Gatwick is unsuccessful in getting the second runway in London. It is so good to see leading British business men imbued with the tradition of the Japanese Samurai who preferred to fall on their swords rather than admit defeat. It was of course a pity that such testosterone charged courage would also lead them to attacking Pearl Harbor and the subsequent atomic bombing of their cities, but I am sure historical analogies like this will not interest you.

It is a pity that you cannot find the same courage to speak out against the unsustainable expansion of aviation in the face of runaway climate change.

The good thing, (if it is a good thing) is that the worst case scenarios are all happening far quicker than we expected. The Arctic Sea Ice is collapsing, methane releases have started, economies are collapsing, food shortages are starting, Australia is on fire again and I could go on and on - but as you clearly can't be bothered understanding what is going on there is no point in me going on at you.  So by the time your second runway is built, assuming that you have not already impaled yourself on your sword, no one will be flying anywhere. That is apart from the American Military who may be interested in using it to support the climate change wars they are already war gaming for.

Kevin Lister

Response to Sir Howard Davies speech on Airport Capacity

Dear Sir Howard,

Having read your speech today, firstly let me congratulate you on the in depth analysis that you have carried out and the range of view points that you have considered.

My observation on your comments (in italics) follow:

1. “We are grateful to all those who have responded and helped us in our work. Of course in some cases, at airports or in airlines, for example, one may argue that it is their job to do so. But many others, in local action groups or environmental organisations, have devoted much personal time to preparing well-considered responses to the many questions we have posed.”

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

After having devoted considerable time making submissions to this commission, its predecessor the sustainable aviation consultation and other parliamentary committees it is gratifying to see your acknowledgement of the efforts that concerned citizens have gone to.

I trust that with your comment you also appreciate that the dice is hugely loaded towards the large aviation corporations. From a purely logistical perspective, it is far easier for them to continue submitting to consultations such as this than it is for members of the public who have to balance the time for research and preparation with the normal day to day business of work and family life. It is also emotionally draining repeatedly explaining the severity and consequences of climate change.

But the loading of the dice is done in ways that are far more subtle and subversive towards supporting the goals of the industry. Many people are unable to comment on the climate change and environmental limitations that we inevitably face for fear of losing their job. No one in the aviation industry, oil industry, motor industry, travel industry and many others would have the courage to speak loudly against the aviation industry. To do so, would almost certainly invite dismissal.

Indeed even in education which should be the bastion of progressive thought, I have found myself in trouble with my organisation for stating the obvious in debates such as this.

The final loading of the dice against environmentalists is what they have to say is what nobody wants to hear. Government's are not elected on the basis of the closing down airports and tackling climate change, but ensuring that somehow the status quo of economic growth can be preserved despite this being impossible. For this, they have the full backing of the press. So on these matters, governments listen to industry and then conjure up large and plausible words to make it sound like they are taking climate change seriously and listening to environmentalists. I would suggest that despite your efforts, you will have taken more soundings from industry than from climate change scientists. It is hugely concerning that your speech makes no mention of the last IPCC report despite it only being published one week ago. It is equally concerning when in this country we have world leading expert centres such as the Tyndal Centre that you have not solicited information from. Prior to your next report, I would challenge your organisation to take soundings on this matter from Prof Kevin Anderson who has done considerable research on the impacts of aviation on climate change.

I trust also that you appreciate that many thinking people are now terrified about the emerging disaster of climate change, but feel powerless to act. Many of these concerned people would neither know that this commission is taking place nor feel adequately qualified to make a worthwhile submission – yet their fear of the future remains justified. This places a special onus on your commission to ensure environmental considerations are given their full weight, and not simply moved to one-side by the overwhelming response load that the aviation industry is able to muster.

2. “Official and industry forecasts of demand for air travel have been systematically over-optimistic. Successive Department of Transport forecasts have recently been reduced, since the financial crisis and associated recession. That is partly a function of lower GDP growth, which is a strong driver of demand, but also a result of higher oil prices, which have increased the cost of flying aeroplanes.”

In your demand forecasting paper you never acknowledged the interconnectivity of the different aspects of our economy. The financial crisis of 2008 had its roots in the rapidly increasing oil prices that burst the bubble of speculation that drives the economy. Since that date the global economy has remained on life support through a combination of quantitative easing, exceptionally low interest rates and inflation to transfer wealth from savers to borrowers. These solutions are not sustainable. Even these exceptional efforts have hardly boosted economic growth and compared with times past the recovery is moribund. The biggest message of the 2008 crisis is that the economic system we take for granted is fundamentally flawed and the same drivers that caused the crisis haunt us still today. This persistent overhead of uncertainty is leading the US economy to the unprecedented point of a default on their bonds. As an ex-financier, I am sure that I do not need to impress on you the severity of this with its potential to blow out the water demand forecasts and availability of capital for investment.

3. “While only 6% of UK carbon emissions today are associated with air travel, that proportion could rise sharply as other sectors reduce their emissions. If we allowed unlimited growth in air traffic, that would impose high costs on the rest of the economy if the overall target is to be met, for example, pushing up domestic heating bills as the energy sector has to decarbonise more quickly.”

This is an interesting choice of words. 6% is a big slice of the pie, and as you point out it is set to increase.

More significantly the government's plans to decarbonise the economy are not going well. I refer you to the Government's document, The Carbon Plan: Delivering our low carbon future. It is ironic that with respect to aviation it boldly states in section 35 that, “Emissions from aviation will be capped by being part of the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) from 2012, ensuring that any increases in aviation emissions are offset by reductions elsewhere in the EU economy, or internationally.” As you are aware this will no longer be the case, but more importantly it sets the tone for repeated failures in this paper. It again boldly claims, “New low carbon power stations – a mix of carbon capture and storage, renewables and nuclear power – will be built in the 2020s.” Again, none of this is viable. After the Fukishima disaster has irradiated the entire Pacific, nuclear power is looking less and less of an option. None of the plausible words about carbon capture and storage have been able to overcome the thermodynamic limitations inherent with its operation and today we have exactly zero carbon capture and storage projects operational in the world. Not only is the aviation industry struggling to cuts its CO2 emissions, but so is every other industry. As a result global CO2 emissions are increasing super exponentially.

I have pointed out in past submissions the danger of this to social stability. The poorest in society will be priced out of staple energy and food due to peak oil and climate change. The proposal of the aviation industry is that they should be able to price this weakened majority from access to further resources so that the richest minority can continue flying. This is the only outcome from the carbon trading proposals that the industry is proposing, it is fundamentally an act of aggression against society’s weakest.

4. “But none of the submissions made to us have suggested that there are transformational gains to be had. It is true that larger aircraft, like the Airbus A380, could deliver some additional capacity in terms of passenger numbers. New aircraft in each market segment are likely to be a little larger than their predecessors (as well as being quieter and more fuel-efficient). But airline fleets change slowly and the direction for travel is not all one way (for example, some new Boeing 787s may replace larger 747s)”

This seems to be a misinterpretation of the competing strategies of the aviation industry. The A380 was built to enhance the existing the hub and spoke model of aviation by allowing higher density operation on the main routes. By contrast the initial market of the B787 was to support desire of airlines to move to a point-to-point business model. It should be noted that both of these significantly increase CO2 emissions. The A380 increases emissions by simple virtue of its size and the increased number of people that it allows in the aviation transport network, many of whom will be using connecting flights. The B787 however is potentially far worse. Its initial design was laid down in 2003/4 at a time of still relatively low oil prices. Boeing initially considered a higher speed subsonic plane but were persuaded by their customers to build an economical long haul plane suitable for point to point operations. Sustaining this mode of operation inherently requires a much bigger total fuel burn and a substantial increase in aviation business to support it. It was also a solution that the aviation industry saw to overcome potential capacity restrictions at hub airports.

Thus to say that B787 will replace B747s gives a limited picture of the strategic intent of the B787 and the potentially devastating environmental impact of moving to a point to point network.

The point to point model is much more difficult for environmental movements to counter as protests are needed at a wide range of airports. It thus incumbent for your commission to recognise that the B787 strategy is also effectively a route for the aviation industry to circumvent environment protest and to take a harder line with the point to point model.

5. “The best outcome [on climate change] would clearly be a global deal on aviation.”

The aviation industry have been unable to come up with anything even approaching a global deal, and given that it has failed every time it has tried, it is naivety to believe that it will suddenly start succeeding. Turkeys don't vote for Christmas and organisations with billions of pounds invested in capital equipment don't vote for contractions that will leave these idle, especially when they have huge interest payments to meet.

6. “Growth beyond that, unless current assumptions about fuel efficiency and the use of alternative fuels prove to have been overly pessimistic, would put great pressure on the rest of the economy to achieve further carbon reductions, which could be very costly.”

As I have argued in previous submissions, assumptions about fuel efficiency and alternative fuels are already provably wrong. As planes are now almost fully optimised in terms of aerodynamics, structures and thermodynamics any further improvements will be marginal and require huge investments. For this to be recouped, huge numbers of planes need to be sold and operated negating any environmental savings.

The other thrust of the aviation industry is that they can grow their own fuel in some carbon neutral nirvana where global food shortages don't exist and plants are not needed to sequestrate carbon from our polluted atmosphere.

Tesco also tried this approach in 2005. In our correspondence with them where we sought their environmental justifications. They eventually admitted, “When we decided to make biofuels available to customers in 2005, we did so in the belief that they could help customers to reduce their carbon impacts and reduce our dependency on oil as a source for petrol. Since then it has become clear that the impacts of biofuels are more complex” before dropping their entire biofuel marketing campaign. Since then, Terry Leahy went on to warn about the dangers biofuels impose to food security and in a talk on the issue he belatedly stated “we should think things through before acting, so that we do not suffer from unintended consequences.” It is therefore incredible that the aviation industry cannot be bothered to think through the consequences of their proposals, especially when the evidence is so clear all around the world.

It is a hubris that is probably more brutal than any that has gone before. Producing biofuels requires the conscious destruction of ecological resources such as tropical rainforests which are of immense value to the planet now and in the future for absolutely no scientific justification.

7. “Our work so far suggests that doing nothing to address the capacity constraints in our current airport system would not be the right approach. Its likely effect would be to restrict passengers’ choices and it could have unintended consequences for the efficiency and resilience of UK airports, as well as possibly leading to some flights and emissions being displaced to other countries.”

You make this comment immediately after your final summary about being receptive to the constraints of climate change and your well argued points that the best way to constrain aviation emissions is to constrain development of airports. It is quite remarkable. You have seen the evidence but your final adjudication ignores it. Perhaps you might want to explain why. It is setting a bad and dangerous omen for the future.

I thank you for your final request for comments on the analysis you have set out.

Yours sincerely,

Kevin Lister, Bsc (aero eng), MBA, MSC(mathematics)

Thanks for Sir Howard Davies, Independent Airports Commission

Dear Sir Howard,

Many thanks for the public session in Manchester yesterday, I am sure everyone had a great time. The tea and coffee was very nice. When I saw the plate full of Danish Pastries I though it was too good to be true, alas so it turned out to be as as they weren't for me.

I am sure many in the audience may have found your opening remark, “That you wanted the day to tease out the issues on aviation's impact on climate change,” apposite. Unfortunately, I find it just a bit difficult to know what there is to tease out that is not glaringly obvious - atmospheric CO2 will exceed 450 ppm towards the end of this decade making runaway climate change unavoidable, methane releases have started in the Arctic and the ice cap is collapsing, heatwaves and storms are making a mockery of hundreds of years of industrial progress, Syria is in a climate change induced civil war and Egypt is following in its footsteps and yes I could go on and on and on....But certainly the last thing we would want is a pubic session on climate change spoiled by the grubby facts on climate change.

So it was somewhat interesting to hear Heathrow's sustainability director suggesting that all could be made well in the world with a dose of new technology, biofuels and carbon trading.

Just for the record in case it was not noted, I did ask the Heathrow team to explain how new technology would reverse the trend of increasing aviation emissions that has existed since the Wright Brothers' first flight despite new technology being introduced every year from then to now.

Again in case it was not noted, I pointed out that Tesco dropped their campaign to be the UK's leading supplier of biofuel after their complete failure to demonstrate how it can reduce carbon emissions. I asked the Heathrow team to explain what they know that Tesco don't. As the public session debated the merits of biofuel, the last of the Indonesian rainforest is being burnt down and the last of the Orang-utans are being cooked to a crisp. Ignoring the science of climate change and burning every drop of fossil fuels is stupid enough, but burning down the rainforest to grow biofuel is orders of magnitude worse and aviation's plans would accelerate this disaster.

Again in case it was not noted, I asked about Carbon Trading. The poor in our society are facing a triple whammy. The price of basic foods is rising as global warming reduces food production, biofuels are diverting food to fuel and carbon trading will price access to basic energy requirements out of reach. The growing wealth gap has already fuelled inner city riots in the country and I asked how many inner city riots the aviation industry would deem to be acceptable.

Sir John Armitt posited the proposition that in 2050 people would still be wanting to fly in the same way they are now. This is a breathtakingly naïve assumption. In 2050 runaway climate change will be well underway and destroying much of our civilisation. The US department of defence is currently war gaming for climate change conflict in this period. The last thing that people struggling to survive will be thinking about is where they go on holiday, that is unless they are amongst the highest paid civil servants in the country.

In the second session on demand management and in response to Sir John Armitt demonstrating continuing naivety on climate change with his suggestion that more accurate demand forecasts are needed post 2030 for planing purposes I pointed out that our history on forecasting is very poor. The financial models the banks used predicted the risk of recent financial crashes in the order of 1 in 1E50 (1 with 50 zeros behind it). Our ability to predict passenger demand will be equally poor, especially when we continue to exclude the impact of climate change. I made the point that as CO2 continues to rise, our economic resources would have to be directed towards constructing a low carbon economy whilst simultaneously embarking on a wholesale rebuilding of existing infrastructure to cope with climate change impacts. In this future there will be no spare resources for building airports with no business cases. Again, I suggested that Sir John Armitt could answer his own question on the robustness of demand models post 2030 by looking at the increasing cost to Network Rail from climate change and projecting this forward. To help him with his analysis he should consider that we are only in the early stages of climate change and much more serious warming is set to come.

Again for the record, the basis of the CBI argument was that we must have connections to the fast growing economies of China and India. I offered the challenge to the CBI to demonstrate how long they believe these economies will continue growing, given that they have already reached many of the naturalgrowth limits and will face the same dilemmas as us in the near future.

After your deliberations you will of course be tempted by the argument that we must continue to expand because China and others will continue to pollute, and it is correct that China plans to buy the thousands of planes that we subsidise Airbus and Boeing to build. Maybe you should say it how it is – this act of China which is supported by Airbus and Boeing breaches the Durban Platform Agreement  should be considered an act of aggression.

I was asked by a colleague last night why there is any desire to build airports at all. I was stumped, especially when BAA's accounts show the business to be loss making and virtually bankrupt as it struggles with its existing interest payments. The only suggestion I could offer is that as the economy suffered a money supply contraction following the banking crash of 2008, the mathematics of the fraction reserve banking system make it imperative for the government to ensure large amounts of new finance is created to reverse it. This will largely be through new debt backed by equity from Middle Eastern Sovereign funds, helping perpetuate markets for their oil. Ultimately, it does not matter if this is for profitable purposes or not as BAA is certainly not profitable today, it is about creating money and markets for oil. Correct me if I am wrong.

Thanks again for the tea, coffee and a most entertaining time in Manchester. 

Kevin

An other report of the days events is here