Another fine action by PS although this time it doesn’t seem to have any impact – it has so far been ignored by the mainstream media and a quick check on the London City Airport suggests that flights are taking off as normal.

Locals are confirming that flights started from city airport at 7am. While the private Jet Centre where the group are locked on does apear to have been sucessfully shut down, it is alarming that the airport is prepared to disregard health and safety regulations and continue to run flights in the area. There have been no reports that the group have been arrested or removed so far. If they are still there then they have been locked on for 7 hours now...

For the local campaign group perspective see below-

PRESS RELEASE FIGHT THE FLIGHTS - LONDON CITY AIRPORT

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 10 June 2009

FIGHT THE FLIGHTS RESPONSE TO PLANE STUPIDS ACTION AT LONDON CITY AIRPORT


Fight the Flights is not a direct action group, but we fully appreciate the frustration that the climate change activists feel in getting their voices, and concerns heard on aviation expansion, and how aviation is one of the fastest growing sources of CO2 emissions.

It is no wonder that some campaigners feel they are being pushed into taking non violent direct action because the system is failing people of their democratic rights to protect their communities, futures and their environment from harmful ‘runaway’ airport and flight expansion.

Just under a 100,000 residents in east and south east London will be affected by the increasing excessive noise levels from London City Airport upon expansion, and yet less than 10,000 were claimed to have been consulted by the London Borough of Newham. Most will not be entitled to any noise insulation. They will have to live with the consequences every day of their lives, each time a flight takes off and lands. The majority do not have the option to move, and many lived in the area long before the airports creation.

Benefits?

In just over 20 years the airport has only managed to directly employ 120 Newham residents out of the 406 directly employed staff the airport claim to employ.

London taxpayers have also paid £24million for the airports security provided by the Metropolitan Police over the past 5 years, which the airport refuse to pay.

In addition the air quality above London City Airport exceeds EU directive levels by 50% and was termed as ‘toxic’ but this was not acknowledged by the London Borough of Newham. In a borough which has the highest level of mortality in under 30s with asthma in the whole country, Newham should be focussing on improving air quality, not adding to the pollution by approving further expansion at this residentially situated airport in the most densely populated area of England.


Eroded Democracy

Residents have been constantly thwarted and ignored by this government and the London Borough of Newham when providing evidence against the expansion. Requests for a public inquiry into the planned 50% expansion of flights at London City Airport was refused by Hazel Blears, Secretary of State in 2008, whilst the London Borough of Newham showed no concern that 100s of homes in Greenwich will now be in the crash zone and failed to address the risk to residents and communities who live, work or travel through the crash zone in both Newham and Greenwich. However in contrast the government and council appear to consistently listen to the aviation at the expense of the communities: this is expansion at any cost.

With a government that does not listen to local concerns on the effects of expansion on third party safety, increasing pollution levels, the effect on residents health and children’s development, and the contribution to climate change, it is no wonder that we are seeing actions such as this more frequently.

Good action and pleased to see attacks on private aviation however this show some lack of planning that with a bit of thinking through could have been avoided.

The aircraft locked onto was having an engine change so wasn't moving anyway.
The main runway was not affected so all the other planes carried on a normal
The private jets were simply towed to the other area and have been taking off and landing as usual.
The banner could not be seen from the terminal so nobody knew you were there
There was nobody in the terminal handing out explanation leflets or doing media interviews

Well done for doing it but better planning next time.

5 arrests btw.

Climate protest over private jets (with pic)
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/8092724.stm

Plane protesters lock down jet with 'human wheel clamp' at City airport (with pic)
 http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23705741-details/Plane+protesters+lock+down+jet+with+'human+wheel+clamp'+at+City+airport/article.do

Climate campaigners chain themselves to jet at London City airport (with pic)
 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/5492459/Climate-campaigners-chain-themselves-to-jet-at-London-City-airport.html

Activists keep jet grounded
 http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/uk/Activists-keep-jet-grounded.5350810.jp

Climate Change Protestors At London City Airport
 http://londonist.com/2009/06/climate_change_protestors_at_london.php

No one is suggesting short haul airliners, this is just a study that takes into account of the 'total cost of ownership' of different vehicles.

"
True or false: taking the commuter train across Boston results in lower greenhouse gas emissions than travelling the same distance in a jumbo jet. Perhaps surprisingly, the answer is false.
A new study compares the "full life-cycle" emissions generated by 11 different modes of transportation in the US. Unlike previous studies on transport emissions, Mikhail Chester and Arpad Horvath of the University of California, Berkeley, looked beyond what is emitted by different types of car, train, bus or plane while their engines are running and includes emissions from building and maintaining the vehicles and their infrastructure, as well as generating the fuel to run them.
"

Supporter, give them some (more) credit, that they'll figure out that stuff in the debrief, or might be already aware of it but might not have been able to do anything about it in the circumstances that neither you nor I know about fully.

Danny, just 'cos you repost something with a graph in and from a magazine with the word scientist, doesn't show anything.

It depends who produced this, whether it was peer reviewed, and what their agenda was - for example, I doubt it takes into account the extra impact of aeroplane emissions when they're released at that height. There'll be lots more, but I'm afraid I'm not going to get into a debate about it, or read up your full article.

You might use it to justify why you still fly - I think about the 150,000 people dying each year already from our choices.

>It depends who produced this,
Mikhail V Chester,2 and Arpad Horvath, Dept of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California

>whether it was peer reviewed,
Obviously, it was would have been reviewed before publication.
Environmental Research Letters, DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/4/2/024008
If you were to read the article you'll see a British scientist explaining why it is useful.

>and what their agenda was - for example, I doubt it takes into account the extra impact of aeroplane emissions when they're released at that height.

Perhaps not, the source data is the US Environmental Protection Agency 2003 Mobile 6.2: Mobile Source Emission Factor Model. I'm not going to read that if you can't be arsed looking at the article. You can replace any figure you dispute and still use the data.

>There'll be lots more, but I'm afraid I'm not going to get into a debate about it, or read up your full article.

It's foolish to comment on something that you haven't read, you inevitably end up saying foolish and inaccurate things.

>You might use it to justify why you still fly - I think about the 150,000 people dying each year already from our choices.

Foolish and inaccurate things like that. The importance of the environmental total cost of ownership is something Green scientists were publicising over a decade ago, this study is just one that attempts that for transportation using available data. If you even had looked at the graph you would have seen that full-cycle emissiond for planes are 10-20 % worse than the normally quoted tail-pipe emmisions, so this is more of a reason to fly less. It is also a reason to travel less by cars and trains, due the normally hidden or ignored overall cost of the infrastructure.
If you use a different set of aircraft pollutant figures, then you can still modify them by the weightings found in this report:
"We find that total life-cycle energy inputs and greenhouse gas emissions contribute an additional 63% for onroad, 155% for rail, and 31% for air systems over vehicle tailpipe operation. Inventorying criteria air pollutants shows that vehicle non-operational components often dominate total emissions".

Its very easy to read a sensationalist headline in the press and run with it... As often happens though, the reality is far removed from claims that this study shows that trains are worse for the environment than planes.

'>and what their agenda was - for example, I doubt it takes into account the extra impact of aeroplane emissions when they're released at that height.

Perhaps not, the source data is the US Environmental Protection Agency 2003 Mobile 6.2: Mobile Source Emission Factor Model. I'm not going to read that if you can't be arsed looking at the article. You can replace any figure you dispute and still use the data.'

The fact that the article doesn't mention or factor in the fact that the radiative forcing of forcing of aeroplane emissions are 2.7 times higher than those emitted at ground level is a major flaw of the paper which severley distorts its results. When you show the forcing (ie the effect on climate) rather than the co2 emission, suddenly air transport looks dramatically worse for the environment.

The article makes a good point about vehicle occupancy, however you have to trawl through their supplementary data to find out what kind of vehicle occupancy they use for their figures, which again is quite misleading at first glance as they only have values for cars with less than two people in, off peak buses with 5 occupants and nearly full planes. Greater transparency here would make the article far more useful.

Finally the methodology used here does not have anything to say about distances traveled. One of the problems with flying places is not just the higher radiative forcing, but the massively increased distances traveled. Berating pensioners for taking the bus or train into town to get groceries can hardly be compared with people flying half way across the world to have a nice holiday in terms of its ecological impact, and neither are these actions equivalent in terms of their social benefits, one allows people to gather items needed to meet basic living standards, the other provides a global financial elite with a way of enjoying a luxurious way of spending their leisure time.

Life cycle analysis is a useful tool, but only when understood within a broader context.

>The fact that the article doesn't mention or factor in the fact that the radiative forcing of forcing of aeroplane emissions are 2.7 times higher than those emitted at ground level is a major flaw of the paper which severley distorts its results.

The major flaw lies somewhere between your ears. The paper gives you a model you can plug figures into.

>When you show the forcing (ie the effect on climate) rather than the co2 emission, suddenly air transport looks dramatically worse for the environment.

Worse than what? Worse than it previously looked? Why don't you start adding figures rather than rhetoric?

>The article makes a good point about vehicle occupancy, however you have to trawl through their supplementary data...

Yes, you have to read the article in full to understand it. I realise how that is discriminatory against the stupider posters here.

>Greater transparency here would make the article far more useful.

You mean you'd prefer scientific papers on a facebook page where you can judge their ethicacy by how many friends that they have?

>Finally the methodology used here does not have anything to say about distances traveled. One of the problems with flying places is not just the higher radiative forcing, but the massively increased distances traveled.

Bullshit. The paper makes clear it is better to fly to Siberia than drive there. It's not about the total distance, it's about the total pollution.

>Berating pensioners for taking the bus or train into town to get groceries can hardly be compared with people flying half way across the world to have a nice holiday in terms of its ecological impact, and neither are these actions equivalent in terms of their social benefits, one allows people to gather items needed to meet basic living standards, the other provides a global financial elite with a way of enjoying a luxurious way of spending their leisure time.

You are right, it is better to berate the upperclass hypocrites within Plane Stupid who still fly themselves, even if it is their daddy and mommy paying for the flight.

I'd like to ask David Milliband, has young Joss Garmann finally got his head out of your brothers anus? Is Tilly Gifford still flying out to India every year?