EPA says it intends to regulate emissions by US airliners
Really? We need more government regulations from the EPA? Seems like just another junket to squeeze money from both ends. bet they end up with "fees" and fines for engines that do not meet rediculous standards. And of course, the Great Excuse: "Global Warming". I am not believing every jet in the world will cause a measurable effect. Next the airlines will raise prices to "offset" my carbon to get somewheres...
What's that? No, you don't want to bite the bullet with the rest of us? Then STFU!
It occurs to me that the reason politicians fight so hard to get re-elected is that they don't want to have to earn a living under the laws that they've passed.
To quote the Constitution and Bill of Rights you first have to have one.
Regulated aircraft emissions (with the exception of Our Dear Leader's fleet of course) falls into the former category.
There's little money to be made flying passengers in old, worn-out, fuel guzzling aircraft - which is why socialist nations and fly-by-night cargo companies typically operate them.
Government / Air Force jets tend to be 25-50 years old.
The presumptive ability to fly across the country at a moment's notice is part of the model of every corporation and I think that restricting this will be a shoe that pinches very tightly for business. I will note that I have been wrong on issues like this before - I never thought that CA would vote to strangle agriculture in its Central Valley - but the cause and effect _should_ be near enough for most businessmen to see.
Jan
I would favor abolishing the EPA, but I cannot see a path to that happening (other than wishful thinking). I can see a path to downsizing them and minimizing their power: one of the threads that leads to this is their implementation of draconian controls that cause inconvenience to a large segment of the population. There would also need to be a pretty plain cause-and-effect (since we humans are not good at that). If they slowly increase pollution standards for airplanes over a 20 or 30 year period, nothing will trigger. If they implement strict regulation that has massive impact on business, then we might get some of the EPA's power taken away.
So I am hoping for them to be idealistic and unwise.
Jan
executive branch, are killing this golden goose. -- j
.
This is just another government takeover of private industry they are trying to just sweep under the rug. First, they try to dissuade people from travelling through the absolutely worthless TSA (a 97% FAIL rate in detecting _real_ weapons). Knowing that isn't working, they now try to restrict flying altogether.
Boeing and Airbus have made huge investments in efficiency, driving the engine technology. Both companies are in the process of adding electric motors to the landing gear to reduce the need to run the engines at high levels (70% throttle) while taxiing. Both companies have studied hybrid, hydrogen, and electric aircraft designs, and realized the technology to make these designs workable is a long way off. All of this is market driven, so more regulation isn't needed.
And the reason so much "science" seems to favor that view is that EPA and its foreign equivalents hold nearly all the purse strings. Scientists who publish anything that disagrees with that party line have their careers destroyed. Reason did an article on this some time ago. This is why I equate EPA with the State Science Institute.
This crap all comes from Obama. He's the head of the Executive Branch, and all he has to do is put an activist environmental lawyer in charge of the agency and tell him to write as many regulations as possible. Anywhere that somebody is burning a carbon-based compound, carbon dioxide is being emitted, and they can use the universal excuse of "Global Warming" to justify more regulations.