What is that wacky Swift boat smearer Marc Morano up to? I don’t visit his website, of course, since it is filled with disinformation and apparently he is too busy to blog.

But somebody sent me the story and the link to his website, and then I noticed that Morano links to stories here on CP, strangely enough, so I thought I would return the favor this one time.

Anyway, one would suppose the Swift Boat Smearer is being mockingly humorous or satirical, like his namesake, Jonathan Swift, by making this article his banner headline. But then really most of the articles Morano links to merit mocking or satire – “GORE LIED: Global temperatures plunge further; have dropped .63?F (.35?C) since Al Gore released An Inconvenient Truth” [he kills me!] — so you really can’t tell whether his whole damn website is just some sort of elaborate performance art, like something Andy Kaufman would have done.

Anyway, if we drop the part of the story that connects things to global warming — which is beyond tenuous — the article itself, from Russia Today, has some interesting stuff on the weather conditions over the Intertropical Convergence Zone that can make for “white knuckle” flying:

For even the most experienced pilots, flying over the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) is oftentimes a white-knuckle affair.

The ITC zone is a constantly fluctuating band that is located between 5º north and 5º south of the equator. It produces some of the heaviest precipitation on the planet, as well as the bumpiest airplane rides.

This meteorologically active region, which gives off a constant vertical updraft of air along its path, was known to sailors as ‘the doldrums’ due to the absence of any refreshing breeze. But for passengers on an airplane traveling over the ITCZ, the sensation can be much different.

Indeed, as vertical-flowing air masses move upwards from the surface of the water, sometimes at great speeds, airplanes may feel a lot like a roller coaster ride. Meanwhile, storms in this volatile region can climb to 50,000 feet, thus forcing pilots, who usually stay at an altitude of 35,000 feet, to find a way to skirt them.

Tragically, it seems that the pilots of Air France 447 met exactly this sort of perfect storm.

William Voss, head of the Flight Safety Foundation, told Bloomberg that there was an “explosion of weather” along the flight route of the doomed aircraft where three storm fronts converged.

“If you take a look at the satellite information online it was like an explosion of weather at the time the Air France flight would have been trying to pick its way through the Intertropical Convergence Zone,” he said.

“The area of weather along that route of flight wasn’t even there when the aircraft was leaving the coast,” Voss added.

Anyway, I thought readers might like to see this stuff and have some comments on it or Morano’s website.

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This is not helpful:

Russia Today offers this steaming pile of reportage under the disingenuous headline, "Did global warming help bring down Air France flight 447?"

Will climate change lead to fiercer storms? Sure. Can any particular storm be linked to climate change with any legitimate certainty? No. The Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media has a timely piece on this very subject.

This sort of framing—note the headline in the form of a question, note that the evidence is "leading" some climatologists to "wonder"—is made-to-order fodder for deniers like the Business & Media Institute. The free-market group (“Advancing the Culture of Free Enterprise in America”) already pounced on the story: "Climatologist Blames Global Warming for Air France Crash."

They’ve got the gall to call out "warming alarmists" for advancing this fictitious link to the Air France crash. Alarmist?! Why…that’s just…OK, this pretty much fits the definition of alarmist. We can agree on that one.

And, to jab back at the climate skeptics, the Russia Today stinker of a headline was the equivalent of the gleeful right-wing bloviating about the "myth" of climate change every time the temperature drops below 40 degrees F in Miami.

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Obama takes on the anti-scientific delayers

Sick transit?arvindgrover via flickrThis morning, Vice President Biden went slightly off-message about swine flu—just enough to freak out the White House, and potentially enough to freak out hypochondriacal Americans. Appearing on NBC’s Today Show, he responded to a question from Matt Lauer by saying he would advise his own family not to “go anywhere in confined places now.” He specifically mentioned planes, subways, and even cars as spaces that could be unsafe (he also mentioned classrooms and, uh, containers).

The White House scrambled to tweak the message, saying that all Americans should avoid air travel to Mexico and that only those who are feeling sick should avoid hopping on the subway. And lord knows public transportation doesn’t need a mass exodus, given the troubles it’s already facing.

But is Biden right? Should we avoid the subway and other confined spaces?

Not so fast, says David Goldberg of Smart Growth America, which advocates for public transportation as part of community planning. “Certainly it’s understandable that people are concerned,” he told me. “But if you can’t get on a subway or a plane, then you probably shouldn’t be in an office where they recycle the air, and you probably shouldn’t be at a shopping mall.” Far from “holing up in our bunkers,” Goldberg says, the best approach is to use common sense. “The precautions you should take if you’re using public transportation are the same as if you’re in any public space.”

Dr. John Balbus, chief health scientist at Environmental Defense, echoes that sentiment, and says the current threat is getting blown out of proportion. “Every year the United States experiences an influenza epidemic that kills thousands of people,” he says. “It runs from October through March, and we don’t tell people to stop using the subway then.” Balbus, a member of the National Academy of Sciences Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology, says there are no indications at this stage that swine flu is much more severe than other flu strains we’ve encountered recently.

“Is it risk-free to take the subway? No, absolutely not,” says Balbus. “But it’s not risk-free to take it during any flu outbreak. It just requires common-sense precautions.”

What are those precautions? The basics: Wash your hands, cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze, and for the love of Pete, stay home if you’re sick. And one more tip for those who brave the subway, says Goldberg: “Don’t wrestle on the floor with a sneezing stranger.”

Here’s Biden in the (uninfected) flesh:

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Dear Umbra,

This year my family is not in the position to make any major CO2-reducing changes. We will not be purchasing a new car, a smaller house, or more efficient appliances. And honestly, with two small children living in a suburb, public transportation is not a realistic option. Still, we'd like to reduce our carbon footprint and help the environment. Would you be able to point out other meaningful, smaller changes we could make? Thanks for your guidance.

Tara H.
Indianapolis, Ind.

Dearest Tara,

Don't abandon hope for significant greenhouse-gas reductions. If your life is anything approaching the typical American's, there are at least two major CO2-reducing changes still within your grasp. You can't drive less, buy a better car, or make any major home investments, but you can probably eat less meat and avoid the airport. Conventional meats and air travel are two personal climate impact behemoths.

Take a bite out of clime.

Four people flying round trip from Indianapolis to Cancún would emit 9,856 pounds of CO2 (by comparison, a typical family car emits about 12,000 pounds of CO2 in a year. The Environmental Defense Fund estimates that if all Americans switched from their current diets to going meat-free one day a week, it would be equivalent to removing 8 million American cars from the roads. Another way to look at the meat delete option is through the calculations offered by the Pacific Institute, which estimates that a skimpy 40-gram pile of hamburger (about 1.5 ounces worth) causes 790 to 1,500 grams of CO2 emissions. If you calculate how many grams of burgers your family usually eats and add it all up, you can get an idea of your yearly beef-induced emissions; you can also estimate your travel emissions by using any number of online calculators.

May I presume, however, that budget is a limiting factor for you? Eating lower on the food chain -- and, of course, eschewing the hella-expensive cost of an airline ticket -- are quite kind to the pocketbook, unlike the upfront costs of the new auto and home improvements you mention above. In fact, if you don't currently fly due to economics, pat yourself on the back -- your footprint is already lower than many Americans'. A big sticking point on following this prescription, though, is that flying and meat-eating (among other high-carbon callings) are often undertaken for pleasure. To ease any resistance you may have to foregoing things you enjoy, remember: In situations where habit change is hard, we start with Less, not None.

I want to once again mention Mark Bittman's New York Times article about eating less meat (I'm going through a Mark Bittman phase). Unlike yours truly, Bittman can avoid the Why and go directly to the How, and (also unlike yours truly) he is a cooking expert. His suggestions include reducing portion size (the USDA, for one, recommends only about five or six ounces of meat each day); he also advises using other protein sources, eating less protein overall, ordering differently at restaurants, and serving less-meaty dishes that are so delicious they're a pleasure unto themselves.

As to flying -- if indeed you or yours partake in such an activity -- there is a straightforward way to reduce, and a slightly complicated way too (or probably several, but for now I'm just mentioning one). If your family typically flies for one vacation and two visits to see the extended family, cut out one of these trips or substitute a less carbonaceous (bus! train! llama!) travel method. I don't have much experience with business travel, but I do know that video conferencing and trip consolidation are also useful when it comes to reducing business miles flown. If you cannot trim the number of annual plane trips, whether for business or for family, see if you can curtail the emissions on your flights through clever flight choices. Direct flights are better than indirect flights, because take-off and landing burn the most fuel. A strong aviation emissions calculator, such as Atmosfair, will help you compare various routes and emissions costs as you shop for tickets.

As you see, your family need not feel environmentally helpless or stumped. These two tweaks alone could make a great difference -- unless you are already land-bound vegetarians. In which case, write back and we'll talk about different changes.

Affably,
Umbra

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Dear Umbra,

Your recent answer to the plane/train question prompts me to ask something that has always bothered me but that my little old brain can't figure out on my own. I know that planes are worse than other forms of transportation, but the plane is going to fly whether I'm on it or not. So I always wonder if it's really better for me to drive to Chicago in my car than it would be to grab an empty seat on a plane that's already going that way. In that sense, isn't it like the bus? Yes, the bus pollutes more than my car, but it has to drive the same route every day whether I get on or not. I understand that by buying a plane ticket, I am generating demand that the airlines then supply, in theory. They might add more routes and so forth. But that seems more like an issue for a regular traveler, not for a once-a-decade plane trip to Europe. Please help me get my head around this!

Beverly B.
Louisville, Ky.

Dearest Beverly,

Thank you. Two little old brains are better than one, so together perhaps we can puzzle through the good points you raise. Those of you who have just joined our travel smackdown, please visit the prior trains vs. cars and cars vs. planes question and the lively discussion that followed my thrilling use of math.

Give buses a transporting chance.

Have you heard that airlines are starting to charge fees for luggage -- not to mention using lighter-weight beverage carts, seats, and silverware -- to keep down fuel costs? From a fuel perspective, each additional passenger is like a giant walk-on suitcase. A heavier plane requires more energy to fly, hence it burns more fuel and emits more greenhouse gases than a lighter plane. For that reason, estimates of greenhouse-gas emissions for air travel are always accompanied by qualifiers about numbers of passengers. So weight is one reason not to jump on a plane.

Another reason is that -- as you rightly suspected -- the trips we take encourage those airlines to keep flying. Supply and demand affects air carriers much the same way it impacts the bus business. We can easily imagine how this works with the latter. Say we're making last-minute plans to travel from Louisville to Chicago for a windy weekend. We check the bus schedule, discover there are two buses per day, and buy tickets for one of the routes. We board the bus, and see that on a Friday it's practically deserted.

What would we logically conclude from our lonely ride with more-than-ample seat choices and full access to the bathroom? That few people choose to travel from Louisville to Chicago this way. And it would be no surprise the next year to find that the bus company had slashed the number of trips on that route. Likewise, if our bus had been sold out, we wouldn't be surprised if the services increased.

Bus companies -- whether they're offering intercity bus service (between cities) or local routes in town -- will supply vehicles to meet demand. That's logical, right? It doesn't matter whether you buy tickets far in advance or at the last minute; for intercity buses it doesn't matter whether you commute daily or hop on once a fortnight. Transit companies have figured out the typical load and try to serve that load. We all generally accept this rationale, and there's no reason not to extend it to the airline industry.

Just thinking of yourself as a surprise airline client doesn't discount you as a demand generator, either. In order to snag a decent profit, carriers have to take into account the frequently flying businesswoman and the once-yearly international vacationer. You, the individual traveler, matter to the airlines. And what the world needs now is fewer flying travelers and fewer planes in the air. So it's truly better not to fly if you can avoid it.

Buses, on the other hand, need your support. Out of all our road transportation options, intercity buses are the best choice vis-à-vis global warming. Within cities, meanwhile, buses are often the only form of public transport (one that's relatively kind to planet and pocketbook). Both types of bus services will be easy to expand if demand was to grow, and demand must grow. Though, like me, you may wish we could all ride affordable and frequent trains, the infrastructure for instantly expanding rail travel is simply not here. We need to increase our use of mass transit. Support buses by riding them when you can and voting to fund them when asked. And enjoy your trip to Chicago.

Windily,
Umbra

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The aviation industry talked up greenness Wednesday at the world's biggest air show in Farnborough, England. At a sustainability summit, Giovanni Bisignani of the International Air Transport Association called climate change an "emergency situation" and said airlines are the best suited to address it: "No other industry is as responsible, united, and ambitious." Indeed, the industry is gung-ho about designing more fuel-efficient aircraft; the Airbus A380 and Boeing 787, both coming down the pike, are being touted as the most fuel-efficient airplanes yet. But Big Air remains unenthusiastic about a European Union plan to include airlines in its emissions-trading scheme, and officials continue to stress that the air industry really ain't that bad. "We are under fire from many fronts, certainly from environmentalists, certainly from the uneducated general public that finds us an attractive target at which to shoot," says Boeing CEO Scott Carson. "But the flying public still wants to fly."

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All flights into, out of, and within the European Union will be included in the bloc's emissions-trading scheme as of 2012, the E.U. Parliament decided Thursday. If the plan is given final approval, airlines will have to cut emissions 3 percent in 2012 and 5 percent per year from 2013 on. Airlines would buy 15 percent of their emissions permits from the E.U.; the rest would be allocated for free. Big Air Travel strongly opposes the plan, saying it would be extra expense for an already struggling industry. The United States is also opposed, and insists that forcing non-European airlines to cap emissions would be illegal under international aviation rules. E.U. officials say the plan is legal, and hope that it's just a first step toward an eventual global agreement on aviation emissions.

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