Model Airplanes

(Photo: Ben Grey)

As we move into 2015, the latest climate science continues to diverge from policy. New science tells us that, because of short-lived climate pollutants, current policies dealing with carbon dioxide pollution alone will likely produce more warming than doing nothing at all.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has now also said that we must begin to effect a large removal of the accumulated climate pollution already in our atmosphere – that emissions reductions alone are no longer sufficient. But all is not discouraging, when it comes to new climate discoveries. Atmospheric removal of carbon dioxide now appears to be no more expensive than many things our civilization does every day.

This is a paradigm change from current policy. All policy to date basically relies only on reducing carbon dioxide emissions that we put in the sky every year. Nowhere does policy or proposed policy suggest taking more out than we put in. Two decades ago, proposed climate policy was suggesting carbon dioxide emissions reductions of 80 percent or more by 2100. A decade ago, the suggestions were for reductions of 80 percent or more by 2050. Today in some cities, current policy is reaching for what is being called net zero, or 100 percent reductions of carbon dioxide emissions by mid-century.

Looked at a different way, the Kyoto Protocol called for the United States to reduce emissions to 1987 levels by 2012. Currently proposed Environmental Protection Agency

Article source: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/28212-climate-change-2014-what-do-we-do-now

When Angela and Mike Stewart tell people that their now 10-year-old son, Sam’s, first word was carburetor, they’re not joking.

“We’re pretty sure that was it,” said Angela, seriously.

Actually, it makes a lot of sense for this Washington family, which spends just about every other weekend at race tracks across the Midwest between April and November (racing season) and countless more hours in the garage at home working on their dragsters.

Mike’s is a “door car,” a 1964 Ford Fairlane, and Sam’s is a sleek, scale model of a full-size dragster.

That’s right. At just 10 years old, Sam has his own car and he not only drives it, he races it against others his age down on a one-eighth-of-a-mile track.

Sam was just 9 when he competed in his first drag race with the NHRA (National Hot Rod Association) Junior Drag Racing League. In mid-November, he

Article source: http://www.emissourian.com/features_people/feature_stories/washington-s-own-speed-racer/article_53d31a42-8ff6-50e0-8933-0b893cd795e6.html

This holiday season, one of the hottest-selling toys has been the quadcopter drone, a tiny remote-controlled helicopter that carries a small video camera anyplace the ground-based operator sends it. While some of these brightly colored quads weigh less than a pound, they can still deliver a pedestrian a pretty ugly whack in the side of the head if the operator loses control.

Imagine for a moment, though, that the drone is larger, say a machine that weighs as much as 55 pounds. And imagine that instead of colliding with a pedestrian that 55-pound drone finds its way into the engine or windshield of a commercial airliner.

Remember the Canada geese that were sucked into the engines of that US Airways airplane in 2009 shortly after takeoff from LaGuardia Airport? Those geese that forced pilots Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger and Jeffrey Skiles to put their airplane down in the Hudson River weighed only 9 to 12 pounds each.

Right now, the Federal Aviation Administration is trying to develop rules that will allow commercially flown drones as heavy as 55 pounds to share the same airspace as airplanes carrying people.

This is a really bad idea, despite the fact that the FAA plans to restrict drones to altitudes less than 400 feet above the ground.

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Article source: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-drones-airplane-laguardia-jfk-airspace-faa-sullenberger-perspec-1225-jm-20141223-story.html

Article source: http://www.wsj.com/articles/aviator-buffs-yearn-for-watches-but-few-pilots-actually-use-them-1419556999