Tom Gullick: 9,000+ (1 Viewer)

[Richard Klim]

The start of wandering off into the anthropogenically induced climate change, or not, was the amount of flights mega-listers take to build up their totals. Pardon? 90%, at least, of the flights taken were scheduled flights, flights that were going to their destinations even if the birders weren't on them...

Come off it, Chris. As a birder, I accepted that I was as guilty as anyone else of contributing to the proliferation of excessive and unnecessary air travel. Every passenger (businessman, tourist, birder...) can smugly look across the aisle and reassure themselves of their innocence – the flight would have gone anyway, carrying all these other folk on far less important missions.

There is absolutely no need to go swanning off around the globe for 'meetings'. That's what the internet has capacity for.

But similarly, why do birders still 'need' to travel thousands of kilometres just to personally see/hear (ie, 'tick') species that can often be easily experienced via a wide range of online media?

 

[chris butterworth]

Come off it, Chris. As a birder, I accepted that I was as guilty as anyone else of contributing to the proliferation of excessive and unnecessary air travel. Every passenger (businessman, tourist, birder...) can smugly look across the aisle and reassure themselves of their innocence – the flight would have gone anyway, carrying all these other folk on far less important missions.

But similarly, why do birders still 'need' to travel thousands of kilometres just to personally see/hear (ie, 'tick') species that can often be easily experienced via a wide range of online media?

Oh, bugger. That's not fair Richard. You're introducing logic. There may have been a touch, just a smidgen of hyperbole in my post. It was aimed more at those who were, perhaps inadvertently, blaming long distance birding tor the world's ills. ( damn, more hyper bowl ).

Chris

 

[Valéry Schollaert]

What about cattle producing methane?

Back in Europe I created an association organizing short distance birding trips (it still exist); food was 100% vegetarian (and organic). But regarding meat production, this is far to be the single impact on environment. Cattle is using more space (thus destroying more natural habitats) than any other food production and use huge quantity of water. For one who eat meat, avoiding bath to save water is just a joke! I think being veg is probably the most important of the principles speaking of

we could all do well to adopt these principles in our daily lives

thus for tourism it is a bit more difficult, as it is generally not in holidays that the people want to start this kind of effort - this being said, our veg birding trips in Europe were successful.

My goodness, it didn't take long to forget about Tom Gullicks achievements in this thread.

I think nobody forgot, whatever we like it or not, but this is one of the fact I like with birds and birding: our interest is leading to all kind of considerations and talks, including of course nature protection, human behaviour, but also many other sciences and interests including even philosophy sometimes. It is the richness of ornithology...

 

[Andy Hurley]

Valéry, have you ever seen the fields on Mallorca? I suspect yes. They try to get about 5 harvests a season. They pump millions of litres of water onto those fields to achieve that, and them blame tourists for their water shortages. They have to make their minds up. Similarly the crop circles in the desert that will run dry in 10 years because there is no more water. Its happening in Africa too. Except there they they don't only grow crops, but flowers too, then the rains don't come and they have the next drought. Its all down to sustainablity, I think. If they only grew crops that used a sustainable amount of water, it would help enormously. Similarly, the could intoduce Springbok and Oryx, that require far less water and tastes, in my opinion, better than beef. It might even be sustainable, but I don't know as I haven't seen any figures. The trouble is, people are always willing to find ways to make more money. Europeans have in comparison, to other areas of the world, a very high standard of living. Other people are trying to inprove their own standards. So one should be careful when pointing fingers. There is no easy answer. Until the rich industrial countries change their attitudes to sustainability and personal gain, you can't condem others who are trying to emulate them. But as you say we all have our opinions and ornithology is rich

 

[Valéry Schollaert]

Valéry, have you ever seen the fields on Mallorca? I suspect yes. They try to get about 5 harvests a season. They pump millions of litres of water onto those fields to achieve that, and them blame tourists for their water shortages.

Most fields are there as cattle food (in general, in the world), some 78% if I remember well. We wouldn't need intensive agriculture if the World would be veg.... I found this figure on FAO official publications.

Livestock now use 30 percent of the earth’s entire land surface

http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2006/1000448/

That's the paradox not understood by all. If we ate cereals and veggie instead of meat, we would need to produce much LESS cereals... thus reduced considerably the land need to crop our food (by 50% more or less if all of us would be vegetarian).

Cheers

 

[Gordon]

Hi Andy,
if you want to find out more re the scientific basis of climate change I suggest you have a look at this web site:
http://www.realclimate.org/

cheers
Gordon

 

[Trystan]

That's the paradox not understood by all. If we ate cereals and veggie instead of meat, we would need to produce much LESS cereals... thus reduced considerably the land need to crop our food (by 50% more or less if all of us would be vegetarian).

Cheers

Trouble is, we would then be able to get our population up to 14 billion and be right back where we started. Manage the world population down to sustainable levels and we wouldn't need to feel guilty about our flights although I would still advocate being vegetarian.

 

[Valéry Schollaert]

Trouble is, we would then be able to get our population up to 14 billion and be right back where we started. Manage the world population down to sustainable levels and we wouldn't need to feel guilty about our flights although I would still advocate being vegetarian.

I agree 100%. But now that we are many and we won't kill excess of people, the best is to look to decrease our footprint... I think. And talk about reduce population as well, but this I do too, since long!

 

[Andy Hurley]

Hi Andy,
if you want to find out more re the scientific basis of climate change I suggest you have a look at this web site:
http://www.realclimate.org/

cheers
Gordon

Thanks very much Gordon

 

[Andy Hurley]

Most fields are there as cattle food (in general, in the world), some 78% if I remember well. We wouldn't need intensive agriculture if the World would be veg.... I found this figure on FAO official publications.



http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2006/1000448/

That's the paradox not understood by all. If we ate cereals and veggie instead of meat, we would need to produce much LESS cereals... thus reduced considerably the land need to crop our food (by 50% more or less if all of us would be vegetarian).

Cheers

Thanks for that Valéry, I see you point. I agree, I eat meat 29 days a month. Its not necessary and I should cut down, but I'm not too fond of veg. Too many over boiled veg at school. Homo Sapiens is an omnivore, so removing all meat from our diets is probably not going to happen. I got the feeling that the article from the FAO was a bit biased in favour of the big business farmers, but came up with little to help the smaller ones. The idea of high intensity farming, to me, is not very appealing. I also thought it a bit Nimby to suggest that livestock should be moved away from near large conurbations. I didn't see the point, because the meat would have to be transported at higher cost, not only to the environment.

 

[Valéry Schollaert]

Homo Sapiens is an omnivore, so removing all meat from our diets is probably not going to happen.

In an ecosystem, species are eaten and eat others, and are forced to adapt their population and behaviour according to the behaviour and pressure of others, food availabilities and so on.

Human is not respecting those basic rules since long. We eat others but refuse to be eaten. We refuse the resources to limit our population. We refuse diseases to reduces our numbers. We eradicate our predators, and force other species to grow for our own use. As we have been changing most or the rules, why suddenly want to argue for one aspect -to be omnivorous- that it is our nature?

As we changed everything, if we wish to survive long term, obviously they are efforts to make, efforts being sometimes against our original nature.

Like managing the population. Despite instinct pushes many women to have large families, we should work against it to stabilized or (better) reduce progressively the population...

Before being apes, we have been other form of life with different regimes, not always omnivorous. We can still evolve to something different - evolution has not stopped. Why not using a smart way of reacting to the fact resources are limited compare to our population?

 

[Jos Stratford]

As a birder, I accepted that I was as guilty as anyone else of contributing to the proliferation of excessive and unnecessary air travel.

Yep, anybody using a plane in these days of impending carbon-induced doom should be castrated at the arrivals gate. Would never find me on a plane, I'm an angel.

 

[Richard Klim]

Yep, anybody using a plane in these days of impending carbon-induced doom should be castrated at the arrivals gate.

Unfortunately castration would be too late in my case, having already fathered two occasional air travellers.

 

[angusmcoatup]

Yep, anybody using a plane in these days of impending carbon-induced doom should be castrated at the arrivals gate. .

As if the delays getting through passport control aren't painful enough!

 

[Jos Stratford]

As if the delays getting through passport control aren't painful enough!

Just go via Helsinki ...all automated now, just scan your passport, stand in a little booth for some seconds while a camera scans you and you're through, a breeze and not a single official to talk to you.

Of course, then you need to go through security.

 

[McMadd]

C'mon Jos...yer from Lithuania...we Finns have some standards...and shouldn't you be writing about barr rastlin' or summat? ;D

 

[Jos Stratford]

... shouldn't you be writing about barr rastlin' or summat?

Dirty great bear footprints outside my tent a few days ago, big blighters they are :t:

 

[Nightranger]

On the other hand, all major sources of CO2 should be reduced through coherent approaches; there's no point in saying 'we won't if they won't' (the school playground take).o
MJB

Good point MJB, but I am not saying that we should not think about what we are doing in terms of eco-holidays or ordinary holidays in Greece as opposed to holidays in Blackpool, Scarborough, Barmouth or Lunan Bay but look at the real figures over CO2 emissions etc. We demand more in producing our optics, clothes, i-phones, computers, food (particularly it's packaging) and cars.

...and look how many on that list we use in other parts of our lives. The problem lies in the infrastructure that it requires to produce all this and everything that we and even Third World countries see as vital for existence. So many things are produced these days with a 'shelf-life' (cars particularly but strange as it may seem...not aircraft), which makes us buy more to replace them.

Aviation is such a small part of this that I sometimes cannot believe that conservation bodies do not understand...are they trying to be too cute?

The Boeing 757 that flew you to Corfu ten years ago is now plying the skies over the UK as a freighter and will do so for at least another decade...the equivalent of at least 35 cars/trucks/buses all of which will be scrap in half that time.

 

[MJB]

Aviation is such a small part of this that I sometimes cannot believe that conservation bodies do not understand...are they trying to be too cute?

The Boeing 757 that flew you to Corfu ten years ago is now plying the skies over the UK as a freighter and will do so for at least another decade...the equivalent of at least 35 cars/trucks/buses all of which will be scrap in half that time.

Good points, Ian. There are about 25,000 large civil aircraft in use at present. New noise regulations and the need for airlines to drive down costs mean that fuel-efficiency has improved and continues to do so. There are about 35 million vehicles in Great Britain (not UK) as of April this year, about 29 million of which are cars. Fuel-efficiency is a major factor here, pushed also by low Vehicle Excise Rates.

The core of the overall problem is the sheer number of people worldwide who drive, but there are nuancing aspects. Large numbers of vehicles in urban conurbations may contribute to an accelerated uptake of CO2 in that region, beyond that calculated from numbers alone. Airliners pump their exhaust directly into the atmosphere at around 30,000 feet, which has an accelerating effect over the same amount were it emitted on the ground.
MJB