Sunderland airshow permanently cancelled because of 'climate change'

[Mark Harmsworth]

Not that I've ever been to the Sunderland airshow but I fear for the future of one of my favourite summer activities.

 

I know that others no longer happen (yes, I mean you Biggin Hill) but this is the first time I've noticed climate as a reason.

 

Here's a link:

https://www.itv.com/news/tyne-tees/2022-10-18/popular-airshow-permanently-axed-due-to-climate-change

[Robin-42]

Statistically, airshows and other large events produce essentially zero emissions when compared to other daily activities. The problem is, they are very visible and are polluting events. Cancelling them gives an impression of taking action while ignoring more useful means of actually reducing emissions. 

[Rabbit Leader]

You must be joking?? How far is this nonsense going to go?
The next thing might as well be that the British military decides to stop defending the nation from imminent attack, due to fear of harming the planet! That’s ok… might as well ship all your great warbirds across the Atlantic as that’s the only place you’ll be able to fly them. 
Cheers.. Dave (proud Climate sceptic). 

[spruecutter96]

36 minutes ago, Robin-42 said:

Statistically, airshows and other large events produce essentially zero emissions when compared to other daily activities

That's an extremely bold statement. Thousands of cars and other vehicles travelling to and from the event.... the exhaust-emissions of all the participating aircraft.... numerous other types of emissions? How can these be described as "zero emissions"? 

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm as bad as anyone for using my car. The point is, we ALL contribute, every day to the climate situation, whether we want to acknowledge it or not. 

 

Cheers. 

 

Chris. 

[spruecutter96]

I read a few years ago that the CAA has it in for airshows. Every event that gets cancelled, for any reason, is a sad thing. Will we eventually reach a situation where RIAT, Duxford and Shuttleworth are the only venues left for airshows? If it happens, it will have a huge adverse effect on the UK Warbird scene and will be detrimental to peoples' appreciation of history. 

 

Cheers. 

 

Chris. 

[Mark Harmsworth]

Look on the bright side though - we might be able to pick up a few cheap 1:1 scale Spitfires.

[Lord Riot]

It seems a strange excuse. Of course attempts to reduce emissions are always laudable, but it takes more than just ending a few airshows to stop our planet heating up. Big business and governments need to take it seriously for a start.

 

I don’t believe that it’s been cancelled due to feeling guilty over climate change anyway, my opinion is that this airshow and all others cancelled recently are because of money. Everything is to do with money, or rather organisations’ lack of it. They can’t convince me that if say, Elon Musk were to give them £100m they wouldn’t suddenly decide to reinstate the show.

[spruecutter96]

56 minutes ago, Lord Riot said:

I don’t believe that it’s been cancelled due to feeling guilty over climate change anyway,

It could be for any number of reasons. We'll probably never get to hear the whole truth. Still, a sad occasion. 

 

Chris.  

[spruecutter96]

2 hours ago, Mark Harmsworth said:

Look on the bright side though - we might be able to pick up a few cheap 1:1 scale Spitfires.

I think that - currently - a flying Spitfire is around the $1.5 Million mark or so. At that price, you could pick up a shed-load!

 

Chris.   

[Circloy]

33 minutes ago, Blackcat2020 said:

It's far cheaper however to use this as a phoney excuse because it (a) costs nothing and, (b) gives organisers brownie points for their "environmentally friendly" credentials! 

 

 

No doubt it's mainly a financal issue but it'll help them save face when things like this happen

 

https://www.itv.com/news/tyne-tees/2022-06-28/what-went-wrong-at-teesside-airshow-refund-process-and-causes-set-out

[Robin-42]

8 hours ago, spruecutter96 said:

That's an extremely bold statement. Thousands of cars and other vehicles travelling to and from the event.... the exhaust-emissions of all the participating aircraft.... numerous other types of emissions? How can these be described as "zero emissions"? 

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm as bad as anyone for using my car. The point is, we ALL contribute, every day to the climate situation, whether we want to acknowledge it or not. 

 

Cheers. 

 

Chris. 

Without getting into a battle of statistics, when you compare a single large event, which definitely does pollute,  with the emissions produced by zipping components and raw materials around the planet chasing the cheapest labour and lowest cost (Emission controls? What are they?) the show is insignificant emissions wise. It would have a label on the chart, but you would not have room to colour in the bar graph. I did state “essentially zero”, but only in comparison.  

Blasting a Eurofighter around the sky may not be environmentally friendly at all, but even the mighty US war machine is trying to do it’s part. https://time.com/6148778/us-military-climate-change/. We all do contribute to the problem, we all need to solve it. 
 

 

in any case, based on other comments cancelling the show for environmental reasons seems to be either virtue signalling or gaslighting.  

[noelh]

I also  think it's an excuse. Virtue signalling at it's worst. Out of curiosity I  looked up the  countries with the highest Co2 emissions.  China followed by the US are the worst and the top  five countries combined amount to 60% of all  emissions. The UK as a whole produces just over 1%. So if the UK went  Co2 neutral tomorrow. It wouldn't have any impact at all.

 

In  fact the majority of countries on the list are below 1% and many effectively zero. Yet many of those countries no doubt are desperately playing their part. Mostly by raising the  taxes of their hapless citizens. 

 

What an airshow contributes  is virtually nil.  Oh we all repeat the mantra 'We  all have to play our part. But until the big polluting countries reduce their emissions. Anything we do will  simply be a drop in the ocean. 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 31, 2022 by noelh

[iang]

On 31/10/2022 at 02:21, noelh said:

I also  think it's an excuse. Virtue signalling at it's worst. Out of curiosity I  looked up the  countries with the highest Co2 emissions.  China followed by the US are the worst and the top  five countries combined amount to 60% of all  emissions. The UK as a whole produces just over 1%. So if the UK went  Co2 neutral tomorrow. It wouldn't have any impact at all.

 

In  fact the majority of countries on the list are below 1% and many effectively zero. Yet many of those countries no doubt are desperately playing their part. Mostly by raising the  taxes of their hapless citizens. 

 

What an airshow contributes  is virtually nil.  Oh we all repeat the mantra 'We  all have to play our part. But until the big polluting countries reduce their emissions. Anything we do will  simply be a drop in the ocean. 

 

 

 

 

Whatever the real reason for the decision to cancel the show, I support councils' decisions to become carbon neutral in the next decade or so.   It's true that the UK's current  CO2 production is a small share of total global production, but the countries that produce most CO2 also tend to have larger populations. In terms of CO2 production per capita, the UK is still above the global average.  The UK is also responsible for a large share of cumulative historic anthropogenic CO2 emissions, and these historic emissions still continue to have an impact upon current global warming (for between 100-200 years), so signalling here is not just virtuous. More importantly, this is not just about carbon production, as the UK has effectively outsourced much of its manufacturing to poorer countries who have carbon intensive production methods. Much of the  output of these high carbon producing countries is exported for consumption elsewhere  Using consumption rather than production as the metric leads to the unpalatable conclusion that rich countries are responsible for most historic and current global anthropogenic CO2. Much of this consumption  is eventually discarded and exported back to poorer countries for carbon intensive disposal or finds its way to landfill sites here or abroad, which are  sources of significant methane production (which for a given volume is even worse for the planet than CO2). 

[Fredag]

Using climate change as an excuse is Disinformation.

[Paul J]

I don't believe that it's just airshows that affects  climate. Other events like all those motorsports, horse racing, footie etc.could also be contributors to this. No, it's got to be money or local politics.

[Selwyn]

1 hour ago, Paul J said:

I don't believe that it's just airshows that affects  climate. Other events like all those motorsports, horse racing, footie etc.could also be contributors to this. No, it's got to be money or local politics.

And I dont believe any of these makes an iota of difference to the climate. Climate change is a natural process that has been happening since the earth was formed from a hot cinder. We have no influence on this process.  Please dont confuse reducing dangerous gaseus emissions from industry and cars with the climate.

 

Selwyn

[Paul J]

46 minutes ago, Selwyn said:

And I dont believe any of these makes an iota of difference to the climate. Climate change is a natural process that has been happening since the earth was formed from a hot cinder. We have no influence on this process.  Please dont confuse reducing dangerous gaseus emissions from industry and cars with the climate.

 

Selwyn

Quite agree.

[ckw]

How much/little it contributes to climate change is probably irrelevant - but the 'optics' aren't good for a council that is stating a commitment to zero emissions. I would image there are also security considerations ... an airshow would be a very visible target for 'Stop oil'. Even if the venue is secure, their road block tactics could cause chaos. 

 

Cheers

 

Colin

 

 

[iang]

1 hour ago, Selwyn said:

And I dont believe any of these makes an iota of difference to the climate. Climate change is a natural process that has been happening since the earth was formed from a hot cinder. We have no influence on this process.  Please dont confuse reducing dangerous gaseus emissions from industry and cars with the climate.

 

Selwyn

 

 

Can you cite any scientific evidence for these views, that isn't funded by Big Oil?

 

This 60 second video  produced by the Royal Society obviously won't change your mind, but may prevent others who stumble across this thread from promulgating dangerous, factually incorrect, disinformation.

 

 

[Selwyn]

33 minutes ago, iang said:

 

 

Can you cite any scientific evidence for these views, that isn't funded by Big Oil?

 

This 60 second video  produced by the Royal Society obviously won't change your mind, but may prevent others who stumble across this thread from promulgating dangerous, factually incorrect, disinformation.

 

 

Can you cite any evidence that wasn't funded by governments with a environmental political agenda?

 

8000 years ago you could walk from what is now the Uk to what is now Europe. This land bridge ended because of global warming melting the ice caps and the consequencial raising of sea levels. This of course was caused by all the excessive emissions from industry and polluting vehicles. But wait! there wasn't any industry  or polluting vehicles 8000 years ago.  strange that. Wonder what they could blame that on? 

We are currently in  a lull between ice ages. An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages and greenhouse periods. Its a natural process.

 

Selwyn

[Chimpion]

I suspect this is about to be closed down so I won't comment on the politics. Let me just point out that "A causes B" is logically irrelevant to the question "can C cause B".

Both statements can be simultaneously true.

[Sabrejet]

5 hours ago, Selwyn said:

And I dont believe any of these makes an iota of difference to the climate. Climate change is a natural process that has been happening since the earth was formed from a hot cinder. We have no influence on this process.  Please dont confuse reducing dangerous gaseus emissions from industry and cars with the climate.

 

Selwyn

 

This is missing the point: it's not about trying to stop a natural process - it's about trying to make a difference. Or next time your house catches fire, don't bother putting it out "because it always happens". We only need to go back two years to see the difference that lockdown made to air quality and wildlife profusion.

 

 

 

[Selwyn]

1 minute ago, Sabrejet said:

 

This is missing the point: it's not about trying to stop a natural process - it's about trying to make a difference. Or next time your house catches fire, don't bother putting it out "because it always happens". We only need to go back two years to see the difference that lockdown made to air quality and wildlife profusion.

 

 

 

You are missing my point. I totally agree with you that there needs to be an improvement in air quality, Its just that  they are linking air quality and wildlife profusion to climate change,  two completly seperate  issues. 

 

Selwyn

 We have inadvertantly strayed from the thread subject too far,  and this will be probably shut down, I wont be adding anything else to this discussion.

[Mike]

Yep.  It's gone too far, and OP no doubt regrets posting the topic now.  It's going the way of the dinosaur and woolly mammoth.  Night night.