An outbreak of common sense at The Guardian? (And I get to talk about airships)

If the figures in this article in the Guardian are correct, it really does make all the European panic about flying and greenhouse gases sound rather ridiculous:

UN scientists from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimate aviation's contribution to global carbon emissions to be just 2%. To put things in perspective, road traffic contributes 18% globally, while the fossil fuels used to generate heat and power contribute 35%.

"But you are growing uncontrollably," is the usual retort. Our industry is growing at between 5 and 6% per year because people want to travel. The biggest growth is in rapidly developing economies, such as China, India and eastern Europe. Their hard-earned wealth is helping them to travel the world. This is balanced by slower growth in more mature markets. And the net impact - estimated by the IPCC - is that aviation's contribution may grow to 3% by 2050.

And further down:

...I am not arguing that aviation should be left alone to pollute as it sees fit. Consume less fuel and you emit less carbon. Aeroplane manufacturers understand. Over the past 40 years - starting long before Kyoto - fuel efficiency improved 70%. And the next generation of aircraft will have a fuel efficiency of just three litres per 100 passenger kilometres. That is much better than any hybrid car on the market.

Airlines have also understood. In the past two years, fuel efficiency has improved 5%. They are doing everything from making spoons lighter, to optimising the amount of water in toilets.

Our own association's efforts to straighten routes, reduce congestion and eliminate delays slashed carbon emissions by more than 12m tonnes in 2005 - equivalent to removing 3m cars from Britain's roads.

Damn. One of the cooler things I wanted to see come out of an anti greenhouse gas campaign was a return of the large scale passenger airship. Sounds like it is hardly necessary.

Of course, airships are inherently lovely anyway, and there always seems to be some company hoping to be about to revive the giant airship. Popular Mechanics ran this article recently about "hybrid airships" which are an interesting idea:

Hybrid airships use gas to generate 30 to 80 percent of the lift they need to get off the ground, and depend on aerodynamic lift--the flow of air over wings or fuselage--for the rest. That means that when hybrids stop moving through the air, they sink. The advantage? Once on the ground, they stay put. A major problem for conventional airships is the difficulty in handling them on the ground. Large and buoyant, they're always eager to fly away on the slightest breeze. The Goodyear blimp requires 17 handlers; the zeppelins of the '20s and '30s employed hundreds.

Defence in the US had paid money (under its nicely named but defunct "Walrus" program) to investigate these heavy lift airship-ish things, but whether a large scale one will ever be built seems unclear. Companies that like to talk up airships often come up with nice graphics and concept illustrations. Aeros Corporation's is worth looking at.

The PM article, and this website, talk about hybrid airships with a load capacity of up to 500 tons. How that compare to airplanes? According to this article, a new variant of the 747 will carry 154 tons of freight. A 500 ton capacity Walrus derived airship could therefore presumably carry a lot of people. I guess you would only need build one a fraction of that size.

I would have thought that their use around Europe would have been most appropriate. The distances make for more reasonable travel times, with lots of nice scenery to look at .