Re: We are doomed I tell you - doomed!
A plane like a Boeing 747 uses approximately 1 gallon of fuel (about 4 litres) every second. Over the course of a 10-hour flight, it might burn*36,000 gallons*(150,000 litres). According to Boeing's Web site, the 747 burns approximately*5 gallons of fuel per mile*(12 litres per kilometer).
How many huge passenger planes and cargo planes are flying 24/7 ?
When the gargantuan*Harmony of the Seas*slips out of Southampton docks on a Sunday afternoon commercial voyage, the 16-deck-high floating city will switch off its auxiliary engines, fire up its three giant diesels and head to the open sea.
But while the 6,780 passengers and 2,100 crew on the largest cruise ship in the world wave goodbye to England, many people left behind in Southampton say they will be glad to see it go. They complain that*air pollution from such nautical behemoths*is getting worse every year as cruising becomes the fastest growing sector of the mass tourism industry and as ships get bigger and bigger.
The Harmony, owned by Royal Caribbean, has two four-storey high 16-cylinder Wärtsilä engines which would, at full power, each burn 1,377 US gallons of fuel an hour, or about 66,000 gallons a day of some of the most polluting diesel fuel in the world.
This vessel is only ONE of hundreds, maybe thousands of similar vessels throughout the world throwing huge amounts of pullutants into the air every day.
Greenpeace warned of this increase of devastating pollution at least 40 years ago. That is when I joined them.
Had the world taken notice of what Greenpeace were saying, and taken positive action at that time, then I believe that global warming that we are experiencing now would be minimal. Yes global warming is basically a natural occurrence on earth, but it is made incalculably worse by what we human beings are chucking into our precious air.
It is time to take the bull by the horns and sort out this devastating pollution while we are still able to do something serious about it. Forget about shouting out that people are getting paranoic – it’s those who are shouting that will contribute, through their disregard, to the potential disintegration of our planet. IMO