A report by David Packham (representative for the Parish Council on the Parish Councils Airport Association)
February 2017
Advantages and disadvantages
Bristol airport at Lulsgate is about 11 miles from Timsbury as the crow flies, and many of us use its facility to fly away to the sun, and probably, at this time of the year, to the snow. There are regular flights to Amsterdam, Brussels, and Frankfurt from each of which there are onward flights to over 200 destinations.
It would not be expected that such advantages would be free of all disadvantages to the local community. An obvious disadvantage is intrusion of aircraft noise, day and night. The World Health Organisation has extensively detailed at adverse effects on health associated with disturbed sleep resulting from low flying aircraft [1]. There are analogous problems associated with vulnerable groups, for example in schools and hospitals.
Villages closer to the airport suffer much more badly than does Timsbury, and some years ago residents around Lulsgate recognised the value of a community body, wider then individual parish councils, to represent local interest in matters associated with Bristol airport. They set up the Parish Councils’ Airport Association (P.C.A.A.) to represent local interest in matters associated with Bristol airport. As the airport has expanded, its impact has increased and the membership of the P.C.A.A. has grown and now around 20 parish council members mostly from North Somerset and Bath & North East Somerset districts. Timsbury Parish Council has been a member since about 2000 at which time the airport was seeking to increase its quota of night flights.
Flightpaths and growth
Since 2000 aircraft may have got a little quieter, but their numbers have increased. In 2000 there were about 2.13 mppa (million passengers per annum) using Bristol airport, in 2016 there were 7.5 mppa. Also technical advances have meant that aircraft approaching and leaving the airport now keep much closer to designated flight paths [2]. This is good news for those well away from the designated paths: bad news for those under them! A major approach route to Bristol from the south concentrates aircraft in a ± 1 nautical mile wide path, centred on Timsbury.
The airport’s policy appears firmly to be one of unlimited growth, at least for the next 20 years.[3]. Despite the United Nations agreement on Climate Change in Paris in 2015 there has been no moderation of the airport’s ambition. The growth figures have very recently been restated, with the addition of a 15 mppa target for 2036. [4]
The airport has planning permission to expand to 10 mppa. It seems prudent to expect within a few years a further planning application seeking to expand passenger numbers, and therefore flight numbers far beyond the present limit. That application will require careful detailed scrutiny if the interests of local communities are not to be annihilated.
The airport public relations assures us that “Amazing journeys start here“[5]. Some intrusion is probably unavoidable: that is a price we pay for such journeys. But local communities need constant vigilance, lest their interests are amazingly damaged by activities of the airport.
Damage well beyond the local community: Climate change impacts
Unfortunately the growth of aviation – exemplified locally by Figure 2 – has much wider and more serious disadvantages than traffic congestion, noise pollution and building on the Green Belt. There is a fundamental contradiction between the carbon reduction requirements of the Climate Change Act and the Paris climate agreement [6], and the aviation industry’s projected expansion.
The national aspirations of the aviation industry for growth present a threat to our carbon reduction climate change targets. Remember the logic behind these targets: they strive to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to a level which could limit temperature rise to 2 deg. C, previously termed “safe”. The Paris agreement recognised that climate change has already had dangerous, observable effects: loss of sea ice, shrinking glaciers, accelerated sea level rise and longer, more intense heat waves, and other extreme weather events [7], and aimed to limit global temperature increase well below 2 °C, urging efforts to limit the increase to 1.5 °C.
The Climate Change Committee, which advises the government on meeting green house gases reduction targets, has shown that by 2050 aviation emissions need to be reduced to 2005 levels. An optimistic “likely scenario” is often quoted as suggesting that, with massive increases in efficiency, a 60% increase in passenger numbers might be possible between 2005 and 2050. [8] Note (Figure 2) that Bristol proposes a 300% increase between 2005 and 2036!
Those quoting these figures often omit to say that the situation is actually much worse. As the Climate Change Committee makes clear, in addition to producing carbon dioxide, aircraft in flight are responsible for other green house gases, see panel below. The precise warming effect of these non-carbon dioxide emissions is subject to research, but a conservative estimate is that they double the global warming effect of aircraft in flight. When this is allowed for, nothing like a 60% increase in passenger numbers between 2005 and 2050 will be possible.
HOW DOES AVIATION CONTRIBUTE TO CLIMATE CHANGE?
Aviation emissions arising from the combustion of kerosene include:
- carbon dioxide;
- water vapour (which leads to the formation of contrails and cirrus clouds at altitude);
- nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide, together termed NOx (which forms ozone, a greenhouse gas, at altitude);
- particulates (soot and sulphate particles);
- other compounds including sulphur oxides, carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons and radicals such as hydroxyl.
The impact of aviation on climate change is increased over that of direct CO2 emissions alone by some of the other emissions released and their specific effects at altitude. These effects include increased tropospheric ozone, contrail formation and a small amount of methane destruction. The environmental impacts of aircraft have been assessed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (1999) and more recently by the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (2002), and they are thought to be 2–4 times greater than that from CO2 alone. While further research is needed on these issues, the broad conclusion that emissions are significantly more damaging at altitude is clear.
Department for Transport, The Future of Air Transport, 16th December 2003, p. 39-40. http://www.dft.gov.uk/aviation/whitepaper/
Bristol airport’s website seeks to assure the public “We are committed to embedding sustainability principles into the way we work, the way we develop ….” [9]
But “sustainability” carries the implication of stability or equilibrium maintained “for ever”, or at least for a very long time. The Bruntland definition is often used:
“development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. [10]
It is not a commitment to “sustainability” which is driving the airport, but an obsession with a myth grounded in a mindset with a quasi-religious belief in unlimited growth, unlimited progress and the unregulated market. [11]
The hottest year on record
NASA measurements indicate that 2016 was the hottest year on record [12]. With the Swiss ski slopes melting and the temperatures in the Spanish summer so hot that the famous wine maker Torres is buying land in the Pyrenees in case its traditional location near Barcelona become too hot for the vines[13], it may be that our “Amazing journeys” from Bristol airport to the sun and snow will no longer seem so attractive.
References
- www.aef.org.uk/downloads/Health_impacts_of_aircraft_noise.pdf
- Bristol Airport Ltd., Implementation of RNAV aircraft approaches from the south at Bristol Airport, Consultation Document, July 2013.
- Master Plan 2006 to 2030, Bristol International Airport
- Bristol South West Economic Link, Option Development Report, ch2m, West of England Local Enterprise Partnership, July 2016 {ch2m is the name of a large American consultancy with an interesting reputation v. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/CH2M_Hill}.
- https://www.bristolairport.co.uk/about-us/environment/sustainability
- Paris Agreement English – english_paris_agreement, http://unfccc.int/files/essential_background/convention/application/pdf/english_paris_agreement.pdf
- NASA http://climate.nasa.gov/effects/ The consequences of climate change
- Meeting the UK aviation target – options for reducing emissions to 2050, Committee on Climate Change, December 2009
- https://www.bristolairport.co.uk/about-us/environment/sustainability
- World Commission on Environment and Development Our common future, (the Bruntland Report) Oxford University Press, 1987.
- Cf. Pope Francis, Laudato Si’ 2015 paras. 106, 123, 210
- https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/official-2016-declared-hottest-year-record?utm_source=Email-newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=General
- http://www.wineanorak.com/miguel_torres.htm