Would like to learn to fly, but...

In article . com,
wrote:

Having become dangerously addicted to MS Flight Simulator, I am
starting to develop a hankering to learn to fly for real. However I'm
having a bit of trouble reconciling this desire with my concern about
CO2 emissions and climate change. My wife and I tend to buy reasonably
fuel efficient cars and are soon to have a wind turbine installed on
our house, so to start burning aviation fuel just for fun would seem
like a bit of a step in the wrong direction.

Can anyone provide any insights to help me allay these concerns? I
don't even know how much fuel the average light aircraft consumes or
how much CO2 it puts out into the atmosphere. Is it comparable to a
car or is it a lot more? (My car gets about 50mpg, but then I spend a
lot more time driving it than I could ever afford to spend flying a
plane.)

Thanks in advance,
Colin

Colin.

Go ahead and learn to fly. At the very least, you will discover that
there is a lot of open, wild country out there, which you can see only
from the air. There are some economical homebuilts out there, but you
will have to seek them out.

I am not a fan of man-caused "global warming." Over the last 40 or so
years, the environmentalist community has dithered between "global
cooling" to "global warming."

They have ascribed its cause to man's presence, while conveniently
overlooking the total changes, methods used to obtain data and
assumptions used in their modeling.

I also look at who is making the claims and would have to check for
myself if they declared that the sky is blue and that grass is green. A
lot of old-time leftists had to seek a new cause when their idol, the
Soviet Union, imploded and exposed itself as one of the world's biggest
oppressors and polluters. Environmentalism became their cause, since
capitalism and industry were their natural adversaries.

As for your efforts to save energy, the bottom line is that you are
helping your wallet at the same time, and should continue to do so.

However I'm
having a bit of trouble reconciling this desire with my concern about
CO2 emissions and climate change.


There are many recreational activities that probably have a smaller CO2
footprint. However, these things are awfully hard to calculate through
to the end. And then there are all other kinds of other possibly
negative impacts for any human activity: pollution with other stuff,
somehow indirectly furthering poverty in Africa, exploiting cheap labor
in India or China, whatever.

In the end, if you think it through, all recreational activities are
superfluous with regard to ecology. Where do you want to stop? That's
something only you can decide.

--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)

On May 11, 8:23 am, wrote:
Having become dangerously addicted to MS Flight Simulator, I am
starting to develop a hankering to learn to fly for real. However I'm
having a bit of trouble reconciling this desire with my concern about
CO2 emissions and climate change. My wife and I tend to buy reasonably
fuel efficient cars and are soon to have a wind turbine installed on
our house, so to start burning aviation fuel just for fun would seem
like a bit of a step in the wrong direction.

Can anyone provide any insights to help me allay these concerns? I
don't even know how much fuel the average light aircraft consumes or
how much CO2 it puts out into the atmosphere. Is it comparable to a
car or is it a lot more? (My car gets about 50mpg, but then I spend a
lot more time driving it than I could ever afford to spend flying a
plane.)

Thanks in advance,
Colin