Originally Posted by Zapata

Your confessed lack of understanding is because you're looking at this as if it is black and white. There is no contradiction between being an environmentally responsible citizen and a pilot. It's about mitigation of our environmental impact, not dawning a grass skirt and living off the land.

Flying airplanes is my job. We live in a modern industrialized society with infrastructure and part of this infrastructure involves travel by air. If I did anything else for a living, my environmental footprint would be about the same as it would be for a non career pilot. When an environmental activist buys a plane ticket, that isn't a contradiction either. This is because the majority of us are consumers of goods and services and these goods and services rely on said industry and infrastructure. Part of this infrastructure is supported by air travel. (which, I might add, is very efficient and leaves less of a carbon footprint, than say, enough Ford Explorers to transport 300 people from coast to coast.)

Participating in Earth Hour was a symbolic gesture that was designed to send a message. A simple cursory read of their website would have revealed that.

So no, there is zero validity in this implication.



Since your actions affect your surroundings and you are affected by your surroundings, you're not left out of it whether you think so or not.

I absolutely justify my views with science and use the word every time. I'm not the one in disagreement with the National Science Foundation, its equivalents in other countries, numerous science associations, oodles of universities and heck even the major oil companies (I think except for Exxon but, I heard that they're even coming around) that are all signatories to the connection between greenhouse gases and global warming. yeah yeah, bias exists, I know. However, in the big picture, that bias is negated by the default checks and balances of peer review.