If you fly from New York to London or London to Warsaw or just about anywhere else, well shame on you! At least, according to Greenpeace, air travel is so sinfully decedent and fuel-hungry that it’s entirely justified and fair to run onto the tarmac at a major airport and stage a publicity stunt. All the delays and misery be damned, because for those like Greenpeace the idea that people would dare burn hydrocarbons to travel is just plain evil.

Lets run some numbers here. London Heathrow is a major hub airport which, among other things, serves as the gateway for trans-Atlantic flights for Europe. If one were to fly from New York to London on a Boeing 747-400, one of the more common aircraft for long-haul transcontinental flights, then the aircraft would be burning something like 4.8-5 gallons of fuel per mile. This comes out to about 16,000 gallons of fuel for a transatlantic flight. Considering that the aircraft can hold about 500 passengers, this actually isn’t too bad. The among of fuel used per passenger is about 32 gallons. Of course, if you’re flying from London to Berlin or Rome, it will be a whole lot less fuel. Also, the numbers above are for a 747-400, but if you happen to be flying in a 747-8, a 787, an airbus 380 or one of the other newer, more efficient aircraft, you could be consuming as much as 15% less fuel per passenger.

To be fair, it’s possible that a trip may consume more fuel that that, especially if the aircraft is not entirely booked or if it is not the most up to date aircraft with the highest efficiency turbofan engines. However, these days, with fuel prices at historic highs, airlines are trying harder than ever to fill their aircraft to capacity and use the most efficient aircraft, especially for the longer runs.

But according to the eco-stupid side, it’s not really your choice to fly. Rather, it’s just wrong and bad and you need to be stopped from doing it. Greenpeace thinks we just should not travel. Cultural exchanges and broadening one’s horizons be damned, it’s just not right to burn that kind of fuel, even if a modern jumbo jet burns 0.01 gallons per person per mile.

Now lets take a look at how Greenpeace gets around:
(When they’re not flying first class to a conference or protest that is)

That’s the MV Esperanza, one of the ships of Greenpeace, and if it looks like it’s spewing out sooty black smoke, that’s because it is. It happens to be a former Russian firefighting and emergency response ship. Russia is prone to a lot of ice, so a ship like this needs to have a very thick and heavy hull, but being that it also has to respond to emergencies, it also has to be fast. So how the hell do you make a big bulky heavy ship also go fast? Well, you put an enormous engine in it, of course! Or in this case… three of ‘em. That’s why the 72-meter giant can cruise at 16 knots without breaking a sweat.

Yes, three engines. Two enormous large displacement marine diesel engines and one APU engine to provide the ship with power when it’s not underway. Marine deisel engines are a lot like the land-based ones, except they burn marine diesel. Marine diesel is consumed in enormous volumes because the engines are constantly at work, unlike a land vehicle where there’s a lot of coasting, a ship needs to have constant power to the props to keep it moving against the the fluid friction it encounters. This combined with less regulation makes marine diesel a lot cheaper than the land-based kind. Cheaper, heavier and dirtier.

Greenpeace has said that it has a “special fuel system” to make it cleaner but they don’t give many details. On the other hand there are plenty of other things they could do to make it cleaner that they seem to have elected not to do. For one thing, they could run it on a cleaner fuel. A marine diesel engine will happily burn something like Jet-A fuel, which is available pretty easily. It’s much more refined and lower in sulfur, resulting in less smoggy emissions and generally cleaner burning. It’s also a lot more expensive, so they might not be able to have as many luxuries on the ship. Even better would be they could use something like LPG, which has proven to work decently as a marine fuel. They’d need new engines, it might slow the ship down and it would be more expensive. But then, aren’t these the guys who say “shame on you” to everyone who flies or drives an SUV?

Not exactly energy efficient:

The engine you see to the left is not actually one of the main engines. While the propulsion engines are gargantuan, the engine to the left is only moderately huge. That’s because it’s the electric generator engine. Apparently this ship uses an enormous amount of electricity because that is not exactly a small generator. Considering that the electric generator is going to be running nearly all the time, or at least when they’re not in port connected to grid power, it would help a lot to replace it with a smaller one.

One easy way to do that would be to put a small generator of a few horsepower on board and rely on that most of the time. Another thing they could do, which would be even better, would be to have a hybrid battery-engine system. That way the ship could run off of battery power most of the time and only run the engine when they get low, allowing it to operate more efficiently and eliminate any idling. This might even a rare example of a circumstance where wind or solar power could actually help, if it were installed to top off the batteries. If they’re frugal enough they might even get by without running the generator very much at all. To do this though, the power consumption of the ship would need to be cut drastically. A small generator would only produce a few kilowatts. Sure, that’s more than enough to run the radar and communications, provide energy to high efficiency lighting and run the other important systems on the ship.

But… they’d likely have to give up a few things. For example, notice the big dirty dome pictured to the right. It’s dirty because it’s located near the stacks where the ship belches out filth into the atmosphere. It’s big because it has a high power gyroscopically stabilized two-way satellite dish in it. Something like that needs a lot of power to keep up communications on the high seas to provide broadband Internet service. Of course it’s not the only way to get on the internet at sea. There are systems like Iridium Satellite Internet which is so low-energy it can run for hours on a lithium ion battery the size of a deck of cards. But systems like Iridium or other mobile satellite systems have one problem: They’re slow and generally charge per-megabyte. This doesn’t stop them from being used for the basics like sending e-mails or text information or the occasional image upload or webpage, but if you want to check out Youtube, surf the net and play with webcams while on the high seas, you’ll need a big VSAT system like that thing.

But, I guess without the massive and power-hungry satellite system there wouldn’t be much use for the computer facilities on board. I mean, if you’re going to have a network for numerous laptops and desktops on board, you’re going to want to have an internet connection, right? And a good fast one, because hey, between the two workstations in the radio room, the those in the office and all the laptops you’re going to be using that satellite link quite a bit. Hell, it even has a webcam that is transmitting 24/7. And you’ll need a lot of content to print to make sure that the laser printers are used to the maximum utility.

Oh, but there’s more. The damn thing has it’s own video editing room and dedicated computer on it. Why? Well, because they want to edit video and not have to do something lame like install the video-editing software on one of the other computers. That would be really annoying, having to share the computer for multiple purposes. Also, although you *could* edit video just fine on a little energy-sipping laptop just fine, it’s a lot better to have your own decked-out editing rig, complete with a dubbing monitor and a set of jog dials and stuff. Otherwise, you’d be stuck with shuffling a bunch of little windows on a single screen and using the mouse to navigate. So apparently, to Greenpeace, it’s totally worth the expense, space and energy. (note: sarcasm)

There are plenty of other places to cut energy use. The cabins on the ship look downright lavish and if you were to bunk up instead of giving everyone such a nice stateroom, there would be plenty of space for those LPG tanks I mentioned earlier. In addition to that, the ship is not only air conditioned, but it has very large refrigerators and freezers on it. Here’s an idea: ditch all those massive power-sucking refrigeration systems and just stock the ship with canned and non-perishable foods. Oh is that roughing it too much for you? You want your Ben and Jerry’s? Poor baby!

Greenpeace also has two other ships: The MV Argus and the MV Artic Sunrise. They’re both a bit smaller, but generally the same deal in terms of complete wastes of energy and generally being quite environmentally-unfriendly. The Argus is a smaller and not really a full-fledged oceangoing ship, although it does have two bigass engines. The Artic Sunrise is akin to the Esperanza with big high speed satellite internet and all the other luxuries you’d expect for a crew of candyass rich college hippies. Then there’s the SV Rainbow Warrior II.

The Rainbow Warrior II doesn’t seem to get used very much. It gets its picture taken and everything, but it never really seems to be one of the vessels they use to do anything much with. Perhaps this is because that ship is wind powered (a sailboat that is) and like most things that are wind-powered the performance is generally not very good and subject to the whims of nature. It does also have filth-belching engines on board too, for electricity and axillary maneuvering power. (Apparently they use way too much power to get away with a wind turbine or something stupid like that.. those are for everyone else to have to use.)

So why bother with all the trouble of sails and rigging, cross wind sailing and that crap when you can just fire up those big engines and plow through the waves, eh Greenpeace? And if you do happen to take out the sailboat, why even bother raising the sails, anyway? Just hire a tugboat. Hell, it’s not like you can’t afford it, right?

BUT, I’ve saved the best for the last:

What’s that thing on the back of that Greenpeace ship? Oh. It’s a helicopter. Yes, a fast zippy little helicopter. Actually it’s a what they call “Tweeny.” And it happens to be a Hughes 500D. I’m actually a bit surprised they even have a webpage on it, because this is the same group that will tell you that you’re a bad, sinful, shameful person for daring to do something as uneco-friendly as flying. The Hughes 500D happens to sell for $500,000-750,000 for a used early-80’s model, like Greenpeace has, which is plenty of money to get the cleaner engines put on their floating filth factory. It’s a zippy, nimble little aircraft and clearly it’d be all kinds of fun to have one of those at your whim. It carries five passengers (four comfortably, but it will seat five), including the pilot.

Given that it’s a small, high performance, single-rotor helicopter, the Hu-500D happens to be ABOUT THE MOST INEFFICIENT VARIETY OF AIRCRAFT EVER BUILT. Not that I have anything against helicopters, but when you’re willing to protest big modern turbofan passenger jets and then go for a ride in a little helicopter, it takes things to a new level of douchebag. Helicopters are less efficient by their very nature. They don’t cruise on big wings but rather are a very un-elegant brute-force method of flying that uses a single big prop to force air downward. Small helicopters have small rapidly-spinning props which make the efficiency even worse, and except for dual-rotor helicopters like the Chinook, up to 25% of the engine power is sent to the tail rotor, which doesn’t actually provide any lift but simply counteracts the torque of the main rotor that would otherwise make the body of the helicopter spin.

The 500D model is the high performance version of the Hughes 500. While other versions may use a power plant as small as 280 horsepower, the D model has a big Alison 250-C20, putting out 420 horsepower. It has a maximum range of about 300 miles (less when fully loaded), if both the main fuel tank and the reserve are filled for a total of 109 US gallons. So the aircraft gets a bit less than 3 miles to the gallon. If you’ve got four people in it, it’s 12 passenger miles per gallon. Of course, it’s less if you are going to be doing any hovering or plan on swooping down for dramatic camera shots or anything like that. The damn thing will run the tank dry in just a couple hours of hovering!

Apparently, Greenpeace uses the little gas guzzler to do a bunch of things. They say it’s for “research” and transportation in support of their various activities, but more than anything else it seems to be a camera platform, and also, of course, a really fun little joy-ride toy. Greenpeace says that they need the chopper to do things like document whaling and other “eco-crimes.” It seems to be a fun platform for stunts too. For example, joy riding the chopper while carrying a can with a scull and crossbones painted on it. Oh that’s clever! (sarcasm) Can I go for a ride? Last time I went on a helicopter tour it was like 80 bucks and it was really short and the helicopter wasn’t even as nice!

Well, I’d like to mention to them that there are other ways of getting areal camera shots which don’t involve such enormous amounts of fuel. What about an unmanned helicopter? You could get a very good gas powered model chopper with a camera mount for just a few grand, and they’ve proven a versatile and effective means of getting good shots. Greenpeace might respond by saying that they can’t tolerate the footage from an amateur single-CCD camera. They want some well-stabilized HDTV footage of a professional grade (money being no object). In that case, there are professional-grade remote helicopters that can carry high grade cameras on gyroscopically stabilized mounts. They can even get more dramatic images than manned helicopters because they can come in close and make quick moves. The high end ones will do quite a distance as long as there’s line of sight. They just won’t be fun to ride in.

If you absolutely MUST have the ability to carry people around by aircraft, because ya know.. rubber boats are lame and not as fast.. then what about a seaplane? You can get a reasonably efficient small plane to hold two or four people and put floats on it. It’ll use a fair amount of fuel but a hell of a lot less than a helicopter. You won’t be able to fly it on and off of the deck, but you can hoist it up onto the boat after taking off and landing on the water. Could you maybe possibly live with that? Even better would be an ultralight amphibious aircraft. It would be super fuel-efficient, it could land on glaciers and places like that and would not be too heavy to lift on the boat.

Somehow I doubt that Greenpeace has any interest in any of this. I even doubt that they’d do something like replace the helicopter with one with a smaller engine or a small two-person helicopter instead of the high performance five seater.

What is that smell in the air? What the hell is that? Is that the thick gritty smell of marine diesel exhaust? Or is that the smell of the lubrication grease and all the other supplies for the upkeep of the helicopter? Or is that the smell of the cold hard cash that pays for it all? No.. no that’s not what I smell. I know that smell. I’d know that smell anywhere. That’s the stench of hypocrisy and it’s stinking up the place so bad that I can hardly breathe!

Many of the images used here as well as those which were studied to determine the condition of the ships and other technology of Greenpeace were taken from various online photo albums of idiots who have been on their ships and support their actions or are affiliated with the organization. No, I don’t have permission to use these. No I am not giving credit to whoever they came from. I don’t care either. Hell, some of the albums were even embedded such that the photo could not be saved from the page and I had to screen-cap them. I don’t care. I have no respect for these bastards and it’s not like they have any respect for the rights of others.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, August 9th, 2008 at 12:02 am and is filed under Bad Science, Enviornment, Humor, Just LAME, Obfuscation, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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