Ostriches can’t fly

In April 2013 Dr Paul Williams of Reading University and Dr Manoj Joshi of University of East Anglia published a paper on how climate change will increase the incidence of turbulence resulting in additional costs for the aviation industry.

This was one of the very first academic studies on the impact of climate change on aviation.  Search Google for this phrase and you get zillions of documents on the impact of aviation on climate change but very little indeed on the impact on aviation of climate change.

It is interesting that the aviation industry has been so vociferous in opposing efforts to cut emissions without actually having quantified the impact on their business of not cutting emissions.  This does not speak well for the intellectual curiosity of their accountants!

It would be a good idea to bring climate and meteorological academics together with aviation experts and economists and really dig into this question.  Airlines should be energetic in evaluating the financial and strategic impact of climate changes on their businesses.  Failure to do that is, at least, a serious disservice to their shareholders.

This entry was posted in Climate change policy and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.