http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/michaelschaus/2014/12/01/global-warming-alarmists-claim-airplanes-wont-fly-in-50-years-n1925601
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The hunt for Manbearpig continues. Amusing Alarmist predictions have ranged from the apocalyptic to the bizarre, but the latest is downright idiotic. According to a couple of scientists from Columbia University, air travel might be relegated to the trash bin of history in the future because of the supposed global warming that is occurring today. According to Breitbart.com:
The two scientists, Coffel and Horton, looked at a phenomenon known amongst pilots as ‘density altitude’, which affects a plane’s ability to take off. Essentially, on hotter days the air is less dense, making it harder to get a plane airborne.
Okay… So warm air makes it tougher for planes to take flight. (I’m sure you can see where this is going.)
Commercial aviation overcomes the problem by issuing weight restrictions at the airport on particularly hot days. Coffel and Horton sought to predict how many more weight restricted days there will be by 2050-2070, and decided, through use of [climate] models, that the “number of weight restriction days between May and September will increase by 50-200 percent at four major airports in the United States by 2050-2070,” and that “these performance reductions may have a negative economic effect on the airline industry.”
So, according to a couple of computer models that these scientists worked up (because, clearly, computer models can never be questioned), hotter temperatures in the future will adversely impact the ability for airplanes to takeoff… Thus putting substantial strains on the industry.
Intellectual honesty must not be a prerequisite for becoming a professor at Columbia.