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You just cannot make this stuff up. Just astounding.
So, in celebration of Earth Day, Barack Obama got up at the crack of nine and kept Marine One idling on the South Lawn unnecessarily for fifteen extra minutes on his way to Andrews, which of course kept the other two Marine One helicopters hovering over the White House. Then he went to Andrews and transferred to Air Force One on his way to Asia, stopping in Osa, Washington to survey the damage from the landslide there a mere month after it happened.
After that, he is continuing on to Tokyo, then on to Seoul, then down to Kuala Lumpur, over-flying the Philippines along the way. On his way back, he stops in Manila for a day, and then continues back to Washington. 20,861 miles flown, by two 747s. Plus the C-47 that carries "The Beast," at least one Marine One helicopter, and a phalanx of Secret Service.
And then there's the hundreds of Secret Service who have gone ahead, almost always on private and government aircraft, to each of these locations.
And before anyone pipes up with the usual "you want the President to be unprotected?" BS, no, that's not what I want. What I want him to do is two things:
There is no reason for this trip. None. He's fiddly-farting around in Asia because he wants to go somewhere and feel praised. What's he going to do while he's there? Tout his wonderful foreign policy?
Jim Garaghty calculated 868 tons of carbon emissions just to go from DC to Washington to Tokyo, and that's INCREDIBLY conservative, because it is averaging in a whole lot of planes that are far more efficient from the standpoint of airplane miles flown per gallon. The 747 is horribly inefficient at this metric, but "makes it up on volume" because your typical 747 carries a shit-ton of passengers (generally somewhere around 450, depending upon configuration; maximum configuration is almost 525 passengers). Air Force One, however, does not carry a shit-ton of passengers. It carries a dozen or so crew, maybe forty pool reporters, and (if the whole family is along), four VIPs, plus maybe half a dozen White House staffers. Rare is the day when there are more than about 100 people aboard Air Force One on an international trip; it's usually less on domestic trips.
Per the graph here, as cited by Garaghty, on this graph, the 747-200 (which is the model upon which the VC-25 is based) uses 5.76 gallons of fuel per mile. Now, we know that 28000 and 29000 actually have much more powerful engines, but just exactly what they are is a secret, so it's very likely that 28000 and 29000 use considerably more fuel than this, but let's just give the benefit of the doubt on this and say that AF1 is just a standard 747-200. That means that over the course of this trip, this one plane will use 5.76 gallons X 20,861 miles = 120,160 gallons of jet-A. Their own math says that 2.75 gallons per mile equals 244.22 pounds of carbon dioxide put into the atmosphere. So from there, it's just a matter of scaling up: 244.22 ÷ 2.75 = 88.71 pounds per gallon of fuel burned in the air, multiplied by 5.76 gallons per mile = 511.53 pounds of carbon dioxide produced per mile flown for Air Force One. Multiplied by 20,861 miles flown = 10,671,025 pounds of carbon dioxide from Andrews back to Andrews, of course not accounting for fuel spent taxiing on a runway or idling the APU on the ground, which we can consider negligible for the moment. Multiplied by two, that's 21,342,050 pounds of carbon dioxide just for 28000 and 29000, or about 10,671 tons of carbon dioxide. Add in the fact that the second AF1 does "lazy-8s" in the air the entire time that the actual AF1 is on the ground, the C-47, the helicopter travel in DC and at local destinations, the diesel and gasoline burned by the Presidential entourage, the amount of fuel burned in private and government planes to shuttle the Secret Service around, etc, and we're easily over 12,000 tons of carbon dioxide created for this one trip for Obama to go stroke his ego in Asia. That's as opposed to the average of nineteen tons per year for the average American.
Regardless, that's just the start of it. As a part of Earth Day celebrations, he sent EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy on a week-long tour of the country lecturing everyone about their "carbon footprint" from the steps of a Gulfstream. New York, Boston, Cleveland, Atlanta, and Memphis, all to tell people not to burn fossil fuels.
And there much more
This adds up to an ASTOUNDING amount of carbon dioxide spewed by these people in the name of ... telling everyone else not to create carbon dioxide.
So, in celebration of Earth Day, Barack Obama got up at the crack of nine and kept Marine One idling on the South Lawn unnecessarily for fifteen extra minutes on his way to Andrews, which of course kept the other two Marine One helicopters hovering over the White House. Then he went to Andrews and transferred to Air Force One on his way to Asia, stopping in Osa, Washington to survey the damage from the landslide there a mere month after it happened.
After that, he is continuing on to Tokyo, then on to Seoul, then down to Kuala Lumpur, over-flying the Philippines along the way. On his way back, he stops in Manila for a day, and then continues back to Washington. 20,861 miles flown, by two 747s. Plus the C-47 that carries "The Beast," at least one Marine One helicopter, and a phalanx of Secret Service.
And then there's the hundreds of Secret Service who have gone ahead, almost always on private and government aircraft, to each of these locations.
And before anyone pipes up with the usual "you want the President to be unprotected?" BS, no, that's not what I want. What I want him to do is two things:
- actually use taxpayer dollars wisely, and;
- not be a raging hypocrite.
There is no reason for this trip. None. He's fiddly-farting around in Asia because he wants to go somewhere and feel praised. What's he going to do while he's there? Tout his wonderful foreign policy?
Jim Garaghty calculated 868 tons of carbon emissions just to go from DC to Washington to Tokyo, and that's INCREDIBLY conservative, because it is averaging in a whole lot of planes that are far more efficient from the standpoint of airplane miles flown per gallon. The 747 is horribly inefficient at this metric, but "makes it up on volume" because your typical 747 carries a shit-ton of passengers (generally somewhere around 450, depending upon configuration; maximum configuration is almost 525 passengers). Air Force One, however, does not carry a shit-ton of passengers. It carries a dozen or so crew, maybe forty pool reporters, and (if the whole family is along), four VIPs, plus maybe half a dozen White House staffers. Rare is the day when there are more than about 100 people aboard Air Force One on an international trip; it's usually less on domestic trips.
Per the graph here, as cited by Garaghty, on this graph, the 747-200 (which is the model upon which the VC-25 is based) uses 5.76 gallons of fuel per mile. Now, we know that 28000 and 29000 actually have much more powerful engines, but just exactly what they are is a secret, so it's very likely that 28000 and 29000 use considerably more fuel than this, but let's just give the benefit of the doubt on this and say that AF1 is just a standard 747-200. That means that over the course of this trip, this one plane will use 5.76 gallons X 20,861 miles = 120,160 gallons of jet-A. Their own math says that 2.75 gallons per mile equals 244.22 pounds of carbon dioxide put into the atmosphere. So from there, it's just a matter of scaling up: 244.22 ÷ 2.75 = 88.71 pounds per gallon of fuel burned in the air, multiplied by 5.76 gallons per mile = 511.53 pounds of carbon dioxide produced per mile flown for Air Force One. Multiplied by 20,861 miles flown = 10,671,025 pounds of carbon dioxide from Andrews back to Andrews, of course not accounting for fuel spent taxiing on a runway or idling the APU on the ground, which we can consider negligible for the moment. Multiplied by two, that's 21,342,050 pounds of carbon dioxide just for 28000 and 29000, or about 10,671 tons of carbon dioxide. Add in the fact that the second AF1 does "lazy-8s" in the air the entire time that the actual AF1 is on the ground, the C-47, the helicopter travel in DC and at local destinations, the diesel and gasoline burned by the Presidential entourage, the amount of fuel burned in private and government planes to shuttle the Secret Service around, etc, and we're easily over 12,000 tons of carbon dioxide created for this one trip for Obama to go stroke his ego in Asia. That's as opposed to the average of nineteen tons per year for the average American.
Regardless, that's just the start of it. As a part of Earth Day celebrations, he sent EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy on a week-long tour of the country lecturing everyone about their "carbon footprint" from the steps of a Gulfstream. New York, Boston, Cleveland, Atlanta, and Memphis, all to tell people not to burn fossil fuels.
And there much more
- Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack went to Des Moines to to talk about climate change and water management. He apparently didn't have the cheek to go and talk about this in the San Joaquin Valley, where federal "water management" is killing farms at a breakneck speed.
- Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz preached about climate change from Providence and Hartford.
- HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan preached about reducing global warming through "sustainable housing," after having arrived in New York by private plane.
- USGS Acting Director Suzette Kimball went to Embudo, New Mexico, to talk about how data-streaming has helped fight global warming, in a surprising fit of irony, even for this administration.
This adds up to an ASTOUNDING amount of carbon dioxide spewed by these people in the name of ... telling everyone else not to create carbon dioxide.
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