VIP makes me sad for them.

[Meat Hunter]

My observation is that charter flights arrive with 8-18 passengers and general aviation aircraft arrive with between 2-6 passengers.

I could be absolutely incorrect in this, but I would guess that the Burning Man aircraft per passenger carbon footprint is considerably less than the automobile per passenger carbon footprint.

Especially since there are no long hours waiting in the entry and exit lines with the motor running like automobiles, trucks and RV's.

[BoyScoutGirl]

How does more air traffic square with Burning Man's commitment towards sustainability? One would think that each plane that lands bumps up the event's carbon footprint substantially.

Do not confuse "leave no trace on the playa" with sustainability. The Org has not made a commitment to (environmental) sustainability, which makes sense because nothing about Burning Man is even close to sustainable.

People are making comendable efforts (e.g. Black Rock Solar, AEZ), but the most sustainable way to participate in the burn is not to go. Or, hell, don't go AND try offsetting the impact of the tens of thousands of us who drive and fly hundreds of miles to go and burn perfectly good lumber, etc.

[apprehensive]

There hasn't been a formal commitment in this regard yet, you're correct, but there has been repeated messages that Burning Man is striving towards greater sustainability. There's no reason that it could be a lot more environmentally friendly than it is presently, leaving aside that one of the core activities is burning shizzle and whatnot.

[GreyCoyote]

"Greener" is always better, but I'm with BoyScoutGirl: to really play that game, you just can't come.

On a lark, I just did my carbon footprint for Burningman 2015. I was ASTOUNDED by the numbers. Critiques would be welcome, BTW.

My round-trip to and from BM was 5100 miles. I got an average of 10 mpg pulling a trailer with a late-model Toyota Tundra. That's 510 gallons of fuel. Each gallon of gasoline produces right at 20 lbs of CO2. So just my driving alone produced 10,200 lbs of carbon dioxide.

A 25 year old pine forest under ideal conditions sequesters about 15 lbs of carbon per tree per year. So my little Burningman jaunt means there better be 680 trees working overtime for a YEAR. (That's about an acre and a half worth of trees).

I also burned about 3 gals of fuel in the genny per day for a total of 16 days, so that's another 48 gals or 960 lbs of carbon, or 64 more trees.

I also burned 23 gallons of propane heating tamales and keeping the dome warm. Each gallon of propane creates 13 lbs of carbon, so we have another 300 lbs of carbon, aka 20 more trees for a year.

By this simple math, my personal carbon footprint was 11,460 lbs. It will take 764 trees a FULL YEAR to digest this carbon load. And of course this is just fuel. I also ate cooked food on the road, slept in hotels with air conditioning and freshly washed sheets, and purchased soda in aluminum cans. I won't even try to make those calcs.

Put another way: The total carbon I produced exceeds the combined weights of the tow vehicle, the trailer, and the contents (including people) therein.

How about that "Green" Burningman? Anyone? Bueller?

[andy]

I can't speak to greenhouses gases but I can give you pretty accurate info on fuel consumption, which I think would track emissions. A typical passenger jet gets about 80 passenger-miles per gallon (dramatically better than a generation ago) so flying is not much different than 3 people in a car. Of course buses and trains are dramatically more efficient, assuming they are full.

[Meat Hunter]

Andy,

How many kerosene (aka diesel fuel) powered passenger jets did you count at Black Rock Municipal Airport this year?

[Elderberry]

The airport can accommodate jets?

[Meat Hunter]

Oh yes,
With two 6,000' runways (one for arrivals and one for departures), the airport can and has accommodated a good number of different general aviation pure jets.

This year, a Falcon jet was on the ground for a short period. Although, I was not always on the runways, that was the only pure jet that I saw land this year.

[Elderberry]

That surprises me.

[Meat Hunter]

I was pretty busy at the time and I did not walk out to it, but it looked like a Falcon 10 to me.

The next time that I looked up, it was gone.

[theCryptofishist]

it appears that PnP feel entitled. I moreover think that increasing the number of tickets available at the Direct Group Sale. This will reduce the number of Burgins and bring in more core burners. Me personally, I got tired and fed up telling people how to mooply behave, it was like I was a moop asshat.

Ah yes, it's all the fault of the new people... That's not been trotted out for about five minutes.
And I think that plug 'n' play can probably get in DGS without much trouble. My takeaway from Caravansicle, although I know that that's not what they did.

[Elderberry]

And I think that plug 'n' play can probably get in DGS without much trouble. My takeaway from Caravansicle, although I know that that's not what they did.

That was what they did. Fortunately, that won't happen again, nor will there be placement for those camps.

[BBadger]

An aside on aircraft emissions:

According to this article, the most numerous plane at the event was the Cessna 182; however, these only represent the planes that were parked at the event. Most of the flights (500+) were chartered turboprop aircraft.

The Cessna 182s produce more pollution than regular cars (carbon monoxide, etc.), but are comparable when it comes to CO2 emissions. There aren't, however, that many Cessnas at BM to make much difference.

The chartered turboprop aircraft are another story because they're transporting many people and making many flights. Turboprops are relatively efficient in terms of fuel consumption and emissions on a per-passenger basis. With the cost of aviation fuel and increased pressure to reduce emissions, turboprops are becoming more attractive to the airline industry.

Still, is the turboprop better than a car? It'd be hard to really draw a meaningful comparison.

Burner cars are "special" -- not the same kinds of vehicles you'd see compared in studies. They're often overloaded with supplies, sometimes with cargo that creates drag. They're hauling trailers and other cars. There are more RVs, school buses, trucks, and vans -- not just regular "cars." What is the MPG of the car? How many passengers?

There are other factors as well. An aircraft travels in a straight line to its destination, whereas the cars travel on roads. The aircraft also doesn't have to wait in line for hours, idling, or turning on and off engines (which belches out lots of pollution). This, on the other hand, also reduces traffic at the gate as well. Or does it? Somebody brought in the rest of the camp. Or was that done with more efficient transportation than the average overloaded crossover SUV or RV?

I say it's a crap-shoot. The very existence of this very unnecessary Burning Man event means that there is lots of unnecessary pollution. While we might be able to do a little better, the fact is, Burning Man is a big pre-commodification event that makes no excuses about its trace beyond what gets wiped from the playa itself.

if you want to green up the world, I'd suggest just staying home and spending your time campaigning against gasoline leaf blowers. Really. Those things belch out more pollution in half an hour than a Burner would attending the event with their 400+ hp Ford truck traveling from Miami to BRC (one way). Or maybe get on the case of motorcycles. Or Volkswagen diesel vehicles.

[apprehensive]

You need to look at it on a per passenger basis, and in those terms aircraft are more polluting than cars, even heavily laden cars pulling trailers. Also, yes, turboprops are more efficient than jets, but remember that a 747 carriers more passengers relative to the total amount of fuel consumed than does a small aircraft and that needs to be factored into the equation. Are there any articles you have regarding turboprops being more efficient per passenger? Again, I may be incorrect about turboprops and am more than willing to be set straight. When you look at the pollution from a small jet though, then the figures go through the roof. Also, the shorter the journey the less fuel efficient it will be, a point which applies to all planes. There is also the critical point that it's not just emissions that make flying so polluting, its where the pollution is emitted which is in a part of the atmosphere that magnifies their impact considerably.

You can take the view that on any rational analysis, it's more environmentally friendly to simply not attend, but that misses the point a little. What I'm saying is that there is at present likely a significant amount of plane journeys into the event that cover small distances and which could be replaced with car journeys. Adding more air traffic is simply going to push the pollution footprint in entirely the wrong direction.

[BBadger]

I am looking at it on a per-passenger basis. For regional transportation (< 500mi) and less than about 70 passengers, turboprops will be more efficient. There are articles on the web; here is one you can read. Flights to BRC are generally less than 500 miles, but more important, something like a 747 is not going to be possible anyway on the temporary runway at BRC.

In the end, it really doesn't matter. The short-range to-the-playa aircraft pollution is a drop in the bucket compared to the resources, pollution, and energy expended by this event. If it were a real concern, this event wouldn't take place out in the middle of nowhere -- which confounds every attempt at keeping things efficient in the first place. This event is resource intensive by design.

So, again, save your energy to fight leaf blowers in Defaultia. That's the real struggle.

[apprehensive]

All that article says is that turboprops are more efficient than jets for planes that can carry less than 70 people. There is no reference to turboprops' relative pollution footprints relative to other modes of transport, which is what I was really asking for, albeit not in a very clear fashion, my apologies. Also, remember that the fewer passengers the plane carries, the less fuel efficient on a per passenger basis it will be and I'd guess most planes landing at BRC will have a passenger capacity that barely breaks double figures. Out of curiosity, what is the largest plane that can land at the airport there in terms of passengers?

I'd be interested in the typical length of journey that planes for Burning Man are chartered for, also. The shorter the journey the much less fuel efficient the plane will be given that more fuel is used for taking of and landing. Certainly, I've seen nothing to suggest that planes are anything remotely near cars in terms of their pollution footprints. And it's their pollution footprint that we need to look at, not fuel efficiency figures, because the emissions are going into a part of the atmosphere where their impact is magnified severalfold.

This may all seem unrelated to the OP, but I'm not sure that it is. The more VIPs and so on that begin to frequent the event, then the greater the demand for planes will be and, a lesser consideration, the more SUVs that will be needed to ferry people to and from the airport.

[BBadger]

You can read the IPCC report. Data is from the 1990s. "The amount of CO2 emitted per passenger-km for different modes of transport is very dependent on the type of aircraft, train, or car and on the load factor. Typical CO2 emissions for air transport are in the range of 30 to 110 g C per passenger-km, which is comparable with passengers travelling by car or light truck."

Regardless, in the grand scheme of an event like this it makes no difference anyway. This is not a green event, nor does it aspire to be. People fly into the event, just as they drive, to attend a week-long art festival in a remote location in a nearly empty state. Pollution-credit penny-pinching here and there is about as ridiculous as worrying about whether brand names on cars constitutes "commodification".

[Molotov]

Other than the per-flight-hour cost, the C-130 civilian (Lockheed L-100) version would be perfect for moving large numbers of participants and their gear onto the playa with its STOL capabilities.

[media]

[apprehensive]

This is not presently a green event, but it does aspire to be. And there have been plenty of statements to that effect from the organisers. Environmental responsibility is even a central component of the Leave No Trace principle. At least, that is unless one is suggesting that any, presently informal, commitments towards environmentalism from BMORG are but "weasel words"? Should that be one's argument, then, yes, I am in at least partial agreement.

There are plenty of ways in which the event could be more green though, particularly on the transportation front, which accounts for around 70 to 80 per cent of pollution, based on the figures I've read. My main point still stands though that even if a short range flight does emit the same amount of pollution as a heavily laden car, and I dispute this, the net effect of those emissions are magnified substantially because they will be emitted in a more sensitive part of the atmosphere, which itself will vary depending on the cruising altitude of the aircraft in question. Encouraging more flights into the event will only push it in the wrong direction. Maybe it's doomed in this respect, and others, and we may as well not bother, but that's a defeatist attitude and well should at least be trying to steer it in a more sustainable direction, I think.

[Elderberry]

Other than the per-flight-hour cost, the C-130 civilian (Lockheed L-100) version would be perfect for moving large numbers of participants and their gear onto the playa with its STOL capabilities.

Did that plane put itself in reverse? I didn't know that was even possible.

[Mr Gizmo]

Other than the per-flight-hour cost, the C-130 civilian (Lockheed L-100) version would be perfect for moving large numbers of participants and their gear onto the playa with its STOL capabilities.

Did that plane put itself in reverse? I didn't know that was even possible.

It's Burning Man ... all things are possible.

[Popeye]

Other than the per-flight-hour cost, the C-130 civilian (Lockheed L-100) version would be perfect for moving large numbers of participants and their gear onto the playa with its STOL capabilities.

Did that plane put itself in reverse? I didn't know that was even possible.

Yes, the C-130 was made for short/ narrow runways. I don't think the engines could be reversed, I think the large flaps are dropped and thrust from the props is reflected forward. It is pretty neat to watch.

[Meat Hunter]

The pitch on the propellers are reversed.

[Elderberry]

Other than the per-flight-hour cost, the C-130 civilian (Lockheed L-100) version would be perfect for moving large numbers of participants and their gear onto the playa with its STOL capabilities.

Did that plane put itself in reverse? I didn't know that was even possible.

Yes, the C-130 was made for short/ narrow runways. I don't think the engines could be reversed, I think the large flaps are dropped and thrust from the props is reflected forward. It is pretty neat to watch.

I've actually flown in them in VietNam, but I never saw them go in reverse. Interesting. They aren't the most comfortable means of transportation.

[Popeye]

The pitch on the propellers are reversed.

That makes sense, I was trying to remember seeing the flaps all the way down but it has been a while.
Never flew on one but we used to get once per year fuel deliveries by C130. Spent about a week pumping from bladders to fuel tanks. They used to back up about 2000 feet to get within pumping distance to the tanks.