Since it’s the weekend and I have nothing better to do (read:I have a lot of things I need to do, but don’t want to do them), I’ve been thinking more about the proposed expansion at Heathrow airport. Inel has once again posted an intriguing article called End bias in favour of aviation and other stories, mostly consisting of annotated links to articles in the Guardian. The one that caught my eye was The arguments for and against Heathrow’s runway 3.

First a rant. In aviation runways are numbered by the direction in which they point. For instance, the current runways at Heathrow are 9R, 9L, 27R, and 27L. Calling the proposed expansion “runway 3″ would mean that there would be a runway pointing approximately 30 degrees east of magnetic north. That’s just wrong; nobody is proposing that. The third runway will be parallel to the existing runways.
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Inel has has a series of posts lately about the proposed Heathrow Expansion. The lastest being Calling all students! Help Stop Heathrow Expansion. Please. I don’t live anywhere close to Heathrow, but for what it’s worth here’s my opinion. Expansion of any airport close to a large city is likely to be unpopular. The principal complaint is that the increased air traffic will contribute to the overall noise-pollution of the city.

Looking at a Stop Heathrow Expansion site, they offer four reasons to oppose construction of a new runway. (If you’re short for time, scroll down to the bottom and read the last one.)
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Every once in a while, someone will try to argue with me that the observed rise in the concentration of CO2 is because it’s “measured on a volcano”. But is it? The most frequently cited CO2 measurements are from Dr. Keeling’s measurements on Mauna Loa. Yes, this is a volcano. But Keeling took measurements at other locations as well.

Scripps Institution of Oceanography had several monitoring sites scattered throughout the World, mostly on remote islands in the Pacific. The Mauna Loa record is just the one that extends back furthest in time. We can see that all of the observations show excellent agreement.

(Click for bigger image)
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The issue of accuracy versus precision is interesting to me. In science, there is a distinct difference between the two words. Yet to everyone else, the two are synonymous. Therefore, I was slightly amused by this exchange on Anthony Watts’ blog. A commenter wrote the first part, and Anthony replied.

In an earlier entry, you said this MMTS unit is accurate to plus or minus 5 degrees. How does this compare to the MMTS units NOAA uses now? And how accurate should the unit be to replace current models?

REPLY: “you said this MMTS unit is accurate to plus or minus 5 degrees”

I never said any such thing. That level of accuracy would be useless.

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