Politics & Science
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Friends of the Earth convinced the press to make a big deal last week out of a very routine thing — a major airline having to fly a jet only partially full. In this particular case, a Boeing 777 flew its regular hop from Chicago to London, but there were only five passengers on board. The FotE was certainly correct in pointing out the wastefulness of this flight, but they mislead the public (and more importantly mislead a major newspaper, its editor, and millions of readers) by ignoring significant factors.

1) The airline was contractually bound to fly that airplane.

2) The airplane was scheduled to make a return flight the next day, in which it could (and generally does) carry hundreds of passengers.

3) The flight lost a lot of money for the airline.

The last point above is particularly important with regard to the FotE’s complaint about the environment. Why? Because it demonstrates that this is, ultimately, a self-correcting problem. It doesn’t require any intervention or effort whatsoever to fix this problem, because if the line continues to be unprofitable then the carrier will stop flying it!

But even worse is the fact that this complaint comes a time when carriers are routinely setting records for percentage of seats filled! When combined with newer engine designs (the plane they complained about is brand spanking new!) means that air travel is more fuel-efficient than its ever been before.

Aren’t we supposed to WANT more efficient mass transit? I don’t hear FotE complaining about that empty bus my local transit authority sends down Martin Luther King Blvd during mid-day, week-day hours when everyone is already at work. What’s the difference?

Some scandal!

The story:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/news/2008/03/05/nplane105.xml

The play-up on the Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/05/ecoscandal-aa-plane-fli_n_90032.html

PBS Frontline tackles Haditha. The whole episode is available for online viewing at this URL:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/haditha/

I put off watching this for a couple of weeks because I assumed it would be pretty ugly and uncomplimentary of the Marines. Boy was I wrong. They completely destroyed Iraqi eyewitness testimony and in the end seemed to support the overall exoneration of the Marines, focusing instead on the complexities of ground combat. And John Murtha does not make out well in this at all.

I tell you what, anybody who believes in liberal bias in the media should watch this.

And of course anybody who thinks Haditha was a massacre should watch it as well. They will not be pleased.

But the main thing is that what ultimately exonerates these Marines is scientific investigation and evidence. A brief example of this can be seen in the situation with House 4, which Marines claimed contained men who were aiming AK-47s at them. Iraqi eyewitnesses claimed that the men were unarmed and shot execution-style in another building and then dragged into House 4. But those eyewitnesses had an obvious motivation for deception, and bullet holes in the walls of the room the men were found in directly contradict their testimony. Another example of this surrounds the men who were in the white car, where eyewitness claims were refuted by live video shot from a drone circling above the area at the time.

Science trumps human eyewitnesses. As it should be.