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heathrow expansion stopped due to climate change?

Anti-development Climate Change

It seems that the WWF and Greenpeace have made a major strike against climate change by stopping the runway being built. I think this is somewhat overstating the case on several fronts, namely:

• The link between CO2 and climate change (or global warming) is not proven and the science is far from settled. See here for more background on this.
  
• Even if airline flights do contribute to climate change, not building one single runway is not going to stop overall growth in airline traffic - it will just occur somewhere else instead, and probably result in yet more CO2 being produced due to the additional inconvenience caused.
• Strangely enough during 9/11 when all air flights stopped over the US, there was a noticeable up-tick in the daily temperature - as the contrails left by the planes when flying contributed to reflected heat going back into space.

This is a dangerous prescient - if the worry over climate change can stop development occurring on such a scale, then it truly is a time to be worried, as people will be making massive impact decisions based on potentially flawed science that could be very detrimental in the long term.

Also it looks like the runway is not dead in the water, rather they have been ordered to consult with the public more.