Extinction Rebellion plans to shut down Heathrow Airport with drones - Polidicks

Are you expecting people to actually put themselves onto the airfield? Drones are easily one of the best things for this, they can completely bypass any security that current Airports have, there's really nothing you can do about stopping them besides telling people to stop and hope they're scared enough to do so.

Next thing you know those dame negroes will be sitting in my cafe seat.

Now the planes have to divert and spend more time in the air, good job wasting fuel and creating more emmisions.

I count this as terrorism. Long jail sentences for anyone flying drones near the airport please.

I don't think you understand the amount of technical knowledge and money that is required to build just a single drone that can pull off anything close to Gatwick with the new anti-drone measures in place, especially now that the plan is known. Literally anything else is preferable at this point. Just going in with a couple dozen consumer drones to protest won't last for more than a couple of hours at most before everyone gets arrested. Completely bypass security only to get jammed and fall out of the air.

And yet somebody managed to do it without anyone finding him out and with no evident motive. What makes you say that nobody within an extensive national movement has the know-how to do such a thing? Let's not even get into the laughable assertion that such a wide association wouldn't have the required funds to put together a single drone. ...And if that's what ends up happening then nobody would have a solid case against drones as a whole since it's been demonstrated that they can be dealt with incredibly easily. So why do you give a shit? Literally what are you even complaining about at this point?

Short term loss for long term gain. People said the same thing when they blocked traffic, it is one of the stupidest arguments against this form of protesting and only displays your own short-sightedness and wilful ignorance.

Weren't you the one who complained about cyclists making firefighters late in the Notre-Dame thread a while back? Do you have something specifically against people who go through the effort of combating climate change? Terrorism is a huge fucking stretch. Never heard of terrorists giving a head's up ahead of time to avoid any and all casualty and physical damages. Those are the nicest terrorists in the entire world. More to the point, terrorism is about inspiring fear into the people, to pursue a political goal. Hence, the name. I don't know of anybody who'd shit his pants and quiver in fear to the idea of getting their flight delayed or even canceled. All this is is a protest. An effective one, for a change, which is why so many people come out of the woodwork to whine about it.

You'd not be defending them if you were stuck in traffic or had to take a 2 hour diversion

You have to understand that circumstances have changed since Gatwick and there's been a huge investment in anti-drone tech to make sure it doesn't happen again. It won't be so easy this time. The reason I'm complaining is because this will still cause the airport to be shut down out of safety for multiple hours, delay and cancel a ton of flights and make people hate drones even more. Why not find a better alternative to protest than trying to shut down an airport for 10 days, fail miserably, get arrested with terrorism charges, and ruin all radio controlled hobbies.

Yes I would. I defended striking train workers even though they heavily disrupted the network for two days a week, for months. That personally affected me, since I rely on public transportation, and yet I didn't bitch about it because I understand the basic principles of protesting. So if they do they will have achieved their goals then? What's the problem again? Okay, I'm listening. What exactly do you suggest that would be equally effective and more convenient?

why planes though? they're more fuel efficient than cars. the most popular aircraft in america, the Boeing 737-800, gets 85 mpg per seat

You'll need to back that figure up with a source. It doesn't make sense to attribute a fixed consumption rate to airplanes because it varies drastically depending on distance travelled, because take off and landing typically consume a lot more than cruise among other things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft

For comparison, a Volvo bus 9700 averages 0.41 L/100 km (570 mpg‑US) per seat for 63 seats.[74] In highway travel an average auto has the potential for 1.61 L/100 km (146 mpg‑US)[75] per seat (assuming 4 seats) and for a 5-seat 2014 Toyota Prius, 0.98 L/100 km (240 mpg‑US).[76] While this shows the capabilities of the vehicles, the load factors (percentage of seats occupied) may differ between personal use (commonly just the driver in the car) and societal averages for long-distance auto use, and among those of particular airlines. Doesn't beat cars once you factor in multiple passengers. Who goes on vacation alone in a family car? You can get better performances than any plane at any range by simply ride-sharing. That's without even factoring in trains as an alternative.

-Disrupting average joes that have no power to do anything meaningful while doing even more to get the authorities angry at RC aircraft is not the way to go. These kids are fucking dumbasses. They may mean well, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

There is no useful form of protest that does not disrupt average joes. I challenge you to name a singular useful form of protest that hasn't already been explored that doesn't disrupt average joes.

And that's without even accounting for the rebound effect air traffic entails. If people didn't have the option of going almost anywhere in the world under 12 hours for a (relatively) low price, maybe they'd settle for vacations in closer yet equally refreshing destinations.

Disruption of this scale caught the attention of the entire nation last time, and going by this thread was certainly reported on internationally, and that was without the climate change narrative being involved. Raising awareness and getting people thinking is absolutely vital towards getting society to change its attitude so we can stop roasting the planet. We're already on that road to hell. The use of fossil fuels and the advancement of global industry lead the way for good intentioned advancement of humanity, but has caused catastrophic problems. This is part of trying to turn this car around to get off the road to hell.

If they want to make a point they ought to go to the US where politicians have outright banned discussion of climate change, and it's a lot more complex than that - you're fucking people over who've saved money for their holidays/to visit family and friends because they'll be losing more than just a few hours. People will get stranded abroad, families etc.

So are you saying they're getting cheap piece of shit drones or something, what's the failure rate on these things exactly, like jamming? Or are you referring to some sort of electrical interference? Like I get that you think people using drones is bad because you don't want to have use of one banned or whatever, but stop thinking these people are complete morons, who is actually going to auto-return a drone, to their home, after doing what they've just done? One in one hundred thousand/million? Maybe, that's a big maybe too, but most of the people are going to be doing it locally then parking it in a field or somewhere nearby, then picking it up shortly afterwards.

"I don't want to be inconvenienced" isn't a particularly strong argument against "what you would experience if these protests do not work is far worse than the very temporary and mild inconvenience you would suffer from the protest". Also "make those people inconvenienced, not me" implies that the effects of what they're protesting aren't local. Part of the USA's problem in tackling climate change is that the other countries aren't holding our feet to the fire. In such regards, having the UK rise up against the US because its citizenry is demanding it is more strategically useful than them going to the US to demand it.

What do they hope to achieve by shutting down Heathrow really... "Awareness"? Everyone and their mum is aware of the climate change issue, it's just going to end up being one of those stunts that will be on the news for a few days and will be just as quickly forgotten. Also, there isn't much airlines can do, it's already in their best interests to have fuel efficient planes. They should go after other industries that have a bigger footprint/aren't doing anything to lower their emissions.

"Rather than talk about climate change here, why don't just they go to the other side of the world where talking about climate change is even harder?" NGL that's some galaxy brain tier argument. And that's without even delving into the lack of legitimacy of what I assume would be mostly British nationals going to the US to protest about the government's actions there. The GOP would easily just brush it off. I'd say trying to pressure the people who are more likely to concede first is the smarter move. And if nothing is done about climate change then lots of people will lose their home, entire cities will disappear or become non-viable, families will starve, etc. Forgive me if your description doesn't elicit much emotion in me by comparison.

Probably the same sort of thing that was achieved by US Airports shutting down due to traffic controllers not being paid: immediate government response due to it speaking in the language they like to speak the most -- money.

I think it's different here, the US the government can't "crack down" on someone not going to work because they aren't being paid while here it's just going to end up in the government arresting the drone pilots.

Jamming as in jamming the 2.4 ghz frequency which is used to control them. Also, auto return-to-home is a failsafe mechanism which will make the drone fly back and land at the spot it took off from if it loses connection, if for example, the signal gets jammed. Cops use this to track where it came from if it has a return-to-home function.

So make it take off from the middle of nowhere? Doesn't really take a genius to circumvent this problem.

Except the signal can only go about 1.5 - 2 kilometers, which means that you need to take off close to it for it to be able to reach the airfield.

Ah OK see, makes sense; if this does happen and the airport does get shut down temporarily, I'd hope they'd get the point behind them doing this and not just seeing as people being idiots, you can think they're idiots but then you're missing the point also, how else do you really get a message across to people these days without doing something radical? Going through normal systems doesn't work for shit either (since they can easily ignore people who do because the don't like or care for what they have to say), so that's not an option.