Not correct the way you put it.
For a given distance the Cirrus with 310 hp has exactly the same fuel consumption as a 150 hp Piper Warrior.
I flew Munich-Split a couple of times in both airplanes, both consumed 105 liters of fuel for the 360 NM. (2:20 vs. 3:40 flight time)
Peter wrote:
With enough money you can buy anything… and care homes can always get extra staff if they pay them enough. The UK (and every other place in the modern world) is struggling with this issue, but it is a problem really only when people want the taxpayer to fund their care home.
Not really. If half of the population must take care of the other half, there won’t be much done in a nation in the end. It will wither and die when the money is used. You have to import people somehow for that to work. Somebody have to produce food, build houses, create income, create a future. It is a real problem in Norway. Norwegian women give birth to too few babies, and the population is going down. Luckily the Poles in particular see lots of opportunity here, so the population is increasing after all. It’s just that in 30-40 years there will be more Poles here than native Norwegians 
We are only 5 million people here, and close to a million are immigrants today.
Alexis wrote:
For a given distance the Cirrus with 310 hp has exactly the same fuel consumption as a 150 hp Piper Warrior.
OK, so I should have said a Cirrus or a Piper Warrior 
My point was simply that if you want to fly, but don’t like the idea of gas guzzling “monsters”, there are lots of other alternatives that does the same “job” (whatever exactly that may be) just perfectly, but with a lot less environmental impact.
For some real world perspective, the so-called “environmental impact” of my flying activities is sourced from six drums of fuel per year plus near zero industrial production (forever). In relation to the manpower required to support that personal consumption, the fuel plus taxes paid on the fuel is bought every year with after tax wage income typically earned during the first week of January. One of the things that attracts me to flying, other than the fun and education, is the lack of ‘treadmill’ consumer mentality and the associated sustainability of the activity.
In comparison to my aviation fuel use, my more expensive environmental resource consumption is land use, roughly four times higher than fuel in cost per year, with competing land use demand driven by population density. At least land is forever, with just a little maintenance, even more so than the planes.
When I do the sums, most piston aircraft have roughly comparable efficiencies on a seat-mile basis. A Cirrus with full seats flown slowly will be more efficient than my single-seater. The inefficiency comes when all you want to do is fly a few circuits for currency with 1 pob.
On paper the an2 does ok. 12 seats 100 knots 150 lph.
Ok, but it’s hard to find 10 other people for each flight just to make this calculation work ;-)
Dilemma: My passion of flying or my concern for the environnement ? :D
I’ve already thought about gliding , but it seems so complicated ( especially the waiting, everything depends on the weather and you are not really free because it also depends on other people since you cannot take off by yourself … )
LeSving wrote:
If half of the population must take care of the other half, there won’t be much done in a nation in the end. It will wither and die when the money is used. You have to import people somehow for that to work.
Given the number of people in the world who do essentially nothing productive this does not strike me as a substantial issue in relation to world population reduction, even if there are local issues that need to be resolved through population migration. Technology has created the overall situation by reducing the actual work but for various reasons the employment continues. Sometimes it seems to me that the western world has taken on the character of a giant make-work scheme to distribute resources, and that’s neglecting people who are actually unemployed and therefore under utilized by any standard.
Astrioorion wrote:
My passion of flying or my concern for the environment?
Are you planning on giving up air travel entirely, or just the variants that are socially stigmatized in your culture? For comparison, I just calculated the amount of fuel I use on recreational airline travel based on the per seat airliner fuel consumption of 0.04 L/km per seat for an A-340, which is what’s in use on my typical routes. Not counting any business travel, only for recreation, its about 125% of what I use annually in my own planes, not counting my wife’s airline consumption – which would make it roughly 250% of what we use for the plane.
