Talk:Air transport and the environment (United Kingdom)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Good article Air transport and the environment (United Kingdom) has been listed as one of the Engineering and technology good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can delist it, or ask for a reassessment.
This article is within the scope of the following WikiProjects:

A request has been made for this article to be copyedited by the League of Copyeditors. Please add the code:
}}{{LOCE|{{{s}}}|class=articletype|title=Air transport and the environment (United Kingdom)|date=~~~~~
to the bottom of the requests page, replacing articletype by the classification of this article.

Contents

[edit] Start

This article was original titled Air transport in the United Kingdom. At an abortive FAC attempt it became apparent that that title did not accurately represent the subject matter. This new article has therefore been created to address this issue. The original article has been edited down to serve as a stub for a more general treatment of the subject of air transport in the UK. --FactotEm 10:36, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Protest

This is a great article, great stuff. From my angle I think it would benefit from a significant profile to the nature of the opposition to this policy. The opposition is broad and active. It includes not only activists, but also the Conservative Party, the Mayor of London, the National Trust, World Development Movement, Oxfam, etc etc and was the trigger for the Camp for climate action at heathrow in the summer. Some of the core issues are exposed in the Flying Matters article. Twyford Down was the moment when road transport policy in the UK changed (a fact that is not properly covered in that article), it also had a broad coalition and finally (after the road was built) allowed people in positions of power to seriously discuss other options and a civil servant is on record as saying that the protests allowed the alternative to road building to be considered properly for the first time (BBC Secret Life of the Motorway). What government's should be worried about is broad coalitions and at the Camp for Climate Action near Heathrow in Aug07 there were students, pensioners, locals, councilors, MPs (Labour and conservative for sure), scientists, thinkers (such as George Monbiot and Tony Juniper), representatives from senior NGOs and so on. This is the same chemistry that changed the policy on road building in 1994. I am not saying everyone welcomes the proposed limits on our 'freedom', but this coming together is an indicator that the conflicts inherent in the business as usual approach are coming to a head. It will be useful to see how these issues should be shared out into different articles, and also to fit into a world context, but I suggest they should be covered in outline in this article.PeterIto (talk) 22:36, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Issues article

I chose this article as a peg on which to hang information about air transport issues in the UK. Others have since worked on campaign groups involved in this subject space, and there is now a risk that the same subject will be duplicated across a number of different articles. My favoured solution is to morph this article into one that relates specifically to the issues concerning air transport in the UK. Related articles, such as those for campaign groups, can then reference this 'issues' article, allowing those articles to focus on the organisation and not get bogged down in campaign issues which are likely to be emotive. Similarly, airport articles can be updated with sections on campaigns specific to them without also having to discuss the underlying issues in detail. This approach might also scale upwards well to allow an international perspective, and perhaps a wikiproject is warranted, or maybe a WP:TASKFORCE within the WP:AVIATION and/or WP:Environment projects. --FactotEm (talk) 13:16, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] New article name

Following a comment in the recent failed FAC attempt I've moved this article (again) in order to give it a title that even more accurately reflects the content. I've checked the manual of style for naming conventions, and the capitalisation is based on my best effort at interpreting the standards. The subject is a document published by the government, and the applicable wikipedia standards relating to capitalisation seem to be Wikipedia:Naming_conventions#Legislation_in_the_United_Kingdom and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (books) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Factotem (talk • contribs) 07:08, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

And again. --FactotEm (talk) 12:34, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] GA Review

Sorry it took me a while to get to this - this is a long article, and quite different from all the other ones I usually review, so I waited on it 'til last. —Rob (talk) 17:32, 31 March 2008 (UTC)


GA review (see here for criteria)
  1. It is reasonably well written.
    a (prose): b (MoS):
    See below
  2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.
    a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):
    See below
  3. It is broad in its coverage.
    a (major aspects): b (focused):
  4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.
    Fair representation without bias:
    "Whilst setting a financial value on all such impacts is difficult to do precisely..." slightly NPOV, though obvious. This is debatable.
  5. It is stable.
    No edit wars etc.:
  6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.
    a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
    Great use of images in the article! Curious about the contrails one. Is that supposed to represent global pollution?
  7. Overall:
    Pass/Fail:

[edit] Section 1 (from above list)

  • "regional airports have experienced the most growth in recent years, due to the success of 'no-frills' airlines over the last decade." Is that taken word-for-word from the report? Seems a little buzzwordy, unless it is taken from the report, in which case it needs to be cited.

[edit] Section 2

  • "The strategy has been criticised for implementing a predict and provide..." by whom? Also needs a ref.
  • "The government is seeking to redress this through the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), but progress is slow." According to whom, and how slow?

[edit] Section 3

* I'm through the introductory section, and I have some questions. Was there any response issued to this white paper by critics? A slightly higher level of detail (beyond "critics") might be needed for the intro, para. 3. * Does the white paper deal with no-frills carriers directly, or not? There are many citations to another executive report regarding the carriers, which pretty much shows that these low-cost carriers are the primary driver for growth for air transportation in the UK, but I'm wondering if the original white paper deals with that particular point or not.

[edit] Overall

I'm going to need a second opinion on this. However, the article history (and page move history) suggests that the original article dealt with current issues in air travel, and reading the article bears that out. Which is why I'm slightly worried that the name of the article suggests that its content should be limited to the content of the white paper, and direct responses to the white paper. However, I'll have to have someone else vet this opinion. Good read! —Rob (talk) 17:32, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Another editor has suggested that I leave the scope issues out for another debate, which I will. Just one outstanding issue. —Rob (talk) 02:24, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Thanks again. Is your concern that the 'predict and provide' label is not sourced at all, or just not sourced in the lead? I just want to re-iterate that this issue is actually addressed in the body of the article (See the last 2 sentences in the last para of the section Global environmental impact). I just don't like cites in the lead when the information there is simply summarising a fully sourced statement from the main body. --FactotEm (talk) 06:38, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
It wasn't so much the ref as that I wanted to know who was doing the criticising. But I went ahead and added that in the lead, and I think it's ready now. —Rob (talk) 12:53, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
That's fair enough, but I think this change tends towards an implication that it is only the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee that label's the govt policy such, when in fact criticism along these lines comes from many sources. I've changed the lead to better represent the character of the opposition. --FactotEm (talk) 11:08, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
Forgot to add. Thanks. I didn't think anyone would be prepared to take this GAN on. Appreciate it. --FactotEm (talk) 11:10, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] GA Review Responses

It is a lengthy article and I appreciate you taking the time to review it. I'll get back with some detailed responses later today. --FactotEm (talk) 06:52, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Cites in the lead

I am not generally a fan of cites in the lead. I write them as summaries of the main article, and there is nothing in them that is not detailed and cited in the main body.

[edit] Section 1

That phrasing is mine, but accurately relects the source. I have added the relevant reference (which talks about a "...dramatic increase in the range and number of scheduled routes available from UK regional airports.") - see ref 22.

[edit] Section 2

  • See the last 2 sentences in the last para of the section Global environmental impact for the source of the predict and provide criticism (it is also a criticism echoed throughout much of the anti-expansionist campaign literature).
  • Slow progress via ICAO is now explicitly referenced, and a reference to the timescales so far included.

[edit] Section 3

  • I don't really understand your point about critics. Can you expand? The white paper has been criticised by numerous anti-expansionist campaign groups, and these provide the main sources of criticism throughout the article.
  • Yes, sections 4.31 to 4.38 of the white paper deal with regional airports and states "The recent emergence of 'no-frills' services ... has stimulated demand across the country, but has been a particularly important factor in the growth that has occurred over the last ten years at many regional airports." and that "The Government's policy is to encourage the growth of regional airports to serve regional and local demand..."

[edit] Overall

Yes, the article scope/title is a difficult one and I understand your concern. I'm not sure that, in order to produce a comprehensive treatment of the subject, it is necessarily wrong to explore some of the key points of the white paper in more detail using other sources, but others may have a different opinion on this. Largely this seems to me an issue of correctly titling the article, which as you can see I have struggled with throughout.
Thanks again for your time. I hope the above addresses your concerns, but if there is more that can be done to improve the article I'll do my best. Cheers. --FactotEm (talk) 08:36, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Additional Info

Forgot about some of the other comments...

  • Not sure that the text on setting financial figures on environmental impacts is POV, but it can be easily removed if this is a problem.
  • The contrails pic was chosen because it illustrates emissions, but it is not intended to make any kind of statement about the role of contrails (and also cloud formation) in environmental impacts, which is I believe a little understood effect. It was the best picture I could find in Commons (there were some which better illustrated the polluting aspects of aviation, but they were not taken in the UK). --FactotEm (talk) 14:07, 1 April 2008 (UTC)