Two Time-Warners in One!

Past performance is no guarantee of future results. In 2007, Time magazine, a component of the Time-Warner-CNN-HBO conglomerate, asked, “Does Flying Harm the Planet?” And quickly came to the conclusion that it sure does:

A placard from one activist at Heathrow expressed it thus: “You Fly, They Die.”

Airplanes operate on petroleum fuel, which means they release large amounts of carbon dioxide when they fly. Commercial air travel is currently responsible for a relatively tiny part of the global carbon footprint —just 3.5% of total greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But the unique chemistry of high-altitude jet emissions may produce an additional warming effect, while the explosive growth in air travel makes it one of the fastest-growing sources of carbon gases in the atmosphere. And unlike energy or automobiles, where carbon-free or lower-carbon alternatives already exist, even if they have yet to be widely adopted, there is no low-carbon way to fly, and there likely won’t be for decades.

Flash-forward to today, and to Sports Illustrated, another publication that’s a member of the Time-Warner-CNN-HBO conglomerate: “Kate Upton floats through a zero-g chamber in this year’s Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, which hits newsstands today,” the New York Post’s Page Six reports:

Here’s how Upton defied gravity:

After Page Six reported in January the curvy model was shot for the issue in the zero-G chamber, photos were released today of the curvy blonde floating around in an anti-gravity chamber, operated by Zero-G Corporation in Arlington, VA.

“Upton flipped, floated and modeled in true weightlessness – as if in outer space,” Zero-G said in a press release on the photo shoot.

The shoot was set up last March in the Zero-G chamber, a specially equipped Boeing-727 that simulates zero-g in flight. “Upton bounced and soared through the plane for the cameras,” the release said.

While we have no complaints about the final results, we’re also not the ones attempting to guilt you out of flying for the sake of Gaia. As the Professor is wont to say, I’ll believe global warming is a crisis when the people who tell me it’s a crisis start to act like it’s one. If Time magazine can’t convince the fellas down the hall at Sports Illustrated to take global warming seriously first, why should they expect anyone else to?