alphasierra

For those of you not following these events closely: the 747-8 and the 787 (both new) both utilize a very similar engine from GE (the GEnx).

The GEnx 1B (787) failed in July this year and kicked off an investigation that is trying to determine if there is an engineering or manufacturing problem in the parts that connect two shaft pieces together to form the main shaft in the engine.

The GEnx 2B (747-8) failed in early September this year and the initial investigation is not complete.

This memo confirms that the 747-8 and the 787 failures are NOT related.

That being said, the NTSB wants to pull the ETOPS certificate from the -1B engines which would effectively ground the majority of the 787 fleet (the 787 is optimized for long flights which would be majority over water/out of gliding range and the GEnx has the widest install base on the 787).

The FAA has indicated that they will take a watching brief for the time being.

Ok was able to read (thanks scarmig).

Their claim is that we alter approximately 2.27 acres worth of environment to support each person (mainly nutrients). This comes out to 40%?? of the land of Earth being transformed and showing state change.

Through this transformation of land and our consumption of primary nutrients we currently consume between 20-40% of the biota production and also degrade the whole production chain.

Their claim is that at current human growth levels we will exceed 50% transformation of the land mass and this will cause rapid, unpredictable changes (state change) and we will reach this in 2025.

Interestingly, they claim that through greenhouse gas emissions we have delayed this massive state change (by putting more energy into the environment).

Need to read the article -- my library doesn't have access yet but this seems way too sensationalized.

I have no doubt the world will change. I don't think that we could prevent it even if we turned off the figurative taps but there's no way that the article advocates that the planet will not support life after this change.

Does it go into the probable losses and the mechanisms for those losses (heat/acidification/etc)? From that we could identify probable impacts to the nutrient cycle.