By Jeremy Lovell LONDON, Dec 12 (Reuters) - Green campaigners said on Tuesday that Britain will back a major expansion of its booming aviation industry in a report this week that they say will do nothing to combat global warming. A transport department spokesman, who declined to provide a date, said the report would not mark a change from conclusions in a December 2003 aviation policy paper. That saw a need for four new runways, two in the Greater London area, as falling prices and a strong economy brought a surge in flight and passenger numbers. The report follows the conclusions of a transport review this month by former British Airways chief Rod Eddington endorsing a major expansion of the country's airports. Environmentalists said that with passenger numbers expected to double to 470 million a year by 2030 it would be impossible for the government to meet its target of cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 60 percent by 2050. Including carbon from aviation in the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme -- the government's preferred route -- would have little effect, they said. "It will not happen for a number of years and is unlikely to lead to a significant reduction in the growth in air travel," said Friends of the Earth campaigner Richard Dyer. Campaigners say the EU's own draft proposals to include aviation in the ETS after 2011 would only trim predicted air traffic growth by a maximum of 2.9 percent by 2020. To make matters worse, scientists say high altitude emissions are much more damaging than those at the surface. Most scientists now agree that world average temperatures will rise by between two and six degrees Celsius this century due to emissions of so-called greenhouse gases, melting polar ice caps and causing floods, famines and violent storms. Former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern said that urgent action on global warming from human activities like burning fossil fuels for power and transport was vital. His October report said the cost of curbing greenhouse gas emissions now was about one percent of global economic output -- a figure that rises 20-fold if action is delayed. (Additional reporting by Jason Neely)
