A few speakers rely heavily on their data slides which I'll try to update when they're released over the next week or so. One of those is Nikolas Hill, a senior consultant with AEA, but he is also the one speaker to speculate - in response to a question - about where the UK Conservatives got their figures. Notably the one that says high-speed rail is 70X cleaner than air travel.
Hill suggests that they must be doing some odd things with load-factors - "perhaps using 100% load-factors" - but more importantly, taking a particular view of how much greener electricity generation could become in future.
I'm way out of my depth on that subject, but it seems that the effect of more efficient generation could be huge and would transform the environmental equation.
According to the delegate list there is a lonely Conservative Party rep somewhere in the room, but he doesn't take the bait and nobody else attempts to offer an explanation of what they're up to.
Until, that is, the lunch break, when I'm assured by the representative of an organisation with heavy aviation interests that it's all about helping Zac Goldsmith win the parliamentary seat of Richmond Park at the next election. It's one of the poshest constituencies in London (hey, I used to live in it) and very winnable from the Liberal Democrats. And parts of it really are affected by Heathrow noise.
Whether the Conservative party would seriously trash the third Heathrow runway in order to win a single seat - even for one of its best-loved sons like Goldsmith - seems doubtful to me. But then I'm an aviation guy and what do I know?
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