I get several emails each week from those interested in weather-related topics. I enjoy those interactions.
But there have been an increasing number of messages from those promoting a chemtrails conspiracy, suggesting that aviation contrails in the sky are really the result of a clandestine, top-secret government program to spray chemicals in the atmosphere to control the climate or worse (biological and chemical warfare).
Let me say it clearly: this chemtrails business is total nonsense and can easily be proven to be total nonsense.
The lines in the sky are contrails and are the result of the water vapor and particles ejected from jet engines (and in the past, internal combustion engines).
The air aloft is cold and can not hold much water vapor. The combustion in jet aircraft releases significant amounts of water vapor, that condenses into cloud droplets and then later freezes into ice particles.
These cloud droplets produce long, linear lines of cloud--contrails.
Now one chemtrails advocate told me that he had PROOF that it had to be a government secret program.
He argues that some days there are lots of contrails while other days have few. What was different on the clear days? No government secret emissions of chemicals!
Do you want to see an example? Here are visible satellite images over Oregon for two days this week. The first image has lots of contrails (the thin white lines). The second image had none.
It turns out that some days have more favorable conditions for contrail development than others.
Don't forget the logistics and performance issues with the chemtrails conspiracy hoax. The chemicals would either have to be mixed into the jet fuel at the refinery or loaded into an auxiliary tank at the airport. Jet liners don't have a chemtrails auxiliary tank. The fuel system consists of a center-body tank and a fuel tank in each wing. There are no connections from the nonexistent chemtrails tank to the engines. The chemtrails would have to be injected after the fuel is burned otherwise they'd be burned too, and just become CO2 and H2O. Any such hardware plus the chemtrails would decrease the amount of paying payload that the airplanes could carry. There are no airport workers loading chemtrails into the nonexistent tanks.
ReplyDeleteIf they were put into the jet fuel at the refinery, they'd breakdown during the combustion process and would be converted to H2O and CO2.
Can any of these chemtrail nuts find a worker who has actually handled the chemtrails or a Boeing engineer/mechanic who has designed/installed the hardware? No, because chemtrails is hogwash.
Wikipedia has a short history:
ReplyDelete"The theories were posted on Internet forums by people including Richard Finke and William Thomas and were among many conspiracy theories popularized by late-night radio host Art Bell, starting in 1999."
Some early blogs had to ban any posts/comments about chemtrails because of the preposterous beliefs and the disagreeable nature of the posters.
Maybe there is something in the water where these folks live. :)
The earth is also flat.
ReplyDeleteI get asked this all the time, its scary what people will believe and then latch onto.
ReplyDeleteThe only thing I know is it's gonna be a long HOT summer. The east coast is baking right now and it's only a matter of time before we get ours.
ReplyDeleteAnd this is your conspiracy theory? What does this comment have to do with chemtrails?
DeleteTim- That's inductive reasoning and it does NOT work with weather. Although it could turn out hot, that reasoning doesn't follow. Witness the summer of 1993, when it was warmer in much of Alaska than here and we never really got our due that year.
DeleteIt's not about making sense or being true. It's psychological -- so trying to explain the (lack of) science isn't likely to change people's minds. For example, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-drawn-to-conspiracy-theories-share-a-cluster-of-psychological-features/
ReplyDeleteAha! Now we have proof that Dr. Mass is part of the conspiracy covering this up!
ReplyDeleteSeriously though, please do a follow up post sometime sharing some of the more ridiculous responses I'm sure you're receive in response to your post.
I work a few rows away from the Emissions group at Boeing. They just did some testing with a 737 EcoD airplane investigate contrails made with SAF vs JetA. I don't believe those results are public yet, but here is a pdf on the project. https://www.boeing.com/content/dam/boeing/boeingdotcom/principles/environment/pdf/Contrails-FactSheet.pdf
ReplyDeleteMy understanding was that the initial kickoff of the project was caused from a high uncertainty band on the impact contrails have on climate (mostly the idea that contrails and increase the amount of reflected / trapped heat?). Im sure you know more about that than I do Cliff.
-UW Alumni, Boeing
The reason why greater numbers of the population are entertaining conspiracy theories right now is that so many prior "conspiracy theories" have proven to be accurate. To wit, we have only to look back at the origins of the COVID virus, which many thought to be funded by the NIH but were subsequently told they were nutcases. Then we had the COVID shots themselves, in which anyone questioning their efficacy as well as potential side effects were immediately branded as heretics and were drummed out of their professions, their friendships, even their own families as a result. All this, even though one of the developers of the MRNA technology was among the first to come out publicly and sound the warnings about the lack of proper protocol and testing that was originally enshrined over decades of established medical doctrine. The science, media and government in many levels have sown the kind of distrust they're currently experiencing. And here we are.
ReplyDeleteHmm, it's possible that there are rare cases as you describe (I'm not convinced by your COVID examples but that's an aside). To me : IF ONLY these people looked at the EVIDENCE and drew appropriate conclusions. It's not close - no, they don't. So to me it is irrelevant whether or not there have occasionally been partial "hits" from crackpots. that are supported by actual data.
DeleteBut that's the entire crux of their argument - it's not "irrelevant" to them, and when others claim that it doesn't matter and that they're still "crackpots," it only proves their points.
DeleteYou seem to be positing a kind of ur-conspiracy, in which there is some kind of a source of truth saying that all the things people think are conspiracies come from some single source.
DeleteOn a slightly different note, Cliff, why is it that people think sulfates will cool the upper atmosphere? I remember you saying that contrails have a net slight warming effect because water vapor, like carbon dioxide, absorb outgoing IR radiation. Why do "they" think sulfates or sulfuric acid will have the opposite effect, since it will nucleate the formation of water droplets?
ReplyDeleteLook into it a bit further. It's not total nonsense, as they admitted to it themselves. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/solar-geoengineering-should-be-regulated-u-n-report-says/
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to deny that cloud seeding has and is occurring when they admit that it is occurring. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/18/united-arab-emirates-is-using-cloud-seeding-tech-to-make-it-rain.html
ReplyDeletehttps://www.cnn.com/2022/03/14/weather/cloud-seeding-weather-modification-wxn/index.html
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/eight-states-are-seeding-clouds-to-overcome-megadrought/
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/17/how-cloud-seeding-can-help-replenish-reservoirs-in-the-west.html
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/drought-turns-governments-to-cloud-seeding/
https://www.ars.usda.gov/oc/dof/seeding-the-skies-harvesting-rain/
Is it a conspiracy theory if it's true?