Surveyed scientists debunk chemtrails conspiracy theory
UCI, Carnegie paper explains persistent aircraft trails, substances in soil and water
Irvine, Calif., Aug. 12, 2016 – The world’s leading atmospheric scientists overwhelmingly deny the existence of a secret, elite-driven plot to release harmful chemicals into the air from high-flying aircraft, according to the first peer-reviewed journal paper to address the “chemtrails” conspiracy theory.
Researchers from the University of California, Irvine, the Carnegie Institution for Science and the nonprofit Near Zero organization asked 77 atmospheric chemists and geochemists if they had come across evidence of such a large-scale spraying program, and 76 responded that they had not. The survey results were published Wednesday in Environmental Research Letters.
Heat from aircraft engines produces condensation trails that can be clearly seen from the ground. A small but vocal segment of the population firmly believes that these are composed not merely of condensed water vapor but of chemicals and elements such as strontium, barium and aluminum that powerful, high-level entities have been intentionally and covertly releasing into the atmosphere for decades.
They find the increased number and lingering presence of these aerial streaks suspicious and claim to have identified toxic substances in soil and water samples.
“The chemtrails conspiracy theory maps pretty closely to the origin and growth of the internet, where you can still find a number of websites that promote this particular brand of pseudoscience,” said study co-author Steven Davis, UCI associate professor of Earth system science. “Our survey found little agreement in the scientific community with claims that the government, the military, airlines and others are colluding in a widespread, nefarious program to poison the planet from the skies.”
The belief in chemtrails parallels increasing public distrust of elites and social institutions, according to earlier social science research. To those convinced, the chemicals are sprayed to regulate the food supply, control human population and/or manipulate weather patterns. In recent years, the theory has expanded to include government-sponsored geoengineering to mitigate climate change.
Some of the surveyed specialists suggested that global warming may in itself be a cause of longer-lasting condensation trails from aircraft engines. Another contributor, outlined in the study, is the steady growth of air travel in recent decades, which leads airplanes to fly higher, where contrails are more likely to form and remain in the sky.
“Despite the persistence of erroneous theories about atmospheric chemical spraying programs, until now there were no peer-reviewed academic studies showing that what some people think are chemtrails are just ordinary contrails,” said Carnegie investigator and co-author Ken Caldeira. “Contrails are becoming more abundant as air travel expands. Also, it is possible that climate change is causing contrails to persist for longer than they used to.”
The survey’s respondents – many of them currently active in research on atmospheric dust and pollution –stressed that methods of collecting samples of water, snow and soil recommended by chemtrails-focused groups may be to blame for faulty results. Obtaining and transporting samples via Mason jars with metal lids, for example, was cited as a poor practice that could lead to erroneous outcomes.
One of the experts questioned wrote:
“The jar will contaminate the sample, as will the metal lid, particularly if you shake it. I cannot imagine a worse protocol for collecting a sample; the data would be totally worthless.” Another said, “To analyze metals in environmental samples, glass needs to go through an acid wash to remove any residual metals. Otherwise, plastic should be used.”
UCI’s Davis said:
“We don’t imagine that we’re going to sway the beliefs of hardcore adherents to the chemtrails conspiracy theory with this study. But we thought it was important to go on the record with fundamental scientific facts to refute claims that the government is deliberately spreading harmful chemicals from aircraft.”
Amen to that, as I’ve viewed “chemtrails” as some of the worst crap science out there. It goes hand-in-hand with wild atmospheric effect claims about HAARP, which persist today even though the HAARP facility was closed a few years ago.
Ken Caldiera, a climate scientist whom I’m often in disagreement with is a co-author of this study said that “…showing that what some people think are chemtrails are just ordinary contrails.”.
That’s exactly right. But conspiracy whackadoodles seem to think there’s an organized effort (imagine trying to keep thousands of airline pilots, ground personnel, and suppliers quiet for years), even going so far to fake-up video footage of a airliner cockpit “chemtrail switch” being thrown.
It is a laughably transparent fake, notice the switch label is an overlay to hide the real lettering under the switch. The overlay isn’t even attached, and it slides when thrown.
As the overlay label slides down, you can see the word LOGO. The actual switch function is the LOGO LIGHT, used to illuminate the company logo on the tail:
Here is what the switch panel looks like in a 747:
![extlights[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/extlights1.jpg?quality=83)
And here is the actual panel used in the faked-up switch video as seen in a Boeing 737-600. Annotations are mine:
Snopes.com debunked yet another version of a fake chemtrail switch.
Proponents use video like this one to say that there really is an on-off switch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdhQ590I0H0
But what is actually happening is that the airliner is going from one type of air to another, such as crossing a frontal boundary, or by changing altitude where the dew point and temperature are no longer conducive to exhaust condensation. Of course, such simple Occam’s razor type explanations don’t satisfy the chemtrail kooks.
Here is a video produced to go with the paper:
Now if we can just put HAARP, Anti-Vaxxers, and the particularly wrong and angry Slaying the Sky Dragon no greenhouse effect kooks in their rightful place of understanding science properly, we might actually have a more pleasant Internet.
The paper:
Quantifying expert consensus against the existence of a ‘chemtrails’ conspiracy
Environmental Research Letters | August 10, 2016
Nearly 17% of people in an international survey said they believed the existence of a secret large-scale atmospheric program (SLAP) to be true or partly true. SLAP is commonly referred to as “chemtrails” or “covert geoengineering,” and has led to a number of websites (e.g., Global SkyWatch) purported to show evidence of widespread chemical spraying linked to negative impacts on human health and the environment.
To address these claims, we surveyed two groups of experts—atmospheric chemists with expertise in condensation trails and geochemists working on atmospheric deposition of dust and pollution—to scientifically evaluate for the first time the claims of SLAP theorists.
Results show that 76 of the 77 scientists (98.7%) that took part in this study said they had not encountered evidence of a SLAP, and that the data cited as evidence could be explained through other factors, including well-understood physics and chemistry associated with aircraft contrails and atmospheric aerosols.
Our goal is not to sway those already convinced that there is a secret, large-scale spraying program—who often reject counter-evidence as further proof of their theories—but rather to establish a source of objective science that can inform public discourse.
Read the entire paper – open access at: http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/8/084011
UPDATE: It occurred to me that some of the “harmful chemicals” being claimed as being “deposited” were actually quite common. From the paper:
Atmospheric deposition
SLAP proponents argue that seemingly abnormal concentrations of elements such as strontium, barium, and aluminum in water, soil, and snow samples are the result of sprayed chemicals. Our survey asked experts to evaluate photocopies of three different laboratory analyses of elemental concentrations in samples of pond sediment, filter media, and snow that were posted on the SLAP website, Geoengineering Watch. Additionally, experts were asked to evaluate the appropriateness of the sampling methods recommended by SLAP websites, and whether they have observed any secular changes in the environmental concentrations of strontium, barium, and aluminum over their careers, and the factors underlying any change.
Now compare that list to chemical analysis of seawater:
source: Karl K Turekian: Oceans. 1968. Prentice-Hall
Gosh just think of the terrible things that could happen if airplanes sprayed seawater in the air like the salt spray we get naturally from the oceans. /sarc
NOTE: Since Chemtrails is normally a banned topic at WUWT, comments will be heavily moderated. Rants, accusations, claims of being paid to publish this, etc. that don’t conform to WUWT policy will be deleted.
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You don’t believe in the government secretly spraying altering chemicals into the atmosphere? That’s how you know they’re working!!!! Lol.
Is that supposed to mean that they are psychologically “in denial” or that they to be assimilated with holocaust denial. Please clarify.
So this paper is yet another attempt at proof by consensus. This is the most blatant non scientific bunk. This is just Cook at al , all over again. Did they do the usual filtering like : are you still doing active research in this field, have you published more than 5 papers in the last two years in this field?
What was the selection method which produced the 77 from the thousands of “atmospheric chemists and geochemists ” they could have chosen? Before asking whether they were “aware of” they need to ask if they have ever looked, otherwise a negative response is meaningless.
Now I should point out that I have never seen anything even remotely convincing about chemtrails and everyone I have ever met who is into this does not understand the first thing about could formation or what determines whether contrails will be persistent or not. They have no idea about the physics and just regurgitate the usual rubbish we’ve all seen on the internet in a totally unquestioning manner.
However, this is the most crappy attempt to “scientifically” disprove something which I have seen in a long time. A pseudo consensus from a straw poll of a straw poll selection of “experts”.
Rather than 77 ‘opinions’ about ‘awarenesses’ could not they find ONE competent scientist who could demonstrate something with a proper scientific article? Was this article written by socialogists or ‘media studies’ graduates or what.
Sorry this is not science.
Also what is it suppsed to prove? It does not provide any solid scientific data or facts to those who do not believe in chemtrail projects and it certainly does not speak to anyone who is concerned or convinced there is a problem. In fact, it is so badly done that I would say it looks more like a hopeless white wash and cover-up which will more likely be seen as confirmation by anyone who concerned about the existence of chemtrail projects.
Scientifically it is a failure and as communication it is a failure. Further proof that we are coming to the end of the age of enlightenment.
The most incompetent drivel I have seen since Cook’s cooked up 97%.
don’t have to worry too much about the Anti Vaxxers though, when the diseases spring up again, they have ensured that their kids won’t survive to breed. In fact, the anti vaxxers will have the only children that get sick
This is good site which directly addresses a number of erroneous ideas as well as respectfully showing where some who have attempted to collect samples for analysis have gone wrong explaining the ludicrously high reading they were claiming in their results.
http://contrailscience.com/contrail-or-chemtrail/
Well worth spending some time clicking through for contrete facts, arguments and rebuttals to common misconceptions.
Greg…my sentiments exactly a “survey of scientists” is Cook et al. Stupid government experiments? That’s for historians armed heavily with FOIA disclosures. I mean the MK Ultra Project was definitely out of bounds and got away from them. How much of civilian modern drug abuse has been fueled by “controlled” use of amphetamines in the military? The problem with “conspiracy loonies” is sometimes they brush up against some real stupid secret government program and bring discredit to anybody asking questions.
Thank you, Greg. I agree.
76 out of 77 saw no evidence of “chemtrails” – but what about the 77th?
Greg “Scientifically it is a failure and as communication it is a failure.”
It might also be that they are too busy in their real jobs and don’t have time to run scientific tests and I really really doubt there would be any budget for such activity. Unfortunately the fact that AGW theory (idea) uses consensus has poisoned the possibility of the usefulness of consensus. Anyway, what else should they do as in this case they are just using whatever information to hand to debunk this crap?
I really doubt this will have any affect on those deluded and fixated on this, in fact it will be considered more evidence that this stupid idea is real. Whenever I have argued on this or other ludicrous conspiracy ideas the replies usually begin with insults and then the usual mental contortions to protect their particular insanity.
Without doing any tests it should be enough just to look at the world and think this one through. Unfortunately this is also what a lot of conspiracists say which is ‘open your eyes’. However, we do live in a time when people will follow their sat nav and drive out into the ocean. I think a lot of people today are losing the ability to look at the world directly and without filters.
Bryan A – Except that most of the children that get sick have been vaccinated.
Regardless of effectiveness (and different vaccines have varying effectiveness) the harm that has been caused to many should be much more widely acknowledged. People should have all the information – not just that which the establishment or a majority want them to believe, so that they can make the right choice, taking into account pre-existing health issues and genes.
Interesting that this site only publishes on this topic when the news supports its view. Greg, you are right, this is drivel just as Cook was. Anyone who has actually LOOKED at these things and is old enough to remember how contrails used to behave, must suspect something has changed. I have taken photos from my yard in central Texas that support what I am asserting, but don’t know how to post them here: what they show is a “contrail” which, instead of sublimating, slowly spreads across the sky, leaving a faint haze that persists all day. The haze, whatever it is, ain’t some new form of water vapor. And, as this site has demonstrated over the years, Establishment Science has been thoroughly corrupted, so who you gonna believe? This lame BS, or your own lying eyes?
Indeed, when you see some thing like:
…. The world’s leading atmospheric scientists overwhelmingly deny the existence of a secret, elite-driven plot…
you need to wonder just how they would know about a “secret” conspiracy. Chemtrails are a boneheaded chunk of paranoia, but really… Just because “methods” like this are regarded as acceptable in climate science doesn’t them acceptable in real science.
The problem with this Contrail rubbish is that it assumes many things that simply aren’t true.
Not that they can be proven, then can’t, because the basic physics and fundamentals don’t exist.
As a guide in general avionics, start with the NASA primer, found here: http://virtualskies.arc.nasa.gov/aeronautics/1.html
However, for this rubbish to exist, what your saying is that the following things must be true.
First, that some global elite conspiracy exists at a level that manages to muzzle all World Governments and all employees of all airline entities and organisations, worldwide, with no exceptions.
This forgoes just one ‘Getup’, ‘Conspiracy Socialist minded loon’, ‘inbred moron’ or other equally doubting individual stumbling over the logistics and apparatus used.
This then is the first problem, outside of somebody photo-shopping idiotic images of secret aircraft functions, show me, just one, just one, piece of apparatus used to transport, store or inject your “secret” chemicals into any aircraft?
You can’t.
Not because it has the greatest camouflage known to mankind, but because it simply doesn’t exist.
The second problem to your grand theory is where do you store this muck?
A. Suspended in the aircraft fuel mix, really?
B. In it’s own ‘sooper secret ‘ hidden on-board container?
Then in either case comes the problem of either contaminated Jet Fuel or the ability to mix what is essentially non-combustible material into the Jet Fuel mix at some point.
The issue here, in all it’s stupidity, is where in any standard aircraft could you hide these storages tanks?
Should you opt for (B) and the related plumbing and controls, explain it to us all.
Diagrams are a must. AS is the technology and it’s weight.
However, for (A), explain how often would you need to clean out the sediment from the Fuel Tanks and related plumbing for option (A) without being noticed, much less, dispose of the related contaminant?
This is basic logistics and physics, but wait, if gets worse.
Given either of your methods, what exactly is being mixed into the Jet Fuel mix that no one has noticed?
Is it a Gas based product, a Liquid based product, a Powder based product, or some other solid or no solid substance as yet unknown to science?
As a courtesy, we won’t go into the excess maintenance issues with contaminating Jet Fuel or the serious consequences while doing so in flight.
However, aside from that, then explain to me how the aircraft weight and load factor is managed?
In simple terms, let us fuel an average large jet, for example, a Boeing 747-400, with 150, 000 litres of fuel, or roughly 39,625 US gallons of fuel, which weighs 120 metric ton. Just the fuel load, nothing else.
Then let’s shove a few people aboard and a little baggage.
However, we need to keep it under 295 tons, otherwise the aircraft will never get off the ground.
This problem in the aviation industry is known as (MTOW) or “Maximum take-off weight”, that magic mark where you will forever remain on Terra Firma, because your too heavy to get into the air.
With all of this in mind, tell me how much your aircraft weighs, per payload group.
I.E.
1. Your aircraft type and model and the engines used.
2. The dry weight of the aircraft.
3. Your chosen fuel weight.
4. Your chosen freight weight.
5. Your chosen passenger and crew weight, as separate items.
6. Your chosen weight of support logistics, as separate items. (Food, oxygen, clothing, water, etc.)
7. The weight of your “Secret Chemicals” or your separate payload.
8. Your proposed flight heights.
9. Your proposed flight speeds.
We will allow for average variance in speed, height and such for aeronautics related issues.
Then pick an imaginary flight path and destination, based on the average of the aircraft capability and your flight weight.
From this, the various aviation types can then calculate your (MLW) or Maximum landing weight, which is what you should weigh when you land, less the fuel you used.
From this we can deduct your (MTOW) or “Maximum take-off weight” and compare the difference between the two.
However, for the sake of argument, you may quote actual real figures of real aircraft from real flights.
Should there be any discrepancy, it will soon be noticed.
Given that these aviation performance and load figures are very well known and are also well published, this is why all avionics types are taught the THE BREGUET RANGE EQUATION and the related logistics that apply.
This is one of the most important things to understand in avionics and is why your theories are dismissed out of hand.
In fact, the most scrutinised figures on the planet are avionics performance figures.
Any discrepancy, such as the dumping of your “Secret Chemicals”, in any quantity or volume, will then be noticed.
In fact, any substantial discrepancy will soon be noticed.
I would refer you to this site first, for the next few months.
https://www.faa.gov/data_research/aviation_data_statistics/
This is how, via basic maths, physics and logistics, anybody with the slightest clue about avionics knows your off with the pixies.
Such a project could never be hidden.
Such a project could never land in any Socialist or Communist country or for that matter, Islamic country, with being discovered. Much less, could anyone manage the reaction that would follow.
You think for a moment, that any Foreign Government hostile to the USA could hide this?
You seriously think China would?
You think you could land such a aircraft in any Arabic or Muslim nation without notice?
This is why your being laughed at.
Not because “the man” is against you, not because you can’t find the “worlds greatest conspiracy”, but because you can’t apply basic common-sense and look at the actual logistics and facts.
Exactly. Evidence which undermines a conspiracy theory is just evidence of an even bigger conspiracy!
🙂
Conspiracy theorist. Racist. Islamophobe. Denier. All words to stifle any reasonable conversation. Cloud seeding has existed for 100 years. There are currently over 30 companies in the US alone dedicated to this. Many more worldwide. What do they do? Has science and technology not made great strides into this activity? If you are a true AGW fanatic or government pushing this lie, would it not make sense to research possible actions to counter its effects? To get some information i did some research into Universities. Unfortunately I have not saved the searches. And, yes they are working on Climate Change. Not an easy search. Most is blocked from public view. Why?
You are aware that the gov’t sprayed low–level-pathognenicity bacteria over San Francisco in the 1950’s are you not to test how aerial spraying was disseminated. Of course, they’ve cleaned up their act since then. 😉
I have no idea why Anthony denies chemical spraying. I am not saying this is happening. But here are some FACTS:
If glass jar sampling of purported air/falling metals is due to glass-jar and ild contamination, just triple wash jars and lids, with distilled-water final rinses, and then submit distilled-water samples as controls, then subtract the latter samples’ values from the collected samples.
If the supposed chemtrail flyers thought things out, they would spray only at night and overcast days, this would have created massive press. The astronomers would have noticed clear daytime skies, but fog when they tried to observe.
If Anthony doesn’t notice summertime “high smog”, high-altitude stratus and strata-cirrus, I have. In the early ’60s, I saw clear-blue skies in the Sactramento Valley. It was beautiful. I saw B-52s from Travis, March and Victorville laying down contrails that dissipated within 2-3 miles behind the planes.
Today, the Sactramento Valley summer skies are ugly. Gray, sun-diffusing high-stratus/cirrostratus. Did Anthony never get to observe the beautiful past clear blue summer skies over the Sacramento Valley? When on a high northern Sierra Nevada peak, you could see the Coastal Range nearly every day from June 1 to Spetember 1 all summer long?
lftpm,
“If Anthony doesn’t notice summertime “high smog”, high-altitude stratus and strata-cirrus, I have. In the early ’60s, I saw clear-blue skies in the Sactramento Valley. It was beautiful. I saw B-52s from Travis, March and Victorville laying down contrails that dissipated within 2-3 miles behind the planes.”
I still see such skies here on occasion, and the very few high flying planes one would expect in a place (Northern Central Valley) with only a few North/South scheduled flights supposed to be up there. Many days they’re up there in droves, apparently going to and from virtual airports all over the North Pacific and all over the Western Continental US . . which of course can’t really be there . .
I just note in passing that the metals “chemicals” listed (barium, strontium,…) are widely used as colorants in fireworks… the tons used of which have risen dramatically with wealth of the nation…
Oh, and those red roadside flares….
Hope they didn’t measure during late summer or near any traffic problems or…
The extra H2O comes from the burning of the hydrocarbon fuel , not the heat . It condenses on cooling to the ambient temperature .
The ones at lower altitude happen because the turbulence of the engine blades condenses the water and the particles in the exhaust form nice nucleation particles for the resulting clouds to persist.
Dew point is a temperature and pressure phenomenon but we normally don’t see the pressure relationship in day to day life because the normal variation of surface pressure makes little difference, but the changes in pressure and temperature in a jet engine (though it works with old propeller planes like a DC-3 as well due to blade pressure gradients) make a significant shift of the state chart for water. People who have never worked with engines and engine instrumentation have no feel for this concept.
But about this report: Surveys mean nothing! Just because I happen to be part of this consensus does not mean that I follow this report. I agree that the arguments for this conspiracy are spurious, but I do so from experience in aviation and analysis of actual data associated with air operations, not because some 99.999% of a group of people agree. One reproducible experiment whose results show that condensation is not a credible solution is enough to make me search for another solution.
Thanks Owen. We have had enough of this ‘consensus’ crap in climatology. I now seems to be the new normal. Since most of these guys are probably involved in climate one way or another, it must seem a perfectly normal way to “prove” something to them.
Dew Point, DuPont. Coincidence? I think not! (Insert emoticon indicating mordant sarcasm.)
Yea , I realized that I should have mentioned that the ambient air needs to be nearly saturated for the additional water to condense . But these comments are archival once committed . I just wanted to point out the perhaps inadvertent omission of the additional water of combustion without which there would be far fewer and shorter contrails .
The idea that thousands of commercial planes are secretly carrying around any extra weight of any thing for any reason is one of the most bizarre conspiracy theories ever — even more so than 20010911 conspiracies which particularly bug me because that was my neighborhood and lost a great friend in it .
I believe the most interesting “trails” I have seen were actually negative trails. I watched a liner heading in toward SMF pass along a very thin layer of cirrus clouds. It was leaving a regular condensation trail behind in blue sky, but as it crossed into each thin cloud layer, it created a “negative” contrail of clear air that otherwise had all the characteristics of a regular contrail. This was not a shadow effect, which was momentarily my first hypothesis.
Here you go Duster:
http://giov-research.com/Contrail.jpg
Well, yeah.
The output exhaust of completely burned hydrocarbons is CO2 and H2O. Since the exhaust is more humid (H2O) the dew point of the exhaust is higher than the ambient air. If the dew point is higher than the ambient temperature there is a vapor trail.
Don’t like the survey says science or the game shows that use the same meme but it would be easy to pick someone who believes this conspirosy by the usage of tin foil hats .
Greg,
Great post, have nothing to add. My (rhetorical) question is, 76 out of 77? For the odd one out, what was his (her/it’s/shiz/sherz) answer?
D*mn, out of order. :<(
Wait for it. All of Anthony’s blog spawn and other such critics will trash this and say it is all part of the overall lies generated by WUWT. Paid and orchestrated by ‘Big Oil’ and ‘Big Airlines’, no doubt.
Oh I’m sure Slandering Sou (Miriam O’Brien) will have to weigh in on it, her ego demands it.
None of the CS theories even come close to Lizard people, flat earth, amazed also how many people believe the ISS is in a swimming pool. If you can “believe” the sun and moon are “lights” moving around a flat plane, you shouldn’t own a credit card
There has to be a song in there somewhere !! Maybe…” Can’t get away from a Slandering Sou ” ??..(Obviously my song writing days are over)
As a professional pilot of some odd 40 years of all types of aircraft, thank you for this article. Been accused of the Chemtrail thing by having a tank under a firefighting aircraft.
Actual conversation.” What’s dat tank unner yer airyplane.?” Reply “It holds fire retardant.” Drooler;”Dats Cemicals?” “Well it’s bascially Driller’s mud phosphate fertilizer.and seweed based gum thickening.” Drooler: “Dem’s chemicals. so you are part of da problems.” “Chemtrails. you flys and makes chemtrails.! ” Oh boy! I call Jeff
Rense and Art Bell on dis one! I found Chemtrails.’ he went away happy. never heard from him again..
BTW this occurred in Chico, Ca. back in 1992.
I think Drooler went on to an acting career, did I see him on “The Walking Dead”?
Credit card? That’s nothing; one of them may be driving somewhere at this very moment. That would be an effective seat belt commercial.
so who is mr 77? can i watch him on cabal tv?
How does one join cabal tv? Do they have to wear funny hats?
Tin foil ones..
I explained the contrails to my young children as condensing “airplane breath.”
“They” are not intentionally spraying hazardous chemicals
They are intentionally spraying chemicals that they hope with reflect light and thus cool the planet. It is just a coincidence that these chemicals are also hazardous.
LOL Obviously those chemicals have affected your ability to take in new information. Perhaps a good chelation will help.
If there is a change in contrail persistence, you’ve got the atmosphere being the cause or the emissions from the jet engines or both. Any idea, I would think more sulfur in fuel? Not to poison anyone lol, but maybe for more pressure?
Would that put more aerosols into the air to draw moisture?
Cupping, preferably to the eyeballs.
Jeff Alberts.
Could do it to the ears, might be more effective.
“Could do it to the ears, might be more effective.”
Aw heck, why not all head orifices.
Let me guess, 97% of scientists say chemtrails are not real, you’re just seeing things.
Well, just because 97% of scientists believe something, doesn’t necessarily mean they’re wrong, just that they might be.
Well, actually there is NO GREENHOUSE EFFECT! From 4.12 of “Introduction to Atmospheric Physics” by Fleagle and Businger, “This effect is sometimes refered to as the greenhouse effect ….However it is NOT commonly recognized that whereas the absorbing effect of the atmosphere results in temperature above what they would be without an atmosphere, the elevated temperatures within a greenhouse are not to be attributed to absorption of the long-wave radiation (to outer space) by the glass, but rather to the greenhouse being a convective boundary. In 1909 R.W. Wood carried out an experiment with two model greenhouses. One of which was covered with a ROCK SALT sheet and the other normal sodium glass….” The text goes on to explain that the equilibrium temperatures for both model greenhouses, parallel to each other on the same day, were the same. (With a discussion of the nature of a “convection boundary” and the ability to trap in the incoming visible and near IR energy, and convert to an elevated temperature of the gas within the boundary. The text goes on to say, “The trapping of energy from incoming radiation by the atmosphere is…therefore may be called, the ‘Atmospheric Effect’.” I realize that in “general and non-precise” English speaker’s minds this may be a trivial distinction. However, I feel that there is an OBLIGATION to be precise in this realm with regard terminology” and use of the language.
The precision of terminology is crucial in sound science. Indeed, it’s the presence an atmosphere that is capable of being heated directly by moist convection that accounts for the bulk of the widely-misunderstood “greenhouse” effect. Nor is the debunking of “chemtrails” well served by the claim that
which contradicts the well-known physics of condensation of vapor upon cooling, not heating.
Say what? The heated air (exhaust) from the engine hits the ambient air and condenses. The ambient air is much cooler (at altitude) than the exhaust. Ergo: condensation.
Oh come on Bill!
Air does not ‘condense’. Combustion of kerosene (jet fuel) created H2O out of the H in the kerosene (typically C9H20 to C20H42). Burning jet fuel literally creates water vapour.
When the water vapour cools in the air behind the airplane, it condenses and freezes, and because the concentration is high enough, it appears as a white cloud of ice particles.
If ‘chemtrails’ were true, there would be no need for a switch to throw. They could just as ‘secretly’ add something to the fuel and keep quiet about it. For example, adding anti-freeze to kerosene could be interpreted as ‘adding a chemical’ because anti-freeze is a chemical. If the anti-freeze was ethanol or methanol, that would increase the amount of water vapour (because it contains hydrogen) but it would need less kerosene because anti-freeze is combustible.
Contrails consist entirely of water vapour mixed with a lot of invisible CO2 and a tiny amount of CO and black carbon.
Thank you Crispin, and the rest, above and below, who can explain combustion clearly.
This article and the resultant comments is very useful: It serves as a guide to who is an actual thinking and rational person who understands science, and…um…other sorts. (To be kind to the other sorts I will not describe them as they really are.)
And thank you to the airline pilot for your story of Drooler.
The idea that planes are carrying chemicals in huge vats and spraying them as they fly is seriously batshit crazy.
As is the idea that decades ago memories of contrail appearance and persistence not matching up with how the sky looks in 2016 is proof of a massive conspiracy, is equally retarded.
It may be worthwhile to make a list of names from this comment section of people who can be safely ignored in further conversations on any topic at all, on the basis of truly impaired judgement.
Good luck with this. It seems the more you disprove one of these conspiracy theories, the more convinced adherents become that the conspiracy is vaster than they thought. Saw the same thing with seeding hurricanes. Anytime there was a wiggle in a storm track, it was because of seeding. Once the Government ended STORMFURY the conspiracy theories dried up.
Things won’t improve once it becomes apparent that the global warming hypothesis is wrong and that science has gone down a vast dead-end corridor. There will be those who say that CAGW is just being covered up by some mysterious cabal. >sigh<
Yeah, especially when you go about it by asking a group of govt payed scientists if they are “aware” of anything about the govt. operating a secret operation and try consensus instead of science and facts.
If I was concerned about the existence of chemtrails, I’d definitely see this as confirmation not a rebuttal.
Lamer than this and you don’t get out of bed in the morning.
@ur momisugly Mumbles, re Storm fury: There are still cloud seeding operations (China for one , pre Olympic games and others including the US and Canada). I also remember seeing photos of airspace pre 911 and the days after when air traffic was halted for 2-3 days not a haze to be seen for that period prior and post that period a haze re-appeared. I just wonder what the cumulative result of exhaust trails have especially during prolonged periods of stable weather such as summer high over North Am.? Anyone?
“Results show that 76 of the 77 scientists (98.7%) that took part in this study said they had not encountered evidence of a SLAP, …”
I wonder about that last scientist…. 🙂
I was wondering that myself, but frankly, I’d waste my time worrying more about something other than chemtrails … like maybe Bigfoot.
Studies to debunk chemtrails nutty theories? Most are so out there. Though the image above, the contrails, don’t they form near the tail and not right from at the engines because there is still heated and ice crystals wont form there?
Theories are all well and good, some pure sci fi, but persistent contrails are pretty significant and refract a lot of sunlight over large areas. They are something discussed by the IPCC, not some cooky conspiracy theory, yet it is worth noting this is not more prominent, as well as what appears to be completely uncoordinated cloud seeding efforts around the globe, this should also be up there, botching something might cause floods in one area for example, it all seems unregulated, just like that dude dropped a lot of ion into the ocean recently in some deal with the islanders.
This dude. He’s in the eye of a legal/scientific/political storm now. http://russgeorge.net/2014/06/23/worlds-first-commercial-scale-ocean-pasture-restoration/
Natural ocean pasture fertilization by volcanic activity is linked to a record BC salmon run. http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/volcanic-eruption-led-to-b-c-salmon-boom-scientist-1.890331
Now that’s funny! Environ-mentalists are now taking credit for mother nature.
Remember, engines are turbofans: exhaust is pretty cool
The conspiracy theorists are out to get us. It’s only a matter of time…
The biggest conspiracy theorists I’ll have you know are detectives, Fed or police, it’s what they do. So does good researchers, not the utube loonies, (researchers generally, not concerning chumtrails)
D
Lewandowski is coming after you.
As one that has probably watched the sky for 50 years, I’ve seen a lot of contrails, and in the past 20 or so I have seen a lot of “strange trails.” When I read about “debunking” peer reviewed reports, especially here on WUWT, I am amused at the fact that such reports are acceptably correct, when reports on climate change are totally bogus. Bottom line is when you look up in the sky and watch two jets flying the same direction at what appears to be the same height – judging by their apparent size, and both are leaving “contrails” behind – you know, the type that come out of the engines or off the wing tips forming ice crystals that sublimate quickly, as the trail behind them might be 20 times the length of the airplane and stays quite narrow. Suddenly, however, the trailing plane’s “contrail” ceases to sublimate and expands and expands and expands while never dissipating. I know what a contrail looks like and I know they really don’t “persist” for long periods of time. I do know clouds reflect heat back into space and it appears reasonable to assume that these highly persistent, never sublimating “contrails” are doing the same thing. I’ve watched real clouds form and dissipate in the same areas as the “strange trails,” but the trails don’t. You think what you want, I know what I see, what I know is possible, and what I know isn’t possible. Those are NOT contrails.
Your opinion is noted, but unfortunately wrong.
You are assuming he atmosphere and the flight plan/altitude are constant, they aren’t and this is what causes such variations in condensation. Winds, temperature, dew point, clear air turbulence, engine output/throttle setting, altitude, can all play a role in determining if condensation and dispersion occurs. You just can’t see any of those things from the ground.
And so, the mind strives to fill in the blanks.
Your opinion is noted, but doesn’t necessarily mean any more than mine does. To each his own. I recognize what you are saying. Contrails, however, still do not spread many miles wide without fading away. Everything dilutes as it spreads – except, apparently, some magic contrails. Ice crystal either melt or sublimate, well, most of the time except when conditions are just right, so as to confuse the mind.
There are companies that specialize in “cloud-seeding”. A simple internet search can find many advertising their services. They are mostly dumping aluminum-oxide into the atmosphere and thus into the eco-system. This paste and copy Lewandosky/Cook-like study does not deal with this reality. Anthony, this study is a mirror image of the garbage which you have been fighting against for decades, and to trumpet it as “peer-reviewed” when you’re fully aware of how much pure garbage is pushed out under that rubric makes me wonder if you’re receding into a fox-hole of eccentricity. There are hundreds of tons of heavy metals pumped into our atmosphere and lands every day. I could hire a plane tomorrow to do exactly that, if I so wished.
You are no different (in this realm) than those who mock climate alarm skeptics, to me, Anthony. It is perfectly possible in the scientific sense that substances are/have been sprayed into the atmosphere, and all the mocking in the world won’t make it impossible.
GC and JK, normally I stick to nerdish/legal climate or energy facts. But your comments here are off base. So I will rebut using common sense.
Chemtrails theoretically possible, yes. We have the sarcastic image upthread of a cropduster. In reality? No. Every ‘proof’ evaporates in the light of simple scrutiny like sea water spray, collection jar methods, and examination of commercial and military aircraft. Comtrails are H2O in the condensed/ ice state. Nothing more. Chem trails is complete nutter territory. Now, itnwill always be there on the internet, since nutters have equal access. Salby youtube lectures being a recent example over at Climate Etc.
The one big geoengineering attempt (iron fertilization of the Pacific off Vancouver) was found and shut down pronto. And iron fertilization isn’t toxic, it just increases ocean bioproductivity.
Contrails, however, still do not spread many miles wide without fading away.
===
They form cirrus clouds…..
Tom, remember that these are very big engines burning fuel and leaving exhaust. You know this and I believe you have seen “strange” contrails, but it was probably an engine burning through more oil than usual.
“Chemtrails theoretically possible, yes.”
Good thinking, I hope you can maintain that approach.
” In reality? No. Every ‘proof’ evaporates in the light of simple scrutiny like sea water spray, collection jar methods, and examination of commercial and military aircraft.”
Every proof? Says who? You? Official “debunkers”? . . “They” debunked us climate alarm skeptic’s “proofs” long ago . . but you don’t speak so highly of their debunking in that realm. Why do you in this one? Without allowing the presenting of the “opposition’s” own arguments/evidences, by them, it’s all just so much authority worship to me . .
JK, you deserve anothet reply. As said, because every ‘chemtrails’ “proof” has evaporated upon minimalist scientific scrutiny. Natural abundance, contaminated amateurish collection, whatever. As said above, none of that will matter to dedicated chemtrailists, apparently like yourself. Just like none of the equivalents matter to dedicated CAGW warmunist believers. Paise, no SLR, greening, thriving polar bears, all no matter. So the optimum engagement strategy is to present referenced irrefutable facts, then cease further engagement with nattering nutters. Like here, now, you.
“So the optimum engagement strategy is to present referenced irrefutable facts, then cease further engagement with nattering nutters. Like here, now, you.”
I agree, and that’s why I condemn folks here speaking as though it is an irrefutable fact that no “chem-trails” have ever been generated. Skepticism is one thing, but close-minded mocking of people for not believing what you do, is quite another (especially a negative) . .
Robert W Turner August 12, 2016 at 5:34 pm
This video is poor. There are a handful of old Russian planes from the 60s that are smokers, one of maybe a 737 with engine problems, which gets repeated and I really really doubt the 737 at the end is chucking out all that smoke.
You ain’t seen a “smoker plane” until you’ve seen a BUFF. (Made them easy to avoid when taking joy ride flights along Rye, Hampton and Salisbury beaches back in the early to mid 80’s when Pease was still active.)
Original Mike, that video is pretty interesting. I lived in or near Sacramento most of my life. Mather AFB used to be the SAC base and every so often they would scramble the “buffs”. That and Aerojet General testing rocket engines made for some very interesting days.
Earlier this year on a flight to Almaty, I saw quite close below, but on a heading about 45 degrees north of my westerly heading, a large civilian plane that was blowing a great deal of black smoke from both engines. Expecting that something was really wrong I took a video of it for several minutes – more than 5 as I recall. I followed it until it was no longer visible which was for many miles. The colour of the exhaust never changed. There was something obviously wrong with the fuel mix because the exhaust was just like a badly tuned kerosene burner. Never seen before or since. As I deal with combustion professionally it was very obvious to me that this was unusual, abnormal. It was not ‘spraying something’.
Like the story above about two jets running parallel and one having a sudden change in the contrail persistence, it could have been entirely caused by the one jet changing the air-fuel mix to see what happened. The ‘changed’ trail was probably condensed, unburned kerosene, the direct result of combustion inefficiency produced by operating some sort of test. The fact that there was a companion aircraft tends to support the ‘test pilot’ angle. It was probably filming the experiment.
Crispin in Waterloo August 14, 2016 at 11:48 am
This is an optical illusion. I was in Scotland a while back and going up in wave lift. The clouds above me were white but as I went up passed them they became a dirty grey. Not what I was expecting. Also., there is no option whatsoever to change the fuel content in a plane. You can increase or decrease the fuel flow but not its content. You can change the mixture in small planes with carborators but that is just increasing or decreasing the amount of air. So pilots get what they get.
This is a good juncture to second Anthony’s point. I can’t afford the time to read this thread to conclusion, but so far no one has discussed a relevant fact about contrails. There are two phenomena: (1) The condensation of water vapor from engine exhaust, formed from hydrocarbon combustion. Most everyone has mentioned this. (2) The production of otherwise invisible air vortices trailing from the wingtips (an inevitable consequence of the aerodynamic lift process)–into which the condensation trails can be drawn.
This can be appreciated when one looks at the passage of an airliner, and the contrails seem to greatly expand in diameter, the farther they are from the airplane. That diameter approximates the size of the trailing wing vortex. This may be one explanation for why contrails may end abruptly, if a vortex trail is sheared by an updraft.
While I’m at it, I might as well refer to a topic that has popped up on WUWT in the past, regarding seeming rocket trails in places where they ought not to be. These are simply contrails of a jet that is approaching from beyond the horizon and flying toward the viewer. How else could it look? If you don’t know what you are looking at, it will appear like a rocket blasting upward into space. (Because if you know what a rocket launch looks like, you will know that this is not it.) I have seen this effect many times in connection with traffic coming into Sea-Tac International.
Finally, I am not talking out of utter ignorance. I was for several years engaged in a research effort at my employer (name un-named) to detect and measure the presence of trailing vortexes, in all weather conditions. An interesting problem. I had fun characterizing it in cocktail conversation as “We are trying to see something invisible…through something opaque.”
,
“I know what I see ….”
Well from your comment you do not seem to know what you see. What do you think is the accuracy of your claim that the two planes are flying at the same height and therefore in the same air conditions?
Go on, just jot it down on paper what you estimate the height to be and the uncertainty in percent or thousands of feet and what certainty you can put on the size of planes being the same if they look about the same to your eye.
Once you have made an honest attempt to address the uncertainty in your observations read the following article and see whether you were correct and how that uncertainty affects what you think you “know” about what you have seen.
http://contrailscience.com/measuring-the-height-of-contrails/
Greg, A simple program called flight radar is available to any one, it accurately positions planes in the airspace above you anywhere, you can put it on a screen and sit on your deck and watch the planes fly over with most of the flight data available. From that you can make your own conclusions. Also we have watched the changing patterns of contrails over the last 45 years. Maybe it is a change in fuels, a change in exhaust patterns due to different engine types but to me there has definitely been changes, I also do not believe for one second all that happens in the condensation and exhaust process involves pure water etc ( I think AW threw this out here as a “Friday Funny” but I think it is a valid subject!
“…when you look up in the sky and watch two jets flying the same direction at what appears to be the same height – judging by their apparent size…”
Well you’d have to identify the type of plane to make an appropriate size comparison. And let’s say that one is 90% of the other…well, when you’re talking about flying at altitudes of 30,000-40,000 feet, a 10% difference in elevation is huge when it comes to the conditions one plane experiences vs another.
Do not planes flying in the vicinity of each other have a minimum separation distance in altitude, always in intervals of 1000′?
So if they are near each other, they are not at the same altitude, by ATC flight rules.
I once found a plot of yearly production of aviation fuel over the last 50 years….a YUUGE increase, so we would expect a large increase in contrail activity over the same period of time. That being said, as a meteorologist who worked in a National Weather Service Office 40 years ago and trained to identify clouds, I have never seen a contrail that would make me think it’s anything different from a vapor-induced cloud formation. (BTW, microphysical-probe based studies have shown that contrails in humid environments “suck” vapor out of the environment, and produce much more cloud mass than can be produced by the vapor from jet engine combustion alone.)
Cloud seeding through particulates and sulphuric aerosols I would think.
Roy
Spot on. You describe the action of the carbon in the exhaust and the water vapour-cum-ice particles acting as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN). This happens in parcels of air stripped of all CCN with the water vapour remaining in gas phase, waiting for something to condense on. It is in fact both super-cooled and super-saturated. The available water vapour would condense on the particles and the relative humidity would drop, and the ice mass would increase.
Contrails persisting and/or expanding into larger clouds isn’t new. Antoine St-Exupery described just that phenomenon in “Flight to Arras”, published in 1943. Like it or not, they really are contrails. Most interesting contrail I’ve seen was a dotted line. Quite often the atmosphere at altitude has waves in it, and so flying at a constant altitude put the airplane first in one airmass, then another.
“Like it or not, they really are contrails.”
Why exactly can’t some of them at least, be more than just contrails?
How does this logic you are proposing work, exactly? . . If it’s possible that nothing unusual is going on, there must not be? . . I realize Anthony is condoning and encouraging that form of reasoning here, but I say he’s doing logic itself a great disservice thereby.
JK, by your logic in reverse, if it is possible, then it must be true.
No, Menicholas, that’s not my logic, and I defy you to demonstrate by anything I ever wrote that it is, sir. The implicit assertion of this article (and most of those commenting in agreement) is that there are no chem-trails . . A negative, and I merely claim to have witnessed a positive.
All trails are not chemtrails
Some trails are chemtrails
Not the same logic.
Less ambiguously put;
No trails are chem-trails
Some trail are chem-trails
If Anthony declared some trails are not chem-trails, I would not have said a word . . But he didn’t, he claimed (by inference and insult ; ) to know that none are, and I don’t believe he can possibly know that. And frankly, it’s somewhat disturbing to me that so many I see as very intelligent and well educated people here, don’t understand that none of these “explanations” prevents anyone from spraying things up there.
Tom O
Contrails might form or they might not depending on the air they are flying through. They might also persist or not and if they persist they might do so in a variety of ways including expanding way beyond the original trail. So what? The atmosphere is not organised into neat cubes or any regular shape or pattern and there is a wide range of outcomes when a condensation trail appears.
When all the flights over Europe were grounded by Eyjafjallajökull volcano it was said that the clear sky was going to be a rare and special occasion. It wasn’t as clear skies without contrails have happened since as they did before. Some people see what they want to see.
There is one thing I have learned by this particular article. A closed mind is a closed mind when it comes to reviewing something that differs from what they choose to believe. It doesn’t matter which side of the “argument” you are on, either. We read what we want to, and we reject out of hand, that we choose to. There are “reasonable” explanations for what you see when you look up, and if you wish to believe that there is something in the fuel that causes ice crystals to persist far longer than would be normally expected, then so be it. If you wish to believe that ice crystals formed coming out of the end of a fanjet are pure and can persist for 30 to 40 minutes or more as they slowly drift across the sky, then you will. There are those that believe colder is warmer and that drier is warmer and that wetter is warmer. Have a nice day.
Tom O August 12, 2016 at 1:50 pm
“…when you look up in the sky and watch two jets flying the same direction at what appears to be the same height…”
Planes are separated by the semicircular rule so two jets in the same direction will be 2000ft apart. Contrails appearing and then ceasing is no more unusual than clouds appearing and disappearing. Clouds appear to be scattered randomly but there’s no conspiracy there?
Please see this video of Lenticular Cloud over Mount Hood. The cloud appears stationary even though the air is moving fast over the top of the mountain. Cloud forms and dissipates just because the air is made to go up and then down.
And this: At 00:45 clouds appear out of nowhere. It gets more interesting around 1:04 as cloud forms and dissipates:
Interestingly, we can see two planes fly by at around 26 seconds on the left side.
“They appear to be the same altitude, flying in the same direction”, and yet one makes an intermittent contrail, one part of which lingers briefly, and the other makes a very short contrail which dissipates immediately.
The watch that same part of the sky, as clouds form and dissipate.
This is all you really need to see to know that contrails can do all sorts of things, and a plane’s altitude cannot be reliably judged from the ground with any accuracy.
The whole controversy was absurd on the face of it. Outfitting aircraft to spew toxic compounds is a highly dubious proposition. Especially commercial airliners, which have their own requirements for range, safety, capacity, and speed. Really, you do not just load on a bunch of equipment and cargo with nobody knowing.
As I said, aircraft deliberately spraying chemicals is ridiculous.
http://images.usatoday.com/news/_photos/2006/06/29/crop-duster-mtopper.jpg
Aw, man – you beat me to it! Of *course* there are chemtrails! Anyone who lives around farm communities sees them quite often during the growing season…just not up around 40,000ft 😉
Airtractor 802 dam’ fine Ag and Firefighting aircraft..
That doesn’t look at all like a contrail. Perhaps you should stick to the subject!
And that stuff is obviously not coming out of the engine, as contrails always do.
Do chemtrail people own telescopes, or even binoculars?
TonyL / GromitDog – That bit about not at 40,000ft. How about this bit of flying under wires:
You would lose your job as a crop sprayer if you tried it 40,000ft. It’s infuriating that in needs explaining why.
The water vapor in the exhaust comes from burning the fuel. It is basic stoichiometry. Burn carbon fuel get CO2 and H20.
You also get fine particulates of unburned carbon and sulfur oxides, not to mention the water vapor that might be in the air the engine is traveling through. Now you have pretty much everything you need to seed a cloud: water and aerosol particulates. When you add the turbulence induced by the movement of the aircraft and the blades to beat the water out of the atmosphere, you have a perfect storm for cloud formation. Add to this the ever greater bypass ratios of newer jet engines and yes there is going to be a change in contrail formation.
I haven’t seen the data, but if atmospheric water vapor content has increased in the last couple of decades, that would also have made the air ripe for persistent contrail formation. Since ice crystals are such a good source of nuclei for cloud formation, that would tend to make contrails a good core for larger clouds to form when the vapor content would support them.
Hey, it just occurred to me that there is also the breathe of all the hundreds of passengers in the plane as the cabin air is vented and replaced over a cycle of every few minutes.
I wonder how much water vapor is in the exhaled breathe of a few hundred peoples?
One person has enough to fog up a car in a few minutes.
There are several consideration for this “chemtrail” business. First, where do the airlines hide the tank for the chemtrail chemical on the airplane? How much does this weigh? How can a plane be full of passengers and baggage carry the chemtrail stuff also?
In ten years of working on heavy inspections of airliners, I’ve never come across any extra tank installed for this sort of thing.
And who says it is commercial airliners? I see many airplanes in the sky trailing “normal contrails.” Not saying you are wrong, just pointing out a truth.
Then maybe you’re part of the conspiracy? Just try to *prove* you’re not. 😉
Big Al — Oh, you are so easily fooled! — Eugene WR Gallun
OK, everyone has to use the /sarc tag so we can know who to put on our mental list of people who should be ignored.
Here’s where the theory of chem-trails started… Thanks, George Lukas!
http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/4/46/TheStoryOfStarWarsTheEmpireStrikesBack-BookAndTape-Cover.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20080819204432
But where did Lukas [sic] get the idea? Agent Orange.
Amazed that any scientist thought such a paper necessary. Won’t convince the chemtrail kooks, and useless for the rest of us. Any more than documenting in detail Dr Andrews MMR/ autism fraud will convince antivaxxers. Jenny McCarthy simply does not get that correlation is not causation. Autism first manifests with sufficient child development (12-18) months, which just happens to be the onset of most child vaccinations including MMR.
The stats for autism on low vac populations is similar to the rate of vaccinated populations, so the theory doesn’t really hold
M-H, ty. Nice additional observation. Had not thought about it, so did not include as part of my MMR example in The Arts of Truth ebook. If there is a second edition, will add this with actual data and give you footnote credit for the insight. Just on the edge of enough interest to justify a rewrite to update and add an ever growing collection of examples to all chapters. More Obamacare, more no child left behind, more GMO nonsense, more climate stuff, more Washington DC law naming silliness… The book’s theme remains a target rich environment. And, as the intro explains with a Harvard example, even the title is a sarcastic illustration of the books true theme–the arts of untruth.
That is exactly what I thought as well. Even paying heed to this topic only provides fuel for this conspiracy. I blame the publish or perish university system for this. Chalk it up to just another paper you coauthored, helps get you tenured.
As if you can find unvaccinated populations anywhere. You can’t find a low pregnant women either. It is unfortunate that antivaxxers are portrayed as some sort of a cult. Most of them are merely sceptical, and wishing to be able to chose their options. There are valid points to question vaccines, as there is a valid point to be sceptic in every walk of life. Being here is also a sign of healthy scepticism.
Reality check: find one vaccine that actually works against TB.
The stats for autism……the diagnosis of autism has been greatly exaggerated
Hlaford. The problem is that antivaxxers will surely kill people due to lack of herd immunity, and most likely not their own. That amounts to criminal civil disobedience, in my book. Read up on the vaccination issues.
@Rud Istvan, the case against herd immunity is a very simple one. It works only with live vaccines, and in a way of spreading the live vaccine strain infection in the population. For that particular reason it is not advisable to let children recently vaccinated with live rubella vaccine roam around pregnant women. It may do real harm.
The vast majority of vaccines today are not live. And there goes the herd immunity big thing. It is very much like CO2 of vaccination alarmist lot.
A few years ago there was a big alarm about polio in Israel, and lack of herd immunity due to dead vaccines was called to blame. Just scratch the surface and you’ll find more examples.
The story behind vaccines is much larger than the net benefits of the population. The community is mostly divided to sceptics and alarmists, just like climate is. It is almost impossible to maintain an impartial position, but in case you are not personally involved it may happen. The vast majority of bad publicity against vaccine sceptics is concocted by the alarmist lot. Many of the sceptics know very well what they talk about.
I do not think herd immunity is caused by the vaccine being spread to unvaccinated individuals.
It is caused by having enough people vaccinated that the few who are not are unlikely to encounter one another, and thus spread the disease if someone gets it.
It is the same as why driving is usually safe even if a few maniacs drive like jackasses…as long as two of them do not cross paths simultaneously, accidents will be few and far between.
@Menicholas, what you say is reasonable, however, it doesn’t work like that. High vaccination rates you see in media are those that are applied to the children, and it is only a mild deception people conflate children vaccination rates with total population rates. So in practice, the rest of the population falls off the herd, unless you have live vaccines.
If you really insist on herd immunity by total inclusion, and dead vaccines, you’ll have to vaccinate everyone on regular basis.If you miss a booster, you lose immunity. A small glitch in such reasoning is that such action would yield intolerable frequency of adverse effects, and public outrage.
So far vaccination programs are tailored in a way that:
1. children are vaccinated as much as possible
2. live vaccines are re-introduced if a real threat is on a horizon
I am not exactly sure what you just said, but thank you for allowing that what I said makes sense.
I am simply referring to the commonly understood definition of what the term means, and why it is an effect.
“Herd immunity (also called herd effect, community immunity, population immunity, or social immunity) is a form of indirect protection from infectious disease that occurs when a large percentage of a population has become immune to an infection, thereby providing a measure of protection for individuals who are not immune”
Vaccines do not work by spreading immunity to unvaccinated people.
Well, it is a well-known fact sonny-gem that there is a secret society of the 5 wealthiest people in the world known as ‘the Pentaverate’ who perform all chemtrail experiments, including buying off the pilots, and meet tri-annually at a secret country mansion in Colorado known as ‘the Meadows’.
“So whose in this ‘Pentaverate’?”
The Queen, the Vatican, the Getties, the Rothschilds, and Colonel Sanders before he went tits-up. Oh, I hated the Colonel with his wee beady eyes and that smug look on his face. ‘Oh, you gonna buy my chicken?’
OK I got like 3 seconds into, it goes on for 15 minutes. Batpoo crazy!
“they” are “spraying blood”. Wow
https://youtu.be/H75FxDKPz-U
Yes there are even clouds of blood that come up from the dead buried in the Earth! /sarc
I blame sunset.
+1000.
Nothing to do with the sun, the Royal Society told us that.
I got this far and and the elephant in the room is not there!
The original writer did not understand it with the comment about “heat’ from the engines. –No.
Others with H2O from combustion–helps but is not the trigger.
It is particulates from combustion that provide the nucleus for existing super-chilled water vapour to crystallize on. That is why sometimes there are contrails and sometime not.
It is the existing water content of the air that makes it work–or not.
@Anthony Watts – Just to throw a curve, NASA learned a long time ago that the most effective way to cover a large area of the sky with a chemical is using sounding rockets. They launched their experiments out of White Sands at least during the early nineties through 2010, when I retired They were easily visible as I was driving to work just before dawn in Yuma County, AZ, clear over by the Colorado River. They covered multiple New Mexico counties and showed the beautiful colors in your photograph. The intensity against the dark blue sky was amazing. News articles were sent to surrounding states explaining what they were doing to keep alarmists at bay.
I think a number of people here sailed right past the “Friday Funny” part. Glad to see your sense of humor is still working.
Subtle, it is both…a little extra water added to air near the saturation point, and the particulates, and the turbulence, and, as I just thought of, perhaps a wee bit from hundreds of people breathing in the plane.
I want one of the geniuses of calculation to tell us how many people are in various planes, and how much WV they exhale, and if this is significant in relation to the burned fuel WV.
Pretty please.
Otherwise I will have to do it myself, which I can already see will involve lots of looking stuff up.
Ric Werme
August 11, 2016 at 6:39 pm
Oh what the heck. This is a good excuse to rerun what I think is the most informative wind turbine photo ever. It’s even offshore, I think in the North Sea.
http://wermenh.com/wind/images/vattenfall-image_300.jpg
OMG…The windmills are in on it too !! LOL
The Horror!
Chem-Mills!
Oh, The Humanity.
Ladies and Gentlemen, as unlikely as it sounds, Marcus has stumbled upon an effective new technique to fight Wind Farms.
Nothing logical or rational has worked to date. This might just do the trick.
Brilliant!
It’s the horns wind farm 10 miles west of Denmark.
It shows the propagation of turbulence & the drop in pressure as the air flows through turbines
I enjoyed the Nordic Noir ‘Follow The Money’ with its eco-baddies, perhaps the worm is turning as well as the titanic satanic mills (shown on BBC Four too, quite a surprise).
If the wind mills are subtracting energy from the air, could they be actually cooling the air too?
+1, wish I thought of that. I’ll find a way to use it on a clueless pro-wind forum. 🙂
Marcus…you da man!
Good contrail footage. The trails, though initially thick, dissipated quickly.
There is not a good explanation for persistent contrails that from a single airplane do not vaporize to invisibility, but stretch for over a hundred miles, and generate strato-cirrus (cirrostratus clouds.
A few years ago a vocal local eco-weenie kept sending me emails about chemtrails. She was being a royal PITA.
I was out in the marsh one day and photographed a commercial jet high above because it had a long contrail. I was using a 400-mm lens (600-mm equivalent on a APSC sensor) and when downloaded I could clearly see this was an Atlantic Virgin jet owned by none other than the famous enviro, Sir Richard Branson.
I sent the photo to the radical enviro lady and she never sent another loony email about chemtrails.
Good fun. ☺
Clive in now-socialist Alberta (bah) August 12, 2016 at 2:34 pm
“She was being a royal PITA.”
Or how about TW – Time Waister
Excessive cloud seeding on the other hand puts silver iodide into the first two feet of forest soil which retards decomposition. It’s not conducive to a healthy soil situation
What’s a “soil situation”? Did you mean “not conducive to healthy soil”?
I consider anyone who thinks any of this prevents people from rigging planes to spray stuff, just plain gullible.
Some individuals are drawn to doom mate I reckon
Prolly so, but again, that does not prevent people from spraying stuff.
well it’s not like they were taught to think by their teachers now was it 😀
Somehow, this reminds me of General Ripper… “God willing, we will prevail, in peace and freedom from fear, and in true health, through the purity and essence of our natural… fluids.”
Strange…