Sometimes, seemingly innocuous posts can bring in some oddball commenters. Such is the case this week with a post I did about a cloud (or lack thereof) spotted by former NWS Lead Forecaster for northern California, Jan Null.
That post brought out the chemtrailers, one of whom insisted that the “hole punch cloud” was not only a new phenonmenon (it isn’t) but made by (you guessed it) chemicals released from airplanes.
In the strictest sense, he’s right. It is caused by airplane exhaust:
This relatively rare occurenvce is the result of an aircraft flying through a layer of high clouds that have precisely the right temperatre and moisture. As the jet aircraft flies through the layer it contributes just enough additonal moisture and exhaust particles for the ice crystals in the cloud to grow large enough to fall out as ”fall streaks”. This happens in a circular pattern around the path of the jet with a hole in the cloud layer being the result.
Jan Null
There’s nothing nefarious about it.
But when I didn’t allow the discussion of the ridiculous premise of chemtrails, that didn’t sit well.
Oh, and hey: If you people can’t handle the TRUTH about PICTURES >YOUYOU< can’t handle?!?!
.
That you have the freaking temerity to post BALD-FACED LIES from some JERK professing a ~new~ cloud formation, and thence declare that NOBODY may challenge that PROCLAMATION?
.
Science, you say?
.
Science which can’t =OR WILL NOT= be challenged?
.
YOU ARE NO BETTER THAN THE SNAKE OIL SALESMAN YOU PROFESS TO EXPOSE!
.
Go ahead, MR. WATTS, DELETE THIS POST TOO!
I decided to leave it up as an example.
Ric Werme really said it all with this comment about SHOUTING IN ALL CAPS.
Thus our quote of the week:
Good science doesn’t need all-caps.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
RIGHT, NO CAPS. GOT IT……
So science discussions will look like this.
….. and CONSPIRICY THEORIES will look like THIS.
At a glance, “science” versus “GARBAGE” can be instantly recognized.
AGW…. See. all caps;-)
I was somewhat dubious about snake oil. It needed to be investigated, so exhaustive trials were undertaken. The results were really very interesting.
The starting point was the traditional recipe for snake oil, handed down through generations.
First catch your snake, then skin it. Next, kill your snake. Gut it and put the entrails (minus the ::: ahem ::: evacuatative parts) to one side.
Saute two finely chopped onions per pound of snake over a low heat and stir regularly to prevent burning, once the onions start to colour add a teaspoon of muscovado sugar for every nine ounces of onion and continue stirring over a low heat until a light brown caremalisation is apparent. Take the pan off the heat and add your snake carcass, removing the head first if there are any vegetarians nearby.
Add two tablespoons of virgin olive oil for every four inches of snake, season well with salt and pepper. Add one bayleaf (two if the snake was venemous), seventeen finely chopped cherry tomatoes and a small pinch of ground sage. Return the pan to the heat and bring to the boil. Once boiling, skim off any residual scum as soon as it rises to the surface and cook for thirty minutes at a vigorous boil.
Strain the liquid through a fine mesh sieve and pour it into bottles to no more than one twentieth of the volume of the bottle. Top up each bottle with cheap vegetable oil and give it a good shake. Insert a sprig of Thyme to make it look healthy and sell to any passing mug.
The results of the trial? I thought you might ask. Amazingly enough, snake oil sold at a higher price when labelled “organic”. When advertised as a medicine it sold poorly until the label said “homeopathic”. Sales really took off when it was labelled “low carbon”.
The best seller of all was the snake oil to which was added the entrails that were saved from the gutting process. This was “snake oil with added Gore”.
Wait, I though certain media outlets had put out stories about jet exhaust? Didn’t one of the cable channels (Discovery? History?) recently have a special on HARP or the military doing something in the sky? I know for a fact that I remember some German media story about the military in Germany experimenting with exhaust in the skies above their country. There’s also media stories where U.S. military also admitted to expermenting with dispersing particulates in the air, like for missle defense. Seems like it was in Miami or somewhere in Florida, where they made an actual admission (the military).
Doesn’t HARP try to make use of clouds (natural and manmade) to “bounce” raido waves and frequencies around the world? Don’t get me wrong, I ain’t paranoid, but I know there are valid stories out there. I’ve personally seen numerous contrails fan out and become clouds that lasted for hours and hours. My wife and I have commented on them numerous times. Like seeing a contrail that spans the sky in the morning driving to work, then steping out an hour later to retrieve something from the car and seeing the same contrail fanned out a little, then seeing the same contrail going home for lunch fanned out even more, then seeing it a couple hours later when checking just for curiosities sake. Do contrails really last for upwards of 6 hours? Regularly? I’ve also heard a number of people (normal people) commenting that contrails seem to be stinking up the skies lately. I live in a rural area where the nearest airport is 3 hours away. Our skies are usually blue blue blue. Sometimes they get marked up horribly. It’s impossible to miss. Again, I ain’t paranoid, but it would not surprise me to discover that our precious government is doing some sort of weird military experiment in the skies.
There was the Manhattan Project after all. Try going back to 1944 and talking about “atomic bombs” to an unsuspecting crowd. I’m sure you would have been labeled “kook” and laughed right out of town. Truly. They kept that a complete secret from the entire nation, right up to the day the dropped it on Japan. They even tested the darn thing right here in our own country first. Still, it was a secret. Just ’cause the military does something in secret… does that make it kooky?
You guys here at WUWT would be embarrased to know that I get ridiculed when denying AGW around my peers. Doesn’t seem quite fair, does it? Here at WUWT, you can believe that AGW is a farce, but “chemtrails” are material for the loony bin. You might consider being careful how loudly you ridicule. It may come back to haunt you, just like you guys say about the current global warming “scientists.”
I always thought the black helicopter people were nuts. Then I lived in Utah for 2 1/2 years. Black helicopters everywhere. I moved some place safe. NYC
FatBigot, that recipe would do LL Bean proud and you got yourself dinner and a few bucks on the side.
Gary (21:29:45) :
Not loony bin, Gary, but fails under direct observation. There is always the mindset that wants to alarm, but does nothing to seek out the explanation for the phenomenon via direct observation. I observed for myself, and noted the fighters doing things in the exhaust shadow of the tanker refueler. Quite the show they put on. I did, however, come across a crystal generator thing that was touted to protect a community from the alleged exhaust stuff. They wanted to sell you the kit or a finished product for a nice sum. Ok. That’s enough for me when they ask for the credit card. I’ll pass, thank you.
For the folks who use these ‘generators’, they seem to be very happy in thier belief that they are protected from a multitude of various harm.
They don’t try to scare me and I don’t trouble them.
HARP? wasn’t that the attempt by Dr. Bull to launch suborbital and possibly orbital vehicles by a gun. He might have managed it too. But governments knew best: and held back space exploration for a generation.
You see Bull might have been able to do it. Today, at last, private enterprise is trying to do it in another way. But Bull is fifty years ago.
That is if I have got the right HARP. but the only other ones I know of are stringed instruments, and such like.
Kindest Regards.
In Taipei, a generation ago, there was a place called “snake alley”… snake wine, snake soup…. had a friend who practiced crane-style kung-fu and swore by the virtues of snake wine…. sort of a Taiwanese gingko-baloba, I suppose… we can sneer at climate science, but let’s not denigrate snake oil… it does have its virtues…
a jones (22:50:00) :
Yes, HARP was a Bull project. Much like H.G. Wells’ martians, Bull envisaged guns that could put objects into space. He also didn’t care much who he worked for and was building a “supergun” for Iraq when he was murdered in 1990. The gun would have been useful only if it could have lobbed nukes. On the eve of our last war with Iraq a convoy crossed into Syria and disappeared. Within five years a Syrian WMD facility was bombed by Israel and Iran was finishing its centrifuge array…. just a coincidence, I’m sure… everyone knows that there were no WMDs in Iraq.
Gary (21:29:45) : You might consider being careful how loudly you ridicule. It may come back to haunt you, just like you guys say about the current global warming “scientists.” Hi Gary That is a fair point. I think it is false confidence before a fall. However as I understand it the persistence of contrails is dependent on the current characteristics of that part of the atmosphere. So it is possible to have no contrails to the opposite where contrails persist and ultimately generate a complete layer of cloud. The air mass over where you are is perhaps moister and slower than over me here in the UK, although there is nothing consistent about the weather here. However, on some days I have seen what you are describing, but not that often and we get the same planes you do, burning the same fuel.
As far as deliberately trying to alter the weather that has been going on for decades and its not a secret. ‘Cloud seeding’ has been used quite openly to try and generate rain. Silver iodide and Carbon Dioxide are the most common type of cloud ‘seed’ used, and are dispersed from a plane or from the ground. I understand in some countries the military are employed to fire shells containing the above. If such activity is taking place I would have thought that the local farmers would know, as they may have asked for it.
The USFS uses propane generators (sprays) at high altitude to do it’s cloud seeding. It is also not a secret, and has been undertaken for decades. They call it ‘precipitation enhancement’. There is a fundamental problem that appears when doing such things.
It can and does sometimes cause the unintended consequence of local starvation of moisture for the intended enhancement area.
However, the USFS does not undertake to impose taxes by scaring citizens.
Also, precipitation enhancement does not work in the absence of moisture streams. You cannot create something from nothing the last time I checked.
The truth is out there
The truth is “IT TAKES ALL SORTS TO MAKE A WORLD”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_seeding
Re: Leon Brozyna (21:06:21) :
Some really strange critters out there, beyond those weird Congress critters. Conspiracies everywhere — UFOs, catastrophic AGW, chemtrails, Yeti, secret contacts between aliens and governments.
—
It’s summer, so slow news season and much easier to get stories slipped in via churnalism. At least in the US you have a few more news sources than we do here in the UK, where journalism has been sacrificed at the efficiency altar. Much cheaper to fill space with ready rolled stories from wire services and PR outfits like Fenton.
Anyway, as for the cloud punchers*, I note the article doesn’t state who’s aircraft. Yeti’s have been around a while, so should have been evolving and maybe this is just a test of the Yeti space programme. Anyone know Big Al’s shoe size or seen him sockless? Could he be their bag man?
cui bono? subsequor magnus pes!
*also affectionate name for UK artillery users. Actually may not be that affectionate, but most of the time they can’t hear, so no worries.
>>>Will there be a policy change on chemtrails if the Obama
>>>science team decides high altitude pollution will lower world
>>>temperature and create jobs?
Umm, as it to be expected in our Brave New World, ‘science’ is now imitating comedy and it looks like we might start Chem-trailing (sulphur particles) – and all for the sake of AGW. (What else?)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6814912.ece
The graphic that went with this article, had an aircraft spraying sulphur particles into the atmosphere via its contrails, plus a large gun blasting shells of sulphur to explode in the atmosphere.
Do the Royal Society subscribe to National Inquirer?
.
Image of a negative contrail; airplane burned a hole through the cloud or caused it to condensate leaving a dark anti-contrail
http://www.gvarros.com/DSCN5156.JPG
Images of a long thin hole-punch cloud:
http://www.gvarros.com/DSCN5183.JPG
http://www.gvarros.com/DSCN5184.JPG
http://www.gvarros.com/DSCN5185.JPG
This on HAARP’s Wiki entry relates quite well to humanity’s effect on the climate
“Since the ionosphere is inherently a chaotically turbulent region, HAARP’s defenders state any artificially induced changes would be “swept clean” within seconds or minutes at the most. Ionospheric heating experiments performed at the Arecibo Observatory’s ionospheric heater and incoherent scatter radar have shown that after periods of modification (up to an hour), the ionosphere returns to normal within about the same period of time it had been heated.
For instance, HAARP generates 3.6 megawatts (MW) of power. 3.6 MW is considered a minuscule percentage of the energy compared to all of the energy constantly injected into the Earth, and the ionosphere, by the sun.
“
Re ALL CAPS:
For those us who look at our fingers when we type, rather than looking at the screen, the problem is that sometimes the CAPS LOCK key is pressed and we do not realize it until we have typed several paragraphs.
Then we are faced with the choice of re-typing everything, or alternatively trying to explain that we are NOT SHOUTING.
Who decided that CAPS = Shouting anyway?
I say CAPS = Can’t Touch Type.
aLTERNATIVES (see, it really happens):
CAPS = Shouting OR Can’t Touch Type.
CAPS = Shouting ONE Can’t Touch Type.
>>>Some really strange critters out there, beyond those weird
>>>Congress critters. Conspiracies everywhere — UFOs, catastrophic
>>>AGW, chemtrails, Yeti, secret contacts between aliens and governments
Let’s not laugh too much, for I have some sympathy with the conspiracy theorists here.
The primary problem is that governments are lying to us, and becoming increasingly cynical in their overt deceit. Having been lied to on numerous occasions, are we surprised that many people disbelieve everything they are told and turn to conspiracy theories to fill in the gaps?
Is that not what we are doing on this blog? The government is lying about AGW, and we have joined in the ‘conspiracy theory’ claiming that it is all a fake. Are we no better than the Chemtrail believers in this?
.
Other conspiracies that I might be tempted to join in are:
The possible ‘murder’ of David Kelly – the scientist in the UK who could have stopped the invasion of Iraq.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-397256/Why-I-believe-David-Kellys-death-murder-MP.html
And, believe it or not, some of the Moon landing conspiracy. NOT, I hasten to add, that the USA did not go there – of course they did – but that the early pictures they brought back were all so cr** that someone decided to mock up a few in a hangar for publicity purposes. NASA ran on public opinion, and without good photos it was sunk. Imagine Apollo 11, that enormous great enterprise, with no photos to show the world!! A few illicit photos taken in Area 51 would explain every bit of this conspiracy theory and the many pictorial oddities they have uncovered.
.
“pft” said:
But isn’t it a conspiracy theory to suggest scientists and politicians are working together to foist the false premise of man’s CO2 altering climate and rigging the data and science to support their false premise, and shutting down dissenting scientists by witholding funding and grants. All with the the help of the MSM who report heavily on the alarmists predictions and proclaim the science is settled, not to mention the publishers of science journals who use peer review to censor scientists whose work contradicts the consensus.
No one here has suggested that, and you know it, so are simply being disingenuous. That’s just a tired, idiotic straw man argument the AGWers like to trot out. Now, run back to your troll cave like a good little troll.
Not HARP, they’re talking about HAARP, the high frequency active auroral research project. They bounce radio off the ionosphere in order to study it’s behaviour.
It started with some scientists suggesting that it could be used as an EMP weapon for knocking out satellites, or interfering with comms over long ranges. The fact that some of the things they do have an effect on the whole Earth’s ionosphere/magnetosphere has led to further speculation of a science-fiction nature, and it all ended up in the territory of the US government using it as a weather control weapon or even beaming mind-control transmissions into people’s heads.
The fundamental problem with the conspiracy theory in terms of science is not that conspiracies are inherently unlikely, but that the claim of conspiracy is commonly used to explain the total lack of evidence. “It’s a secret. Of course there’s no evidence; they covered it up.”
People see something they don’t understand or can’t themselves explain. They form a hypothesis that involves their favoured boogey-man doing something unpleasant. They predict that it will be covered up, and various stooges and dupes will try to tell them it’s all perfectly innocent. And their prediction is of course soon confirmed. The hypothesis is then elaborated into a complicated theory – epicycles forming as each new contrary observation is fitted in. And they become emotionally invested in its truth, which makes it psychologically impossible for them to give up.
It’s a perfectly natural human behaviour, the way your inbuilt learning process works. It took a long time to recognise the problem and develop the scientific method to avoid it. Science is really all about the extreme lengths you have to go to not to fool yourself. Even people trained in it can be fooled (any who tell you they can’t is a dirty liar), and people who have never had that training certainly can. It goes beyond honesty – you also have to deal with unconscious biases and assumptions.
Watch a professional illusionist – did you spot what he did? Every time? And if you did, was it because someone had previously told you how it was done, (or a trick like it,) or did you figure it out yourself from a standing start?
Those are your unconscious perceptual biases at work – doing science can be that hard. You have to think of the world around you as like a stage magician, and you as the scientist are trying to spot how the trick was done. You have to be systematic. You have to have real evidence for everything you accept, and check and re-check it. You have to identify and eliminate your assumptions. You have to know and account for your own biases. And you have to know how lots of other tricks were done; to know the basic techniques.
It’s a lot of hard work.
That’s a very nice and logical explaination for airplane streaks! Keep up your informative blog!
Snake Oil, eh?
I’ve been using bronze gladiator oil on mine…
Gary (21:29:45) :
Begin Quote
Wait, I though certain media outlets had put out stories about jet exhaust? Didn’t one of the cable channels (Discovery? History?) recently have a special on HARP or the military doing something in the sky?
End Quote
HAARP
I looked briefly into HAARP a few years ago and decided that the hand wringers’ claims about it being used to control hurricanes lacked any sense of a believable connection. Perhaps you can diddle with the ionospere, but I’d think it more likely to affect Antarctica than the tropics.
A few links gleaned from a private web search (i.e. I typed HAARP into Google):
The official page (it’s official, so it can’t be right) with webcams (fake ones, I’m sure someone would claim): http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/
Account from a engineer and physicist about why the site is benign and ends with an excerpt from President Eisenhower’s farewell address about the Educational-Research Complex: http://www.brojon.org/frontpage/bj040501.html . (See the better known http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/21/ikes-second-warning-hint-it-is-not-the-military-industrial-complex/ )
With a hostname like haarp.net, this must be the official unofficial site, see http://www.haarp.net/haarpoverview.htm . It refers to Tesla’s laser (Laser? Well. “a beam one hundred-millionth of a square centimeter in diameter” – quacks like a laser). The home page is a review of the book “Angels Don’t Play this HAARP: Advances in Tesla Technology.” Not all-caps, but the more understated all-bold.
I’ll stick to discussing Michael Mann, thank you.