Introduction

Snow-covered Mt. Teide from the south, Tenerife

PAGE CONTENTS

STOP PRESS - INTRODUCTION – CONTRAILS – EXACTLY WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM? – HOW TO MAKE SNOW – VISION - CONTRAIL Q&A – STAR’s RESOURCES – A SINGLE LONG-RANGE FLIGHT AND AN OCEAN LINER! – PEAK OIL – AMAZING PLANE TRAIL – A SKEPTIC’S BOOKSHELF

Don’t forget my other pages, links and comments are one click away at the top right of the page

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A compelling video shot from above, showing an approaching aircraft laying a dense contrail. Note the trail shadow falling on a veil of altocumulus clouds in the troposphere below.

STOP PRESS 

3rd February ‘10 – CHEMTRAILS AND FALSIFICATION in “Careful With That Cloud”

2nd February ‘10 – NOMEANSNO in “Not Coming”

15th January ’10 – THE WORLD METEOROLOGICAL ORGANIZATION in “6 Porkies”

10th January ‘10 – STAR’s RESOURCES on this page

08th January ‘10 – “Chemtrails” video in “Bamboozled” 

03rd December ‘09 – “JET STREAMS” in “JET SPRAY”

29th November ‘09 – “EXACTLY WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM?” on this page.

27th November ‘09 - ”YouTube 3″ in YouTube SLUGS IT OUT in “YOGHURTS”

12th November ‘09 – “YouTube 2″ in “YOGURTS” and “PEAK OIL” on this page.

23rd October ‘09 – “CHEMTRAILS” in “Careful With That Cloud”

20th October ‘09 – “GLOBAL WARMING IS A MYTH” reworked in “GLOBAL DIMMING”

15th October ‘09 – “REVEAL EARTH’S ATMOSPHERE” in “6 PORKIES”

13th October ‘09 - “YouTube 1″ IN “YOGURTS”

9th October ‘09 - “HOW TO MAKE SNOW” on this page.

6th October ‘09 - “DEFINITELY” in “D BOOTS THE DIVA”

4th October ‘09 - “CREPUSCULAR SHADOWS” in “Circle of Confusion”

27th September ‘09 - “BOENOID” in “BAMBOOZLED”

26th September ‘09 - ”CONTRAILS” on this page 

22nd September ‘09 – “GW ROOM 103″ in “Global Dimming”

8th September ‘09 – “BLUE LIGHT SCATTERING” in “BAMBOOZLED”

1st September ‘09 – “RUSHFAN” in “ROBERT”

20th August ‘09 – “AEROSOLS” IN “6 PORKIES” and “(THEY ARE) LEGION” in “JET SPRAY”
13th August ‘09 – “A BLACK HOLE” in “BAMBOOZLED”
11th August ‘09 – “FRACTALS IN NATURE” in “ESTABLISHED”
8th August ‘09 – “EXPONENTIAL TIMES” in “ESTABLISHED”
4th August ‘09 – “THE END OF LITTLE GREY MEN” in “THE EARTH ROTATES”
29th July ’09 – SKEWED VIEWS OF SCIENCE in “STRATOSPHERE”
26th July ‘09 – BALONEY DETECTION KIT in “BAMBOOZLED”
19th July ‘09 – THE CASE AGAINST CHEMTRAILS and STARS15K’s REFERENCE LIST in “Careful With That Cloud”
12th July ‘09 – MEAT in “LETTER”
11th July ‘09 – AGW DENIALIST FRAUD in ““GLOBAL DIMMING”
21st June ‘09 – UNCINUS added to “BREATHTAKING QUOTES” in ““GENUINE BULL”
20th June ‘09 – Richard Dawkins’s book reviews in A SKEPTIC’S BOOKSHELF on this page (an article on Creationist Dirty Tricks to follow)
19th June ‘09 – “MINNIS AT WORK” in “Driving Around Town” and “STERN’S ‘DUMBEST CONSPIRACY EVER” in “SLEEPS”
9th June ‘09 – “SOME REAL SCIENCE” in “PENROD”
6th June ‘09 – “ISSUE (2)” in “ISSUE”
2nd June ‘09 – “Genuine Professionals” in “Genuine Bull”
29th May ‘09 – “Disproving AGW” IN “Global Dimming”
24th May ‘09 – “The Skies over Britain” in “What’s It All About?”
22nd May ‘09 – “WAKEUPCALLCHANNEL Control” in ““WWII Persistent Contrail Story”
21st May ‘09 – “Friends” in ““Music from my Synth – Jazz/Rock”
20th May ‘09 – “Big Gun FIRES” in “Global Dimming”
15th May ‘09 – “A SKEPTIC’S BOOKSHELF” on this page…
10th May ‘09 – “BREATHTAKING QUOTES” in “GENUINE BULL”
9th May ‘09 – “AMAZING PLANE TRAILS” on this page…
8th May ‘09 – “Watts up with THAT?” in “Trails didn’t exist back then”
7th May ‘09 – “Global Warming Room 102″ in “Global Dimming”
1st May ‘09 – “TRUTH ORIGINS” in “Trails didn’t exist back then”
30th April ‘09 – The Theory of Everything in “Established”
30th April ‘09 – David Cenciotti’s Weblog in “D Boots the Diva”
29th April ‘09 – Contrail Article by Airliners.net in “Contrails”
28th April ‘09 – Website “ChemCon Alert” arrives in “Circle of Confusion”
23rd April ‘09 – Contrailscience Comedy Spot in “Contrails”
22nd April ‘09 – Ian Plimer is convincing in “Global Dimming”
2nd April ‘09 – “Andrew Johnson” (to be cont’d.) in “Another Waste of Time”
25th March ‘09 – “Will Thomas” (NOT cont’d.) in “Trails didn’t exist back then…”

 

INTRODUCTION

This blog is a compendium of most of my activities at first on most of YouTube’s “chemtrail” video comments boxes during the latter half of 2007, continuing on into 2008, where I was banned from YouTube (following a comments campaign against all the sites promoting their fraudulent presentation of a Boeing 777LR prototype aircraft as a spraying aircraft). I then spent three days at David Icke’s website forum, a few months at the Outlaw website forum, and three days at “All Aircraft are Not Involved”. All of these promoted chemtrail speculation, without allowing contrary views.
As I write in March 2009 you may find me on “Opposing Digits”, “Conspiracy Central”, and “League of Reason” website forums.

The National Gas Turbine Establishment, Pyestock, Hants

This blog uses hypertext, so you can click on it and read the references revealed.
My interest arose from my perceiving that the MAIN ARGUMENT of ‘chemtrailers’  - “persistent contrails are ‘chemtrails’ because ordinary contrails fade away” - is FALSE.

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I am a scientist and engineer, having begun my career way back in 1962 as a student apprentice aeroengineer working at the National Gas Turbine Establishment, Pyestock.
http://jazzroc.wordpress.com/about/
Following an exposition on the nature of contrails, this blog is alphabetically-sorted under titles which are either the correspondent or the topic under consideration. It is often angry (a characteristic of chemtrailers, who believe they hold the moral high ground) but is worth persisting with, for it uncovers many fascinating aspects of this multiple paranoia.
In spite of what you may have heard: 
Contrails are the only trails regularly produced by high-flying aircraft, and have been known to be persistent on occasion since 1922.
They are produced by either the freezing temperature acting on steam (which is the combustion product of the aircraft’s engines), or also the reduction in pressure of the air flowing over its wings bringing dissolved water vapor out of solution in the atmosphere.
There have been no cases of poisoning, no samples of fuel ever found to contain poison, no aircraft found ever to contain poison tanks, and no whistleblowers (out of hundreds of thousands of aircraft and airport workers).
The real reason for the increasing persistence of contrails is the increase in air travel, which has increased FIFTYfold since the mid-fifties.
In NO CASE have any of my many “chemtrail” correspondents EVER argued the SCIENCE of the matter.
Their normal response is to immediately label my argument (normally a scientific one) as “disinformation”, which leaves me rather baffled, and forces me to go on the offensive, and pick out the logical flaws (rich pickings) with which I am left. I am reminded of a quote from the late Andrew Lobacewski’s “Political Ponerology” which follows:
“The psychological features of each such crisis are unique to the culture and the time, but one common denominator that exists at the beginning of all such “bad times” is an exacerbation of society’s hysterical condition. The emotionalism dominating in individual, collective, and political life, combined with the subconscious selection and substitution of data in reasoning, lead to individual and national egotism. The mania for taking offense at the drop of a hat provokes constant retaliation, taking advantage of hyperirritability and hypocriticality on the part of others. It is this feature, this hystericization of society, that enables pathological plotters, snake charmers, and other primitive deviants to act as essential factors in the processes of the origination of evil on a macro-social scale.”
I have (mostly) deferred to American English usage and spelling since that is the majority of origin. Text by anyone else is in italics. I have on occasion added comments (I’ve been learning too!) which I have prefixed with an asterisk*.
A word about people who have helped me directly and indirectly. First and foremost is Uncinus of contrailscience, who has helped me to confront the mysteries of WordPress, as well as providing me and everyone else with good advice and courtesy in both the physics of the atmosphere and the gentle art of reason.
And my thanks to Steve Andrews, the Bard of Ely, who put me on to this subject in the first place, argued furiously with me at first, became persuaded of my reasoning, and graciously became my champion. Steve may be a little dotty, but he has a heart of gold.
And a word about your comments. I’ll publish them when they genuinely advance everyone’s understanding. Hatemail, or uninformed dissension from anonymous people will be removed. Here we go…

EXACTLY WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM?

It’s hard to fathom the motives and intent behind the vapid threat of this individual. In view of his refusal to confront the contradictory scientific evidence against his case and his insistence that I must be a “government DISINFO agent” which is presumably borne out every time I take a poke at his ignorance, can his threat at the end of this vid be deemed to possess any significance whatsoever? 

CONTRAILS

HOW TO MAKE SNOW

This shows a quick way to do this. Of course, the weather outside is minus twenty degrees. You’ll notice that water in its liquid and vapor forms wastes no time turning into a fine white smoke reminiscent of – a contrail.

Contrails are formed at even colder temperatures in the stratosphere, where the air pressure is two-tenths of what it is at sea level. But they too are ICE.

VISION

CONTRAIL Q&A

This I have shamelessly lifted from “Contrail Education” at:
http://asd-www.larc.nasa.gov/GLOBE/faq.html
Chemtrailers will often tell you that “authorities” and “the powers that be” will never give you information about chemtrails. This is quite true, but for the same reason that it’s hard to get information about fairies. The authorities are, on the other hand, eager to give anyone who asks information about contrails…

Q: Where do contrails form?
A: Contrails are human-induced clouds that usually form at very high altitudes (usually above 8 km – about 26,000 ft) where the air is extremely cold (less than -40ºC). Because of this, contrails form not when an airplane is taking off or landing, but while it is at cruise altitude. (Exceptions occur in places like Alaska and Canada, where very cold air is sometimes found near the ground.) Thus, people who live under major air traffic routes, not people who live near major airports, are those who will see the most contrails. (However, some major airports are also under major air traffic routes, which can lead to confusion.) You can use an Appleman chart to predict contrail formation for your area. Of course, a contrail cannot form if no airplane passes through.
Q: Why are there more short-lived contrails than persistent contrails?
A: For a particular geographical location, it may seem that there are more of one type of contrail than another. Actually, the type and number seems to depend on the amount of moisture and temperature in the atmosphere where the plane is flying. If the area is fairly dry, then more short-lived contrails might be observed. If there is more moisture, such as along the east coast of the United States, there might be more persistent contrails observed. To look at observations from other areas, you might like to visit the GLOBE website and click on the Data Access button.
http://www.globe.gov/r
Q: What causes the swirling pattern in a contrail?
A: The swirling pattern in a contrail is caused by the vortices coming from the tip of the aircraft. A vortex is a swirling of air coming from underneath the tip of the plane and wrapping upward over the top of the wingtip. This is due to the difference in pressure caused by the curved shape of the wing. The process of having less pressure on the top of the wing and more pressure on the bottom of the wing provides “lift” for the aircraft.
Q: Why are we able to see contrails on some days but not on other days?
A: In order for the contrail to form, there must be enough moisture in the high levels of the atmosphere for the ice crystals to form around the airplane exhaust. If the upper atmosphere is very dry, contrails will not easily form, or will be of the short-lived type.
Q: Do contrails drastically affect weather patterns?
A: Originally scientists believed that the contrails behaved like cirrus clouds to actually make the climate warmer. However, there have been studies conducted that have scientists rethinking their earlier ideas about contrails. This is one of the major questions that has to be researched at NASA and one of the reasons we are putting so much emphasis on contrails. When air traffic over the US was halted after the 9-11 incident, scientists got a rare look at the skies with only a few military jets flying. They were able to analyze the effects of some of these contrails and realized that their earlier notions about contrails’ effects were not totally accurate.
Q: Has there ever been observation of rain from contrails?
A: Typically, rain clouds are low level clouds which are made up of water molecules. These water molecules then come together to form water drops (liquid) which eventually fall to the ground as rain drops. Since contrails are high level clouds, the moisture within them forms ice crystals which do not come together to form any form of precipitation (rain).
Q: Why are contrails white? Contrails are formed from the exhaust of an air plane. We usually think of exhaust as being black and dirty.
A: Almost all cloud droplets (and snowflakes) have a very small particle (aerosol) at their core. But the particle is MUCH smaller than the cloud/ice/snow particle. When light passes through the crystal, it is reflected or bent (refracted) by the cloud or ice particle, which makes it appear white to an observer. Therefore, what makes the contrail look white is the water (frozen into a crystal), rather than the exhaust particle. Note that sometimes the optical effects through these crystals can also produce colors, much like rainbows in water drops. You will only see these when the Sun-crystal-you geometry is aligned in certain ways.
Q: Why can we see a jet high in the sky, yet it is not making a contrail?
A: For a contrail to form there must be enough moisture in the air and the temperature must be cold enough to form ice crystals at the altitude at which the jet is flying. If the temperature is too warm or the air too dry, contrails will not form.
Q: There is a persistent contrail in the sky, and the middle portion of the contrail has disappeared. Is the disappearance caused by wind or air temperature?
A: For all or part of the contrail to disappear, there is a lack of moisture to maintain formation of the ice crystals. It may be possible for air currents to move drier air into the area of the contrail, which would cause that portion of the contrail to evaporate.
Q: Why are so many of the persistent contrails we see so narrow in width, almost a pencil line?
A: The type of contrail you are describing is a persistent contrail, and, in particular, one which is non-spreading. For a persistent contrail to spread, there must be enough extra moisture in the air for additional ice crystals to form. If there is a limited supply of moisture, a persistent contrail may form, but will not spread.
Q: In which layer of the atmosphere do we normally see contrails?
A: Contrails usually form in the upper portion of the troposphere and in the lower stratosphere where jet aircraft normally fly, generally between about 8 and 12 km altitude (~26,000 to 39,000 feet). They can also form closer to the ground when the air is very cold and has enough moisture.
Q: Is it possible to observe contrails as indicators of changing weather?
A: If a contrail is persistent or persistent spreading, then the upper atmosphere contains large amounts of moisture. If a contrail is short-lived, then the upper atmosphere is relatively dry. This was used by sailors and can be used today to somewhat predict the weather. Short-lived contrails may indicate fair weather, and persistent contrails may indicate an approaching change in the weather or precipitation. The weather signal is somewhat analogous to that of natural cirrus clouds.
Q: There were two planes in the sky. One was flying north/south and left a persistent contrail. The other plane was flying east/west and did not leave a contrail. Why did one plane leave a contrail, but the other did not?
A: The two planes were flying at different altitudes – air traffic control has rules for spacing flights in different directions – so that the north-south flight path contained more moisture or was at a lower temperature than the east-west flight-path. The amount of moisture in the stratosphere* can change considerably in a short vertical distance. It depends strongly on the origin of the particular air mass. There are also variations in the efficiency of aircraft engines, which can affect whether or not a particular plane will leave a contrail.

• The stratosphere has different properties from the troposphere, which we are familiar with, because we live in it. The stratosphere is stable, and layered. The layers vary in thickness from tens to thousands of feet. “Stratum” is the Latin for “layer”. 

STAR’s RESOURCES

I’m happy to include here STARS15K’s reference list – all except my own site and some spoof sites. By leafing through this material and absorbing it, you could become sufficiently science-aware to be able to continue this blog yourself, for example.
http://pdf.aiaa.org/preview/CDReadyMASM06_778/PV2006_1414.pdf
http://www.aip.org/dbis/AGU/stories/14203.html
http://www.airliners.net/aviation-articles/read.main?id=85
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1175%2F1520-0450(1997)036%3C1211%3AAEMTPW%3E2.0.CO%3B2&ct=1
http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/94176.pdf
http://www.answers.com/topic/chemtrail-conspiracy-theory
http://www.answers.com/topic/contrail
http://asd-www.larc.nasa.gov/GLOBE/science.html
http://www.borderlands.com/contrails/contrail.htm
http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/wxwise/class/contrail.html
http://contrail.gi.alaska.edu/misc/Stuefer_HyannisOct04.pdf
http://contrailscience.com/
http://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/policy_guidance/envir_policy/media/contrails.pdf
http://facstaff.uww.edu/travisd/pdf/climatepapermar04.pdf
http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_sr/?src=/climate/ipcc/aviation/038.htm
http://www.iangoddard.com/contrail.htm
http://www.iangoddard.com/contral2.htm
ftp://ftp.pa.op.dlr.de/pub/Gierens/TAC/Gierens_contrails_oral_060629.pdf
http://pdf.aiaa.org/preview/CDReadyMASM06_778/PV2006_1414.pdf
http://profhorn.aos.wisc.edu/wxwise/AckermanKnox/chap15/contrail_applet.html (this site has a graph for you to set conditions and will fly a plane with the expected contrail formation at the top)
http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/contrail_controversy.shtml
http://www.scienceblog.com/community/older/1997/B/199701880.html
http://www.scienceblog.com/community/older/1999/A/199900242.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/04/040428061056.htm
http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/media/news6-97.html
http://students.ou.edu/J/Thomas.A.Jones-1/contrail.html
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/fgz/science/contrail.php?wfo=fgz
http://www-angler.larc.nasa.gov/satimage/products.html
http://www-pm.larc.nasa.gov/sass/sass-ref.html
http://deoxy.org/meme/AviationSmog_Talk
http://www.areco.org/pdf/ParticulateEmissionsJetEngines1996.pdf
http://www.csicop.org/si/2009-02/radford.html
http://biblion.epfl.ch/EPFL/theses/2004/2975/EPFL_TH2975.pdf
http://www.knmi.nl/velthove/aircraft.html
http://www.epa.gov/oms/regs/nonroad/aviation/contrails.pdf
http://www.scribd.com/doc/14605078/Contrails-facts
http://www.pa.op.dlr.de/pa1c/GRL22_1501-1504_1995.pdf
http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_sr/?src=/climate/ipcc/aviation/035.htm (this link has many chapters, be sure and drop the menu down to get the full report.)
http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/7/13175/2007/acpd-7-13175-2007-print.pdf
http://www.skepdic.com/chemtrails.html
http://chemcon.2020oregon.net
http://www.dropletmeasurement.com/ (I just found this link on a chemtrail board. The poster claimed it showed chemspray planes. It doesn’t, it shows a company that does sampling and measurement IN SITU. I keep telling people that’s how a contrail would have to be tested, and this company can and does just that.)
http://www.contrails.nl/contrails-research/various%2001.htm
http://www.astro.ku.dk/holger/IDA/notes.html (This site is older and some links might not work. It is a good representation that contrails are studied all over the world, though)
http://asd-www.larc.nasa.gov/GLOBE/resources/activities/appleman_student.html
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4027http://www.dhmo.org/
http://www.thebulletin.org/files/064002006_0.pdf A really well-done, balanced piece on geo-engineering. Not about chemtrails, but a good guide to use when considering that as a possible use/motive for chemtrail use.
http://asd-www.larc.nasa.gov/GLOBE/resources/presentations/contrails_scool.pdf
http://www.scribd.com/doc/13115866/Chemtrailscc-the-Not-So-Secret-Ingredient-022009 This is a pro-CT publication, but has a diagram of the chemical process of jet fuel through an engine and a statement that any metallic aerosol will remain suspended for days. These go against what I’ve been told by CT here. The conclusions reached, I do not agree with. Other research has shown that the barium in Stadis 450 after combustion is significantly small enough it might even NOT show on certain tests, being within the expected “norm” of background.
http://profhorn.aos.wisc.edu/wxwise/AckermanKnox
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2004/04/19/leaving-a-trail/
http://www.atoptics.co.uk/rayshad.htm This is the entire site address, which is very cool. It also contains past galleries I have only begun to explore.
http://www.atoptics.co.uk/atoptics/contr1.htm This shows contrail shadows, aka ‘black beams’ or ‘black contrails’. There are two pages with explanations.
http://www.atoptics.co.uk/fz215.htm This page shows contrail shadows, but most importantly, two jets flying at the same altitude with different contrails. The reason? Something stated often, difference in the jet engines. One is more efficient than the other. So it happens, but for a known reason.

A SINGLE LONG-RANGE FLIGHT AND AN OCEAN LINER

What could they possibly have in common? (Except that they might share the same route.) Well it is this: in a saturated stratosphere, a five thousand kilometre flight of a long-range jumbo jet is able to release EIGHTY THOUSAND TONS of water ice into the air. This is the weight of a large ocean liner in water ice…
“No! Get away with you! This cannot be true!”, I hear you say. But it IS true.
From the paper “Contrails to Cirrus—Morphology, Microphysics, and Radiative Properties”:
http://www-pm.larc.nasa.gov/sass/pub/journals/atlas_JAMC2006.pdf
“The average ice water per meter along the length of the contrail is 16 Kg per meter.” That means a 5000 kilometer flight (THROUGH SATURATED AIR) would put down 80,000 tons of trail material… Whoa! Wait a minute! Isn’t a jumbo’s fuel load about 250 tons? So where does the rest come from? The answer is OUT OF THE ATMOSPHERE! Read the paper for yourself.

“Look up” say chemtrailers, “they are spraying you!”
Well, they are NOT. The ice formed by combusting kerosine for the plane’s jet engines is SEEDING the deposition of further ice out of the saturated air. Furthermore, that ice never falls directly as rain. Instead it evaporates into lower tropospheric air, and might, a day or a week or a month later, take its part in the country’s rainfall.
Sadly, the best region for smooth and stable long-distance flight is this very cold and sensitive region of the tropopause and lower stratosphere, and its occasional huge reaction sends a visual message of change to those people who neither possess or seek understanding of the science underlying it (and consequently don’t have the right to pronounce upon it) – chemtrailers.
But that “message of change” is distorted beyond meaning. At present, scientists say, the effect upon the atmosphere of all this deposition is “within the noise”, meaning that no significant changes to the weather have taken place. Fifty years from now, if air transport continues to increase at today’s rate, then persistent contrails will significantly affect the weather.
Ah, but fifty years from now we will have run out of oil…

PEAK OIL

A SKEPTIC’S BOOKSHELF

(Courtesy of the Millennium Project.)
The Millenium Project Bookshop – 96 books about Pseudoscience.
This is a collection of books related to the Pseudoscience category in The Millenium Project. All commissions from sales in the Health Fraud, Vaccination and Pseudoscience categories are donated to the Australian Council Against Health Fraud to help in the fight against quackery.

Pseudoscience

“200% Of Nothing: An Eye-Opening Tour Through the Twists and Turns of Math Abuse and Innumeracy” by A. K. Dewdney.
One of the common threads through racism, medical quackery and pseudoscience is the abuse of statistics. Sometimes this is deliberate, sometimes it is just an indication of the ignorance of the speaker, but always it is a means of confusing or deceiving the listener. This guide to the absurdities of some mathematical claims helps to level the playing field.
“The Age of Wonder : How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science” by Richard Holmes 
 
“Astrology : True or False? – A Scientific Evaluation” by Roger B. Culver and Philip A. Ianna
“Astrology: True or False?” offers a complete and extensive summary of available evidence on astrology’s basic definitions, concepts, and effectiveness. The authors’ research revealed thousands of predictions gone “bust” – from the start of World War III to claims about the existence of an “anti-Earth” orbiting on the other side of the sun. They studied the famous twenty-year cycle” of presidential death and disaster, the “moon cycles” of crime and murder in major cities, and the incidences of major personality traits in certain sun signs. Their conclusions, while disappointing to the determined believer in astrology, are nevertheless refreshingly rational.
 
“Astrology : What’s Really in the Stars?” by J.V. Stewart
Rather than offering a blistering critique of astrology, Stewart reveals discrepancies within horoscopic astrology’s own framework to let the reader decide whether there is any merit to this ancient scheme of things.
 
“Astrology Disproved” by Lawrence E. Jerome
Why do people believe in astrology? In these uncertain times many long for the comfort of having guidance in making decisions. They would like to believe in a destiny predetermined by astral forces beyond their control. However, we must all face the world, and we must realize that our futures lie in ourselves, and not in the stars.
 
“Bad Astronomy : Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from Astrology to the Moon Landing ‘Hoax’” by Phil Plait.
“Bad Medicine : Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from Distance Healing to Vitamin O” by Christopher Wanjek.

“Bad Science” by Ben Goldacre.

“The Beginner’s Guide to Winning the Nobel Prize” by Peter Doherty.
“Bizarre Beliefs” by Simon Hoggart and Mike Hutchinson.
“The Blind Watchmaker : Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design” by Richard Dawkins.
There’s a little story to tell about this link. As you might surmise, I have been acquiring these links by using a search engine, and normally taking the top item of the search return list as likely to provide the most succinct and accurate review – a BIG mistake when an arch-enemy of science such as Philip Johnson (a lawyer) has somehow subverted the search engine dynamics to put his “review” at the top of the returns – not just ONCE but FOUR times. The ENEMIES of science work deep into the long nights, using any and every means they can to diminish scientific progress and promote their fear-based myth culture. I know what I’m talking about here – Philip Johnson is a mightily-crafty individual who manages to conceal his LIES across hundreds of pages – if you take the trouble to analyse his weasel words you’ll eventually discover his lies and hypocrisy – his agenda. One cannot imagine ANY situation where the reverse (Dawkins “bumping” destructive “reviews” of Johnson’s books up Internet search engine lists) would EVER be true. What absolutely abysmal behaviour this is! So I now include this review instead:
Dawkins has never hidden his advocacy role in describing how evolution works and how poorly our culture understands what’s going on around us. More than simply anticipating obstructionists such as Michael Behe in Darwin’s Black Box, Dawkins aims his criticism at all who adhere to the Judeo-Christian assertion that humanity has some divine mandate to exercise “dominion over the earth”. Clearly, that belief will be the undoing of the species and perhaps life itself if it isn’t shed and a better understanding of the interaction of life attained. The best place to start attaining that understanding starts with this book. Buy it, loan it, give it to those who need to learn what life’s all about – our children. [Stephen A. Haines - Ottawa, Canada]
To Richard, my heartfelt apologies.
To You the reader, please let me know if you discover any other similar instances…
“The Borderlands of Science : Where Sense Meets Nonsense” by Michael Shermer.
“Bullshit and Philosophy” by Gary L. Hardcastle and George A. Reisch (Editors).
“Bully for Brontosaurus : Reflections in Natural History” by Stephen Jay Gould.
“Chemical Sensitivity : The Truth About Environmental Illness” by Stephen Barrett and Ronald E. Gots.
One of the unifying principles of ‘alternative medicine’ is the horror of chemicals. Not things, of course, like ricin and botulism toxin which are natural and therefore not chemicals, or cyanide which is not a chemical when it comes from apricot seeds. The only problem with the chemical-free vacuum of space is the radiation.
 
“Climbing Mount Improbable” by Richard Dawkins.
Endorsements
‘A beautiful, barnstorming, thunderclap of a book’ – Mail on Sunday
‘A cracking good book on evolution’ – John Gribbin in the Times Educational Supplement
‘Mount Improbable … is Dawkins’s metaphor for natural selection: its peaks standing for evolution’s most complex achievements: the human brain, the squid’s eye, and the albatross’s aeronautical prowess … exhilarating – a perfect, elegant riposte to a great deal of fuzzy thinking about natural selection and evolution’ – Robin Mackie in the Observer
‘One of the most gifted storytellers of our generation … he is a missionary who writes like an angel. He is to Darwinism what Saint Paul is to Christianity’ – Mike Maran in Scotland on Sunday
‘The parables – rivetting biological narratives, enthralling as the Arabian Nights tales – continue to ring the changes. Yet the central message – that DNA transcends the significance of the organism – remains the same … organisms are merely vehicles for genes … This is vintage Dawkins’ – John Cornwell in the New Scientist
‘An elegant series of lectures on Darwinian selection … Dawkins continues a tradition of scientific writing from Galileo to Darwin’ – Ian Thomson in the Daily Telegraph
‘Dawkins has done more than anyone else now writing to make evolutionary biology comprehensible and acceptable’ – John Maynard Smith in the Sunday Times

“Cosmos” by Carl Sagan.
The book of the television series.
 
“Deception & Self-Deception : Investigating Psychics” by Richard Wiseman.
 
“The Demon-Haunted World : Science As a Candle in the Dark” by Carl Sagan.
Science is not test tubes, atom bombs and pollution, it is a way of thinking that separates superstition from knowledge. It is a way of deciding what is real and what is fantasy. Many of the sites listed in The Millenium Project are here because this distinction is not detected or recognised.
 
“Did Adam and Eve Have Navels?: Debunking Pseudoscience” by Martin Gardner.
 
“The Dose Makes the Poison : A Plain-Language Guide to Toxicology” by Alice Ottoboni.
A common tenet of both ‘alternative medicine’ and loony environmentalism is that you can’t have too much of a good thing or too little of a bad thing. Of course, if you believe in homeopathy you would believe in anything, but in real life it is possible to have harmless concentrations of dangerous things.
 
“An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural” by James Randi.
“The Extended Phenotype : The Long Reach of the Gene” by Richard Dawkins.
‘One feature of life in this world which, like sex, we have taken for granted and maybe should not, is that living matter comes in discrete packages called organisms. In particular, biologists interested in functional explanation usually assume that the appropriate unit for discussion is the individual organism. To us,’conflict’ usually means conflict between organisms, each one striving to maximize its own individual ‘fitness’. We recognize smaller units such as cells and genes, and larger units such as populations, societies and ecosystems, but there is no doubt that the individual body, as a discrete unit of action, exerts a powerful hold over the minds of zoologists, especially those interested in the adaptive significance of animal behaviour. One of my aims in this book is to break that hold. I want to switch emphasis from the individual body as focal unit of functional discussion. At the very least I want to make us aware of how much we take for granted when we look at life as a collection of discrete individual organisms.’
“Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds” by Charles MacKay.
This book was first published in 1841 and told about panics and hysterias of the past. Updating the book to today would just require the addition of a chapter on the Internet stock craze, an update to the witchcraft chapter to include mention of recovered memory syndrome, satanic ritual abuse and alien abductions, and a new chapter about Y2K madness.
 
“Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science” by Martin Gardner.
This is an extremely depressing and sad book, because it was written more than 50 years ago and it reads like it was written yesterday. Who would have thought that idiocies like scientology, chiropractic, homeopathy, perpetual motion machines, belief in flying saucers, and the nonsense about Atlantis and the pyramids would survive into the twenty-first century? The book is subtitled ‘A study in human gullibility’. Tragic.
“Fear of Food : Environmentalist Scams, Media Mendacity, and the Law of Disparagement” by Andrea Arnold.
Half the people in the world go to sleep hungry and what food they can get is inadequate and poor, yet people keep telling us that our food is dangerous and we should not do things that could produce safe, nutritious food for people who need it.
 
“The Flamingo’s Smile : Reflections in Natural History” by Stephen Jay Gould.
 
“The Flight from Science and Reason” by Paul R. Gross, Norman Levitt and Martin W. Lewis.
 
“Flim Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions” by James Randi.
‘I am constantly amazed by the things that people will believe in. This book is a classic exposure of nonsense, much of which has somehow survived into the twenty-first century.’
 
“Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries : Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology” by Kenneth L. Feder.
“Full Facts Book of Cold Reading” by Ian Rowland.
This is the definitive book on cold reading. It explains everything there is to know about this limitless technique! How can you apparently tell complete strangers about names, dates and events that mean something to them? This book, the most authoritative ever written on cold reading, explains it all! Learn how to do the trick even better than John Edward does it.
 
“Goddess Unmasked : The Rise of Neopagan Feminist Spirituality” by Philip G. Davis.
  
“Gulliver’s Travels” by Jonathon Swift.
“Has Science Found God? The Latest Results in the Search for Purpose in the Universe” by Victor Stenger.
 
“Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes” by Stephen Jay Gould.
“Higher Superstition : The Academic Left and Its Quarrels With Science” by Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt.
There is a famous painting by Goya called ‘The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters’. It is what this site is about and what Gross and Levitt’s book is about. It has taken centuries to refine science as a means of discovering and knowing the truth, yet science, reason and rationality are under attack by second-rate minds who want to put us and reason back to sleep.
 
“How Mumbo-jumbo Conquered the World” by Francis Wheen.
“How Not to Test a Psychic: Ten Years of Remarkable Experiments With Renowned Clairvoyant Pavel Stepanek” by Martin Gardner.
 
“How to Think about Weird Things : Critical Thinking for a New Age” by Theodore Schick and Lewis Vaughn.
“How We Believe : The Search for God in an Age of Science” by Michael Shermer.
Shermer makes the distinction between belief, non-belief and unbelief, and describes his own transition from one state to another. Religion and Science have different roles in society, and this book looks at the boundaries and overlaps which are legitimate for each.
 
“Humbug!” by Jef and Theo Clark.
“In Pursuit of Satan : The Police and the Occult” by Robert D. Hicks.
“Influence” by Robert B. Cialdini.
“Investigating the Unexplained” by Melvin Harris. 
 
“Leviathan” by Thomas Hobbes.
“Making Monsters : False Memories, Psychotherapy, and Sexual Hysteria” by Richard Ofshe and Ethan Watters.
“The Mask of Nostradamus : The Prophecies of the World’s Most Famous Seer” by James Randi.
 
“Memory Distortion : How Minds, Brains, and Societies Reconstruct the Past” by Daniel L. Schacter (Editor).
Much nonsense is talked about what goes on inside the mind and what it means to remember things and events. This book collects some essays from experts who can brush aside that nonsense and explain what it is about memories that we can trust and what we can’t.
 
“The Mismeasure of Man” by Stephen Jay Gould.
Gould has been criticised for being a bit cruel and nasty (and even a bit inaccurate) in his criticisms of people who didn’t know the things we know today, but it is a useful book to show how science can change as more is learned about something. There is no doubt that science is influenced by the culture of the time, but the difference between science and non-science or pseudoscience is that the real thing can break away from culture when the facts demand it.
 
“A Modest Proposal and Other Satires” by Jonathan Swift.
 
“The Myth of Repressed Memory : False Memories and Allegations of Sexual Abuse” by Elizabeth Loftus and Katherine Ketcham.
An entire industry has grown up around the absurd idea that children can be subjected to atrocities like sexual abuse and cannibalism and not remember any of this until some ‘therapist’ reconstructs the memories for them. This book exposes this nonsense for what it is – a vicious attack on children and families by people prepared to knowingly lie to support a crazy ideology.
 
National Science Education Standards
A landmark effort that involved thousands of teachers, scientists, science educators, and other experts across the country, these standards echo the principle that learning science is an inquiry-based process, that science in schools should reflect the intellectual traditions of contemporary science, and that all Americans have a role in improving science education. This document is invaluable to education policy-makers, school system administrators, teacher educators, individual teachers, and concerned parents.
 
“The New Age : Notes of a Fringe-Watcher” by Martin Gardner.
“Nibbling on Einstein’s Brain : The Good, the Bad and the Bogus in Science” by Diane Swanson.
 
“Objections to Astrology” by Bart J. Bok and Lawrence E. Jerome.
A statement by 192 scientists, including 19 Nobel Prize winners, who call the “science” of astrology a deception based on “magic and superstition.”
 
“On the Wild Side” by Martin Gardner.
“The Panda’s Thumb : More Reflections in Natural History” by Stephen Jay Gould.
“A Physicist’s Guide to Skepticism” by Milton A. Rothman.
“Pseudodoxia Epidemica: Or, Enquiries into Very Many Received Tenentes, and Commonly Presumed Truths” by Thomas Browne.
“Quantum Leaps in the Wrong Direction” by Charles Wynn and Arthur Wiggins.
There is a difference between science and pseudoscience, between reality and fantasy. This book shows you how to tell the difference.
“Remembering Satan” by Lawrence Wright.
 ”River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life” by Richard Dawkins.
“Science : Good, Bad and Bogus” by Martin Gardner.
“Science and Religion: Are They Compatible?” by Paul Kurtz, Barry Karr and Ranjit Sandhu.
“Science Versus Religion” by Tad S. Clements.

“The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins.
 
“Skeptics and True Believers” by Chet Raymo.
 
“The Skeptic’s Dictionary: A Collection of Strange Beliefs, Amusing Deceptions, and Dangerous Delusions” by Robert T. Carroll.
Featuring close to 400 definitions, arguments, and essays on topics ranging from acupuncture to zombies, The Skeptic’s Dictionary is a lively, commonsense trove of detailed information on all things supernatural, occult, paranormal, and pseudoscientific. It covers such categories as alternative medicine; cryptozoology; extraterrestrials and UFOs; frauds and hoaxes; junk science; logic and perception; New Age energy; and the psychic. For the open-minded seeker, the soft or hardened skeptic, and the believing doubter, this book offers a remarkable range of information that puts to the test the best arguments of true believers.
“The Skeptic’s Guide to the Paranormal” by Lynne Kelly.
 
“Smoke and Mirrors: The Devastating Effect of False Sexual Abuse Claims” by Terence W. Campbell.
 
“The Sorcerer of Kings: The Case of Daniel Dunglas Home and William Crookes” by Gordon Stein and James Randi.
“The Story of Evolution” by Joseph McCabe
Published in 1911, free from Project Gutenberg.
 
“The Structure of Evolutionary Theory” by Stephen Jay Gould.
 
“Superstition : Belief in the Age of Science” by Robert Park.
 
“The Theory of Evolution” by John Maynard Smith.
Evolution is one of those fundamental theories in science, like relativity, heliocentricity, gravity, blood circulation, atomic structure and quantum mechanics of which it can realistically be said that the idea introduced a paradigm shift in scientific thinking. Modern science would be primitive and crippled without it. This book provides excellent ammunition for the fight against those who would replace evolution with superstition.
 
“The Trouble with Science” by Robin Dunbar.
The title of this book might suggest that it is anti-science, but in fact the author posits that science is a natural part of human existence (and even that of some animals) because it is about how organisms explain and interact with the world around them. The author has produced a very good summary of the philosophical path through Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos and Feyerabend, and there is commentary about the relationship between religion and science which mightn’t please Richard Dawkins but which provides a credible explanation for the ubiquity of religion across societies (and which allows for religion to be abandoned when better knowledge comes along).
 
“The Truth about Uri Geller” by James Randi.
“Unweaving the Rainbow : Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder” by Richard Dawkins.
Believers in superstition and magic often accuse scientists, atheists and other rational thinkers of denying or even destroying mystery and beauty. Dawkins points out in this book that there is so much wonder and excitement in truth and reality that it is unnecessary to make up explanations.
“The Varieties of Scientific Experience : A Personal View of the Search for God” by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan.
Victims of Memory: Sex Abuse Accusations and Shattered Lives” by Mark Pendergrast and Melody Gavigan.
“Voodoo Science : The Road from Foolishness to Fraud” by Robert Park.
The scientific method is the best thing we have come up with to find out about how the universe works. This book is about the misuse of science and how it differs from science done badly. Both are bad, but at least bad science can be corrected. Mad science is more difficult to overcome.
 
“Weird Water & Fuzzy Logic” by Martin Gardner.
 
“Why People Believe Weird Things : Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time” by Michael Shermer.
I am continually amazed by the sorts of things that people can believe without any evidence to support the belief, and often in spite of comprehensive evidence against the belief. Faith is a wonderful thing, but it can’t make facts disappear.
 
“Why We Do It: Rethinking Sex and the Selfish Gene” by Niles Eldredge.
 
“Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History” by Stephen Jay Gould.
.

What’s It All About?

PAGE CONTENTS

THIS – 87,000 Flights each Day – The Skies over Britain – Aviation and the Environment – Climate change – Mechanisms – Total Effect – Radiative Forcing – Vostock Core Samples – Potential reductions – Reducing travel – Kyoto Protocol – Emissions Trading – References for Understanding the Atmosphere

Don’t forget my other pages, links and comments are one click away at the top right of the page…

THIS:

This increase in the number of passengers using UK airports is representative of the world as a whole. It almost exactly also represents the annual number of millions of tons of water deposited as ice in our stratosphere. Where once it was SIX MILLION TONS per year (in 1958), it now (in 2008) is THREE HUNDRED MILLION TONS per year of exhaust ICE that finds its way into our stratosphere as a consequence of Man’s aviation activities. THAT is what is VISIBLE in your sky when you are complaining about it. NOTHING ELSE. It’s a piffling amount compared with the amount of water vapor ALREADY up there!

87,000 Flights each Day

http://www.natca.org/mediacenter/bythenumbers.msp#1

On any given day, more than 87,000 flights are in the skies in the United States. Only one-third are commercial carriers, like American, United or Southwest. On an average day, air traffic controllers handle 28,537 commercial flights (major and regional airlines), 27,178 general aviation flights (private planes), 24,548 air taxi flights (planes for hire), 5,260 military flights and 2,148 air cargo flights (Federal Express, UPS, etc.). At any given moment, roughly 5,000 planes are in the skies above the United States. In one year, controllers handle an average of 64 million takeoffs and landings.

For every one flight you see listed on an airport monitor, two you don’t see show up on air traffic controllers’ screens. It would take approximately 7,300 airport terminal monitors to show all the flights controllers handle in a single day and approximately 460 monitors to show the number of flights being handled at any one time.

The Skies over Britain

Aviation and the Environment

(From Wikipedia)
 Aviation impacts the environment because aircraft engines emit noise, particulates, gases, and contribute to climate change and global dimming. Despite emission reductions from automobiles and more fuel-efficient and less polluting turbofan and turboprop engines, the rapid growth of air travel in recent years contributes to an increase in total pollution attributable to aviation. In the EU greenhouse gas emissions from aviation increased by 87% between 1990 and 2006.

There is an ongoing debate about possible taxation of air travel and the inclusion of aviation in an emissions trading scheme, with a view to ensuring that the total external costs of aviation are taken into account.

 Climate change

 Like all human activities involving combustion, most forms of aviation release carbon dioxide (CO2) into the earth’s atmosphere, very likely contributing to the acceleration of global warming. In addition to the CO2 released by most aircraft in flight through the burning of fuels such as JP-4 and JP-8, Jet-A (turbine aircraft) or Avgas (piston aircraft), the aviation industry also contributes greenhouse gas emissions from ground airport vehicles and those used by passengers and staff to access airports, as well as through emissions generated by the production of energy used in airport buildings, the manufacture of aircraft and the construction of airport infrastructure.

While the principal greenhouse gas emission from powered aircraft in flight is CO2, other emissions may include nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide, (together termed oxides of nitrogen or NOx), water vapour and particulates (soot and sulfate particles), sulfur oxides, carbon monoxide (which bonds with oxygen to become CO2 immediately upon release), incompletely-burned hydrocarbons, tetra-ethyl lead (piston aircraft only), and radicals such as hydroxyl, depending on the type of aircraft in use. The contribution of civil aircraft-in-flight to global CO2 emissions has been estimated at around 2%. However, in the case of high-altitude airliners which frequently fly near or in the stratosphere, non-CO2 altitude-sensitive effects may increase the total impact on anthropogenic (man-made) climate change significantly — this problem is not present for aircraft that routinely operate at lower altitudes well inside the troposphere, such as balloons, airships, helicopters, most light aircraft, and many commuter aircraft.

Mechanisms

Subsonic aircraft contribute when aloft to climate change in four ways:

Carbon Dioxide (CO2)
CO2 emissions from aircraft-in-flight are the most significant and best understood element of aviation’s total contribution to climate change. The level and effects of CO2 emissions are currently believed to be broadly the same regardless of altitude (i.e they have the same atmospheric effects as ground based emissions). In 1992, emissions of CO2 from aircraft were estimated at around 2% of all such anthropogenic emissions, though CO2 concentration attributable to aviation in 1992 was around 1% of the total anthropogenic increase, because emissions occurred only in the last 50 years.

Oxides of nitrogen (NOx)
At the high altitudes flown by large jet airliners around the tropopause, emissions of NOx are particularly effective in forming ozone (O3) in the upper troposphere. High altitude (8-13km) NOx emissions result in greater concentrations of O3 than surface NOx emissions, and these in turn have a greater global warming effect. The effect of O3 concentrations are regional and local (as opposed to CO2 emissions, which are global).
NOx emissions also reduce ambient levels of methane, another greenhouse gas, resulting in a climate cooling effect. This effect does not, however, offset the O3 forming effect of NOx emissions. It is now believed that aircraft sulfur and water emissions in the stratosphere tend to deplete O3, partially offsetting the NOx-induced O3 increases. These effects have not been quantified. This problem does not apply to aircraft that fly lower in the troposphere, such as light aircraft or many commuter aircraft.

Water vapor (H2O) Contrails
Aiircraft in flight at high altitudes emit water vapor, a greenhouse gas, which under certain atmospheric conditions forms condensation trails, or contrails. Contrails are visible line clouds that form in cold, humid atmospheres and are thought to have a global warming effect (though one less significant than either CO2 emissions or NOx induced effects). Contrails are extremely rare from lower-altitude aircraft, or from propeller aircraft or rotorcraft.
Cirrus clouds have been observed to develop after the persistent formation of contrails and have been found to have a global warming effect over-and-above that of contrail formation alone. There is a degree of scientific uncertainty over the contribution of contrail and cirrus cloud formation to global warming and attempts to estimate aviation’s overall climate change contribution do not tend to include its effects on cirrus cloud enhancement.

Particulates
Least significant is the release of soot and sulfate particles. Soot absorbs heat and has a warming effect; sulfate particles reflect radiation and have a small cooling effect. In addition, they can influence the formation and properties of clouds. All aircraft powered by combustion will release some amount of soot.

Total Effect

In attempting to aggregate and quantify these effects the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has estimated that aviation’s total climate impact is some 2-4 times that of its CO2 emissions alone (excluding the potential impact of cirrus cloud enhancement). This is measured as radiative forcing. While there is uncertainty about the exact level of impact of NOx and water vapour, governments have accepted the broad scientific view that they do have an effect. Accordingly, more recent UK government policy statements have stressed the need for aviation to address its total climate change impacts and not simply the impact of CO2.
The IPCC has estimated that aviation is responsible for around 3.5% of anthropogenic climate change, a figure which includes both CO2 and non-CO2 induced effects. The IPCC has produced scenarios estimating what this figure could be in 2050. The central case estimate is that aviation’s contribution could grow to 5% of the total contribution by 2050 if action is not taken to tackle these emissions, though the highest scenario is 15%. Moreover, if other industries achieve significant cuts in their own greenhouse gas emissions, aviation’s share as a proportion of the remaining emissions could also rise. Per passenger kilometre, figures from British Airways suggest carbon dioxide emissions of 0.1kg for large jet airliners (a figure which does not account for the production of other pollutants or condensation trails).

RADIATIVE FORCING 

The radiative forcing units are in watts per metre squared. The total positive forcing (on the right) amounts to 0.045 W/m2.

This must be compared with the world average insolation of 1330W/m2. It is 0.34 millionths of it.

Insolation values range from 800 to 950 kWh/(kWp·y) in Norway to up to 2,900 in Australia.

 

A large volcanic eruption would seriously lower this insolation.

VOSTOCK CORE SAMPLES

This is a plot of CO2 concentration, ambient temperature, CH4 concentration, insolation, running backwards in time for 420,000 years. CO2 can be seen to LAG ambient temperature.

Potential reductions

Modern jet aircraft are significantly more fuel efficient (and thus emit less CO2 in particular) than 30 years ago. Moreover, manufacturers have forecast and are committed to achieving reductions in both CO2 and NOx emissions with each new generation of design of aircraft and engine. The accelerated introduction of more modern aircraft therefore represents a major opportunity to reduce emissions per passenger kilometre flown.
Other opportunities arise from the optimisation of airline timetables, route networks and flight frequencies to increase load factors (minimise the number of empty seats flown), together with the optimisation of airspace. Another possible reduction of the climate-change impact is the limitation of cruise altitude of aircraft.
This would lead to a significant reduction in high-altitude contrails for a marginal trade-off of increased flight time and an estimated 4% increase in CO2 emissions. Drawbacks of this solution include very limited airspace capacity to do this, especially in Europe and North America and increased fuel burn due to jet aircraft being less efficient at lower cruise altitudes. However, the total number of passenger kilometres is growing at a faster rate than manufacturers can reduce emissions, and at present there is no readily available alternative to burning kerosene.
The growth in the aviation sector is therefore likely to continue to generate an increasing volume of greenhouse gas emissions. However some scientists and companies such as GE Aviation and Virgin Fuels are researching biofuel technology for use in jet aircraft. As part of this test Virgin Atlantic Airways flew a Boeing 747 from London Heathrow Airport to Amsterdam Schiphol Airport on 24 February 2008, with one engine burning a combination of coconut oil and babassu oil. Greenpeace’s chief scientist Doug Parr said that the flight was “high-altitude greenwash” and that producing organic oils to make biofuel could lead to deforestation and a large increase in greenhouse gas emissions.
The majority of the world’s aircraft are not large jetliners but smaller piston aircraft, and many are capable of using ethanol as a fuel, with major modifications. While ethanol also releases CO2 during combustion, the plants cultivated to make it draw that same CO2 out of the atmosphere while they are growing, making the fuel closer to climate-change-neutral. The main problems with burning ethanol as a fuel are that it takes more energy to produce than is returned, it displaces food crops and thus raises the price of food and causes soil degradation.
While they are not suitable for long-haul or transoceanic flights, turboprop aircraft used for commuter flights bring two significant benefits: they often burn considerably less fuel per passenger mile, and they typically fly at lower altitudes, well inside the tropopause, where there are no concerns about ozone or contrail production. For even shorter flights, air taxi service using newer, fuel-efficient four- or six-seat light piston aircraft could provide an even lower environmental impact.

Reducing travel

An alternative method for reducing the environmental impact of aviation is to constrain demand for air travel. The UK study Predict and Decide – Aviation, climate change and UK policy, notes that a 10 per cent increase in fares generates a 5 to 15 per cent reduction in demand, and recommends that the British government should manage demand rather than provide for it. This would be accomplished via a strategy that presumes “… against the expansion of UK airport capacity” and constrains demand by the use of economic instruments to price air travel less attractively. A study published by the campaign group Aviation Environment Federation (AEF) concludes that by levying £9 billion of additional taxes the annual rate of growth in demand in the UK for air travel would be reduced to 2 per cent. The ninth report of the House of Commons Environmental Audit Select Committee, published in July 2006, recommends that the British government rethinks its airport expansion policy and considers ways, particularly via increased taxation, in which future demand can be managed in line with industry performance in achieving fuel efficiencies, so that emissions are not allowed to increase in absolute terms.

Kyoto Protocol

Greenhouse gas emissions from fuel consumption in international aviation, in contrast to those from domestic aviation and from energy use by airports, are not assigned under the first round of the Kyoto Protocol, neither are the non-CO2 climate effects. In place of agreement, Governments agreed to work through the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to limit or reduce emissions and to find a solution to the allocation of emissions from international aviation in time for the second round of Kyoto in 2009 in Copenhagen.

Emissions Trading

As part of that process the ICAO has endorsed the adoption of an open emissions trading system to meet CO2 emissions reduction objectives. Guidelines for the adoption and implementation of a global scheme are currently being developed, and will be presented to the ICAO Assembly in 2007, although the prospects of a comprehensive inter-governmental agreement on the adoption of such a scheme are uncertain.
Within the European Union, however, the European Commission has resolved to incorporate aviation in the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). A new directive has been adopted by the European Parliament in July 2008 and approved by the Council in October 2008. It will enter into force on 1 January 2012.

Well, there you are…    ….the most relevant aspect of this report is this:

Aviation is responsible for ONLY 3.5% of anthropic climate change, the existence of which is yet to be proved.

.

References for Understanding the Atmosphere

Holton, James R. An Introduction to Dynamic Meteorology. 2nd edition (London: Academic Press Inc, 1979)
Battan, Louis J. Fundamentals of Meteorology. (Englewood, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1979)
McIlveen, Robin. Basic Meteorology: A Physical Outline. (Berkshire, UK: Van Norstrand Company Ltd., 1986).

And more:

Types of Contrails

PAGE CONTENTS

GROUND LEVEL – EARLIEST PHOTO – WAVE VORTICES – PROPELLER VORTICES – ‘SHOCK’ CLOUDS

Don’t forget my other pages, links and comments are one click away at the top right of the page…

GROUND LEVEL

(TROPOSPHERIC)“ectoplasm and wave vortex”

This aircraft is on approach in humid stormy conditions. Its wheels are down and its flaps are set at fifteen degrees. A temporary “cloud” is visible over the flapped part of the wing indicating the strong pressure reduction caused by the extended flaps, and flowing back from the outermost flap edges is a pair of very strong vortices (“ectoplasm”!) thrown into sharp relief by the clouds of water droplets condensed by the severe reduction in air pressure at their centres. The vortices rise and fall with pressure fluctuations, generated in part by ambient conditions, and also changes in aircraft attitude. Some distance behind the aircraft its wave vortex is remarkably apparent. This is the “mixing engine” that causes contrails to fill supersaturated stratospheric layers.

Why are vortices so stable? Because they spin. Their rotational energy is high, and they can only be brought to a stop by viscous friction between them and the surrounding atmosphere.

The pillar of a tornado is a natural vortex, and is also typically so energetic that water vapor condenses into a “mist” (of water droplets) in the core of its vortex from what one might call the “centrifugal pressure drop” – but one shouldn’t - because the real reason for this condensation is the drop in temperature which occurs as a consequence of this drop in pressure.

THE EARLIEST PHOTO

OF PERSISTENT CONTRAILS (a.k.a. “chemtrails”)

The left-hand side of the picture was probably taken towards the end of August 1940, when the first high-altitude gun battles were being fought between the RAF and the Luftwaffe. The participants were Hawker Hurricanes and Me 109s, which were both fitted with superchargers which enabled them to manoever and fight at around 27,000 ft. The photo is taken over St. Paul’s Cathedral, London. Apologies for the poor state of the picture, but who knows how many times this picture has been copied…

There is a barrack-room lawyer who has claimed the above picture to be fake. If so, then so is this:

Seeing that I am still being spammed by this guy and others, I’m forced to point out the obvious…

These are NOT identical pictures, they ARE of St. Paul’s Cathedral, they are obviously fighter battles, and just as obviously NOT anti-aircraft fire, they AREN’T obscured by much bomb smoke because fighter battles tend to PRECEDE major bombing, as the bombers wouldn’t be able to survive fighter attacks. The defending fighters would have had to be “cleared” first, which is what happened.

As they AREN’T identical, (and yet one can see elements common to both) these pictures VALIDATE EACH OTHER. (I’m not sure that a NASA site would use “made up” material. Why would they need to, in this instance?) They are, of course, NOT the only pictures available for validation either…

The right-hand side of the first picture is a more contemporary copy of St. Paul’s for comparison.

And here is another picture of St. Paul’s, taken somewhat later in the war, where Allied bombers are circling to assemble prior to setting out to attack Germany. In this case one may discern further familiar contrail features such as ice agglomeration, falling, and shear. 

WAVE VORTEX (1)

This was originally titled “Cessna Downwash” but a better name for it is “aircraft and its wave vortex climbing through clouds”. The powerful vortex generated by the pressure difference (inflight) between the topside and underside of aircraft wings is responsible for the lift which keeps the aircraft aloft and also the drag which demands the power input from its engines. The wave vortex of a jumbo jet has been known to cause light aircraft to crash five minutes AFTER the jumbo has passed. It causes “distrails” (negative contrails – ice crystal trail agglomeration and descent) and much furore in the “chemtrail community” where it is thought to be some new and misunderstood aspect of “spraying”. In reality it is the “mixing engine” which causes contrails to fill stratospheric layers with ice, and as a consequence, turn blue skies to white skies. (The”chemtrail” community immediately starts coughing!)

Let me quote you one of our “heroes” who calls himself skywitness because he believes himself to be a lone watcher of the skies on the side of the brave and true. (But on the other hand he blocked me immediately from his channel and then pursued me avidly through other channels’ comment boxes, claiming his contrail videos were irrefutable proof of “chemtrail spraying”). He asks:

“I would like to know if anyone has seen a rip in the clouds as it was taking place. Was it something that flew through the cloud, or did it just start to appear out of nowhere? I have seen more than a few of these type of rips or trails, but I have never seen how it takes place…”

All I’m asking is that anyone that knows him and reads this, could you get back to him and put him out of his misery? 

WAVE VORTEX (2)

The USAF transport plane has just released its “decoy” flares into what would have been its invisible wave vortex. Chemtrailers in particular have to realise that this twin vortex extends backwards (and keeps rotating!) for at least fifty miles behind the airplane, and also, whether it is visible or not, it is always there.

These flares, by-the-way, are making the only definite “chemtrails” that can be proven to exist. Wherever this smoke falls, it will provide a few plants with a little extra fertilizer…

….Aaaaah. And of course I completely forgot these:

 PROPELLER VORTICES

These have also been fervently denied by the relentlessly science-blind as “figments of a feverish imagination”.

Like this:

"figments" from WWII Flying Fortresses

And this:

"Figments" of a C-130 Tanker

And this:

"Figments" of a Kear Cobra helicopter

And this:

"Figments" of a Catalina

 ’SHOCK’ CLOUDS

(Also known as a “Mach Cones”):

Stunning!

Mach Cone of today's B-17

Wow! (Conspicuous consumption or what?)

Trails Seen from Space

PAGE CONTENTS

ATLANTIC OCEAN – MID-EUROPE - THE CROW INSTABILITY - THE “THIRD” TRAIL – SUPERSATURATION – “GAPS” – FUEL VENTS – AIRBUS 340 RTO BRAKE TEST

Don’t forget my other pages, links and comments are one click away at the top right of the page…

 ATLANTIC OCEAN 

A monochrome view of the North Atlantic Ocean by AtlanticSat shows Greenland, Iceland, the British Isles, and part of Norway. Prominent in the photo is a north-south ridge of high pressure, with cold dry air to the west, and warmer wetter air to the east. Aircraft approaching or leaving this ridge have struck permanent contrail conditions on its west side. The trails are at even intervals which suggest there are only TWO great-circle routes involved (London-New York and London LAX) with regular flights from each. The stratosphere (where the trails are) is obviously moving north-to-south.
The trails peter out approaching or leaving the British Isles, where the wetter conditons don’t obtain (for a change).
Chemtrailers must ask themselves why the pilots’ aim was so poor… 

MID-EUROPE 

Here we are centered roughly over Hamburg; Copenhagen is right centre top and the Baltic Sea further to the right. We are looking at a “triangle” of air travel activity between Kiel (center top), Berlin (bottom right) and the Rhineland (bottom left).
You can see evidence that the stratosphere is sliding along at possibly 100kph from the northwest – maybe!

THE CROW INSTABILITY 

I originally thought these were local control surface vortices, but I have been better advised since, by Jay Reynolds. Thanks, Jay!
The Crow instability is a vortex pair instability, and typically goes through several stages:
- A pair of counter rotating vortices act upon each other to amplify small sinusoidal distortions in their vortex shapes (Normally created by some initial disturbance in the system).
- The waves develop into either symmetric or anti-symmetric modes, depending on the nature of the initial disturbance.
- These distortions grow, both through interaction from one vortex on another, and also ‘Self Induction’ of a vortex with itself. This leads to an exponential growth in the vortex wave amplitude.
- The vortex amplitudes reach a critical value and reconnect, forming a chain of vortex rings.
Initially the vortex pair falls rapidly downward. Perturbations of the vortices from the ambient atmosphere grow in a sinusoidal mutual inductance instability (the Crow instability). Eventually the vortices touch, reconnect and form vortex rings which oscillate, interact with themselves and the atmospheric turbulence and stratification, and finally dissolve. During their lifetime the rings continue to drop, giving rise to the periodic series of puffs often seen in contrail evolution.
These are spin-stabilized and follow the deflected air and take a while to spin to a stop. Ice is precipitated out of the -40 deg C water vapour in the vortex vacua. Altogether an intriguing visual phenomenon!
http://www.cerfacs.fr/cfd/wake_vortex_26.php is a useful reference… 

And this low-quality video reveals…

THE “THIRD” TRAIL… 

In this case the fifth… is the trail left by the APU (Auxiliary Power Unit) which is a normal (but small) gas turbine/electrical generator set. As with the main engines, it burns kerosine to form carbon dioxide and steam. As with the main engines, it leaves a trail. But where’s it coming from? 

SUPERSATURATION

“the whole plane is spraying”

When stratospheric air is very clean and stable it may contain MORE water vapour than it does when it is described as having 100% Relative Humidity. The slightest disturbance to it will cause ice crystals to precipitate out of it. It cannot go into super-saturation if there are ANY nucleative materials of any sort in this air.
Here is just such a case, which occurs on occasion in the sub-tropical stratosphere. The trail forms by “burst condensation” into super-cooled droplets which are microscopic initially and can refract sunlight by interference. Over a small space of time these droplets grow progressively as water vapour deposits more supercooled water into them. As they progressively increase their size they run through a progression of light frequencies which they interfere with. This is NOT a refraction effect.

Chemtrailers claim the colours to be indicative of “foreign materials” which is quite the reverse of the truth; only pure water will do this, and only pure air will have become supersaturated in the first place.
The fact that in supersaturated conditions, large aircraft can place thousands of tons of ice into the stratosphere is covered by the paper “Contrails to Cirrus” mentioned in the INTRODUCTION page.
http://jazzroc.wordpress.com/2008/11/22/01-compendium/ 

“GAPS” 

“Gaps” are claimed by chemtrailers as “evidence that planes are spraying”. Such gaps will of course appear in any persistent contrail where the stratospheric air RH falls below 100%. Generally, of course, the humidity tails off gradually, and the transition of trail-to-no-trail is quite indistinct.
In THIS case, the “transition” is a hard and sharp right angle. Too sharp, in fact, for a whirling twin-vortex contrail… Close inspection of the “sky” each side of the “gap” shows it to be comprised of a chemtrailer’s vertical “airbrush strokes”! Naughty! 

FUEL VENTS 

Here we have an aircraft actually spraying something; it’s fuel. If some in-flight emergency occurs and the plane must make a quick landing, it must first lose weight, for it cannot land at its take-off weight. Some of its fuel must GO.
Chemtrailers are quick to claim this shot as “spraying evidence”. 

AIRBUS 340 RTO BRAKE TEST

One of the tests to be undertaken for the certification of a new aircraft is the accelerate-stop with “maximum energy braking” test. This was carried out for the A340-500/600 on February 12, 2002 in Istres using MSN360, the prototype aircraft.
This test, which is based on brakes already close to their wear limit, is always one of the last to be performed and it is not unusual for unexpected events to occur. It is in general a destructive test for the brakes, wheels and tyres, with occasionally some risk of local damage to the airplane. In this particular instance the test proceeded normally, with the target braking distance and brake energy levels being obtained during the deceleration. However, several minutes after the aircraft had come to a stand, damage occurred to a number of wheels.
The cause of the wheel damage, which was consistent across affected wheels, has been identified as an insufficient margin in the design of the wheels to withstand the extreme heat transfer from the brakes and the associated increase in tyre pressure after the aircraft had stopped. The results were reviewed with the component manufacturer and modifications made. These were local reinforcement of the wheels and modifications to the thermal shield between the brake assembly and the wheel.

6 Porkies

PAGE CONTENTS

6 PORKIES – AEROSOLS – THE ATMOSPHERE – THE WMO – ATMOSNAPS

Don’t forget my other pages, links and comments are one click away at the top right of the page…

 

“PORK PIE” = “LIE”  - Cockney rhyming slang. 

“Obviously your alleged credentials are fraud” – has your short-term memory passed away? ONE.

“A true person of Science would step forward and lay all questions to rest” – ditto, and I have. Check my comments here. Check http://www.contrailscience.com. Check http://www.myspace.com/jazzroc TWO.

“You do nothing” – I COULD start pasting again… THREE.

“It is safe to assume that people’s claims must have basis” – assuming is the only action you do. Why not educate yourself in science? FOUR.

“I’d like nothing more than for someone to prove nothing is going on” – FIVE.

“You are by far not only a fraud but a coward as well” – GIANT PORKY NUMBER SIX.

AEROSOLS

What a great porky this one is!

The non-scientific word-association goes aerosol – hair spray – sprayers (truly inspirational!)

TO THIS:

But never a thought to CHECKING UP what the REAL MEANING (scientific meaning) of aerosol ACTUALLY IS:

Aerosol – from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
Aerosol – contamination in northeastern India and Bangladesh.
Technically, an aerosol is a suspension of fine solid particles or liquid droplets in a gas. Examples are smoke, oceanic haze, air pollution, smog and CS gas. In general conversation, aerosol usually refers to an aerosol spray can or the output of such a can.
The word aerosol derives from the fact that matter “floating” in air is a suspension (a mixture in which solid or liquid or combined solid-liquid particles are suspended in a fluid). To differentiate suspensions from true solutions, the term sol evolved – originally meant to cover dispersions of tiny (sub-microscopic) particles in a liquid.
With studies of dispersions in air, the term aerosol evolved and now embraces both liquid droplets, solid particles, and combinations of these.

Workplace exposure
Concentrated aerosols from substances such as silica, asbestos, and diesel particulate matter are sometimes found in the workplace and have been shown to result in a number of diseases including silicosis and black lung. Respirators can protect workers from harmful aerosol exposure. In the United States the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health certifies respirators through the National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory to ensure that they protect workers and the public from harmful airborne contaminants.

Effect on climate
Aerosols over the Amazon each September for four burning seasons (2005 through 2008). The aerosol scale (yellow to dark reddish-brown) indicates the relative amount of particles that absorb sunlight. Anthropogenic aerosols, particularly sulfate aerosols from fossil fuel combustion, exert a cooling influence on the climate which partly counteracts the warming induced by greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. This effect is accounted for in many climate models. Recent research, as yet unconfirmed, suggests that aerosol diffusion of light may have increased the carbon sink in the earth’s ecosystem.

Recent studies of the Sahel drought and major increases since 1967 in rainfall over the Northern Territory, Kimberley, Pilbara and around the Nullarbor Plain have led some scientists to conclude that the aerosol haze over South and East Asia has been steadily shifting tropical rainfall in both hemispheres southward.

The latest studies of severe rainfall declines over southern Australia since 1997 have led climatologists there to consider the possibility that these Asian aerosols have shifted not only tropical but also mid-latitude systems southward.

Oxides of nitrogen (NOx) in the atmosphere are a form of pollution which can give rise to smog and act as a greenhouse gas. Their persistence in the atmosphere is affected by aerosol droplets of water.
In 1964 long chain fatty acids, either naturally produced from marine organisms dispersed into the atmosphere by wave action or man-made, were found to coat these droplets. In 2006 there was a study of the effect of the LCFA on the persistence of NOx, but the long term implications, although thought to be significant, have yet to be determined.

So AEROSOL means this:

Or this:

A REALTIME study of aerosol presence (made by satellite) all over the world may be obtained here, and here is a representative image, from which you can see the satellite passes 90 minutes apart.

There is a video made over a fortnight showing the main aerosol action occurs travelling westward on a line passing through BANGLADESH and the SAHARA DESERT. It is MAN-MADE – the consequence of many hundreds of millions of humans living close to the poverty line…  slash-and-burn, cooking fires, forest fires, vegetable farming decomposition, volcanoes…

No aircraft contrails are found anywhere NEAR this line…

So much for the “chemtrailers” and their “the NWO is poisoning the whole world” theory…

THE ATMOSPHERE

What is it?

It’s a mixture of invisible element and compound gases; nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, water vapour, argon, neon, and trace amounts of other inert gaseous elements. This mixture keeps us in a healthy condition, and imbalance in this mixture can poison and/or kill us. We would all prefer to be at Standard Temperature and Pressure, which is 20 deg C (70 deg F) and 1000 millibars (14.7 lb/in2).

Standard Temperature and Pressure occur at Sea Level, but the atmosphere may reach up to 200Km or more (the INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION orbits at 400Km and you can bet there’s very little atmosphere, if any, at that height!) The following diagram is a graph of atmospheric pressure against height over sea level (altitude). The space station height is three graph-heights higher than the graph below.

There is an asymptotic fall-off of pressure with altitude which is easy to see. This, when combined with the concomitant drop in temperature lends weight to the understanding that the stratosphere cannot bear much loading of contrail ice before it saturates, and cannot absorb more.

The region just immediately higher than the tropopause (at approximately 26,000 feet to 39,000 feet) is the region where passenger aircraft fly, for reasons of safety and economy.

The pressure above the tropopause is one-fifth that at sea level, but at the high cruising speed of 550 miles per hour, there is sufficient dynamic lift for safe and stable flight.

This region is the CAUSE of the “chemtrail” controversy, for it is COLD, STABLE, and INCAPABLE of absorbing large amounts of combustion steam as water vapor. As a consequence this steam cools to microscopically-fine ice crystals, which form – TRAILS behind the aircraft.

And the following is a diagram of air dewpoint and temperature plotted against height above sea level (altitude).

If you look at the dewpoint line (on left) you can see it move continually leftward with increase in height above sea level. This powerfully indicates that with increasing height, the atmosphere is increasingly incapable of absorbing the exhaust water formed by burning kerosine in gas turbines.

Looking at the temperature (lapse rate) line on the right, you can see that it moves leftward with increase in height above sea level, until it reaches the tropopause, where it starts to edge to the right again. You can see that after the tropopause the atmosphere gets WARMER with increasing height. The concave shapes to both dewpoint and temperature here indicate some energy input – either solar ‘focusing’ from tropospheric clouds, or jet stream mixing energy – it is hard to guess.

Another couple of points. This chart was obviously made on a cold day; the sea level temperature is just sub-zero. However, two hundred metres higher, and the air temperature is five degrees higher. Bumps and dips in these two lines show where you may infer the presence of clouds.

There is much more to learn about our atmosphere than I have given here, but I can heartily recommend this link to the UK’s Met Office.

After that you can answer these questions (can’t you!).

As further confirmation I strongly recommend AtOptics

.

And a word to the “wise”. There is a lot of scuttlebutt going around which says “Global Warming is just a myth started by our duplicitous governments as a means of extracting additional taxes”. Well I remember a time when it was thought we were headed directly for a new ice age.

(This was just a journalistic ruse. The next Ice Age will occur approximately 16,000 years from the present.)

Since then, it is true that government funds are available for the investigation of GW to the detriment of other research, and that horrible thing “political correctness” has raised its ugly head above the horizon, but the facts are too numerous to mention that the climate is warming, but also that other facts remain unmentioned, which leaves a question of politics…

See “Global Warming is a Myth” under G in this blog.

http://jazzroc.wordpress.com/2008/11/03/19-global-dimming/

THE WORLD METEOROLOGICAL ORGANIZATION

One of the major purposes of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), as laid down in its Convention, is “To facilitate worldwide cooperation in the establishment of networks of stations for the making of meteorological observations as well as hydrological and other geophysical observations related to meteorology, and to promote the establishment and maintenance of centres charged with the provision of meteorological and related services”. Accordingly, WMO Members operate, in a coordinated manner, complex networks in space, the atmosphere, on land and over oceans. In 2007, Members decided to work towards enhanced integration of both the WMO Global Observing System (GOS) and WMO co-sponsored observing systems such as the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS), Global Terrestrial Observing System (GTOS) and Global Climate Observing System (GCOS). This concept is called the WMO Integrated Global Observing Systems (WIGOS).

Currently, more than 10000 manned and automatic surface weather stations, 1000 upper-air stations, over 7000 ships, more than 100 moored and 1000 drifting buoys, hundreds of weather radars and over 3000 specially equipped commercial aircraft measure key parameters of the atmosphere, land and ocean surface every day. The space-based component of the WMO Observing System contains operational polar-orbiting and geostationary satellites and also R&D environmental satellites complementing ground-based global observations. These activities are coordinated within the Global Observing System (GOS) of the World Weather Watch (WWW) of WMO. Several WMO Programmes sponsor or participate in the operation of several global observing systems. Other global observing systems, e.g. the global hydrological networks (WHYCOS), function principally on a national or regional level.

Observation programmes such as the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) and the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) will continue to play a major role in improving the collection of required data for the development of climate forecasts and climate change detection. WMO’s Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) provides data for scientific assessments and for early warnings of changes in the chemical composition and related physical characteristics of the atmosphere that may have adverse affects upon our environment. Through its Instruments and Methods of Observation Programme (IMOP), WMO ensures that meteorological instruments, including manual and automatic ground-based stations and space-based observing systems, are accurate and provide standardized data.

WMO monitoring and observing systems will be a core component of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), aimed at developing a comprehensive, coordinated and sustained Earth observation system of systems to understand and address global environmental and economic challenges.

ATMOSNAPS

This is, of course, a silly word coined by me to introduce these pictures of Earth’s atmosphere which have been taken by some of the NASA Space Shuttle astronauts from the International Space Station.

I find them most stimulating and interesting. We spend all our time with a “flat-earther” viewpoint, looking up at clouds and failing to see them for what they truly are.

Moment of Launch - "the twang's the thang!"

Shuttle lift-off at Cape Kennedy

Out on a limb...

A massive cumulo-nimbus from above...

A Saharan sandstorm leaves the West Coast of Africa

Eddies form in Cirrus clouds passing over a Mediterranean isle

A sunset from space...