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CONTRAILS by WIKI – CONTRAILS by AIRLINERS.NET - CONTRAILSCIENCE COMEDY SPOT – CLOUDS – COWBRAIN – CHEMTRAIL HISTORY

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CONTRAILS

WIKIPEDIA DEFINITION

Contrails or vapor trails are condensation trails and artificial cirrus clouds made by the exhaust of aircraft engines or wingtip vortices which precipitate a stream of tiny ice crystals in moist, frigid upper air. Being composed of water, the visible white streams are not, in and of themselves, air pollution. However, contrails generated by engine exhaust are inevitably linked with typical fuel combustion pollutants. Contrails might also be considered visual pollution.

Contents
* 1 Condensation from engine exhaust
* 2 Condensation from wing-tip pressure
* 3 Contrails and climate
3.1 September 11, 2001 climate impact study
* 4 See also
* 5 Related matters
* 6 References
* 7 External links

Condensation from engine exhaust

The main products of hydrocarbon fuel combustion are carbon dioxide and water vapor. At high altitudes this water vapor emerges into a cold environment, and the local increase in water vapor can push the water content of the air past saturation point. The vapor then condenses into tiny water droplets and/or desublimates into ice. These millions of tiny water droplets and/or ice crystals form the contrails. The energy drop (and therefore, time and distance) the vapor needs to condense accounts for the contrail forming some way behind the aircraft’s engines. The majority of the cloud content comes from water trapped in the surrounding air.  At high altitudes, supercooled water vapor requires a trigger to encourage desublimation. The exhaust particles in the aircraft’s exhaust act as this trigger, causing the trapped vapor to rapidly turn to ice crystals. Exhaust contrails usually occur at above 26,000 feet. where the temperature is below -40°C (-40°F).

Condensation from wing-tip pressure

Main article: wingtip vortices

The wings of an airplane cause a drop in air pressure in the vicinity of the wing. This brings with it a drop in temperature, which can cause water to condense out of the air and form a contrail but only at higher altitudes. At lower altitudes, this phenomenon is also known as “ectoplasm.” Ectoplasm is more commonly seen during high energy maneuvers like those of a fighter jet, or on jet liners during takeoff and landing, at areas of very low pressure, including over the wings, and often around turbo-fan intakes on takeoff.

Contrails and climate

Contrails, by affecting cloud formation, can act as a radiative forcing. Studies have found that contrails trap outgoing longwave radiation emitted by the Earth and atmosphere (positive radiative forcing) at a greater rate than they reflect incoming solar radiation (negative radiative forcing).

Therefore, the overall effect of contrails is warming. However, the effect varies daily and annually, and overall the size of the forcing is not well known: globally (for 1992 air traffic conditions), values range from 3.5 mW/m² to 17 mW/m². Other studies have determined that night flights are most responsible for the warming effect: while accounting for only 25% of daily air traffic, they contribute 60 to 80% of contrail radiative forcing.

Similarly, winter flights account for only 22% of annual air traffic, but contribute half of the annual mean radiative forcing.

September 11, 2001 climate impact study

It had been hypothesized that in regions such as the United States with heavy air traffic, contrails affected the weather, reducing solar heating during the day and radiation of heat during the night by increasing the albedo. The suspension of air travel for three days in the United States after September 11, 2001 provided an opportunity to test this hypothesis. Measurements did show that without contrails the local diurnal temperature range (difference of day and night temperatures) was about 1 degree Celsius higher than immediately before; however, it has also been suggested that this was due to unusually clear weather during the period.

See also

* Aviation and climate change
* Cirrus cloud
* Global dimming
* Ship tracks
* List of environment topics
* Chemtrail conspiracy theory

Related matters

* Aurora aircraft are hypothesized high-technology Black project aircraft which leave “donuts-on-a-rope” contrails.

(But “donuts-on-a-rope” contrails are known to be an occasional consequence of the normal wave vortex of normal aircraft. The two vortices which comprise the wave vortex of an aircraft occasionally grow to interfere with each other, and generate coupled vortices at right angles to the original pair. These look like “smoke rings”, or “donuts”. See “The Crowe Instability” in “Trails from Space”: http://jazzroc.wordpress.com/2008/11/20/03-trails-seen-from-space/ )

References

1. NASA, Contrail Education FAQ
2. Ponater et al., GRL, 32 (10): L10706 2005
3. Stuber, Nicola; Piers Forster, Gaby Rädel, Keith Shine (June 15, 2006). “The importance of the diurnal and annual cycle of air traffic for contrail radiative forcing”. Nature 441: 864-867. DOI:10.1038/nature04877.
4. Travis et al., J. Climate, 17, 1123-1134, 2004
5. Kalkstein and Balling Jr., Climate Research, 26, 1-4, 2004

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Contrail
* Contrails.nl: Pictures of Contrails and Aviation Cirrus (-Smog), from 1995 on.
* Abstract of article in Nature announcing research results of contrail temperature change study
* Clouds Caused By Aircraft Exhaust May Warm The U.S. Climate
* Contrails over the USA
* Effects of contrails on ground astronomy
* Contrail simulator (Java applet) — interactively shows how temperature and humidity of the surrounding air affect contrail formation and characteristics
* Contrails: What’s Left Behind Is Bad News, article by Nick Onkow from March 4, 2006
* Night flights give bigger boost to global warming 

CONTRAILS

An Article by Airliners.net

Contrails: What’s Left Behind Is Bad News
By Nick Onkow

Nick Onkow offers an informative and illuminating exposé on the detrimental effects of contrails to our environment. Contained herein is an undeniably important article not just because of its content, but because it breaches a topic so commonly overlooked, and so consistently regarded as harmless.

“Our ideals, laws and customs should be based on the proposition that each generation, in turn, becomes the custodian rather than the absolute owner of our resources and each generation has the obligation to pass this inheritance on to the future.”

.

There is some irony in that statement which defends the argument that it is the obligation of the living population of Earth to leave an environment in the best condition it can for the succeeding generation. Why the irony? It was said by world famous aviator Charles Lindbergh, the first pilot to cross the Atlantic Ocean alone. He was concerned about the way the environment was beginning to be affected by humans on an increasingly larger scale and at the time, his aerial view of land development was rare.

Today the aviation industry is larger than many people would have ever imagined it would be and it is only going to grow more as the population of Earth climbs past six billion and national economies grow with it. The nature of commercial aviation includes some detrimental results to the environment. Fuel is burned and the exhaust fills the atmosphere, but cars, trains, and ships do the same. Jet aircraft, however, have a unique form of harming the environment that is associated exclusively with them: contrails. They are the long, thin clouds that are blasted out of the exhaust nozzle of jet engines at high altitudes. Some days they fade away within a few minutes and they pose no threat. It is the days that perfect conditions exist when they do their damage, drifting and expanding to several thousand square miles and blanketing the lowest atmosphere of Earth through the night, unnaturally trapping heat. Some argue that contrails have no effect on the environment but evidence indicates this opinion is not valid. Several solutions to the problem exist. Jets could fly at different altitudes, or engine standards could be raised so that insurance rates are less for those that are friendlier to the environment. Knowledge from the military stealth aircraft program could be incorporated into civilian aviation to avoid contrails, or contrail forecasts could be incorporated into flight planning process so that contrail-prone routes and altitudes are avoided. Contrary to some opinions, contrails have indeed helped raise the temperature of North America and the entire planet since the start of the jet age and continue to do so, making a long-term plan to reduce them a plan that needs to be initiated.

Contrails are essentially clouds and are the same effect as seeing one’s breath on a cold, damp day. The narrow bands of ice crystals gradually expand into a cirrus-type high-altitude cloud if conditions are just right. Just how often are the conditions conducive to their formation? “At flight altitudes, conditions that support contrail-generated cirrus exist 10% – 20% of the time in clear air and within standing cirrus”. Although this is a small percentage, the diverse weather of North America coupled with the staggering number of commercial flights in the air results in at least some part of the United States being good contrail weather on any given day. Worldwide, contrails are estimated to cover 0.1% of the Earth’s surface area and that number is forecast to rise to 0.5% by 2050.

There is some debate over just how effective this cirrus cloud coverage is at raising the average temperature of the land it covers. A NASA study conducted in the USA between 1975 and 1994 found the average temperature to have increased by 1°F . Though a single degree may seem trivial, the incredibly large scale that it applies to makes it significant since just 9°F separates our current average temperature from the last Ice Age. In one study conducted by meteorologist Keith P. Shine, data from satellites was used to prove that only one percent of the increase in clouds throughout the world has been from aircraft. There are also inherent flaws in some of the research performed by NASA. One problem is the difficulty that scientists have distinguishing a suspected contrail cloud from a natural cirrus cloud in satellite images. Skeptics of the theory that contrails do not have an impact on weather argued this theory with some success until a significant event occurred in North America, the main testing grounds of contrail research. 

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 was the aforementioned event, and it was likely to have excited meteorological researchers involved in contrail impact studies. The national airspace was shut down for three days, something that had not yet occurred since the jet age began in the 1960s and is not likely to occur ever again. Scientists took advantage of this unique three day period in history that lacked contrails. What they learned was shocking and is enough evidence to effectively silence any counterargument to their case. One measure of climate is the average daily temperature range (DTR). For thirty years this had been recorded and extra cirrus clouds in the atmosphere would reduce this range by trapping heat. “September 11 – 14, 2001 had the biggest diurnal temperature range of any three-day period in the past 30 years,” said Andrew M. Carleton. Not in three decades had there been such a large temperature spread between the daytime highs and the nighttime lows. Furthermore, the increase in DTR during those three days was more than double the national average for regions of the United States where contrail coverage was previously known to be most abundant, such as the midwest, northeast, and northwest regions. The specific increase in the range was 2°F, which in three days was twice the amount the average temperature had increased over a thirty years time period. This is evidence that contrails do alter the climate of the land they drift above. 

There are several methods that can be explored that will help reduce the role that contrails play in global warming. The easiest way to avoid this global warming through contrail cirrus clouds is to have jets fly at different altitudes. Flying higher than the typical 30,000 to 40,000 feet would usually stop contrails from forming, as would flying lower. Each of these options is, unfortunately, made unrealistic by consequences associated with them. Besides performance limitations of the aircraft above the normal cruising altitudes, airplanes begin flying in the lowest layer of ozone that is found in the tropopause (the dividing line between the lowest two layers of the atmosphere). As for flying lower, the decrease in altitude results in denser air and higher air resistance. This increases fuel burn, which increases the amount of carbon dioxide emitted, negating any benefits from eliminating contrails.

Ruling out drastic changes in altitude, another option might be to increase the emission standards of jet engines and with that only insure airplanes with the newer, cleaner engines. Tests were performed with a NASA jet aircraft examining the effect of sulfur levels in jet fuel exhaust. During the airborne test one engine was run on normal jet fuel and the other engine was run on fuel that emitted exhaust with a lower sulfur content. The high sulfur engine, representing most jet engines on modern commercial aircraft, produced a contrail that lasted through a larger range of temperatures and formed faster out of the engine. The low sulfur engine did the opposite. “Aircraft generate an invisible aerosol trail which enhances the background level of condensation nuclei, in particular regions with dense air traffic at northern latitudes and near the tropopause”. These condensation nuclei are the tiny particles that give water vapor the ability to condense to liquid droplets. The International Civil Aviation Organization is in favor of making polluting, obsolete aircraft uninsurable. While this option would not completely eliminate contrails, it would narrow the window of conditions needed to form them, making them less common.

A third solution to avoiding the large-scale creation of contrails is just that – avoidance. Partly through military research, new methods of forecasting the formation of contrails have been learned. This was a result of stealth aircraft that are not detectable by radar but are easily spotted from the ground if a contrail is following it. A program was initiated by the Air Force Weather Agency with the goal of improved contrail prediction techniques by closely examining the weather that was conducive to their formation. The program, run in 2000, used radiosondes (weather balloons) to measure water vapor content and temperature at different altitudes compared to actual observations of aircraft in the area. The end result was a success: “The statistical model produced a correct diagnosis of contrail occurrence or nonoccurrence for 85% of the observations”. Statistical contrail forecasting, then, is the easiest way for this problem to start being dealt with. Returning to the fact that only 10% to 20% of the country’s airspace is conducive to forming contrails at any given time, that leaves at least eighty percent available for use, and that is not even accounting for the third dimension of altitude which could be used in avoidance.

One way to do this would be to equip each aircraft with a device that detects the conditions that were confirmed in the Air Force study as being conducive to contrail formation3. The Federal Aviation Administration or Environmental Protection Agency could monitor these from the ground to see when an aircraft is flying in one of these areas. Incentives to use other airspace or altitudes could be put in place to reduce the number of jets flying there, such as reduced taxes on fuel or airport fees, or an extra tax or fine on aircraft that fly through the airspace that will leave a cirrus cloud drifting behind.

Unfortunately, aviation will always have some detrimental impact on the environment. What is most important, then, is reducing those impacts to the extent practicable. Through studies it has become apparent that contrails expanding into cirrus clouds do have some impact on the weather and the environment. Global warming is already a concern, and although the extent to which contrails are contributing to global warming is debatable, it cannot be argued that they have no effect. Using weather forecasting to predict areas where cirrus clouds will form from contrails should eventually be used in combination with devices on aircraft and cleaner engines with lower emissions (especially of contents such as sulfuric acid) to actively reduce the negative effects of contrails. As the aviation industry grows, limiting its negative impact on the environment will be a difficult challenge, and reducing the amount of heating that has already taken place as a result of high-flying aircraft will be an even greater challenge.

References:
1. Carleton, Andrew M. “Climatology: Contrails Reduce Daily Temperature Range.” Nature. 8 August 2002.
2. Graham-Rowe, Duncan. “High Flyers are Scourge of the Skies.” New Scientist. 19 October 2002, Vol. 176, Issue 2365.
3. Jackson, Artie. “Statistical Contrail Forecasting.” Journal of Applied Meteorology. February 2001, Vol. 40, Issue 2.
4. Minnis, Patrick. “Contrail Frequency over the United States from Surface Observations.” Atmospheric Sciences Research. NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA. 12 August 2002.
5. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Operational Significant Event Imagery Image of the Day, February 11 1999. http://www.osei.noaa.gov/OSEIiod.html.
6. Schumann, U. “In Situ Observations of Particles in Jet Aircraft Exhausts and Contrails for Different Sulfur-Containing Fuels.” Journal of Geographical Research. 1996, Vol. 101, Issue D3.
7. Watson, Traci. “Plane Trails in Sky Turn Up the Heat Below, Study Suggests.” USA Today. 29 April 2004.

Written by Nick Onkow. Nick Onkow is a pilot, a flight instructor, and a photographer, whose photographs can be found here at airliners.net. Based on the amount of study invested in this topic, we consider him an expert on contrails and their environmental effects.

Comments:

IsuA380B777 2006-03-10 – Dear Nick. An excellent and well researched article. Regards
 
N62NA 2006-03-12 – Very well put together. I hope other a.netters will take the time to read through your excellent article.
 
AFEaviator 2006-03-14 – Very interesting article! I know you article is directed specifically at contrails, but you mention the wide temperature variance during the no fly days post 9/11. I am curious if the margin was less or more in large commercial traffic cities. There has been some very interesting studies about large cities producing their own weather effects and I am curious how this no-fly time period may have affected them.
 
KLM685 2006-03-18 – Congratulations for this piece of excellent work! I used to have geography classes with this teacher from Alaska. She always condemned everything she considered as pollution…that means everything. So one day she talked about how contrails damaged the atmosphere, etc… Thanks to this article I’m now able to put the puzzle together. Amazing research. Well done! Alonsou
 
Xjramper 2006-03-26 – Very interesting read. There are two things I would like to argue. One was weather. That information seems to be lacking, to prove that the drastic change in the temperatures were not caused by a massive frontal system. The other thing that I see is that it was a 3 day observation. What this is telling me is that the earth reversed 40+ years (14,600+ days) of jet pollution and showed that great of a climatic change in 3 days. Seems a little unrealistic to me. zach
 
Goboeing 2006-03-26 – The jet pollution from the preceding 40 years of flying did not disappear. What did disappear for three days were the jets that produced the contrails that form cirrus clouds. The cirrus clouds expand, drift, and trap heat at night. That results in less cooling. During the three days, there were no contrails over the U.S. and therefore no jet-made cirrus clouds to trap the heat. Nick
 
Xjramper 2006-03-27  – First, I did not say they disappeared. Secondly, I would like to see numbers that were recorded during this time. Is there a link that these are available? Because I randomly looked at 5 cities around the country and noticed little to no difference to the change in temperature. Thanks…zach
 
Goboeing 2006-03-27  – The fourth source at the bottom of the article has the numbers I think you are looking for. It is fairly lengthy but they are in there. Picking five cities at random does not give an accurate idea of a change in the usual daily temperature range (DTR). You’d have to compare the min and max temperatures in 24 hour periods and frontal systems and local weather can affect that. Nick
 
Tornado82 2006-04-06 – Sorry Nick, nice editorial opinion article but scientific evidence isn’t gathered in 3 days of records to research something as long-term as climatologic facts. Your sampling is simply way too small, and is heavily affected by the unrelated climatology of that three-day span. This is why most of us in the meteorological community never embraced the “findings” of the September 11th tragedy timeframe as anything but a loose hypothesis.

Just prior to 9/11 was one of the first pattern-shifting frontal passages of the transition season for that fall. Meteorological/climatological fall begins Sept 1, regardless of the equinox. The atmosphere was relatively dry across much of the nation, with crystal-clear skies (even before the tragedy occurred) thanks to the strong high pressure over that period, and still the relatively high Mid-September sun angle. The day time temperatures soared with a well mixed, dry atmosphere across much of the country, especially the Northeastern quadrant where contrails would typically be most prevalent, and where the most observing stations are. A nearly 1030 mb high pressure is quite strong for that time of year, and was anchored over our country bringing a shot of polar air with it. Of course, as will almost always happen in one of these types of atmospheres, decoupling occurred at night. No more mixing is occuring in the atmosphere, the wind becomes very calm, and cold air quickly sinks to the surface with no vertical motion (mixing) to support it. This happens nearly every time you get one of these types of atmospheric setups, it is just that people looked at it with more interest due to the lack of contrails. Additionally, with the upper-level atmospheric setup over much of that time, contrails would not have been very prevalent anyways.

The larger-than-usual diurnal range was caused simply by a very well mixed atmosphere in the daytime, with a very decoupled atmosphere at night, and the magnification of this type of atmospheric setup occuring over a large portion of the nation at the time. Adding to the huge diurnal range is that this occurred when the SST’s and Great Lakes, and any other water-body surface temperatures are near their annual peaks, eliminating any “sea breeze” or “lake breeze” effect to moderate the temperatures. Based on the surface dew points, sky conditions, and decoupling leading to lack of nighttime winds in the time period studied, the low temperatures are right where they should have been. You would have needed much more time to sample effect, or a very sophisticated computer modelling system to replicate the event. So far, neither has happened, and I pray to God that there is no more chance of another catastrophe closing our nation’s airspace in a similar manner.
 
Bwood 2006-04-17 I find this article hard to believe. The idea that the clouds that form from contrails are trapping in heat to me sounds ridiculous. Now before you attack me I know that clouds do trap heat and can keep temperatures higher at night but the clouds we are talking about are at 30000-50000ft. They are so thin you can see through them. For the heat to be trapped at ground level they would have to be lower and only a few hundred to thousand feet off the surface. Also over half the world’s entire atmosphere is between ground level and 8000 feet. If these contrails were lower then maybe but not at thirty to forty thousand feet. I know that the ozone is high up in the upper atmosphere as well but this is a layer of gas that is supposed to block in radiation from the sun. Clouds do not have the same affect. The sun’s radiation goes through clouds and that is why you can get sunburned on a cloudy day. The radiation also can bounce back up through the clouds to the ozone layer. The radiation is what harms us and the atmosphere. It is not that heat itself bounces back from the ozone layer it is the sun’s radiation that bounces back that heats up our atmosphere. Tell me how warm it is on a winter’s night when it is totally clear and 10 degrees below zero then tell me how extra warm it feels when there are some cirrus clouds at 50000ft and it is supposed to be ten degress below zero. It will feel exactly the same. I think the real danger comes from the jet exhaust itself and not water vapor 6-9 miles off the ground. I also feel that there are far greater polluters in this world. Read March 06’s National Geographic that came out on coal plants. There is where we are going to kill our planet. That and cars. Coal plants are the real danger. Jets burn jet A which is basically kerosene or a slightly modified diesel fuel. This has its advantages since it produces only hydrocarbons as pollutants and emits no sulfur or nitrogen pollutants like cars or power plants, however it does produce carbon dioxide. That is a study that should be done. What are the affects of carbon dioxide in the upper atmosphere? I think that the study (or I should say so-called study) done for the three days after 9/11 is not anything that you can come to a conclusion from. It is only three days of data and you can not call something like that a fact after only three days of data. There are too many factors that can cause interference with this so called tested and true study. You would need years of data in different conditions and weather to figure out if this was true. I really cannot accept the idea that contrails that are just water vapor are covering the sky, blocking in the heat from the ground and warming our planet by several degress. If that was the case then everyday that we have clouds the temperature of the earth should rise and cause global warming. People have to remember that there is more than one factor that goes into our climate and weather patterns. I agree that airplanes are pollutors and that something should be done about it. However aviation right now does not have the technology to make “hybrid or alternative fuel planes.” Ethanol is being tested for smaller piston engines but is only in the earliest experimental stages. You are not going to see an Airbus A380 running on corn or hydrogen anytime soon. I think that more research should be done to try and eventually turn planes away from petroleum and to another clean source but it is decades away. We should try to focus our “energy” on making cars and powerplants (by far the greatest polluters on our planet) carbon dioxide-free within the next ten to twenty years. It is possible but the red tape and political issues are enormous. We all need to write our congressmen and women along with the president to get more funding and support for zero emission power plants and cars. Which by the way as of right now we know how to make coal plants and cars zero emisson but no one is doing it on the large scale. Let’s focus our interests on the big and correctable polluters first and then expand out from there.
 
Mdgg2009 2006-06-23 Chemtrails, not contrails.

Apart from the grisly flatus of that final comment, my reasoning agrees with Tornado82. There were other reasons for the figures for that 3-day period which make more sense to me. The conclusions of the article are not correct.

However I heartily recommend Airliners.net as a high-quality source of pictures, news, and comment…

CONTRAILSCIENCE COMEDY SPOT

on 25 Jun 2008 Post 126 the Gregger

so basicly what this website is telling me is that everything i see in the sky is normal. tick tack toe grid patterns are normal and when the sky is covered from horizon to horizon with “Jet crap” i should just go outside and do some strenuous activities, breath deep and don’t worry?

 

I’m sorry Shill. i don’t buy it. Where are the bees?

why is there more statick electricity in the air (more now than i have ever noticed)? I know what HAARP is.

i know what a cloud is.

and i know what a shill is!

…….over a thousand tornadoes this year in the midwest. A “freek” electrical storm in June in california.!

Can’t wait for that sack of cement to come flying through my roof on the fourth of july when they’re trying to make a “Nice day” for us to view the fireworks.

Oh hey and make sure you catch the olympics in china this year. Should be nice out. They’ve forcasted no rain for the duration of the games. Sweet! Hard hat and suntan lotion.! ……..as for the “suckerfish” on the tail of that plane? well i hate to say it but my little HP foto devise is a piece of poo. i’m in the market for a faster camera with a fat zoom so I can get those fotos my debunker friends need to see. ……time to go out and play. I see a little square of blue sky left out there. better go get in it before it becomes a concloud. breath deep SR#$%^.

 

 From Uncinus of contrailscience.com as of 24.04.09, an early photo of WW2 trails…

Clouds

High Clouds (Family A): Cirrus (Ci) • Cirrus uncinus • Cirrus Kelvin-Helmholtz colombia • Cirrostratus (Cs) • Cirrocumulus (Cc) • Pileus • Contrail
Middle Clouds (Family B): Altostratus (As) • Altostratus undulatus • Altocumulus (Ac) • Altocumulus undulatus • Altocumulus mackerel sky • Altocumulus castellanus • Altocumulus lenticularis
Low Clouds (Family C): Stratus (St) • Nimbostratus (Ns) • Cumulus humilis (Cu) • Cumulus mediocris (Cu) • Stratocumulus (Sc)
Vertical Clouds (Family D): Cumulonimbus (Cb) • Cumulonimbus incus • Cumulonimbus calvus • Cumulonimbus with mammatus • Cumulus congestus • Cumulus castellanus • Pyrocumulus • Pyrocumulonimbus

  

COWBRAIN

Statement 1 – “contrails form at a wing-span distance from bottom of plane”. – UNTRUE. The formation distance behind the plane depends on its VELOCITY, AND THE TEMPERATURE AND RELATIVE HUMIDITY OF THE AMBIENT AIR. Your statement is a rough approximation only.

Statement 2 – “sudden short gaps in the trails” – ARE CAUSED BY PLANES FLYING THROUGH “WAVES” OF MORE HUMID AIR, rather like dolphins swimming through waves in the sea.

Statement 3 – “same time try to explain their day-long endurance/spreading claiming the higher levels have uniform saturation. – FALSE. THEY SPREAD IN SATURATED AIR. AT WHATEVER HEIGHT.

Statement 4 – “spraying tests of germs upon millions of citizens”. – FALSE. IT WAS FROM A BOAT TEN MILES OFFSHORE FROM A SOUTH COAST TOWN, AND A HARMLESS (KILLED) AND IDENTIFIABLE BACTERIUM, AND SO INEFFECTIVE AS TO BE TOO DIFFICULT TO MEASURE (and therefore repeated).

Statement 5 – “Spiderwebs” LIE

Statement 6 – “Anthrax” LIE

 

“CHEMTRAIL” HISTORY

A brief history of “Chemtrails”

“Chemtrails” are supposedly long lasting contrails that are being deliberately created by the government for some sinister purpose. In reality, these contrails just look like normal contrails. It’s a fringe conspiracy theory that spread over the internet, mutating as it goes for survivability. But where did it begin? What is the origin of the word “chemtrail”, and who started this particular conspiracy theory?

Google Groups archives internet news-groups back to 1981, but the earliest mention of chemtrails was from May 8th, 1999: on alt.fan.art-bell: “this cartilage gel that Art’s plugging could be used for the joint ache that chemtrail victims complained about last night… say… wait a minute…maybe chemtrails were deployed to boost cartilage gel sales…! Here we have mention of chemtrail victims, and “joint ache” as a symptom.*

* “Joint ache” is a symptom of both diabetes and arthritis, which are known to be consequential to being over-weight. The western diet is the most likely causative agent in these cases.

In may of 1999, we have this: CHEMTRAILS OVER AMERICA Issue #2 April 7-16, 1999: “dear friends and concerned sky-watchers”, a March 17, 1999 radio interview going out to 15 million listeners – again referencing the Art Bell show. So it seems that radio show was perhaps the start of the phenomena. The “Chemtrails over America” bulletin apparently had issue #1 on march 9, 1999. That also seems to be about the time people started taking photos of normal contrails.

Judging by the earliest postings, it seems like hypochondria plays a large part. People start to connect the contrails with illness, and suspect they must contain some kind of poison.

Looking at the previous year (1998) on usenet, there is NO mention of chemtrails. The word “contrail” crops up 324 times, mostly in reference to meteors and rockets. There are a few references to the affect of contrails on climate change. But NOTHING about deliberate contrail creation, or anything like “chemtrails”.

The web site chemtrailcentral.com was registered on May 6th, 2000, about a year after the “chemtrail” idea was created. The earliest archived page from there indicates a lot of local media involvement, and their archive indicates nothing before 4/24/2000, which said: “Monday a KHOU crew met with Chemtrail Tracking USA Club co-founders Lorie [Kramer] and Dona of Houston and member Rhonda from Ft. Worth, as well as other local members of the Yahoo! based club for the taping of a story on Chemtrails and public concern over their purpose and health impact. Reporter Ron Travino and cameraman Nathan visited for several hours at the house of Lorie, taping, talking, asking questions, and viewing photos and videos.”

On chemtrailcentral, there’s actually a thread about the history of chemtrails. There, people give their recollections of how it all started. Most date it to late 1998 or 1999. A few people report earlier contrails (1989, 1991), and then surmise it must have stated earlier.

A post there by 3T3L1 quotes chemtrail debunker Jay Reynolds on the derivation of the word “chemtrails”. Posted on August 26, 2001 at 09:06:54 AM by Jay Reynolds was a statement by Val Valerian (pseudonym for Former USAF captain [John] Grace) in April 1999. “Grace/Valerian recognized that the power of suggestion worked against his claim and proposed coining a new term more suggestive of his claim.” That does not sound unreasonable, since the earliest reference to the word is April 1999. This page claims to be reporting from March 29th 1999, but could have been written after the fact, based on photos taken that day. It’s archived back to October 1999.

The original pages from Val Valerian/Valdemar Valerain/O.H. Krill/John Grace, can be found on archive.org. The earliest real mention of spraying on his pages dates back to emails on 13 Jan 1998. “John Grace is a UFO conspiracy theorist who published several books on shadow governments and suchlike. He also faked documents to support arguments in his books.”