Chemtrails

[Craig D Peltier]

Has anyone ever heard of these? They are the white lines you see coming out the back of jets, mostly military. Theres a guy on a motrocycle board thats a fanatic about these. He says and theres been much public debate about these that its chemicals falling to the land.I think discovery an PBS.

He has noticed many times that after they pass around , it seems to turn cloudy much more than the chemtrails and sometimes more than usual rains (which it hardly does in the desert of so california). Plus all the residue of black specks we get on our cars.
I did notice the black specs in West LA while living there.Always thought it was pullution , I wasnt very close to a highway at least 1.5 miles.

Anywas we all razz him about this but hes fanatical about it. Thinks the government is poisining us causing cancer etc. because of the fuel they burn.

Enough about that , I dont know what to believe.Im sure some will say hes ajust a left wing nut about the gov. On the other hand there has been millions spent studying these.

[John Schreiber]

There are two possibilities. One is that contrails and clouds are quite complex, come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, and change in interesting ways over time. The other is that there are tens of thousands of people involved in some super secret fabulously expensive government project which covers the entire globe that has the effect of making people feel like they have allergies.

I think what happens is that people think they know what contrails are like, even though they haven't really studied them in any detail, then they see something different from what they think contrails should look like. Rather than wonder at the complex physics of the atmosphere, they jump to the conclusion that the government is up to something.

[Lee Schierer]

Contrails are are the result of burning fuel at high altitude. Commercial jets and militay ones all make contrails at high altitudes. Even the old piston engines did the same thing at high altitudes. If you could get your car that high, the exhaust pipe would also leave a contrail, although a small one because it doesn't pass through as much fuel in teh same time frame. Hydrocarbon fuels burn creating carbon dioxide and water vapor (amoung other things). The Water vapor condenses and freezes due to the low air temps at higher altitudes and produce clouds (contrails) behind the jets. As the moisture sublimates into the air the vapor trails disappear.

Jet engines are tuned for the best fuel efficiency where they spend most of their time, so at lower altitudes the engines tend to burn a little rich. If you ever saw the older F-4 Phantoms flying, you could track them by following the black smoke trails they left behind. You don't see that much with newer planes and engines. You will sometimes see black sooty clouds as power is added during take off and landings.

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

Has anyone ever heard of these?

The stuff of conspiracy theories my friend . The same people who are all excited about this are also willing to tell what outfit Condi wore when she and GW planted the explosives to take the World Trade Towers down.




They are the white lines you see coming out the back of jets, mostly military. Theres a guy on a motrocycle board thats a fanatic about these. He says and theres been much public debate about these that its chemicals falling to the land.I think discovery an PBS.

So very much public debate that generally spsaking when the expression "chemtrails" is used people have no clue what the speaker is talking about.



He has noticed many times that after they pass around , it seems to turn cloudy much more than the chemtrails and sometimes more than usual rains (which it hardly does in the desert of so california). Contrails are little clouds of water vapor formed when the jet super heats the air sucking moisture in from the surrounding air and then when it cools rapidly the water that got sucked in forms crystals. Once formed it is entirely possible for them to stimulate more water crystal growth and of course the dust from the burning jet fuel will serve as the dust mote that helps super cooled water form up crystals. No need for secret conspiracies to get this effect.



Plus all the residue of black specks we get on our cars.
I did notice the black specs in West LA while living there.Always thought it was pullution , I wasnt very close to a highway at least 1.5 miles.Prolly is pollution. Did ya know that China is contaminating the Claif., coastline and miles inland because the winds blow the smoke from all the Chinese steel mills and brazillians of other pollution sources right on over ?? Yipper.



Anywas we all razz him about this but hes fanatical about it. Thinks the government is poisining us causing cancer etc. because of the fuel they burn. Generally speaking these conspiracy theorists are about as devoted to their religious faith (and it is a faith) as any other fanatic might be.

[Brett Baldwin]

He's right about those contrails poisoning us but then again so is his motorcycle (and mine and yours) in exactly the same way. It is the exhaust of fossil fuels and we are all guilty of that poisoning.

[jeremy levine]

In the days following 9/11 ( stay with me please ), all air traffic was halted ( except for gov't flights ). This allowed for a quick but intense (before and after ) study of contrails and there effect on cloud formation. While not a huge study it seemed to confim they contails will often (not always) expand into large cloud formations.

[Curt Harms]

In the days following 9/11 ( stay with me please ), all air traffic was halted ( except for gov't flights ). This allowed for a quick but intense (before and after ) study of contrails and there effect on cloud formation. While not a huge study it seemed to confim they contails will often (not always) expand into large cloud formations.

I believe that in order for fog (clouds) to form, there needs to be condensation neuclei, tiny particles for water to stick to. Jet Engines-with one exception I know about-burn kerosene based fuel. The trick is that the larger engines do it at the rate of a few hundred gallons/hour. The combustion byproducts are no different than what comes out of any other internal combustion engine, mostly carbon dioxide and water but with some particulate matter. The difference is that they're being exhausted into -50 to -60 degree F air. Sort of like what happens on the ground in arctic areas in the winter time, engine exhaust forms instant cloud.

There is a belief that jet fuel is something exotic-it's not. It's just kersene that doesn't gel at as high a temperature as heating oil or diesel fuel. Without checking, I think Jet Fuel gels at around -60 degrees C. and diesel gels at around -40 degrees C. which is also -40 degrees F.

The one exception I referred to above was the SR71. Its fuel was rather exotic, one of the things that made it beaucoup expensive to operate. I'm writing this from memory which ain't infallible.

Curt

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

In the days following 9/11 ( stay with me please ), all air traffic was halted ( except for gov't flights ). This allowed for a quick but intense (before and after ) study of contrails and there effect on cloud formation. While not a huge study it seemed to confim they contails will often (not always) expand into large cloud formations.

I saw something about this. Apparently those contrails actually reflect a fair amount of the sun's radiation away. There was a temperature delta too.

[John Schreiber]

I saw something about this. Apparently those contrails actually reflect a fair amount of the sun's radiation away. There was a temperature delta too.
A friend of mine is a research meteorologist and we talked about this. Actually what they found is that the contrails and the clouds which they sometimes generate reflect heat both ways. They reflect solar heat back into space and they reflect the earth's heat back to earth. That means that high altitude jet traffic increases the insulating effect of the atmosphere.

Using data from around the United States on those few days with minimal jet traffic, they found that high temperatures were higher and low temperatures were lower. More solar radiation came into contact with the ground and more heat radiated from the ground back into space. There isn't any clear impact from those facts, but it is probably significant in some way.

Conditions vary a great deal at high altitudes and contrails may or may not appear depending on relative humidity, temperature and atmospheric pressure. As others have mentioned, jet exhaust is the usual cause of contrails, but in other conditions the contrail is caused just by the passage of the craft through the air. I was once lying in the belly of a KC-135 (air force air-to-air-refuling jet) looking aft out the refuling bubble and I could see the contrail we were creating originating at our wing tip vortexes.

That was cool.

[jeremy levine]

A friend of mine is a research meteorologist and we talked about this. Actually what they found is that the contrails and the clouds which they sometimes generate reflect heat both ways. They reflect solar heat back into space and they reflect the earth's heat back to earth. That means that high altitude jet traffic increases the insulating effect of the atmosphere.
...... . I was once lying in the belly of a KC-135 (air force air-to-air-refuling jet) looking aft out the refuling bubble and I could see the contrail we were creating originating at our wing tip vortexes.

That was cool.
Cool story..