A recent column discussed the supposed hazard of “chemtrails”, i.e., chemicals released intentionally by government airplanes to enhance the formation of condensation trails. The web site http://contrailconnection.com is full of reports of sickness and environmental problems caused by such enhanced contrails.
However, it seems to me that the government would be more interested in preventing contrail formation than enhancing them. After spending billions on stealth aircraft that are invisible to radar, I’d think they’d prefer to minimize contrails which make aircraft position, direction, and speed clearly visible to the naked eye.
So perhaps we contributors to http://contrailconnection.com should be more worried about clear, blue sky conditions when no contrails are visible! After all, that’s when the government must be releasing its nasty chemicals that suppress contrail formation and maintain stealth!
Say, Arnold, are the “See what you missed” Column Archives down? I just spent 5 minutes Searching for both “contrail” and “chemtrail” and I didn’t find a thing. Maybe it’s not a Straight Dope column?
If you read the Chicago Reader (and other papers that feature the column), you’ve already seen it. But the columns arrive here on the site a few days later.
Simple answer: To show off. Ever been to an air show that featured the Blue Angels and/or the Thunderbirds? Last time I was at one, they had colored contrails, the better to awe the audience. As to whether they’d have any value in warfare, I couldn’t say.
[[Simple answer: To show off. Ever been to an air show that featured the Blue Angels and/or the Thunderbirds? Last time I was at one, they had colored contrails, the better to awe the audience.]]
Exactamente. And ever notice, after viewing one of those “shows,” you can’t do column addition anymore and you laugh like crazy at Jay Leno?
I admit I don’t understand meterology, but common sense (a poor thing to use) would say that increased cloud cover would cause a cooling off. I do know that if there is heavy cloud cover at night, the overnight lows will not be as low bacause the clouds act like a blanket to hold heat in. But a cloudy day reflects more sunlight out, so the daytime high will be cooler. My first thought would be the reflection during the day would be greater than the hold in effect at night, or at worse would be a wash. So can someone explain to me in simple words how cloud cover will cause local warming?
I’ll have to relate my only experience with contrails, which took place about a year ago in St. Louis, MO. Bright, sunny day, clear and blue, and I walk outside an see a huge white X in the sky. It struck me as weird because both lines making the X were distinct, meaning they had a beginning and an end visible in the sky above. Usually I can’t see the beginning or end of a contrail–it stretches to the horizon. Even if I can see the beginning, I can’t see the end, my presumption being that the beginning represents the point at which the plane gained enough altitude to form a condensation trail. The X that I saw, however, almost looked like skywriting, except larger. I watched it, and it did indeed spread out, the sky did indeed become overcast, though it did not rain. I was mildly sick later that week, though I wouldn’t connect the two at all. Such was my experience.
Of course, there’s a very simple answer to all of this: the government is conspiring to kill me. Case closed. Thanks for your support.
So we don’t go spinning off on wild tangents, let me explain a couple things:
First, Cecil quoted this person in the aforementioned column
Being stationed on an aircraft carrier, I walk around and beneath aircraft all day and night. What this person is describing is a “drop tank.”
It is attached to the wing’s hard points, and carries fuel, extending the effective operational range of the aircraft and minimizing the number of in air refuelings needed per mission. If it leaked, sprayed or otherwise ejected its contents, it would be useless.
Second, what you see trailing the Blue Angels and other aerial performance teems is not a contrail. As Cecil said, a contrail is formed when the moisture in jet exhaust condenses or freezes after being ejected.
Flight performance teams install “Smoke Generators” in their aircraft. A non-toxic, earth-friendly, vegetable-based oil is heated, atomized and ejected. This “smoke” dissapates fairly rapidly and can be colored. It is not a contrail.
Per Sequent’s post, a contrail will form when the surrounding air is cool enough to condense the moisure in the jet exhaust. If there is a localized mass of cool air (Remember, it’s several thousand feet above your head so you won’t feel the temperature difference) and a plane flies through it, the contrail will begin and end at the edges of the cool air.
These temperature gradients are carefully tracked by military aerographers. We wouldn’t want a contrail to form when one of our planes is 50 miles out from a target; so we fly around them.
Commercial planes, with their emphasis on economy, do not fly around these gradients.
I hope none of these doom-seekers ever sees an aircraft flying at +mach. The turbulence the plane causes at its wing and stabilizer tips actually rips apart the molecular bonding of the air, enabling it to be seen by the naked eye for a split second.
Nearly all of the stealth bomber’s combat mission to date have been conducted at night. Night is dark. Contrails are hard to see in the dark. Low (altitude) cool air masses would be avoided so as to avoid contrail formation, especially in areas where search lights are used.
To be totally upfront with the TM, there is a by-product linked to military aircraft which can and does effect citizen’s health.
This is the noise produced by the aircraft.
Several F-14 and F/A-18 squadrons were relocated from Cecil Field, Jacksonville, Fla., to Ocean Naval Air Station, Va. Beach, Va. Complaints from local citizens there have quadrupled.
Several noise abatement programs have been tried, but it seems not everyone can be pleased. The noise issue has divided the community into two distinct groups: The “any noise is bad noise” group and the “Sound of Freedom” group. It remains to be seen whether the Navy can amicabley solve this quandry.
I don’t think that the discussion in this thread has quite tapped into the depth of the paranoia being expressed by the chemtrail conspiracy types.
They’re not worried about normal contrails. They’re also not worried about side effects caused as a by-product of something used to enhance (or de-hance) contrails.
They’re worried that the government has undertaken a secret, large-scale experiment of some sort and is deliberately spraying the skies with something. These are visible as contrail-like traces, but are really some sort of biological or chemical toxins.
I certainly don’t want to inadvertently assist their wild claims, but if we’re going to debunk something we should at least be clear about what we’re debunking.
I live in Phoenix, near Luke Air Force Base. There was an article in the Arizona Republic some months ago about the effects of training flights on weather radar.
The “angel hair” stuff that is described on the contrailconnection site is possibly the chaff that the fighter planes eject to avoid missiles.
The article said that this stuff is apparently picked up by the weather radar, and it shows up as heavy rain out west of Phoenix, near the area where the base conducts practice flights. It’ll be a sunny day outside, yet radar is showing that it’s raining. TV weather people have reported this as rain in the past, preferring to trust the radar rather than looking out a window. Now that they’re aware of the effects of chaff, they are starting to ignore it. According to the article, the chaff is harmless (of course, would they tell us otherwise?), and that it just drifts around for a while before falling to the ground.
This is so weird. I just noticed brownish, jelly-like goop on my car yesterday. I would be glad to mail to anybody who wants to analyze it, if it’s still there.
A couple of months ago while jogging through the park, I noticed a large airliner flying where they usually don’t. They usually come in from the northeast, heading southwest, going into either DFW airport or to Love Field. Since it wasn’t a Southwest Airlines plane, I knew it had to land at the farther DFW airport, but it was much lower than planes usually are when going there, and heading due south, not southwest towards the airport. He then turned 180 degrees and headed back north.
Streaming behind it was a brownish-looking cloud - obviously he was dumping large amounts of fuel. It was not a contrail - he was too low and the weather was warm and clear - it was fuel.
He flew around for a long time, at least twenty minutes while dumping it. After I got back home, I went an looked again, just in time to see him shut off the fuel and turn west-southwest towards the airport. I had my binoculars, so I could now see that it was a British Airways plane, probably an Airbus A320, but possibly a Boeing 767. My guess is that he was headed from DFW to London and had to turn back shortly after takeoff, therefore had too much fuel to land safely.
The strange web site Cecil refers to definitely shows pictures of contrails, but I wonder whether similar sightings of airliners dumping fuel could be the grain of truth from which these people jumped to their wild conclusions.
If you visit the contrails site you fill find two key charateristics the idiots claim prove chem trails are not mere water.
they often appear colored the way oil an water appears
they persist a long time
they are long and dont disperse like water.
I happen to work in the atmosphereic field so I can say a few things about this.
first 1) is a well known atmospheric event known as ‘super numerary’ rainbows. it occurs when a cloud layer is very thin, the water droppets are consistent, and you are at a certaina ngle to the sun. you can ofet see this near the edge of thin clouds. they appear to have alternating bands of pink and green. its a cool effect. and yes it works with water. For the geeks: its an inteference phenomena caused by there being two or more distinctly separate paths through the water droplet that just happen to refract at almost exactly the same angle.
second 3) actually explains 2). the fact is, that virtually all airborne particles disperse at exactly the same rate. it doesn’t matter what they are made of. thus a long slowly displersing plume means nothing more than atmospheric conditions are very stable. this might mean no wind or it might mean very directional variation, no turbulence and noshear in the wind field. Since the particles are dispersing slowly they persist. (The only other means of disappearance besides dispersal is evaporation. but this would mean the plume would only disappear sooner )
Bogwater!? So that’s what it (cough) is–they’re spraying us with bogwater! The (choke) bastards! That would explain the discoloration: it’s (wretch) not just water. Quick–who do I sue?
As contrails may be seen in moonlight, stealth aircraft use various methods of reducing or eliminating contrails. These methods may include complex engine exhaust duct geometry and chemicals added to the engine exhaust.
