Aircraft vapour trails 'could cause global warming'

Breaking News ^ | 29/04/2004

[Denver Ditdat]

Sam, you might like Mackinac Island, Michigan. Motor vehicles are banned. Transportation is via horse, bicycle, or on foot. It is crowded with tourists in the summer, but reverts to locals in the winter. If you are familiar with the Christopher Reeve film "Somewhere in Time", you've seen a glimpse of the island.

Amish or Mennonite communities may be an alternative, but even they share their roads with the internal combustion engine.

[LonghornFreeper]

Some moron brought this up in my Fluid Mechanics class today. The professor almost laughed him out of the building.

[Monty22]

Ok wiseguys.. i've always hated planes. pre-9/11, I could barely get on one ever, pure terror for me. And by terror it's impossible to describe with words.

Post 9/11, I want them around even less. Take trains or boats, work out the systems. Or, just don't be in such a hurry.

[BenLurkin]

We're !!!!!!

[XEHRpa]

> Aircraft vapour trails 'could cause global warming'

Yeah? Well so can Ted Kennedy speeches too.

[presidio9]

Game-set-match.

[Paul Ross]

Unless the contrails completely obscure the sun, day after day, it would have very minimal impact on mean temps

Actually you are mistaken on this. As mentioned before, water vapor is by far, the most effective 'green house' gas. And thank GOD for it. I.e., But for water vapor, the mean temperature of the Earth's planetary surface would be below freezing at the equator. I.e., the oxy-nitro atmosphere would be totally transparent to infrared planck black-body radiation, and the earth's overall temperature would drastically fall. What keeps the planetary thermal balance moderated...and a lot higher... is the water vapor in the atmosphere. This is of course more than just the clouds. It is what gives the atmosphere the color blue, which is what we see when we look up on a clear day...or the blue-halo around the earth astronauts see when they look down at the atmospheric boundary.

Everyone with meteorological knowledge is also aware that cloud cover is of pivotal importance to earth's temperatures. Clear nights, mean the temperature drops as it is radiated right out into space. Cloudy nights, means the temperature loss is moderated. Contrails have been shown by careful satellite measurements to have an effect.

I personally think it is quite benign effect, with my understandable bias, since I live in Minnesota.

[Junior]

What's a conspiracy theorist to do? On the one hand, global warming is a government conspiracy to return us all to the Dark Ages, and on the other hand, there are the mysterious contrails...

[Junior]

What's a conspiracy theorist to do? On the one hand, global warming is a government conspiracy to return us all to the Dark Ages, and on the other hand, there are the mysterious contrails...

[Natural Law]

Would someone care to calculate the area or volumetric percentage of the sky affected by aircraft emmissions? I would verture to guess that this is a 0.000000001% problem at most.

[LeGrande]

Lets say that we have 1000 flights a day across the US and each leaves a contrail 500 feet wide. That would be the same as a single contrail 95 miles wide stretching across the nation from east to west. That works out to be about 1/13 of the total sky (give or take 50% : ) ) not an insignificant amount.

I would further guess that most flights are during the day and that cloud coverage cools the earth and at night fewer flights means less clouds and more cooling. More contrails may solve the global warming problem. So what we need is more planes and flights : ) (Sc)

[Natural Law]

You missed several key points; the average length of the flights and the the total surface area of the daylight half of the planet. A minor point to be considered is that the radius of the earth needs to be increased by 5 miles due to the altitude of the flights.

[SunkenCiv]

A "study" done after 9/11 to see if commercial jet exhaust had an impact on temperature unsurprisingly found in the affirmative.

Imagine -- in the month of September the temperature was higher than it was when commercial flights resumed weeks later. Call Sixty Minutes.

[Red Sea Swimmer]

Extreme deluded greenies will soon claim that excess pet hair is another cause of global warming.

They give "Fruit Loops" a bad name.

[Pro-Bush]

[Red Sea Swimmer]

It seems like the last vestiges of scientific objectivity are being engulfed by a wicked wave of untruths and deception at this time in human history. This time was prophesied to happen.

There is fortunately some sanctuaries of scientific objectivity left in the world.

[dfwgator]

"And monkeys could fly out of my butt."

[Red Sea Swimmer]

Correction...

"There are..." not "There is..."

[MortMan]

While acknowledging that it was difficult to tell exactly how much of the warming was due to vapour trails, he said their contribution was “significant”.

In other words... "TRUST ME". Bah!