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Barium Chemtrails on KSLA

Brief Summary:
  • Samples of water were collected in August 2007, in Stamps Arkansas, by leaving some bowls outside for a month
  • The resultant dirty water was tested by KSLA and was found to have the same amount of barium in it as most municipal tap water.
  • The reporter misunderstood the results, and said there was a lot of Barium
  • The reporter now admits he was mistaken, and that he found no evidence for chemtrails

 

ksla-jar.jpg

Some conspiracy theorists think that persistent spreading contrails indicate some kind of deliberate aerial spraying, probably by the government. They speculate as to what could be in these trails, and one of the most common things they claim is barium.

Some people are so obsessed by this idea that they have rainwater tested to see if it has barium in it. They usually find some, and then trumpet this as evidence that their theory is correct.

Unfortunately they are wrong. I’ll explain why, but first, some basic science.

What is Barium?

Barium is a metal, like calcium. You never find it in its metal form (outside of a lab), as it oxidizes rapidly in the air. Instead you’ll find compounds, usually barium sulfate or barium carbonate. Barium compounds are used in the plastics, rubber, electronics and textile industries, in ceramic glazes and enamels, in glass-making, brick-making and paper-making, as a lubricant additive, in pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, in case-hardening of steel and in the oil and gas industry as a wetting agent for drilling mud. Barium in water comes primarily from natural sources as it is present as a trace element in both igneous and sedimentary rocks. Barium is generally present in air in particulate form as a result of industrial emissions, particularly from combustion of coal and diesel oil and waste incineration.

µ and Parts Per …

When you measure the concentration of a substance in water, you can express it in various ways. You have to pay attention to units when converting from one way to another.

A liter of water weighs 1 kilogram, which is 1000 grams.

A milligram is 1/1000th (a thousandth) of a gram. 1mg = 1 milligram = 0.001g

A microgram is 1/1000000 (a millionth) of a gram. 1ug = 1µg = 1 microgram

Note that last line, because it’s important. The symbol µ is the greek letter “mu”. In measuring, it’s used to mean “micro”, or “millionth”. (To type µ, hold down the Alt key, type 230 on the numeric keypad, and then release the Alt key). Since it’s difficult to type, it’s often written using the letter “u”. Make sure you understand the difference between a milligram (mg, 1/1000th or a gram) and a microgram (µg, ug, 1/1000000th of a gram). A milligram is thousandth, not a millionth. It’s a little confusing sometimes.

A microgram is a millionth of a gram, so it’s a billionth of a kilogram. Since there are 1000 grams in a kilogram, and 1,000,000 micrograms in a gram, there are 1,000,000,000 µg in a kilogram. All this is basic high school science.

Concentration in water is measured as ppm, ppb, g/L, mg/L, µg/L. These are parts per million, parts per billion, grams per liter, milligrams per liter and micrograms per liter. We can convert between these easily:
1 ppm = 1 mg/L = 1000 ppb = 1000 µg/L
1 ppb = 1 µg/L = 0.001 ppm = 0.001 mg/L
(remember that 1 Liter is 1000 grams, so 1 mg in one liter is a thousandth of a gram in one thousand grams, or 1 part in a million).

Chemtrail claims

This video is very popular right now. Claiming that water was analyzed and found to have barium in it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okB-489l6MI

airteamimagescom.jpgThe video was taken in Stamps, Arkansas, which is not entirely surprising as that’s in a region of the US the might be renamed “Contrail Alley”. It’s at the intersection of the cross country routes between the West Coast, and the major airport in Atlanta, Orlando and Jacksonville. Stamps is midway between the two major regional VORs (Texarkana and El Dorado), right next to the major East-West airway Victor V278, and on the edge of a MOA that traffic has to skirt occasionally. It’s also directly below the Atlanta to Dallas, San Antonio to New York and Houston to Chicago flight routes. On just ONE of these routes (Atlanta to Dallas) there is a scheduled commuter flight, directly overhead, at contrail altitude every 15 minutes! The same frequency of flights is found on the Houston-Chicago route, which crosses at right angles almost exactly overhead. Hence, when the weather is right, it is inevitable that you will see contrails in a grid pattern, “a giant checkerboard”. See this Google Earth file: airlines-over-stamps.kmz

ksla-jar2.jpgBut back to the video. It shows a jar of dirty water (collected 9/1/2007), which was collected by Bill Nichols. He’s posted some comments on the YouTube video describing how he collected the water:

it was rainwater. i collected it in two separate bowls on the hood of a pickup truck in my backyard. we are 25 miles from the nearest interstate. this is a very poor county, the only industry is chickens, logging , farming, a little oil—no coal burners or anything like that. i wasn’t looking for attention. i was looking for answers, ksla said they would pay to get it tested. i dropped it off, and they asked my opinion

i put 2 clean bowls there specifically because i wanted to catch what was falling. i don’t recall exactly when i put the bowls there, but they were there for about a month before i contacted ksla. the goo that i caught was full of barium. have a cool day!

Pause for a second, and consider if you left a bowl out for the month of August in rural Arkansas, what would you expect to find in it after a month? Some dirty water? Perhaps a little dust? What’s dust made of outdoor? Dirt, dried topsoil. What would you expect to find in the dirt in Arkansas – one of the richest sources of barium in the US? You’d expect a bit of Barium – but did they actually find any more than you’d get in tap water?

This dirty water was tested, the test results are available in full here. You can also see the results in the video, at around 00:55 to 00:59. Here they are pieced together.

ksla-test-results.jpg

And just to be clear, here’s a closeup of the results, and the units:

ksla-test-results2.jpg

That’s quite straightforward right? Barium found at 68.8 µg/L. That’s 68.8 parts per billion. Now listen to the audio at that precise point (also transcribed on the KSLA web site):

“The results: a high level of barium, 6.8 parts per million (ppm), more than three times the toxic level set by the EPA”.

Immediately you can see something is wrong here. it’s 68.8, not 6.8, and it’s not parts per million, it’s parts per billion. So it’s actually 0.0688 parts per million.

And what of “three times the toxic level set by the EPA”? They are referring to the EPA Limits, as quoted by the CDC:

“The EPA has set a limit of 2.0 milligrams of barium per liter of drinking water (2.0 mg/L), which is the same as 2 ppm [parts per million].”

So the EPA limit is 2 ppm (2000 µg/L), and the tests actually found 0.0688 ppm (68.8 µg/L), just 3.4% of the allowable limit.

That limit’s not really a “toxic level” either. There’s no evidence that it would be toxic even at that level (which, remember, is 29 times higher than what was actually found). The world health organization has set a drinking water level of 7 ppm after doing studies into the health effects of barium.

Barium has always been in water

The WHO also reported on the barium levels in drinking water (meaning, from a tap, not some dirty puddle) and they found:

In a study of water supplies of cities in the USA, a median value of 43 μg/litre was reported; in 94% of all determinations, the concentrations found were below 100µg/litre (IPCS, 1990)

So the average was 43 µg/L, but most were below 100µg/L. This means the amount of Barium found in this supposed chemtrail residue was about the same as was found in the municipal water supplies in the US, back in 1990. This is pretty low, it varies with geography based on the type of rocks in the aquifer. In Tuscany, Italy, the Barium in drinking water was around 1000µg/L (1ppm), high, but still within safe limits.

The amount of barium will also vary based on the weather. Very heavy rains will leach more barium out into the groundwater. So you’d expect more barium after very rainy seasons. This is actually what you find if you look at the historical records in California (which has very uneven annual rainfall). You see spikes in barium whenever there is a wet year after a dry year. Recent years like these are 1991, 1995, 1998 and 2004 (2001 and 2003 also spiked to a lesser extent). The expected peaks were confirmed by the results of Rosalind Peterson at California Skywatch.

So what’s going on here? Chemtrail theorists are constantly claiming that “chemtrails” are made of barium, and that it’s affecting our health. But whenever water is tested, it is found to have perfectly normal levels of barium, which vary as expected based on the rainfall. In the cases where they claim it’s got an unusual amount, this is just a misunderstanding of the units and limits involved.

Yes, there is barium in the drinking water, there always has been, and always will be. Trace amounts, mostly from the environment and some industrial pollution. It’s a very small amount, and not dangerous. There is no evidence to suggest it has anything to do with “chemtrails.”

Update #1: 5/2/2009

Jeff Ferrall, the reporter in the story now says:

https://contrailscience.com/barium-chemtrails/comment-page-8/#comment-23164

Yes, I did make corrections to my first report, which originally aired almost 2-years ago now… after quickly realizing my very embarrassing mistake. I was not happy with myself. Unfortunately, the first version of my report got out to the internet before I could make the correction(s), and the wrong version is shown repeatedly.

My feeling is, and maybe you’d agree, that if such aerosol mixes were created and loaded into jets with either a separate/independent dispersal method other than the exhaust, or actually in the fuel itself… somewhere, somehow, you’d expect someone to talk. I have not heard that yet.

I also interviewed the scientist who originally patented what some believe was a precursor to so-called chemtrail technology. He’s a very kind, helpful man who could not have been more helpful. He says he knows nothing about any such conspiracy.

There’s also a mention of this story In Skeptical Enquirer magazine:
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/curious_contrails_death_from_the_sky/

Update#2: 3/14/2010

More people make the same mistake.  This time someone in Austrailia, and the story was picked up by a Los Angeles environmentalist.   Again mg is confused with µg, making the results 1000 times as high:

http://www.examiner.com/x-10438-Human-Rights-Examiner~y2010m3d13-video-White-Clouds-of-Death-Aussie-exposes-geoengineered-chemtrail-contents?#comments

976 thoughts on “Barium Chemtrails on KSLA

  1. TonyB says:

    I saw all the weather ;-p I think I see part of what I saw from the ground, but it’s hard to say for sure. I still think it’s unusual in that you can see 2 contrails (there was 3 but I don’t have a pick of all 3 separate.) undeniably condense into one larger contrail. In the pics I do have, you can also see the contrail’s (same ones) in the other direction begin to form a ‘system’ blending together with one that crosses. I don’t have pics that definitively show them turning into (whatever the name is for normal, roundish, rain-like) clouds but I’m sure that’s what I saw. So… yes, I think there’s something unusual in that contrails normally don’t turn into lower, more ‘natural’ clouds (unproven in my pics but…) and from my understanding, which isn’t a all that great, they shouldn’t combine into a single larger and more round (tube) shaped trail? But, that kinda supports one of my theories (the 3rd one is obviously a joke ;-p but they were barking a lot…) that the weather moving in caused an anomaly in the atmosphere that permitted some contrails to act in that way; but it’s also possible that they acted in that way because of advanced atmospheric technology IMO. So, how normal is it for contrails to combine 3 into 1 (or at lest 2 into 1 which I show?)

  2. TonyB says:

    Plus, the eye of God is coming in to check things out (time stamped a few mins after the last obvious trail and 20-30 before the ‘clouds’) ;-p And just as a side note to anyone looking, the color of the clouds is (I think) caused from being taken with a crappy cell phone cam… they were visibly white, except the ‘eye’ rainbow type thing. I just picked up a nice new camera though, so anything in the future will be much better.

  3. I think it’s pretty unlikely that contrails would turn into “rain-like” clouds. I’d certainly like to see that. Perhaps it was stratocumulus clouds – which can look like they belong lower down.

    The “eye” thing is a parhelion, also known as a “sun dog”, see:

    http://www.atoptics.co.uk/halo/parhelia.htm

    The two contrails are spreading out, so it’s seems fairly obvious they would merge into one contrail over time. They are probably not forming a “tube” either – just are just seeing it from one angle. It could well be wide and thin.

    If you look at photo 8, you can still see the hint of two distinct trails at the top, but they have just spread out to overlap each other.

    How they spread out is interesting. They are made of ice crystals, which slowly sink – some faster than others, depending on size, so that would spread the trail vertically. But you get a more dramatic spread when the falling crystals reach region of lower air that is moving in a different direction. That’s called “wind shear”, and here it will spread the ice crystals out – almost as if they are being sprinkled onto a conveyor belt.

  4. TonyB says:

    heh, I know what the eye is ;-p it just looked cool. I wish I had inbetween pictures showing the transformation… so it’s not odd for them to merge? Looking them over, in 6 you can kinda make out all 3 towards the horizon. Also, “They are probably not forming a “tube” either – just are just seeing it from one angle. It could well be wide and thin. […] They are made of ice crystals, which slowly sink – some faster than others, depending on size, so that would spread the trail vertically.” That seems to suggest I could be seeing a tube-like formation? At least the bottom half of one… I wish pictures captured 3 dimensions better…

    Strictly theoretically, if that combination of trails were to have definitive proof, like a time lapse video, of turning into the clouds in 13,14, and 15, would that be odd?

  5. Three planes fly roughly along the same path. They leave trails in about the same place. The trails merge. Not something you see every day. But then, you didn’t see it every day.

    Uncommon events are not odd, they just don’t happen very often.

    Not a tube, more of an L shape, with the bottom of the L being longer than the vertical part.

    Contrails turn into clouds sometimes. No, it’s not odd. Maybe your contrails contributed to the clouds growth. Maybe the clouds would have formed anyway. You can see a long line of similar clouds in the satellite photos.

  6. rudedog says:

    Hey, it’s the uncinus and tonyB show. Can you guys lay it on any thicker? It’s getting so deep in here I need to put on some hip waders before I get some on me. When did this website change to comedy central? Or should I say, ‘comedy contrail’. Ha ha, now I’m a comedien too!
    Hey tonyB, you got a little something on your nose. You might want to get that before anyone sees you. Thanks for the laughs guys. Shall I stay tuned for another episode, or is ‘comedy contrail’ over?

  7. hmm says:

    All one really has to do is look up military applications that call for Barium cloud seeding.
    It’s not as far out as one would think.

  8. Well, let’s try that then:

    http://www.google.com/search?q=military+applications+that+call+for+Barium+cloud+seeding

    Nope, all you get are a bunch of chemtrail conspiracy theory sites.

    Perhaps you could give a link?

  9. rudedog says:

    uncinus’s definition of a chemtrail conspiracy theory site:

    Any website that does not conform to the idea that all trails left behind by aircraft are just contrails and nothing unusual is going on and it is the same as it has always been since you were a kid even though you remember differently and your eyes are seeing something else. In spite of the fact that jet contrails require certain conditions to form and even rarer conditions to persist and expand into a blanketing cloud cover. Not to mention the side effects caused by the expanding contrail phenomenom in addition to several other properties not common to jet condensation trails. And so on… and so on…

    In other words, if you dont believe what uncinus tells you to believe then you are a conspiracy theorist or just some kind of nut case like the millions of other people that are reporting the same thing world wide.

    The problem with uncinus’s position on the matter is that he claims that there is no proof of the chemtrail claims, yet he seems to think that his explaination of contrails are proof that there are not any chemtrails being injected into our atmosphere. He seems to think that because a contrail can persist and spread under particular circumstances, which are rare events by the way, that all persisting spreading jet trails have to be normal contrails and cant be anything else.

    All I have to say is if you let uncinus do your thinking for you and dont trust your own eyes and your own physical experiences then you really have no basis to form an opinion on the subject.

  10. Oh, I strongly encourage people to think for themselves, in fact, that’s what I want people to do. Study the facts.

    uncinus’s definition of a chemtrail conspiracy theory site:

    Any website that does not conform to the idea that all trails left behind by aircraft are just contrails

    Well, that would have to include this web site then, as I’ve got a huge list of trails that are not contrails:

    https://contrailscience.com/things-that-are-not-contrails-or-chemtrails/

    He seems to think that because a contrail can persist and spread under particular circumstances, which are rare events by the way, that all persisting spreading jet trails have to be normal contrails and cant be anything else.

    Oh, it’s not that they CAN’T be anything else, it’s that there is NO EVIDENCE that they are anything else. Big difference.

    Can you give anything at all to back up your claim that persisting spreading contrails are “rare events”? How rare exactly? One a week? One a day? One a year?

  11. SR1419 says:

    RubeDog-

    Conditions for Persistent Contrails (ice supersaturation) are “rare” ??

    thats funny, because the IPCC states that:

    “Supersaturated regions are expected to be quite common in the upper troposphere ”

    http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc%5Fsr/?src=/climate/ipcc/aviation/038.htm

    I suppose the IPCC members and contributors are all paid shills.

    Do you really believe there were no persistent contrails when you were younger?? Is your memory truly infallible??

    Why did this scientist write in 1970 that persistent contrails were “frequent”?

    http://tinyurl.com/47lcdg

    Planting disinfo back in 1970 were they?

  12. Cueball says:

    (SR1419) Is it not possible that they were planting disinfo in 1970? Or maybe even disinfo now that appears to be from 1970?? Just asking the questions not accusing!

    So, from the 1970 report you referenced, assuming it is genuine, this scientist is claiming that seeding of clouds via jet exhaust has been occurring for a long time and this may have a modifying effect on the weather, due to persistent contrails. He also says that it is necessary to investigate the effects this might be having on the global climate (glad to hear people were interested in the global climate in 1970).

    So 38 years on, is it possible that the research has been completed on the weather modification effects of jet engine seeding, and the governments (or other agencies) are using this knowledge to affect the weather on a global scale?

    As for global conspiracies to poison the world with barium and other heavy metals, well maybe not the intention, but a serendipitous result for them! If your healthy you will probably not be affected too much, if you are old or infirm, homeless, eating poorly nutritious foods then hey, just maybe your life expectancy will decrease.

    If there was an elitisist, sick, plan to cull the human population, do you really think they would line us up in the street and shoot us. No, it would be a slow increase in pollutants, oxidants, chemicals etc. that would shorten life expectancy and cause greater occurence of disease (e.g. cancer, heart disease).

    Facts are facts, cancer rates and heart disease rates remain high, still no cure for either. No real attempts to improve nutrition even in developed world and now I hear that life expectancy in the US has decreased dramatically over the last 8 years.

  13. The “cloud seeding” have ALWAYS been described as a natural side-effect of planes at hight altitude. It has always been described this way since 1921.

    It’s possible there is a family of Australians living in my garage. Just because something is possible does not make it plausible.

    You need actual evidence. Otherwise, why are you giving the idea any credence.

    Life expectancy has increased at a steady rate of the last decade from 75.8 years in 1995 to 77.8 years in 2005. It has also increased for 65 and 75 year old. This is extraordinarily strong evidence that no population culling is going on.

    http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus07.pdf#027

    So why would you think that there is?

    You don’t have any evidence, do you?

  14. SR1419 says:

    CueBall-

    You asked:

    “So 38 years on, is it possible that the research has been completed on the weather modification effects of jet engine seeding, and the governments (or other agencies) are using this knowledge to affect the weather on a global scale?”

    Possible…but extremely unlikely and highly implausible…for many reasons not the least of which is the global coordination that would be needed- which, if trade and climate treaty agreement and coordination is any indication, is extremely difficult if not impossible…

    I highly doubt that countries such as Russia, Iran, China, Venezuela and many others would be part and parcel to such a plan and rejecting it would certainly not keep quiet about it.

    Moreover, the sheer amount of infrastructure for something like this- 1000s of planes, 10,000s of personnel for truly Global project (which “chemtrails” supposedly are) for over 10 years without a single person admitting anything is just extremely unlikely…especially since there is no evidence that it is taking place…The only offering of supposed evidence is contrails that persist which is highly dubious in the light of benign-intent contrails of known origin that behave in the exact same way.

    you also wrote:

    “If there was an elitisist, sick, plan to cull the human population, do you really think they would line us up in the street and shoot us. No, it would be a slow increase in pollutants, oxidants, chemicals etc. that would shorten life expectancy and cause greater occurence of disease (e.g. cancer, heart disease).”

    My question to you is if there was such a plan…how do the “elites” keep from including themselves and there families and all those involved from the deleterious effects??

    Do they get special air to breathe?

  15. Cueball says:

    (Uncinus) Quote: “You don’t have any evidence, do you?”. That’s a very interesting way of asking a question, isn’t it? It really depends how you define evidence. With regards to the life expectancy, I read that very recently but sadly didn’t bookmark the page, so I need to find it again. I wasn’t just plucking it out of the air.

    (SR1419) I personally do not buy the whole poisoning the masses theory, mainly because I cannot prove it and think it’s highly unlikely. That DOESN’T mean that it couldn’t be happening though. I do buy into the idea that seeding clouds is done deliberately over certain countries to manipulate the weather. Proof or evidence is that jet exhaust (whether with additives to the fuel or not) causes persistent contrails to form and spread. In turn this can alter the weather, if this is done deliberately by lots of planes focussing on certain areas then this is manipulation of the weather.

    Reason for doing this? Who knows, lots of theories but as those that are doing it have not come forward to admit it then we will have to wait and see…

    Reasons for not telling us about it…probably because we are all paying for it via defence budget and therefore via taxes, also probably because of the reaction it would cause if people heard that their government was deliberately flying planes to alter our weather. Even if it was for good reasons there would always be poo-pooers of the idea who would try to gain an edge for themselves by attacking the “project”, such as conspiracy writers or the opposition political party. As ever though cannot prove this but it is a theory.

    BTW – I prefer SR1419’s attitude over Uncinus’, thought the latter was being rude to me in last post :o(

  16. Sorry, I was just trying to prompt you into looking at what actually constitutes evidence here. Specifically WHY people believe things are happening, when to most observers, there does not seem to be enough evidence to support this.

    For example, you said:

    . I do buy into the idea that seeding clouds is done deliberately over certain countries to manipulate the weather. Proof or evidence is that jet exhaust (whether with additives to the fuel or not) causes persistent contrails to form and spread. In turn this can alter the weather, if this is done deliberately by lots of planes focussing on certain areas then this is manipulation of the weather.

    Here you state your belief, and give your evidence, which is great. But unfortunately, the two parts don’t seem to relate. First you say you believe that weather modification is being carried out, then you say you believe this because it is possible.

    Saying something is possible, even proving something is possible (and I’ll accept you’ve provided proof that some form of weather modification via contrails is possible) tells you nothing about what is actually going on. Sure, it’s possible, but is it happening? What evidence do you have that it is happening?

  17. SR1419 says:

    CueBall….

    Cloud seeding is most assuredly done….in this country and elsewhere….and typically involved depositing Silver Iodide into the atmosphere- see here for an example:

    http://www.nawcinc.com/index.html

    This process does not, however, lead to persistent contrails that spread out into a thin sheet of cirrus clouds…

    The effects of persistent contrails on the weather is still very much an unknown and studies are being done by atmospheric scientists around the World to try and determine their effects.

    See here for some examples:

    http://tinyurl.com/6dphju

    http://tinyurl.com/hvp34

    http://tinyurl.com/4qyaww

  18. TonyB says:

    Nah Rudedog, I’ll be back soon enough. Took a vacation for a bit, sorry to disappoint ;-p I’m getting my hands on an spectrograph though. I’m not sure of the quality or how well I’ll be able to use the equipment, but it should be able to show if there is any difference in the composition of the air/cloud/contrail/chemtrail and if the results are clear enough I might be able to determine exactly what difference there is chemically. I’ll be testing on normal clouds and clear sky hopefully next week. I have some doubts about getting results from ‘normal’ dissipating contrails because of their relative size and movement in the sky. I’ll also need to find the absorption spectra for Barium and related chemtrail components and whether or not they’ll even show up if they’re particulates (my experience with absorption spectography has been gaseous only.) We’ll see… Oddly though, it’s been pretty cold and there hasn’t been any persistent trails in the past few days.

    And for the record, I am a paid government employee 😉 Kinda… My employment even involves flight (though in helicopters, and I’m not a pilot…) anyway, so then my theory #1 could be possible? I’m not ruling out #2 either though. Oh, last thing, Rudedog; I don’t think you’re a lab rat, you may experience ‘accidental’ side effects of other testing but it’s probably not directed at you. But I could be wrong, can’t put anything past a govt. condemned for genocide in 2 countries by the UN and just vetoed it away.

  19. SR1419 says:

    Lots of spectrometers (is that different from a “spectograph’?) have been pointed at contrails…from above and below…

    here is an interesting paper with a nice summary of other contrail studies:

    http://tinyurl.com/5h7jfu

    and a picture from a satellite based spectrometer:

    http://www.esa.int/esaEO/SEM8GGULWFE_index_0.html

    With studies of contrails, which date back 50+ years, becoming more frequent and broader in depth and scope, it makes me wonder that if these atmospheric scientists from around the World who study contrails- do not see anything out of the ordinary with regard to persistent contrails…Why should we??

    Surely they are not all paid shills?

  20. short'n'sweet says:

    I’ll be quick and simple.. I live 12 mins away from Toronto International Airport, I drive by every day on my way to work. Hundreds of flights go in and out everyday. For the past 6 years, ive watched as some planes leave huge ever expanding trails that litterly take the blue right out of the sky, ive also watched as hundreds of normal commercial jets have flown in and out with normal con trails that eat right up behind the plane.

    So how do you explain giant chem spraying that goes for a couple of hours, break, hundreds of normal flights continue flying without leaving anything more then a con trail, then a couple of hours later, back again, giant ever expanding chem trails at around 10’000 feet, easly distinguished from the numerous normal commercial aircraft that have to fly in and out of the giant grid like chem trails.

    ive included a couple links of new’r vids, please watch… take note of how obviously different a chem trails is to a con trail in the one vid, its like comparing a fully grown man to a sperm.

    wake up and dont believe the nonsense from the site owners.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdtLTyNOB0A

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kodW75YLGdU <<< WATCH

    watch the vids and then watch your own skys, make up your own minds.. its quite obvious… also take special notice of the 2nd video, which clearly shows a normal commercial airplane with normal everyday for the last 60 years con trail… You wont even see the plane untill about 1:45 in, and look closely, or you will miss it in the giant chem trail.. wake up, look up, dont go back to sleep.. amen

  21. SnS, if you live 12 minutes from Toronto International, then it’s very unlikely that the trails you are seeing are anything to do with planes that are landing or taking off at that airport. Persistent contrails usually form behind planes at cruising altitudes, above 25,000 feet. (although basically they just need tempeeratures of -40 or below, so can occur at any altitude if it’s cold enough – does it get that cold in Toronto?).

    Now, what exact makes you think that the ONLY “normal” contrails are the short ones? Did you read that in a science book? Did you read it anywhere?

    Of course there are two types on contrail – there are non-persistent contrails, and there are persistent contrails. Your videos illustrate the difference between these two types of contrails.

    Persistent contrails have always expanded to cover to sky under certain weather conditions, see:

    https://contrailscience.com/persisting-and-spreading-contrails/

  22. Ross says:

    I take the view that there is only one type of contrail, and then distinguish parts of a contrail as being ephemeral (short, or “normal” if you like) or persistent. A single aircraft can form a contrail that is ephemeral for a part of its flight, and persistent in another part of the flight. This behavior depends on the RH. This is the on/off appearance that is sometimes seen.

    Commercial jet aircraft normally cruise between 30,000 and 40,000 feet. The temperature range for contrailing for the common high bypass engine is, for 30,000 feet (300hPa), -50 degC when the RH is 0% to -40.4 degC when the RH is 100%. For the nor common RH range of 20% to 70% the temperature range is -49.3 to -46.5 degC.
    See the table at http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=display-figures&name=i1520-0450-36-12-1725-t04
    for the article at http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-document&issn=1520-0450&volume=036&issue=12&page=1725
    “Calculations of Aircraft Contrail Formation Critical Temperatures”

    If the RH is above about 64% (when the temperature is -46 to -49 degC), the environment is supersaturated with respect to ice, and the contrail cannot dissipate. Contrails (or parts of contrails) in this ice saturated environment will be persistent.

    Persistent contrails (or parts of them) spread because of wind shear.

  23. Cueball says:

    Just came across these videos on YouTube – very shocking if indeed these effects are caused by chemtrails/persistent contrails (call them what you will).

    If this is true (and I would like to hear an explanation/discussion on this) then it is VERY WORRYING.

    Check it out

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcNbmZlpuDU

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTXlySfFILg

  24. The videos look like fog.

    Contrails would not cause ground level fog, but the same weather conditions that favor contrails (cold, damp), would also favor fog.

  25. Cueball says:

    Without being there myself I cannot say if this was fog but the info said that there was NO moisture on the mirror. If it was fog there would be. So I can only think of a few other things it could be:

    Pollen
    Man-made pollutants (e.g. factory, chemtrails)
    A.N.Other

    Any ideas??

  26. Ross says:

    There is no comment or any indication whatsoever that whatever that is has anything to do with contrails.
    It does not even have the potential to be worrying without more information. Temperature and RH at the time, for instance. A sample of the stuff…

  27. It’s fog. The moisture droplets in fog are incredibly small, and you can only see them because it’s dark, and there’s a bright light shining on them. Fog (or mist) does not condense – it’s already water, so putting a warm mirror outside is not going to demonstrate anything. Fog with a droplet size of under 50 microns will not wet a surface (the droplets just bounce off).

    http://dryfog.kirinoikeuchi.co.jp/eng/dryfog/index.html

  28. Cueball says:

    Ross said

    There is no comment or any indication whatsoever that whatever that is has anything to do with contrails.

    . Yet the video comments clearly state “On October 12 2008, after a day of heavy aerosol spraying, we filmed this “fog” in the center of Germany.” and in the other one “This is just the grey haze that forms when a lot of spraying has been going down, the aerosols. It´s the iridescent sky sinking down and entering your lungs”

    Uncinus – you state matter of fact that this is fog. Not even a chance it could be something else. Unbelievable!

    I don’t know what it is but immediately you do. The comment on the video also says that “the particles are present most days, but not in a “fog” as dense as the one shown here.” So are you now going to tell me that it is foggy most days in this city in Germany. Also, your little scientific piece of information you ran off to find talks about dry particles under 50 microns not showing up, yadda yadda yadda, well if you watch the 2nd video I linked “Dry haze once again”, at around 1 minute 7 seconds the guy stands there and breathes out causing a mini contrail from his mouth. Now correct me if I’m wrong but wouldn’t that vapour cause moisture to form on a mirror?? Compare the size of the particles in his breathed out air to those particles flying by the bright light. Why wouldn’t they cause the mirror to fog with moisture. I put it to you that you are speaking horse turd and this is not as simple as saying FOG!

    OPEN YOUR MIND to other possibilities or at least discuss some. The evidence is here in front of you and the person creating the video has even stated that this occur most days, yet still you are positive it is just normal. Perhaps it has always been like this in this city in Germany, just that because they are looking for it now they are only just noticing it. That seems to fit your other conclusions…

  29. Uncinus – you state matter of fact that this is fog. Not even a chance it could be something else. Unbelievable!

    You are quite right, I should have “it is most likely fog”, because it looks and acts like fog. Of course it could be other things – pollen, smoke or dust to name a few.

    It could also have been powder dumped from an airplane five miles overhead, but that seems inordinately unlikely. Given that it seems to be a stable suspension in the air (hardly falling at all), then it would take several weeks to fall, and would have dispersed enough to blanket the entire country, if not the continent.

    Fog simply is the best fitting explanation. If you can somehow eliminate that as a possibility, then you’ve then got to eliminate pollen, smoke, dust, and all the other more likely explanations.

    You make a scientific point when you say

    if you watch the 2nd video I linked “Dry haze once again”, at around 1 minute 7 seconds the guy stands there and breathes out causing a mini contrail from his mouth. Now correct me if I’m wrong but wouldn’t that vapour cause moisture to form on a mirror?? Compare the size of the particles in his breathed out air to those particles flying by the bright light. Why wouldn’t they cause the mirror to fog with moisture.

    That would have actually been a useful experiment. Did it make the mirror fog up? We don’t know, he does not say.

    You’re a couple of feet from your monitor. You are breathing on it. Is it fogging up? No. So what does that indicate?

  30. LetsSee says:

    Wait, wait, wait a second…

    Let’s get back to basic scientific observation:

    Uncinus – are you saying:

    1) That you PERSONALLY saw “persistent contrails / chemtrails”
    2) Before 1995
    3) To the SAME EXTENT as recent years*

    *Allowing, of course, for the increase of flights (according to EuroControl: Challenges of Growth 2008, flight growth has increased by 4% over the last 50 years)

  31. No, I never said anything like that. In fact I don’t really remember any contrails before a few years ago, persistent or otherwise. It’s not something I paid attention to.

    And that growth, it’s 4% a year – however most of that was concentrated in more recent years. Recently it’s been doubling every 10-15 years. The doc you reference:

    http://www.eurocontrol.int/corporate/gallery/content/public/docs/pdf/pressreleases/2008/ACI_Eurocontrol_press%20factsheets2.pdf

    See the graph on page 5, it shows traffic has roughly doubled since 1995 from about 6 million to 10 million. It has increased 400% since the 1980s.

    There are other factors as well. Modern high-bypass engines produce more contrails. Flights are longer. Planes are bigger. If you account for all these factors there are probably TEN TIMES as much contrails are there were in the 1980s, so it’s not surprising that some people eventually started to notice them.

  32. LetsSee says:

    Ok, so to paraphrase:

    1) Until just a few years ago
    2) You had NEVER noticed trails of ANY kind in the sky
    3) Because it was something… you just didn’t pay attention to?
    4) Even though there were 6 million planes in the sky in 1995 (and 10 million now)

    Never once, did you notice ANY type of trail at all? Not even out of the corner
    of your eye? Not even absentmindedly looking up at the sky?

    Wow.

    And that comment, “some people eventually started to notice them” – there are
    thousands of photographs, video clips, forum postings… so a lot more than “some people”

    * I meant 4% a year, thanks.

  33. Oh I’m sure I noticed them. What I said was

    In fact I don’t really remember any contrails before a few years ago, persistent or otherwise. It’s not something I paid attention to.

    There’s a big difference between noticing something and remembering it. I’m sure if I were walking down the street and I saw a man with an amusingly bad haircut, then I would notice it. But ten years later, would I remember it? No – unless you pay a lot of attention to things, you don’t remember them.

    Yeah, “some people” was not meant to imply one or two – obviously there are at least a few hundred people who now look up at persistent contrails and think they are something new and unusual.

    But the real question is why have all the OTHER people not noticed anything odd going on? Let’s be generous and say 1% of the population have noticed something odd going on in the sky. Why did the other 99% not notice it? Why did they not notice it for ten years?

    Now, if someone can not notice something for ten years, say 1998 to 2008, then why is it odd that they would also not notice it between 1988 and 1998? Especially considering there was a lot less of it them.

    Tell me this LetsSee – when did you first notice these persistent trails?

  34. M. C. says:

    Reading Unicus I have to wonder, has he even looked up into the sky to see what he’s talking about? Most people that I talk to who don’t believe in what’s happening wont take the time to investigate the situation themselves.

    One thing that I find interesting about this week..

    I live in the San Fernando Valley, Burbank…on friday I woke up and I was so happy, we had blue skys and no chemtrails. None! (I suppose the sudden lack of “contrails means that there were no commercial planes flying that day? Same exact weather as the day before which had a sky filed with phoney chemtrail clouds), any how, there was no chemtrails..why?

    Because we’ve got huge fires burning, and the chemtrail sprayers figure that the fires will produce enough particulate matter, and they can lay off the spraying for a few days.

    I’d rather have the fire smoke than the chemtrails any day.

  35. M. C. says:

    I always thought that clouds absorbed the heat from the sun, and that clear days allowed much of the sun’s rays to be reflected back to space.

    It seems to me that creating all these clouds won’t really stop global warming. I ready Teller’s presentation (lawernce Livermoor labs’ Global Warming, and Ice Ages“) and I don’t believe they did all the math to really determine that the “scattering” affect of Aluminum Oxide was valid. I wonder how much true testing they did, and what they specific results were. They sought to reflect 1% of the sun’s rays, which they said would mitigate the 50% increase in global C02. I don’t buy it.

    It’s amazing, all this literture is out there, yet people like Unicus, or unick, don’t even believe in the premise.

    Sheep

  36. Hi M.C. I also live in the LA area, and I can see the smoke, have a look at this satellite photo taken earlier today (Nov 16 2008)

    http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/subsets/?subset=AERONET_La_Jolla.2008321.terra.500m

    I think it’s important though to look at the big picture. Here’s the same photo, but further up the coast, and out to sea:

    http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/subsets/?subset=AERONET_Moss_Landing.2008321.terra.1km

    Note the contrails in the cloud bank 200 miles off shore, opposite San Francisco, probably planes to or from SFO.

    I actually watch the sky very carefully for contrails and other clouds every day as I take my walk. It’s kind of a hobby of mine, cloud spotting, however it’s rather frustrating living in a place with such nice weather. As I’m sure you are aware, there are hardly any clouds during the summer, and it’s only in the last few weeks that we’ve started to see contrails in any significant numbers.

    You mentioned contrails on thursday (Nov 13th), well here’s the photo from that day:

    http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/subsets/?subset=AERONET_La_Jolla.2008318.terra.500m

    Can’t see any contrails, but you can clearly see a band of high clouds running down the middle of the photo over Burbank. That indicates moisture in the high air, and would be responsible for the contrails you saw.

  37. M.C., what premise are you saying I don’t believe in? I’d like to respond, but I’m not sure what you are referring to.

  38. Anonymous says:

    M.C.:

    “I always thought that clouds absorbed the heat from the sun, and that clear days allowed much of the sun’s rays to be reflected back to space.”

    But at night (that’s the OTHER half of the time) the reverse takes place: clouds retain re-radiated infra-red (“heat”), which escapes in their absence into space.

    “It seems to me that creating all these clouds won’t really stop global warming. I ready Teller’s presentation (lawernce Livermoor labs’ Global Warming, and Ice Ages“) and I don’t believe they did all the math to really determine that the “scattering” affect of Aluminum Oxide was valid. I wonder how much true testing they did, and what they specific results were. They sought to reflect 1% of the sun’s rays, which they said would mitigate the 50% increase in global C02. I don’t buy it.”

    If they were to try this world-wide, then the size of the Earth requires (by rough calculation) more than THREE MILLION TONS of aluminium oxide per single shot. That’s 80,000 high-altitude tanker flights, dude.

    “It’s amazing, all this literture is out there, yet people like Unicus, or unick, don’t even believe in the premise.”

    It isn’t amazing to ANY engineer. They generally possess a greater comprehension of material reality than non-engineers and non-scientists.

    “Sheep”.

    They are uninformed ruminants…

    Here’s a cheap and easily-reversible way of conducting the above thought experiment that blows Edward Teller’s approach “out-of-the-water”:

    http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=fg7J8P-uXqM

    The world is just packed full of gentle, intelligent, and thoughtful engineers and scientists like Stephen Salter if you just look away from your conspiracy sites for just a moment…

  39. david lee says:

    While I am not certain as to who is right or wrong on this issue I am certain of one thing.

    Anyone who seems to have an answer to EVERYTHING is surely not on the right path to truth.

    These people exisit on both side s of this argument. Which would indicate to me that the real truth falls somewhere in between.

  40. David, are you familiar with the Flat Earth Society? They too have an answer to everything, as do their opponents, the globularists. Is the earth then half flat and half round?

    The creationists and the evolutionists have a similar situation. Is the origin of mankind halfway between Genesis and the Big Bang?

  41. Chris says:

    Hey something that was brought up today. The new Metallica music video, “All Nightmare Long,” has some clips about all of this stuff. Kirk bought the footage in the video off a guy in Russia. I just thought some of you guys would be interested in watching it. You can view this at youtube or metallica.com. Pretty cool stuff.

  42. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dATv-2lDJaU

    At 7:00 – “A compound of Barium and Arsenic aerosol is deployed” (video shows planes spraying powder, killing zombies).

    Well, there you go – chemtrails are there to kill Soviet zombies. Problem solved.

  43. bryansail says:

    Hi all,
    I like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZT73K2hkVY
    It is a commercial for a prepaid phone card and it is rife with hit you over the head symbolism, I especially like the sprinklers.

    I think we should be concerned with contrails. JP-8 and EDB. Normal contrails sicken pilots and the U.S. Government has
    implicated JP-8 as causing their own pilots to be sick more often than non-pilots. Luckily contrails don’t reach the ground
    ever… except that they do.

    Contrails ARE chemtrails. Throat, respiration problems, lowered immunity and mycoplasma infections, all possible from
    contrails (not chemtrails as the tin hat community would claim because they are all chemtrails. Just as much so when you
    don’t see them as commercial flights don’t take days off.

    So what does a chemtrail look like? It looks like a contrail. It is a contrail. A nice example of Occam’s Razor. Doesn’t mean
    that there are not some advanced contrails with barium salts (improves conductivity for defense applications) and nano sized aluminum (increases jetfuel efficiency per Govt. research)

    Don’t let the raindrops hit your open mouth like when you were a kid as the skies are much more laden with by
    products of contrails these days.

    Hope this doesn’t ‘cloud’ the issue.
    -Bryan

  44. So Bryan, it seems that you accept pretty much everything on this site about chemtrails/contrails, and simple think that contrails contain toxins?

    I’m a little confust as to how you arrive at the correlation with “Throat, respiration problems, lowered immunity and mycoplasma infections”. What are you basing that on? And how long does it take for a contrail to “reach the ground”

  45. bryansail says:

    At this point we have to look at the data from NASA and government funded studies mostly and hope that we can discern what portions of those reports are accurate.

    Correlation of illness from jetfuel combustion is extremely difficult as you are well aware. Studies on the effects of JP-8 (EDB)
    are available of course and one has to consider them cautiously just as one would have to consider studies on Gulf War Syndrome or effects of Agent Orange produced by the U.S. Government carefully. Lots of revisions of course on those information streams.

    There have been studies on the presence of molds in the air we breathe and again one must tread very cautiously in looking
    at that information as it relates or doesn’t with aerosols from jetfuel combustion.

  46. So if there is no correlation, then how can you claim there is a link? Anything is possible – maybe the rise in respiratory problems is from the increased use of CNG vehicles? There’s no evidence of that either. So why pick contrails?

  47. bryansail says:

    Studies done on ill effects of JP-8 have already been done.

  48. Studies on the ill effects of gasoline have already been done. So what is your point?

    http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=gasoline+toxicity

    Jets do not fly along spraying JP-8, they burn it. You are only likely to get any potentially toxic exposure to it if you work long term in a military base in a job involving the fuel systems of aircraft.

    http://www.ehponline.org/members/2000/108p183-192pleil/108p183.pdf

  49. JazzRoc says:

    Correlation of illness from jetfuel combustion is extremely difficult as you are well aware. Studies on the effects of JP-8 (EDB)

    Ethylene Dibromide was an ingredient of leaded gasoline which combined with the lead after combustion to form lead bromide, which passed out of the combustion chamber and exhaust ports, so causing lead oxide NOT to be deposited there.

    I know this because its use was discontinued at the end of the sixties because of safety concerns, and I was forced thereafter to scrape this lead coating off the cylinder heads of my lightweight car engine every 15,000 miles.

    I have told you this before, Bryansale. At that time I was working at Associated Octel, which was the British company manufacturing tetra-ethyl and tetra-methyl lead, so you may consider me to be somewhat of an expert.

    If you care to peruse WIKI (that FBI, CIA, and NSA censored “mouthpiece”) you will find that down the list of uses for JP-8 you’ll find COOKING, using a specially-designed stove.

    If JP-8 were some draconian poison, you would hardly find cooking stoves designed to burn it, would you?

    Furthermore, as has been pointed out previously to you, gasoline WAS and IS a far more deadly material than JP-8, especially as it is burnt at ground level, near you.

    And NO hydrocarbon liquids (apart from pure liquid paraffin) are entirely SAFE.

    But people capable of “discernment” know that Life itself comes with risks. Try and become such a person yourself…

  50. Casey says:

    people who dont believe in chemtrails. WAKE THE FUCK UP. The people who do believe. Lets bring these nazis to justice.

  51. Maur says:

    lololololol

    I don’t know how you do it Uncinus. How you maintain such calm composure in the face of rabid paranoia. I can’t believe you’ve been arguing with these kids for about a year now… Un-fricken-believable…

    I also ended up here after seeing that Metallica video and thinking to myself, “What was that ending? Is there some barium conspiracy theory I don’t know about?” And sure enough there is. I can’t stop laughing at the fact that no matter how many ways you word it, they still refuse to provide any evidence; only speculation. They don’t even seem to know the difference between the two, or the meaning of conspiracy for that matter. They then throw further conspiracies (and insults) into the mix, such as accusing you of pretending to be more than one person. LOL!

    The best part is that their main claim is one of “truthiness,” i.e. “I know it’s real because it feels like it is.” Doesn’t matter that they can’t prove any of it.

    What? Strange stuff happening in the sky beyond my comprehension? Well, clearly the obvious explanation is IT MUST BE A GOVERNMENT PLOT!

    LoL…

    I understand the sentiment of “I know what I saw and you can’t tell me otherwise,” but if you don’t have any proof you can’t equate it with scientific fact. Period. Maybe I saw a mermaid kidnap someone at a nearby beach. Can I prove it? Nope. So I’ll just do the next best thing and misconstrue some conjecture and resort to calling anyone who doesn’t believe my wild claims shills and sheep.

    Until you have some form of solid evidence the burden of proof is on you, not the other way around. And if you are suggesting that you know “the real truth” and “the man” doesn’t want people to know, then a CONSPIRACY THEORY is exactly what it is. The fact this argument has persisted is both funny and sad at the same time…

  52. bryan says:

    Here’s a pretty good link for barium dispersal information. I think Uncinus has gone over that the top of the page
    barium dispersal method discusses a ‘powder’ contrail.
    http://www.luxefaire.com/devilvision/appxhtml/BappendixparticulatesB.html

    Bernard Eastlund stated in an interview that Wright AFB has been conducting research
    for weather modification for a long time. In reviewing that stream of information it
    appears that they began researching weather modification in 1947 and that research
    is directly related to Tesla’s late in life (when he became quite eccentric) research.

    A close look at data pertaining to barium shows that testing has been performed
    at least a few times in the past.

    U.S. Patent #: 5,003,186, titled `Stratospheric Welsbach Seeding for Reduction of Global Warming

    In September of 2002, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell even told a United Nations World Summit in South Africa quote, “we are committed to a billion-dollar program to develop and deploy advanced technologies to mitigate greenhouse-gas emissions.” Powell never fully elaborated.

    Here’s a list of patents pertaining to weather intervention;
    http://www.seektress.com/patlist.htm
    and of course there is the AIM program, and satellite systems that can be used to modify our weather.

    I don’t think that barium is being deployed by commercial aircraft, but comments like those by Powell just
    add fuel to the speculation.
    -Bryan

  53. bryan says:

    So Jazzrock, what are the effects of EDB on sperm counts, liver and kidney function again? Is EDB classified as a carcinogen?
    We do live with it in the fossil fuel age. I place value on your direct experience with JP-8 and I still value reseach results on EDB. The genesis of reports, use and risks of EDB are evolving still. Barium is injected into people as a dye. Life is definitely still great despite these risks. I’m no doubt exposed to worse chemicals when I decide to eat a Filet Mignon (MR) or drink water. Humans
    are brilliantly resilient !

    Discernment, risk, wisdom, heady stuff !

    “The works of the Lord are great, studied by all who have pleasure therein”– Inscribed in the archway of the entrance to James Clerk Maxwell’s Cavendish Laboratory

  54. I think all the barium spraying that has been done for communication experiments has been at very high altitudes (like, 200,000 feet), and is not related to contrails.

    How exactly do you connect Powell’s statement to barium being deployed by commercial aircraft? It’s a bit tenuous – he’s taking about carbon emissions – not cooling down the earth.

  55. Barium is injected into people as a dye. Life is definitely still great despite these risks. I’m no doubt exposed to worse chemicals when I decide to eat a Filet Mignon (MR) or drink water.

    Indeed, lots of things are toxic, but we consume them all the time. Aluminum for example causes bone weakness and brain damage, yet we use it for cooking in, and for containing soda. Just about anything is toxic – the key is: in what dose? It’s easy to scare people by saying “jet fuel is toxic”, but if nobody is actually getting a toxic dose then that is a bit misleading.

    Jet exhaust does contain toxins. But then so does car exhaust, power plant and factory emissions. It’s called pollution.

  56. bryan says:

    Good point about Powell’s comment. It just adds fuel to chemtrail mania, the actual content to chemtrail theorists (and me for
    posting it-lol) is not relevant. You’ve certainly seen your share of that, the scientific data isn’t important, can’t you see
    the trails for crying out loud???

    I’ll try to find actual DATA on barium being deployed at 30,000 feet but a google search is going to be miserable in the
    sense that I will be overwhelmed by chemtrail conspiracy pages.

    Regarding Powells comment there is a lot different science vying for consideration in mitigating man’s effect on the environment which to my thinking should be left to the plankton and forests (provided IKEA and Jamba Juice’s acai farms don’t plunder them all)
    -Bryan

  57. bryan says:

    I think we would be wise Uncinus to consider cumulative loading of these chemicals. At some point we get pretty saturated.
    Fluoride is carcinogenic, it’s positive effect on tooth decay is very questionable and it gets stored in bones and weakens them.
    Then the pharmaceuticals sweep in and put you on drug that rebuilds bone density poorly formed weaker bone which they
    don’t tell you about when they put you on it. I think removing fluoride is a better idea than treating its effects down the
    road -reduced IQ (that explains me) cancers, and osteoporosis. Hidden sources of fluoride are everywhere, its in candy, it lines canned foods, it is in antibiotics, antidepressents. Plastics and styrofoam are now being reformulated and removed because they too are toxic. Sure we are amazingly resilient but at some point all this adds up and it reduces quality of life.
    -Bryan

  58. You can eliminate a lot of the chemtrail conspiracy pages from search results by adding “-chemtrails – chemtrail” to the search, like:

    http://www.google.com/search?q=radio+barium+spraying+-chemtrails+-chemtrail

    You can also limit your searching to google scholar

    http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=radio+barium+spraying

    Or just military sites with site:.mil (or .gov)

    http://www.google.com/search?q=radio+barium+spraying+site:.mil

  59. Fluoride, I think, is another topic – and one where there is lots of scientific discussion happening in other places. The anti-fluoride movement has been around for a while – you’d think if it was a plot, then it would have worked by now:

    As for barium, since nobody has ever shown any unusual amounts of barium related to contrails, then I don’t know what there is to think about.

  60. bryan says:

    That little girl is being PUSHED lol ! Thanks for the search notes. I’m messing around with searching on dogpile
    here and there to see what (if any) differences there are.

    back into barium… it seems that a lot of the chemtrail webpages (when I last searched them) didn’t seem to have active discussions. There is more discussion at youtube about chemtrails than most of the conspiracist websites.
    I also am going to check if there is anything about barium mitigating pollution just in case.

    I’m curious, IF / when the mitigation program is implemented will it be publicized? There is a chance that
    they will really consider all the angles before implementation and they may not necessarily hold a press conference.
    -B

  61. What mitigation program are you referring to?

  62. James says:

    and who are ‘they’?

  63. M says:

    Someone explain? why the snow and rain……leave my hair sticky and stiff sometimes. More often than not. Chemtrials for certain. If I shower and have silky hair, go outside and get rained on or snowed on, and then when my hair dries, find it is stiff and sticky, kinda like after swimming in salt water, then wash it again and it is silky??? Tell me what the hell, is in that water coming down from the sky???

  64. Ben says:

    “Someone explain? why the snow and rain……leave my hair sticky and stiff sometimes. More often than not. Chemtrials for certain. If I shower and have silky hair, go outside and get rained on or snowed on, and then when my hair dries, find it is stiff and sticky, kinda like after swimming in salt water, then wash it again and it is silky??? Tell me what the hell, is in that water coming down from the sky???”

    In order to get rain, water particles have to condensate on something, that thing is ALWAYS dust, pollen, or some other particulate matter (like the smoke from automobile exhaust). As the droplet builds it also picks up more particulate matter, it also aborbs more of that particulate matter, eventually the droplet get’s heavy enough that it starts to fall. On the way down from the cloud, it bashes into every other water molecule and dust particle between the cloud and the ground, so by the time it reaches the ground, it’s nearly as dirty as ground-water.

    Yes, the water from your showerhead is just as dirty, but that’s part of why you use detergents and rinse agents (shampoo)… which completely invalidates your comparisson, unless you tried to shampoo your hair in the rain, in which case I’d say it likely didn’t rain hard enough to wash out much of the shampoo.

    There’s also the issue of hairsprays, if you use any of them, the rewetting of your hair without rinsing them out could be making clump up into a big sticky mess.

    The only way to make a valid comparisson would be to try washing your hair in the shower using the same amount of water as that from the rain… and then not using any shampoos or conditioners. Otherwise you’re just trying to compare apples to cars.

  65. Ben says:

    Ron:
    “100LL is the most widely used piston engine aircraft fuel and although it’s listed as LL (low lead) it still contains up to 0.56 grams of lead per liter. About 97 percent of gasoline used
    in piston-engine powered aircraft is leaded avgas, mostly 100LL. The remaining three percent is ethanol-free unleaded automotive gasoline (mogas).
    http://www.epa.gov/fedrgstr/EPA-AIR/2007/November/Day-16/a22456.htm

    How about jet fuel? That would be the relevant fuel in this case. Heck, coal has a hell of a lot of lead in it, but those jet aircraft aren’t running on coal either. In this case people are trying to look at the effects of jet engine exhaust… which of course there will be some effect until someone figures out how to make an emission free jet engine… so the only question is how much of an effect does it have, and how much of that effect that is trying to be measured is from the planes, and how much of it is from other sources like vehicles, powerplants, etc. I know the guy in the video said he doesn’t have any of those things near him, but do you REALLY think the exhaust from cars will be completely gone before the air can move 10 feet? 100 feet? how about 1 mile? 10 miles? now how about 100 miles? 1000?? Of course not. Exhaust from various sources stays in the atmosphere long enough that it can circle the earth several times over. Don’t believe me? No problem, just go look at the smoke trails from the seasonal wildfires in Africa (NASA and NOAA both have great pictures of it circling the earth many times). So even if this guy lived out in bumville nowhere, the air will still have fossil fuel emissions from stuff as far away as LA, or even Hong Kong. So the only accurate way to determine what role the jet exhaust is having would be to run a jet engine in a vacuum, then test the exhaust, now you know what pure jet exhaust has in it, it’s fairly simple math to figure out how diluted it is in the atmosphere and how much of those contaminants actually came from any one jet (based upon atmospheric dilution alone, it’s fairly easy to see that it’s going to be between less than 1 ppt (that’s at least 1000 times less than 1 ug/l).

    For those of you who still believe there’s some conspiracy to hose us all down with some kind of pesticides or something… it’s not that you’re crazy, you’re just stupid.

  66. rudedog says:

    You guys are all the same. Your only response is to call someone stupid if they dont conform to your programmed way of thinking. Grow up. Thats not how you educate people, by being a jerk.

  67. Rudedog, if you read Ben’s post you see he raised several points. Why do you focus only on him saying a pesticide spraying conspiracy is stupid? Do you agree with such a conspiracy theory? If not, then his jibe was obviously not aimed at you. So could you answer his scientific points?

  68. Richard says:

    Unicus, you are really something. You get around. I’ve seen you on other sites, always defending the faith, and barking the party line.

    I’ve taken a closer look at some of your posts, and responses. It’s amazing. You’ve got a little group of merry men, constantly bathing you in adulation. “Keep up the good work”, and “Keep em honest”, etc. etc.

    You also seem quick to request chemtrail believers to provide any video tape or pictures. You just can’t wait to debunk them.

    I don’t really take a strong position on the Chemtrail issue, other than I believe that the persistent contrails that spread out into vast swathes, eventually blending in with other swathes, eventually blocking out a good deal of sunlight, are something more than simple ice crystals, which form naturally in high altitude aircraft.

    I don’t know why they’re doing it, or how long we’ll have to deal with it, but I don’t like it. I miss the clear skys, and I don’t like the idea that the gov can authorize that without our consent, or notification….. But I’m not the kind of guy to make a big deal out of the issue.

    Here’s the thing that was perhaps most convincing in making me question the official explanation. Firstly, I figured I could use an easily available software to determine the flight that are going over head, in real time. When I was matching up planes in the sky with plans on the computer feed, I noticed something. All the planes going over my head, here in Burbank, CA are either on approach to land at a southern Ca airport, like burbank, LAX, or one of the other many airports…, or they are climbing out from a take off from one of these same airports. Here’s the rub….airplanes contrail only over about 25,000 feet, and at the latitude of Los Angeles, they actually only appear much higher…the planes, either on approach, or climbing out are nowhere near 25,000 feet when they pass over the San Fernando Valley. So we’re left with the explanation that all the plane we see laying down these huge contrails are actually cruising on their flight patterns, which happen to take them right over LA Suburbs.

    Here’s the rub with that explanation. The only flight patterns that go over LA are North – South. Going west…no dice.., Coming from the west, also, NO DICE…no patterns.

    There are some flights from S. Jose, Sacramento, SFC etc, that pass nearby, but right over…and there not enough to account for all the trails.

  69. All the planes going over my head, here in Burbank, CA are either on approach to land at a southern Ca airport, like burbank, LAX, or one of the other many airports…, or they are climbing out from a take off from one of these same airports.

    That’s simply not true. There are lots of commuter planes that fly right over the LA area. Like all the traffic to San Diego, for example.

    The only flight patterns that go over LA are North – South. Going west…no dice.., Coming from the west, also, NO DICE…no patterns.

    Most of them are. There are also some flight going to Hawaii that fly over LA. You will notice that the vast majority of LA contrails are roughly north-south.

    I believe that the persistent contrails that spread out into vast swathes, eventually blending in with other swathes, eventually blocking out a good deal of sunlight, are something more than simple ice crystals, which form naturally in high altitude aircraft.

    Why do you believe that, when science tells us that that that’s exactly what they are?

  70. rudedog says:

    Another pathetic response.

    uncinus says:
    “That’s simply not true. There are lots of commuter planes that fly right over the LA area. Like all the traffic to San Diego, for example.”

    How many commuter planes have you seen that leave huge ever-expanding contrails that never dissipate? Besides, dont forget, we can actually see and hear the large jet aircraft that are leaving these trails. They are never from commuter planes. lol. Your contrail “science” is plagued with deception uncinus. It is nothing but smoke and mirrors being used to conceal the truth.

  71. I see quite a few. You are near Redding, California right Rudedog? There also you get mostly north-south traffic. See:

    http://flightaware.com/live/airport/KRDD

    Click on the top-right map to make it larger. Note the vast amount of north-south commuter traffic. San Francisco to Seattle is directly over Redding.

    I can’t hear the high altitude planes in LA, too much background noise. Are you in a rural area? Still seems unlikely. Seems rather odd that you’ve never produced any video or photo evidence.

  72. bryansail says:

    “U.S. patent number 6315213…is described as a method of modifying the weather and should concern the public. A scientist from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base acknowledges that planes are spraying barium salt, polymer fibers [read: plastics], aluminum oxide and other chemicals in the atmosphere to both modify the weather and for military communications purposes.”

    taken from; http://www.allthingspass.com/uploads/html-142Out%20Of%20The%20Blue%20Rev%20Aug_06.htm
    worth a read as it details in some cases how testing of atmospheric research went on for decades before being declassified
    and therefore known to have occurred.

    History directs us to believe that any program involving compounds or effects bad for biosystems will be kept as secret.
    So the history of covert military programs is one where the public is kept in the dark while the program is already active.
    How does this relate to HAARP and atmospheric moderation?

    Jazzfunk likes to post with great authority (and vehement derision) that any dispersal of aluminum (or other metals) would require specialized military aircraft, yet dozens of technical papers outline that this is most certainly not true. If it were just one or 2 papers or a couple of patents, he could possibly claim that these are not evidence that this can be brought to point of use.
    Unfortunately he would be wrong as there are many dozens of papers detailing the utilization of dispersed metals.
    The particles may be seeded by dispersal from seeding aircraft; one exemplary technique may be via the jet fuel as suggested by prior work regarding the metallic particles.

    5003186 – March 26, 1991 – Stratospheric Welsbach seeding for reduction of global warming
    Quoting: from patent text;
    they are mixing powdered aluminum with the jet fuel. it is released, unburned, into the jet exhaust.
    There are other patents that align closely to the Welsbach seeding patent which is what you find when
    said patents are at the point of use (money stream generation and contracts being awarded)

    Uncinus, that Airplane Voodoo1 is owned by Raytheon. Raytheon is an interesting company, have you looked into
    how they may be related to atmospheric moderation yet?
    http://www.airport-data.com/aircraft/N289MT.html

    Peace all and good luck with your studies on reports such as the 600 page “National Defense Authorization Act” and
    the Congressional Research Service paper on “High Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse and High Power Microwave Devices”, “Title II Research Budget”, “Army Test Resources Master Plan”, “Microwave Symposium”, “Department of Defense/Management Issues Related to Chaff”, Naval War College reports; “Space Forces Support For the Joint Forces, Desert Storm, Who’s in Charge?”, “Progress In Space Acquisition”, “Program Acquisition Costs” etc. This is where you will begin to find out the true nature
    of atmospheric moderation as it pertains to contrails.

    -Bryan -aka Brain for sale and bryansail

  73. Bryan, I think you need to take a step back and ask yourself why you give this stuff any credence.

    The bottom line here (with “chemtrails”) is that some people think that some modern trails are significantly visually different from trails 20 years ago. I’m arguing that they are not, and I give a lot of evidence to support this case.

    Now you come along, and seem to be suggesting that some trails contain poison that the military is not telling us about. Your evidence for this is several vague references to possible programs you’ve gleaned from patents and suchlike.

    But you have no evidence that this is actually happening. No evidence that the contrails are different.

    You can find a lot of things if you look for them. Imagine one day you got the idea that there was a military base on the Moon. You look it up on the internet and find a lot of speculative info on such bases, you even find old government plans, some interviews where scientists argue it’s necessary, and maybe even some patents. So do you then go and believe that there are military bases on the Moon? Probably not.

    So what exactly is your argument here? Do you think contrails look different now? Do you think there is any evidence that they are different?

  74. JazzRoc says:

    Richard:

    “Here’s the rub with that explanation. The only flight patterns that go over LA are North – South. Going west…no dice.., Coming from the west, also, NO DICE…no patterns. There are some flights from S. Jose, Sacramento, SFC etc, that pass nearby, but right over…and there not enough to account for all the trails.

    What about LAX itself? Isn’t that one of the world’s largest airports, and don’t aircraft have to enter a handling stack to land there? Doesn’t this stack begin at heights that are cold enough for trails? Doesn’t such a stack necessarily have straight lines in it, and at least two, and possibly four headings within it?

    Bryan for Sale:

    “there are many dozens of papers detailing the utilization of dispersed metals. The particles may be seeded by dispersal from seeding aircraft; one exemplary technique may be via the jet fuel as suggested by prior work regarding the metallic particles. Quoting: from patent text; they are mixing powdered aluminum with the jet fuel. It is released, unburned, into the jet exhaust.

    You must tell me a better phrasing and search engine to use, for I could only find a single page of results for “suspension of aluminum particulates in aviation kerosine” in Google, and only TWO of those had any relevance at all.
    Special stirrer pumps and injector systems would be necessary, for without them engines would definitely be prone to flaming out and resisting reignition. These are not standard civil equipment. Nor are any signs of this modified fuel evident anywhere in civil aviation.
    I would expect this material to exist in some military and high-speed research aircraft, but never in continuous and/or world-wide use.

  75. What about LAX itself? Isn’t that one of the world’s largest airports, and don’t aircraft have to enter a handling stack to land there? Doesn’t this stack begin at heights that are cold enough for trails? Doesn’t such a stack necessarily have straight lines in it, and at least two, and possibly four headings within it?

    No. LAX is a very busy airport, but the traffic there is almost invariably routed straight in with no delays in holds. ATC basically coordinates the traffic at a distance, having them speed up and slow down as needed so they arrive in a specific time slot. London is a different story, but even there the holding stacks do not go high enough for contrails to form.

    Pretty much the only contrail flights east-west across LA are to Hawaii, maybe some to Japan, etc. There are several Hawaii flights a day.

  76. JazzRoc says:

    As an afterthought, it is highly likely that finely-powdered aluminum (or barium) would ignite at exhaust temperatures.
    If it did so, it would be a powerfully-exothermic reaction (like thermite). The aluminum oxide is a powerful corrosive at those high temperatures and would etch its way through the exhaust turbine blades in a brace of shakes. It would be OK in a ramjet…
    When I first heard of the “chemtrailer” theory of metals in jet fuel I assumed they were talking about boron hydride, which was toted in the sixties as a performance-boosting “mixer”. Whatever became of that?
    I don’t know, but theorize it was dropped in the main, to be saved up by the military for infrequent use – whenever such use might surprise an enemy, at the cost of a set of engines (or maybe for a one-way trip).

  77. bryan says:

    It has to be given credence because;
    The reports are real as opposed to imagined.
    The testing of atmospheric moderation is real -such as the high level atmospheric barium release of 1974.
    The perceived need for military superiority is real.
    The money streams going to the DOD for atmospheric moderation is real.
    The science of atmospheric moderation is real and extends beyond the scope of chaff and cloud seeding.

    How to connect it to contrail behavior being significantly different is something else. I don’t have evidence that these
    contrails behave differently. I think that visual discernment between potential chemtrails vs. contrails is most likely
    not possible. I think the addition of metals to aircraft exhaust would not change the contrail behavior enough to know.
    Therefore I think that you are right on this website in your main argument.

    My argument is that there is evidence that the military wants to improve technologies that we know exist (such
    as radar jamming, naval communications, weather modification) and that one area that they have explored and
    continue to explore includes the use of metals via airplane jetfuels. My point is that these technologies are not
    going to have robust data such as chaff or cloud seeding. Another point that I’ve made is that history shows
    us that these experiments and testing happen without the public’s knowledge. If there is an improved method
    of radar blocking, we aren’t going to have a full blueprint on its implementation and that does not mean that it
    isn’t happening. The ‘vague’ reports, papers and patents are only vague if you decide not to delve into them.

    Now the Moon base idea is interesting. I haven’t explored it but I don’t doubt I could find evidence such as you
    suggest. What would make me believe in a military base on the Moon would be if I kept running into papers and
    reports that build off of previous reports that evidence implementation. This is precisely what one finds when looking
    into the above reports (which are only the tip of the iceberg). The Chinese are publicly saying they will get a Moon
    base but it remains to be seen if they can implement it in the timeline they suggest (and keep revising). The Moon is pretty
    fascinating. I don’t think we really have disclosure or understanding today. Who placed it there lol? How
    is it that it vibrates the way it does? Why don’t the astronauts recall much about their visit there? lol …
    I surmise we know less than we think we do about the Moon and that data is being withheld -have you seen good images
    of the backside? I didn’t say we didn’t go … although…

    The evidence that atmospheric moderation is underway and it intersects with contrails.
    I could overload you with links to several hundred scientific papers and detailed research on how this relates but it would
    not prove that a metalized contrail looks different, so perhaps it isn’t relevant to the thrust of your website. The
    data on metalized contrail behavior is vague I would have to agree with you there. The data on why it is
    helpful to have metals in the air is anything but vague however.

    That metalized contrails exist is very possible;
    MILITARY PROJECTS AND EXPERIMENTS
    Military projects are associated through the mixture of barium salt in the lower atmosphere. The main purpose of the mixture of barium salt aerosol in the atmosphere is for the functioning of the most secretive project, the refinement and operation of the Radio Frequency Mission Planner/Variable Terrain Refractivity Parabolic Equation, RFMP/VTRPE, computer propagation program for the United States Navy. Weather control also utilizes barium salt in the atmosphere to accomplish its goals. The projects are under the heading and associated with the term Advanced Radar Studies.

    A MIXTURE OF BARIUM SALT IS THE ATMOSPHERIC MEDIUM THAT CAUSES RF DUCTING
    Barium salt chemtrails can be used to create an artificial ducting path at altitudes needed for communications from the command and control area to the battlefield operations area. Radio waves (voice, data and radar) follow this artificial path in both directions for a maximized communications path. Barium salt is the atmospheric medium used with the enhanced Variable Terrain Refractivity Parabolic Equation (VTRPE) propagation program, part of the Radio Frequency Mission Planner (RFMP.) Weather information (environmental input data) is fed to the weather model computer program, connected to the VTRPE computer propagation model program. Barium salt is an atmospheric medium used for both the HAARP associated RF, weather control and RFMP/VTRPE propagation programs.

    Regards,
    Bryan

  78. So if “chemtrails” are simply the US army experimenting with RF ducting, then why are these “chemtrails” being reported all over the world, constantly, for decades?

  79. JazzRoc says:

    Bryan:

    “I think the addition of metals to aircraft exhaust would not change the contrail behavior enough to know.”

    Oh, but they WOULD!

    Have you forgotten the GAP in the trail behind the engines? You know, the gap which represents the time it takes for the exhaust steam at 1100 degrees centigrade to cool to ice crystals at -40 degrees centigrade?

    Aluminum and Barium are used in fireworks. The back end of a jet engine IS a firework of sorts, and in that gap one would expect WHITE for aluminum and GREEN for barium, if either of those metals were to be present in the fuel.

    Now it could be argued that these effects might not be visible in brilliant sunlight, but aircraft also fly at night, don’t they? Have you ever seen a photo of a colored jet engine exhaust?

    Another memory-jogger for you might be FLAME-TESTING, where in the physics lab at school you might remember you dipped a platinum loop in a metal salt solution, and held it in a bunsen flame – and saw a color characteristic of a particular metal.

    Remember that?

  80. bryan says:

    Because people are barking up the wrong tree. There is a pathology too, people KNOW “something” is wrong, so they point to
    contrails. A bogeyman for adults. I’m in over my head as to why but I haven’t looked into surfactants of civilian jet fuel yet.

    I am not a chemist. Researching aluminum for jetfuels has led me to research surfactants more closely. It appears to me that
    the surfactants are alumina precursors and in some cases alumina. The data from the companies is that they are harmless and
    combust fully but I’m not so convinced, in fact one of the storming media reports discusses an additive to reduce metallic
    smoke emissions.

    Alcoa, they prefer to call them “surfactants” or if you dig back to their patent
    alumina precursors,
    and have named the company International Fuel Technology Inc.
    http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6027706.html
    http://www.cohenresearch.com/reports/ifue_01-18-05.pdf

    Mentions surfactant constituents;
    http://www.ftc-houston.com/images/Jet%20Fuel%20Filtration%2006-04.pdf

    http://www.stormingmedia.us/70/7092/A709290.html

    Fuel Microemulsions for Jet Engine Smoke Reduction MAY 1980 52 pages
    Authors: D. W. Naegeli; G. E. Fodor; C. A. Moses; SOUTHWEST RESEARCH INST SAN ANTONIO TX MOBILE ENERGY DIV
    The full text of this report is available for sale. The concept of water and alcohol/fuel microemulsions for the purpose of reducing smoke emissions from jet engine test cells was studied in a T-63 gas turbine combustor. Several ethanol/fuel, methanol/fuel and water/fuel microemulsions were prepared with JP-4 and JP-8 base fuels and the appropriate surfactants. Both metallic (ferrocene) and nonmetallic (hydrazine) smoke- reducing additives were examined for possible synergistic effects when combined with the microemulsified fuels. The fuels were tested …

    So Ferrocene reduces metallic smoke emissions.

    I still have to look up surfactants of civilian jetfuels, although I should just trust the discovery channel test since aluminum
    readings were in the ‘negligible’ category.

    Regards, Bryan

  81. So basically Bryan, you just think that aviation jet exhaust is polluting a bit more that is generally realized, and there’s some kind of cover-up?

  82. bryan says:

    Pretty close Uncinus, but I don’t claim to know if it can be considered a ‘cover-up’
    The only way I’d consider it one is if the aluminum readings straight out of the exhaust reads very high and I don’t have any idea
    if this is the case.
    Surfactants save money. Seems like there would be no conspiracy if this is all there is.
    -Bryan

  83. bryan says:

    Jazz____,
    I think the Gap is interesting, the whole post is interesting. Look for less of a gap at night (lol) from a ground based observatory.
    I think we’ll need 300-500 m telescope equipped with night vision and then we should look for green tinged or white effluent with
    absolutely no gap at all. I do see occasional trails at night, but now I realize that I haven’t been looking very astutely at all.
    Rock on.
    -Bryan

  84. Nick says:

    Do contrails just form from jets? or can they form from big passenger air planes like the Boeing 747’s?

  85. Contrails form from any plane engine, from big jets to small single engine planes. Most of the contrails you see are from regular passenger jets.

  86. Carl says:

    Chemtrail believers say that there is a project called operation cloverleaf that has to do with chemtrails. Are they making up a fake name of a project?

  87. nick/carl/John, I’m not sure where that name came from, but the only references to it seem to be on chemtrail conspiracy sites.

  88. Carl says:

    yeah that’s where i see them too. I think that they are making it up to try prove their “chem trail” theory to be true.

  89. Carl says:

    I would also like to tell everyone that regular airlines. JFK international, San Fransisco international, Los angles international etc occasionally fly in X patterns. Sometimes they fly in parallel lines of 2 or 3 but at different altitudes. I know because i watched them on Google earth.

  90. Jakeability says:

    Just as meteorologists predict groundlevel weather conditions, can they also predict temperatures at cruising altitudes, for given days, thereby predicting the formation of persistent ‘contrails’?

  91. Jakeability says:

    On average, how many flights fly over Oregon daily?

    Or, where could I find this information for myself?

  92. Just as meteorologists predict groundlevel weather conditions, can they also predict temperatures at cruising altitudes, for given days, thereby predicting the formation of persistent ‘contrails’?

    Yes they can, but with much lower accuracy. Ground conditions are monitored by thousands of closely spaced weather stations on a second-by-second basis. Conditions above ground are only measured once every 12 hours by weather balloons released from stations 300 miles apart.

    Be they can generally get a broad idea of when contrails are likely to form. Just not incredibly accurate. Google for “contrail forcasting” to get more info.

  93. Jakeability says:

    If, as you’ve suggested, global warming is a contributing factor in the persistency of ‘contrails’, were they being created more frequently in 1998?

  94. I don’t know how you could find it out exactly. But consider the major airports north and south of you:

    North: Portland, Seattle, Vancouver
    South: Sacramento, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Las Vegas, Phoenix

    Say there was one flight a day between each airport in the north, and each in the south, in both directions. That’s 3x6x2 = 36 flights.

    Of course that ludicrously low, how many flights are there from LA to Seattle every day? Easy to get an estimate, just go to expedia.com and search for one way non-stop tickets from LAX to SEA on some date in the future:

    http://www.expedia.com/pub/agent.dll?qscr=fexp&flag=q&city1=LAX&citd1=SEA&date1=3/13/2009&time1=362&cAdu=1&cSen=&cChi=&cInf=&infs=2&tktt=3&stkc=1&tktc=1&trpt=1&ecrc=&eccn=&qryt=8&load=1&airp1=&dair1=&rdct=1&rfrr=-429

    That lists 43 direct flights in one day between Los Angeles and Seattle. That’s one way, there are also 43 flights in the opposite direction. That’s 86. Add in private jets and you’ll get at least 100 (probably more)

    And that’s just LA to Seattle, one of 18 major routes. Add in the others and you’ve probably got, at a conservative estimate, 500 flights a day that have a chance of making contrails somewhere over Oregon.

  95. I don’t really know if global warming is a factor – I just raised it as a possibility. I don’t think it would be a major factor, even if there were some effect. 1998 was 1.24 degrees C warmer than average, but then most of the last 10 years has been an average of 0.70 degrees warmer, so 1998 is really not that different for the past decade.

    I also don’t think that anyone keeps year-by-year records of how many contrails there are, so it would be rather hard to tell.

  96. Carl says:

    Sorry for asking you so many questions uncinus, but I’m curious. I
    have a question, can a persistent contrail near the horizon or far away from where I’m at look a lot lower than it really is?

  97. I think people often do think contrails are lower when they see them near the horizon, as opposed to directly overhead. Perhaps this is related to how the moon psychologically looks bigger when it is low in the sky, when it’s actually the same size regardless of it’s position.

  98. Jakeability says:

    Do the ice particles in ‘contrails’ multiply, or only appear to as they widen?
    The ‘contrails’ I’ve seen recently ‘seem’ to grow without much fading.

    Also, visually, can a person estimate the altitude of individual ‘contrails’? The ones I’ve seen recently ‘seem’ very low. And not necessarily just near the horizon, but the ones directly overhead also.

  99. Do the ice particles in ‘contrails’ multiply, or only appear to as they widen?
    The ‘contrails’ I’ve seen recently ’seem’ to grow without much fading.

    That’s a very good question. From what I’ve read contrails are initially very dense, in that they contain far more ice crystals than a regular cloud. Hence they can spread out without appearing to thin. This is also helped by the ice crystals growing in size over time, so as the contrail spreads the crystals are growing, keeping the appearance of density. Eventually the ice crystal density and crystal size become indistinguishable from cirrus clouds. See:

    http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1175%2F1520-0469(2000)057%3C0464%3AOTTOCI%3E2.0.CO%3B2

    The development of contrails into cirrus clouds on the timescale of 1 h is discussed in terms of a representative set of number densities, and size distributions and surface area distributions of aerosols and cloud elements, with special emphasis on small ice crystals (diameter <20 μm). Contrails are dominated by high concentrations (>100 cm−3) of nearly spherical ice crystals with mean diameters in the range 1–10 μm. Young cirrus clouds, which mostly contain small regularly shaped ice crystals in the range 10–20-μm diameter and typical concentrations 2–5 cm−3, have been observed.

    Also, visually, can a person estimate the altitude of individual ‘contrails’? The ones I’ve seen recently ’seem’ very low. And not necessarily just near the horizon, but the ones directly overhead also.

    Not easily, you can’t calculate how high it is unless you know how wide it is. The best way would be to take a photo of the plane forming the contrail with a camera of known focal length, then if you can identify the plane type you can calculate its altitude. See:

    https://contrailscience.com/measuring-the-height-of-contrails/

    It’s crucial to correctly identify the plane in this situation.

  100. SR1419 says:

    From what I understand…the presence of contrails can induce ice crystals to form…creating cirrus clouds where there were none before…

    Also- as for the number of planes…over Oregon…as Unicinus suggested his figure may be low…as there are a lot of other airports that do fly commuter flights to and fro…

    for example- in the Bay Area, in addition to San Francisco there is also the Oakland airport and the San Jose airport- both relatively major airports with significant regional traffic…

    …and that does not include private traffic- there is an old AFB near me that is used by DHL/FedX etc for their planes and also receives a fair amount of private jets…

    …even 6 person Lear jets can leave fat contrails….

    The National Air Traffic Controllers Assoc says there are 87,000 PER DAY! in the US…with only 1/3 being commercial flights….that is a lot of planes in the sky!

    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.”

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