Airplanes Unexpectedly Modify Weather 223
reillymj writes "Commercial airliners have a strange ability to create rain and snow when they fly through certain clouds. Scientists have known for some time that planes can make outlandish 'hole-punch' and 'canal' features in clouds. A new study has found that these odd formations are in fact evidence that planes are seeding clouds and changing local weather patterns as they fly through. In one case, researchers noted that a plane triggered several inches of snowfall directly beneath its flight path."
What wasn't mentioned (Score:5, Funny)
I don't see (Score:3, Funny)
what's the problem {?|.}
Cloud Seeding (Score:3, Interesting)
Interesting. So the effect of cloud seeding is just as likely to be caused by the planes flying through the clouds rather than the silver iodide alone?
Re:Cloud Seeding (Score:5, Informative)
That was suggested back in 1970 [ametsoc.org]--- that cloud seeding experiments need to consider the possibility that the plane's flight itself is doing the seeding.
Re:Cloud Seeding (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Cloud Seeding (Score:4, Insightful)
Control groups are basically impossible to find with clouds, as any meteoroligist will tell you. We still cannot absolutely predict which ones will dump rain on us, and which ones won't - often they behave in completely unexpected ways with no apparent reason why. There's no such thing as a control group with clouds, because one formation may have been going to dump a load of rain anyway, and another seemingly identical formation would not.
With a large enough control it may be possible - but getting a large control is basically nigh on impossible because of differing air temperature, atmospheric pressure, wind speed, and a whole host of other variables. This is not something you can accurately simulate either.
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Didn't we have this sort of thing after 9/11? I seem to recall a /. submission about observed weather changes while all the aircraft were grounded.
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Clouds are substantially different, and waaaaay more complicated than human physiology. We're not at the stage that we can measure the amount of water and particle sizes in clouds yet. The best we can do is fly a 3cm diameter probe through a
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If you were going to test a fishing lure, would you use a "control group" consisting of trout, bass, pike, baleen whales, and tiger sharks? Would you then apply the results to all "fish", despite the fact that some of those weren't fish at all? I would hope not.
This is the case with clouds.
If you'd like to know more, try Wallace and Hobbs [amazon.com]. It's one of the corners
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I think the guy you are arguing with is thinking of an experiment something like this, for example. Take 1000 clouds that are at least reasonably able to produce precipitation (for instance cumulus congestus clouds, or only nimbo stratus). As the cloud appears, draw a color out of a hat. If blue, seed the cloud, if red, fly through the cloud, and if green do nothing. If 90% of the seeded clouds produce precipitation, and only 40% of the unseeded clouds do, then that is good evidence that the seeding has
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It seems to me that the issue lies in the extremely broad cloud classifications--this comes not from any training but from reading apoc.famine's posts. If you visualize words like 'cirrus,' 'nimbus,' and 'stratus' to be categories for clouds similar to the rock categories 'igneous,' 'metamorphic,' and 'sedimentary,' and then think of the extremely varied characteristics [wikipedia.org] of rocks within each category, and finally imagine that instead of flying a plane through cloud we are hitting rocks with a hammer and chi
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If you were going to test a fishing lure, would you use a "control group" consisting of trout, bass, pike, baleen whales, and tiger sharks? Would you then apply the results to all "fish", despite the fact that some of those weren't fish at all? I would hope not.
You can still use that data as a control, you just need to properly categorize the data before you use it. Coming back to cloud formations and controls what you'd need to do is classify each cloud, control or not, and then use the data appropriately.
Observe the type of cloud, the meteorologic conditions, and other pertinent data such as season, phase of the moon, natives chanting on the ground, whatever. You then compare your clouds that have been seeded against appropriate control clouds. Yes, this means y
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If I were going to test a fishing lure, say a worm, I would test it against some other lure, say a small fish. If I caught twice as many trout with the worm than with the small fish, could I not say that the worm is the more effective lure?
If I picked 200 clouds to fly through, and randomly sprinkled iodide crystals in 100 of them and randomly sprinkled salt crystals in the other 100, and the ones sprinkled with iodide crystals produced twice as much rain, could I not say that the iodide crystals are effect
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Yes, I agree that the 200 clouds will all be different. Nonetheless, if you randomly assign 100 clouds to one group and the other 100 to another group, then add up the precipitation totals of the two groups, the totals should be approximately equal. Even though the individual clouds are different, the law of large numbers [wikipedia.org] says that the larger the sample of clouds, the lower the standard deviation of the sample will be. This is basic statistics.
If you then seed one group of clouds and not the other group, an
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Nope. You can't. You can use the same lure on the same fish under identical conditions and get fish to respond 90% of the time on day one, and on day two fish will respond to the same lure, fished the same way, 10% of the time.
If fishing was as predictable as you think it is, it would be called catching, not fishing. There's a reason most fishermen who use lures have a large tackle box with a good selection of lures. What works one day will not attract a single fish the next day. The same goes for fly
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I agree that fish can behave differently on different days. This is why we repeat experiments instead of taking the results of one experiment as conclusive. Are you seriously saying that if when I use lure A I consistently catch twice as many fish as lure B, I still cannot say that lure A is more effective?
How about if when I give Tylenol to test subjects with headaches, 50% report improvement, vs. 20% for a placebo? Can we not conclude anything about the effectiveness of Tylenol, just because each of the s
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Unfortunately there is no proof that an external event or condition created the statistical and mathematical variations in the results of the experiment. The conditions can be different clouds, temperature, humidity, and other atmospheric conditions. Academically the clouds and atmospheric conditions have to be and I emphasize have to be identical in the control group to be considered valid. There is no way around it. You can run an expensive experiment yourself but the experts will reject it because there
Re:Cloud Seeding (Score:4, Insightful)
You need to read up on the scientific method (and wikipedia is fine: here [wikipedia.org]). Control groups, as indicated by their name, are statistical instruments that are, by definition, not identical. They can be practically identical, for the purposes of the experiment.
If we were to take your apparent view of science, nothing in the history of scientific inquiry would have been sufficiently proven, as it is highly unlikely that quantum spin characteristics met the burden of having to be identical in the controls of chemical experiments, or that Galileo's balls met the burden of having to be identical except for their mass.
Read up on controls here [wikipedia.org]...
Statistical controls via randomization are an accepted (and fundamentally sound) approach to the reduction of experimental measurement error. Something being very complex doesn't make it unobservably complex. The assertion is so absurd that it is either a troll or a genuine failure to understand the scalability of reason, causality, and the scientific method.
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Despite the largely chaotic nature of cloud formations (and, thus, the difficulty in modelling behavior), we know that certain inputs, situations, and characteristics have a higher likelihood to lead to expected behaviors than others. It's how we can have hurricane season, make reasonable predictions about precipitation much of the time, etc.
Additionally, weather prediction a week out is a significantly different problem (having to do with predicting the global weather system instead of a comparatively loc
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He seems to be saying that our understanding of clouds hasn't progressed far enough to even begin somethi
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Sorry, but you don't know what you're talking about. There is no possible way to do any sort of control on clouds. They are all different. Trust me - I'm slogging my way through meteorology classes at the moment. I took a class that touched on cloud physics last fall
Pick 1000 clouds. Randomly assign them to two groups. Try cloud seeding in one of the groups. Fly identical airplanes through the other, going through the motions of cloud seeding, but not actually seeding. Observe results. Apply standard statistical tests of significance to see if there was a meaningful difference in rainfall from the two groups of clouds.
Why would you think the complexity of clouds precludes doing a controlled experiment?
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"cloud dynamics are so ridiculously complicated that we don't even have good models for them yet"
You should get Al Gore and company to help you. FFS, they've had good working climatology models for decades now, complete with hockey stick projections! (Lest any particularly dense readers mistake the sarcasm, any time I refer to Al Gore, I use it as a synonym for "douchebag")
Re:Cloud Seeding (Score:5, Insightful)
The key to the experiment is that the set of all clouds has some (currently unknown, but definitely fixed) distribution of rainfall amounts. As you draw samples from this distribution and fill a histogram, you get an idea (perhaps fairly coarse) of what that distribution is. Then you draw samples from a different distribution (seeded clouds), and get an idea of what that distribution is, too. Do these distributions appear to be different, or are they similar enough that we can't tell? Since what matters is the distribution as a whole, we don't need to worry about matched pairs in control and experimental groups, or what the characteristics of individual clouds are. Trust me, we have exactly the same situation in HEP. No two collisions are ever exactly (or really even close to exactly) alike, so if matched pairs were required, we'd never get anywhere at all.
The kicker is, of course, getting enough samples to populate your histograms sufficiently to get a good enough idea of the distributions. You are asserting that there are too many variables in cloud configuration space (and you're right, there certainly are an awful lot). But we don't care about filling up cloud configuration space. What we care about is filling up integrated radar echo (as an approximation to rainfall amount) space, which is one dimensional, and therefore much, much easier to populate.
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So conspiracy nut Alex Jones was right after all. The high-flying planes are changing our weather.
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I would think anyone who understands how to design experiments would see the need for a proper control group.
We've already seen that no one who understands how to design experiments has anything to do with the study of weather or climate.
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This doesn't surprise me at all. I live near Heathrow in London, and the best weather so far this year was while the airports had grounded flights due to the Icelandic volcanic ash. Many of my friends commented on the coincidence.
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I'm more surprised this is surprising.
Think about it from a surface area perspective. More surface area, more room for condensation, greater chance of precipitation I'd suspect.
cue the contrails conspiracy (Score:2)
in 3.....2......1
Chemtrails? (Score:3, Funny)
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Come on, those guys are entertaining. :) I love the pictures where they show intersecting lines and say that the planes have been flying patterns to drop evil chemicals on the population. Well, the evil chemicals are present, but that's the aircraft's exhaust.
And for those who don't know, the "grids" are usually created by flights departing in two different directions. They get a pretty regular grid pattern because at busy airports, flights leave at a fairly regular inter
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He is obviously a plant by the Warren commission to distribute falsehoods among the masses. But what even he doesn't know is who is actually behind the commission. My research shows the Girls Scouts of America are in league with the Greys on that one.
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Well, the bad things [wikipedia.org] would be something like if a Cessna tried to take off immediately behind a heavy jet, the Cessna may find himself tumbling down the runway in most ungraceful ways. It's not limited to small vs big aircraft though. A heavy aircraft following another can have unintended (and nasty) results.
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Oh, I see your point now. It's a tool used by terrorists. Anyone causing wake turbulence would therefore be a terrorist. Just like all those evil people caught possessing DHMO [dhmo.org].
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My god, I didn't realize how bad the epidemic had grown! Outlaw it now!
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Meh oversight on DHMO is too stifling. People in industry tend to use a lot more of the relatively unregulated hydric acid, instead. It's a very good solvent: it dissolves almost everything.
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A good photo of what an aircraft does do to the air see;
http://www.skysoaring.com/albums/gliderhumor/Box_This_Wake.jpg [skysoaring.com]
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WOW! That's an amazing shot. All the shots I'd seen before were near the ground, to show how the wake turbulence is at ground level, like this one [wikipedia.org].
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A couple of vids showing wing vortex well;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1ESmvyAmOs [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uy0hgG2pkUs&feature=related [youtube.com]
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I got sucked into a similar discussion once. I will never make that mistake again.
After doing some back of the envelope calculations, using the average size of cloud droplets, the velocity those droplets fall, and the average height those clouds are... I pointed out that the clouds seen over your head would take up to 10 hours(or substantially longer) to fall to ground, and even with a small breeze, would end up hundreds of miles away from the location seen by the time they would reach the ground.
Even f
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I don't know about the 10 hours or 100 miles, but I didn't do the math. :) I live in Florida, so frequently watch the weather formations on TV (and now the Internet), so I'm very aware of cloud movements. We get some pretty nasty storms here in the summer (think instant hurricane type weather), so it's advantageous for us to know what's happening around us. Usually we can see bands of rain forming miles off the coast, and time our activities accordingly. If I have to go for a long drive,
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unintended intersection of the flight path and the ground, in most ungraceful ways
LOL
Kinda similar to a story I heard from my phd supervisor (dunno if it's true or not and my memory of the exact term may be hazy) that someone told him not to use the "M word" and instead to call the things they were talking about single use unmanned air vehicles (i'll leave the reader to figure out what the "M word" was).
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hehe, that's a good way to say it. Those sometimes of have an intended intersection with the ground though, in most decorative ways.
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I live in Phoenix and I pay attention to the skies. Haven't seen a chemtrail in a couple months. Maybe it's the summer heat (moved here in November, have seen the chemtrails elsewhere in Arizona before), maybe they stopped spraying when BP's oil volcano went off in the gulf. I don't keep logs or take pictures, so this is just from memory.
With that said, there are still planes flying in and out of Phoenix Sky Harbor International. I'm in one of the flightpaths, so I see those planes all the time. The planes
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Contrails are very dependent on the humidity in the air. Military or commercial pilots can correct me if I'm wrong. In really dry air, you won't see them at all. If there's enough humidity, they'll make pretty trails. Even if you don't have the humidity at ground level, higher layers of the atmosphere can have significantly different characteristics.
The picture in the link looks like a very nice standard rate turn. It's probably a departure, heading towards the destination
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After posting I remembered a relevant anecdote...
I used to live in the mountains, ~80 miles from Phoenix. On this particular day I looked up and noticed multiple jets in the sky, which were presumably headed to/from Los Angeles. All were at cruising altitudes. Some jets were laying contrails that rapidly dispersed and disappeared, while other contrails "hung around" and dispersed like chemtrail proponents said.
I guess the main thing is "who do you trust"? I figure this wouldn't be the first classified progr
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A lot of that has to do with the specific weather conditions where that contrail was. Sometimes it'll disperse quickly. Sometimes it'll take some time. Humidity, wind, temperature, pressure, aircraft configuration and load all change the way it works. You can have significant differences in a relatively small area.
I seriously doubt any commercial carrier has equipped their aircraft with any super secret government gassing project. :) How exactly do you explain to the groun
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I seriously doubt any commercial carrier has equipped their aircraft with any super secret government gassing project.
When I read the links years ago, they said that the doping agents go straight into the jet fuel, and pass through the turbofan without causing other problems.
Here's a search that might turn up something appropriate:
http://www.google.com/search?q=patent+aluminum+jet+engine+chemtrail [google.com]
Re:Chemtrails? (Score:4, Insightful)
Their implication is that there would be a white plume from the engines. If it were mixed with the jet fuel, it would always be present. Folks would notice if aircraft were putting off that kind of smoke. It may not be totally noticeable when taxiing, but it would be obvious during takeoff.
Being that aircraft all fuel from the same source at the airport, there would be no difference between aircraft, that is usually reported with chemtrails. As I've read it over the years, some dissipate quickly. Some linger for a long time. If it was included as a fuel additive for commercial aircraft, there would be no "sometimes" to it.
And just because a patent was issued doesn't mean that it really works, or that it's in use. People get patents all the time that lay dormant forever.
Re:Chemtrails? (Score:5, Funny)
Surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
More of a duh, really. (Score:5, Funny)
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And I dreamed I saw the bomber death planes
Riding shotgun in the sky
Turning into butterflies
Above our nation
-JM, Woodstock
Just sorta comes to mind.
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Not surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
This isn't terribly surprising. Clouds are a delicate formation of moisture that hasn't collected into dense enough masses to fall. Aircraft disturb the air, blowing that moisture around. We've known about contrails for an awful long time. I wouldn't be terribly surprised to find that particles in the exhaust give the moisture something to cling to (i.e., cloud seeding).
Those are some nice pictures though.
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You don't have to be a pilot to observe it. I've seen some very nice examples of contrails, while riding in commercial aircraft. I like to sit behind the wing, so I can observe what the pilot is doing. It's not like I can do anything about it, but at least it's better than sitting back completely oblivious to what's happening. A few drinks later, it doesn't really matter though, I'll take a nice nap until I hear the landing gear go down. :)
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A few drinks later, it doesn't really matter though, I'll take a nice nap until I hear the landing gear go down. :)
Based on what I've seen of pilots, they're thinking the same thing....
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Hmmm, that's interesting. I hadn't seen anything about it before, but I found several references [google.com] for more information. Thanks, now I have some reading for today. :)
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Here's a [nasa.gov] couple writeups [nasa.gov] from NASA on the phenomenon, with some interesting pictures.
Of course, since it's from the government, conspiracy nuts will say it's disinformation. :)
I thought this was well established? (Score:5, Interesting)
The data from the near-universal grounding of US airspace the days following the 9/11/01 attacks shows pretty conclusively that air traffic has a non-trivial affect on weather patterns. Or at least that's what's I recall from the time.
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Re:I thought this was well established? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not always true. While one instance certainly isn't enough data to completely explore and explain a phenomena, it can certainly establish that said phenomena exists.
And it's not like we're talking about a data-set of one plane canceling a flight. We're talking about a couple of days, and tens of thousands of flights, all across a big stretch of the planet. That's more than just an anecdote.
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Certainly. But that second data point is clouded with mud and ash.
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Forcing (Score:3, Interesting)
>>The contrail cover from planes reflect more light from the sun.
Also, it's important to state that up until this point, climatologists thought that contrails had a forcing effect helping to cause global warming. And still show it that way, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiative_forcing [wikipedia.org]
However, papers like this: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v418/n6898/full/418601a.html [nature.com] rather convincingly argued that they have a rather strong forcing in the opposite direction (i.e. that they help
Re:Forcing (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, pity you're actually reading the fucking results wrong. *sigh* To quote wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
The daytime temperature didn't increase. The difference between night and day increased. And guess what? That matches expectations! Why? Because:
So when there are contrails, it stays warmer at night, due to radiative forcing effects. No contrails? It gets colder at night. End result? *Larger night-day temperature difference*.
But, hey, let's actually look at your study, shall we? Hey, here's a choice quote from the abstract:
Hey, look at that... that's what they fucking found. Science at work: scientists make prediction. Scientists have convenient experiment. Observations match predictions. The system works.
But, hey, don't let facts get in the way of your "skepticism".
Poor rebuttal (Score:5, Funny)
To quote wikipedia:
is inherently invalid.
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PBS had a great show called Dimming the Sun and IIRC they delve into showing how the 9/11 air traffic halt raised the temperature in American cities by 1 or 2 degrees.
Err, no, that's not right.
What they found was that the night-day temperature difference increased by about a degree, which makes sense if contrails are insulating the atmosphere (due to less heat escaping at night).
mod parent up (Score:2)
if I just had some mod points
Tenerife (Score:5, Interesting)
I was a complete skeptic when I was told this as I arrived, but like clockwork on those days I always saw the same thing. The crazy thing is that any other day of the week around the summer you can expect mid-to-high thirties and rarely a cloud in the sky. So maybe not scientific, but anecdotal evidence anyway.
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Re:Tenerife (Score:5, Funny)
You mean when it was closed because of a volcanic ash cloud? I'm sure we can attribute any and all weather changes entirely to the lack of airplanes...
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seen following 9/11 (Score:2)
Are these studies the follow-ups mentioned here?
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/08/07/contrails.climate/index.html [cnn.com]
Potential AGW support? (Score:5, Interesting)
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I thought that one of the anti-AGW arguments was that in general humans can't affect climate
. If a person believes this from the outset, they have an ideology ( "Man can never fly as birds can" "No thing can travel faster than the speed of sound" "Man can never affect the climate" ), and probably no amount of evidence will dislodge them from their position.
:)
If they believe that humans haven't affected climate, then there's hope
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I'm not deep into the AGW/anti-AGW arguments (and not trying to start a flame war), but I thought that one of the anti-AGW arguments was that in general humans can't affect climate.
First off, there are morons on both sides. Some people loudly exclaim that humans have ruined everything and some roar that humans have no effect on their environment. Both points of view are ridiculous.
The more reasonable proponents of climate change assert that mankind has had a measurable, long-term effect on the environment that will be difficult to reverse and requires drastic and immediate measures to prevent a catastrophe. Opponents of this point of view argue that the environment has gone through ma
Re:Potential AGW support? (Score:4, Insightful)
We've known for a long time that humans can affect not only weather, but climate. Since the 60's, we've known that clouds seeded with silver nitrate will produce precipitation. IIRC, the same was demonstrated with chips of solid carbon dioxide. However, that said -
We still do not have enough evidence to prove that burning fossil fuels will produce global warming. Now before I continue, let me just get this out of the way: there is a difference between someone who believes global warming *can't* be true in the religious sense, and someone who recognizes that climate is a difficult subject for which we just don't have the answers now. There will always be anti-AGW folks around regardless of where the science goes and what happens to the climate. That said, the AGW theories have these difficulties:
At this point, we simply don't have the scientific certainty to claim AGW is happening, and that it will be catastrophic. Even were we to accept the AGW theories at face value, they are so filled with qualifying factors that we could not conclude that we are in imminent danger. We could say that change is going to come, but we can't quantify the impact. Given the timescales on which climate changes, it would hardly be an unmitigated disaster on a global level. Even if the direst of predictions proved true, we'd have more than ample time to adapt. (Keep in mind the US sustained not one, but two wars in the Middle East, at the cost of trillions of dollars. Imagine what the same could do to relocate US cities inland, if necessary.)
The simple fact of the matter is, though, that we're well past peak oil, and AGW or not, we're going to stop burning it someday. So it only makes sense to buy into renewable energy technologies while they're cheap than wait for the oil to run out and be put over a barrel (no pun intended) by the solar power companies. If you want people to stop burning fossil fuels, you just have to give them a cheaper alternative. You don't have to lie to them about global warming.
Ugh. The new deniers use fancier arguments. (Score:4, Informative)
Your post is littered with falsehoods. I barely know where to start. Whether you realize it or not, you're concern trolling from ignorance.
We still do not have enough evidence to prove that burning fossil fuels will produce global warming.
Eh? What?`
First off, basic physics predicts that more CO2 and methane (and other greenhouse gasses) in the air will cause the atmosphere, and hence, the ground, to heat up. In a glass jar, CO2 behaves precisely as expected.
The Earth is more complex than a glass jar, it's true, but to argue against global CO2-based warming, you need a plausible physical explanation for where the heat caused by the CO2 went. Unless some obscuring agent prevents sunlight from hitting the CO2, the heat from was undoubtedly generated in the atmosphere nearly exactly as predicted by physics. So where does it go?
In addition to a magic (heretofore invisible) heat-sink, you need a plausible alternative explanation for the geologic record, dating back 100s of thousands of years, showing that, indeed, CO2 and warming are in a feedback-loop, punctuated by various global disasters.
Now before I continue, let me just get this out of the way: there is a difference between someone who believes global warming *can't* be true in the religious sense, and someone who recognizes that climate is a difficult subject for which we just don't have the answers now.
This is a ridiculous cop-out, and is a lousy argument for destroying civilization as we know it.
The fact is, we've had a pretty nice equilibrium here for thousands of years. Throwing off that balance could mean a lot of different possible things, but it definitely means chaos and turmoil.
We don't know everything, but we know some things. We know that the gulf-stream is very important to heating up North America. We know that North America would turn in to a block of ice if it were to shut down. We may not know how to keep it running, but that's not a good reason to toss a bunch of carbon in the air to see what happens.
The best plan is probably to try to maintain the equilibrium somehow. It's worked for a while. I like the coasts where they are, and I don't want to experiment with their shape, thank you very much. If I were in a rowboat with you, I also wouldn't want you to experiment by standing up and rocking it back and forth.
I'll deal with two more of your arguments.
Global temperatures have been on the decline for the last decade, much as they did during the turn of the century 100 years ago.
Incorrect. 1999-2009 were the hottest decade in human history. 2009 was about as hot as the previously hottest year on record, 2005, and possibly hotter, depending on what source you use. This can hardly be described as a decline, and is a typical misconception sponsored by various media outlets.
2010 is trading on Intrade at 67% to be the warmest year on record. You could make a pretty nice sum by betting against it, getting back two times your money at that price level.
Only if you cherry pick 1998-2007 from the data can you claim a "decline", which really isn't a decline, it's a squiggle that bounces back and forth, ending up just below the top.
You may not be a denier, but you sure play one on /.
We can probably agree that CO2 is a greenhouse gas; what we can't explain is why increased generation of CO2 hasn't resulted in a proportionate increase in the atmospheric CO2 levels.
Possibly because you made up that as a requirement. Your argument is irrelevant and spurious. Physics predicts a warming as CO2 rises. CO2 levels are rising dramatically, as we have observed. The temperature is rising dramatically, as we have observed, your weak protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.
Yes, the oceans absorb some. This isn't a question as you intimate, it has been measured. The question of whether increased CO2 in the atmosp
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Unless hundreds of thousands of aircraft are going around causing these "localized effects", 24 hours a day, seven days a week. (Hint: that's the scope of the air transit industry)
Hello Capt. Obvious (Score:3, Insightful)
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Give yourself a "duh" there, because a quick reading of TFA reveals you're wrong in every respect as to the mechanism.
For example, turboprops are more significant contributors, precisely because they are more efficient, and less "hot". And there's little effect on very cold clouds, it's the in-between ones which get push
the short D20 version of this (its a dice roll) (Score:4, Funny)
to create a rain/snow storm in a given area certain things have to happen
lets say you need to roll 60 on a d100 to get rain and roll a 4 (on a d6) to get snow IF YOU ROLL RAIN
just dartboarding a few factors you need to have
greater than X% humidity (add 7 to your roll for every 10% above X)
a cold front near by to generate the clouds (and provide for some winds) (add 2 for every 1.5 degree difference)
enough seeds in the clouds to tilt things past the equalibrium
a low enough temp that the water doesn't boil off (penalty of 1 on the d6 roll for every 20 degrees above 0C)
now having a bunch of planes i would bet could 1 add to the "muck" in the air 2 twist the temps a bit 3 do a whole lot more than a butterfly in generating wind
Cooling? (Score:2, Insightful)
My 2c
Opposite effect (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Opposite effect (Score:4, Insightful)
Captain obvious fail ? (Score:2)
I am by no means a weather geek, but it seems obvious to me. You have a cloud, by definition a body of misted water in borderline suspension, and you ram a plane through it, it's going to upset the suspension enough to change back into a liquid. We did stuff like that in science class in high school :P
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Sure they weren't just emptying the onboard toilets?
Then there would have been blue clouds and blue snow.
Anyway, Pilots couldn't even if they wanted to. [wikipedia.org]
Re: Military Applications (Score:2)
Am I the only one that considered flying in mass numbers over areas that have the right conditions to flash flood it?
Only as in "dambusters".
Re:I don't understand the Karma System (Score:5, Funny)
The Slashdot moderation systems is a system of layers.
Users are randomly assigned "moderation points" that can be spent moderating a post upwards "+1", or down with "-1" and include a "tag".
Once spent, the points are painted onto ping pong balls--"+" balls and "-" balls. These are then thrown together in a large hopper and fed down a tube to the squirrel cage. In this cage, dozens of specially trained squirrels sort the ping pong balls according to size and shape and drop them down appropriate tubes to be further sorted by the next stage of squirrels. Once fully sorted, each ping pong ball is individually routed through a pipe that determines the tag that will be applied. The ping pong balls are then routed back to the beginning of the system. The ping pong balls are siphoned off from various points throughout the system at the same rate that posts are made. Each ping pong ball is then assigned to a random post, and there ya have it--Slashdot moderation.
I hope that helps.