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House committee advances bill to ban chemtrails (www.alreporter.com)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/nottheonion@lemmy.world
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[–] 155 points 8 months ago (54 children)

Should be easy, considering they don't exist to begin with. 

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  • [–] 87 points 8 months ago (10 children)

    Shush. We're this close to getting them to tax contrails, which would effectively be a tax on jet fuel.

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  • [–] 21 points 8 months ago (9 children)

    No, you can fly to avoid the creation of contrails. Ironically, would actually be a boon for the environment, since contrail clouds are massive greenhouse generators https://youtube.com/shorts/qBPwloCdRKw

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  • [–] 14 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    I thought they were just condensation?

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    They are, but clouds disproportionately reflect IR. Basically the energy comes in as a mix of high, medium and low energy light. The earth re-radiates as low energy IR. Clouds trap this keeping the warmth (and energy) in.

    Clouds and CO2 act in a similar way.

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  • [–] -1 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    Gonna call BS on that short. Clouds cool the atmosphere because they reflect incoming visible light. Clouds also absorb infrared light, causing a greenhouse effect, but they also do that when they're not condensed into clouds. Their infrared absorption depends primarily on their composition, which doesn't change. Contrails are basically equivalent to cloud seeding, which is a method of cooling the atmosphere by increasing cloud cover.

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  • [–] 10 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Current scientific consensus is that contrails are a net contributor to warming (they trap more heat from escaping the atmosphere than they prevent from entering overall) - but it's a complex phenomena that's difficult to model, so studies vary a lot in estimating the magnitude of this effect - from being a fraction of airplane CO2 emissions, to being several time that.

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  • [–] 8 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    This isn't someone guessing, man. He's citing research on the topic.

    Essentially, these clouds are 50% opacity to visible light, but nearly 100% in infrared. So they block some incoming light, but reflect almost all infrared from the surface. It's a net warming effect at these altitudes.

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  • [–] 21 points 8 months ago (36 children)

    until they decide enforcement means no contrails at all and suddenly they've found a new and exciting way to economically ruin the country.

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  • [–] 8 points 8 months ago (35 children)
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  • [–] 37 points 8 months ago (33 children)

    Contrails are mostly water vapour that's condensed due to the hot exhaust of airplane engines.

    They are certainly not completely avoidable, they are likely inescapable without sacrificing significant fuel efficiencies (eg: all methods stealth fighters use to suppress or mask their exhaust heat signature).. which would negate any benefits to global warming.

    P. s. I'm not going to watch a YouTube video that could be a few paragraphs of textual explanation, because it'll no doubt be eight times longer than it needs to be for the benefit of more ad money or promotion in the almighty algorithm.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (9 children)

    Pretty sad that your comment gets so much attention while dismissing a huge breakthrough in research.

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  • [–] 9 points 8 months ago (6 children)

    Maybe we shouldn’t have to SMASH THAT LIKE BUTTON to have a discussion on the internet, or sit through an ad read for Brilliant or whatever

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    And maybe people dismiss comments that dont get liked and assume the answer that gets liked is "more correct". Yes I wish it would work without the likes systemy but in reality 90% of the internet is AI slop and misinformation.

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  • [–] -1 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Do we seriously have to listen to people air their gripes about internet video anytime a link is shared? Jesus Christ.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (1 child)

    Its not a huge breakthrough in research, mate - its a feasibility study. Its claims are promising, but until its tested in the real world it's just interesting, not a breakthrough.

    Upvotes don't mean much, they don't change the ranking of comments like on worse social media like Facebook or Reddit. Don't worry about them. I've seen very useful and valuable comments downvoted to heck and vice-versa.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    Its been tested by now, Ive looked into it a little. Seems like 90% of the time contrails form inside clouds and there is no benefit in avoiding them there. So simply avoiding contrails altogether is not recommended, but avoiding the ones forming in a clear sky would be pretty easy and extremely efficient warming-wise.

    Upvotes matter in the sense that comments with negative upvotes get dismissed more easily without thinking about them. Less people would watch a video from a comment with -5 votes than one with +100.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago* (7 children)

    I'm not going to watch a YouTube video that could be a few paragraphs of textual explanation, because it'll no doubt be eight times longer than it needs to be for the benefit of more ad money or promotion in the almighty algorithm.

    The linked one is a short video with a duration of 02:37. There's no padding in this one. Naturally, you can't actually get all of the nuances of the full-duration video, which also can't cover the full nuances of the study itself that it's based on (https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2634-4505/ad310c).

    Pop science videos making studies accessible to the general public are good, actually. I recommend that you stop being dismissive of them. Had you actually put in the time, you wouldn't have posted things that are in direct contradiction with the latest science on the subject, spreading misinformation in the process.

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  • [–] 11 points 8 months ago (6 children)

    I've got no interest in watching even 2.5 minute YouTube videos when I can read the text of the same content in 45 seconds. Instructional videos can be great and valuable, but that's not what we're talking about here. There are a wealth of crap pop science videos on YouTube that misrepresent studies.

    The study is interesting, but it's a feasibility study data utilizing a theoretical models - there are a lot of assumptions here. If they or other researchers go on to perform trials using their proposed flight adjustments to the autopilot software and validate it works, great! Until then, it's very far from settled science. Here is another recent study that proposes the main problem is incompletely-burned fuel which causes soot particles that sustain the contrails in the atmosphere for much longer than contrails from low-soot contrails, which quickly diaperse. This is an emerging field of study with few published studies and varying ideas on how to resolve issues.

    Maybe if people want to share emerging scientific information that's important to them on a written forum they should put in the time to look to more valuable text sources, instead of dropping YouTube links with overconfident assertions that will put off people from watching them, eg, "contrails are completely avoidable".

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (4 children)

    You have remarkable audacity for continuing to argue the point while also boasting about how you’ll ignore any information that isn’t spoon fed to you in your format of choice. Sooner or later, you’re going to miss something that way and make an ass of yourself, if that didn’t already just happen in front of our eyes.

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  • [–] -1 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    God forbid I actually read sources, and prefer reading to taking heads on a video platform that is designed to waste people's time in endless content crawls.

    You call me audacious yet here you are stepping into a discussion to try your best to belittle and chastise an internet stranger with a different opinion.

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  • [–] 0 points 8 months ago* (2 children)

    I went to college for English Lit so please don’t lecture me on the virtues of reading. God forbid you stoop to get all the information you can. You are acting like an ass and I’m letting you know. I didn’t get up this morning to chastise you.

    If there’s any doubt in your mind what you did:

    1: “this video says you’re wrong” 2: “well I don’t watch videos dahling.” (flips hair, draws on cigarette)

    See we’re not strangers anymore. You’re that fucking guy who did that fucking thing.

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  • [–] 0 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    I gave MY preferences for reading, note the use of the phrase "I prefer". I did not extoll the virtues of reading. It's a shame your English Lit exposure in college didn't extend to education on logical fallacies, because you use them a lot.

    1: “this video says you’re wrong” 2: “well I don’t watch videos dahling.” (flips hair, draws on cigarette)

    1: User actually said "contrails are completely avoidable". 2: I said that's factually untrue. My disdain for a youtube link on a comment thread discussion was literally my post scriptum.

    You have a massive chip on your shoulder about people who don't want to watch videos for science news, that's clear - but I don't care to hear any more about it. Maybe take a breath and reflect on context. We're in the comments section on a 'nottheonion' news post about goddamn JFK banning chemtrails because he thinks DARPA is secretly impregnating them with experimetnal chemicals. Y'know.. wackadoo shit.

    Have a great weekend & life, I will no longer respond.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

    note the use of the phrase "I prefer"

    Nah. Let’s note what you actually said, not this attempt at softening it. Someone posted a video link, and you said:

    I'm not going to watch a YouTube video that could be a few paragraphs of textual explanation, because it'll no doubt be eight times longer than it needs to be for the benefit of more ad money or promotion in the almighty algorithm.

    You haughtily and wrongly dismissed it. It was short. It was highly informational. It did not drag on or exhort you to smash the like button. You made an assumption, you were confidently wrong, and thanks to me you now know it.

    You tell me to educate myself about logical fallacies while misusing “ad hominem.” I didn’t try to discredit your argument about contrails by attacking its source. I’ve really not engaged you at all about contrails. I said you were acting like an ass. That your behavior, right here, right in front of me, was haughty and foolish. It was. A rebuke is not by necessity an ad hominem logical fallacy.

    School’s out. Thank god you’ve promised not to post more haughty, foolish, confidently wrong nonsense.

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  • [–] -5 points 8 months ago (13 children)

    That YouTube Short seems to be a valid one. It's by someone who (according to his own words) has a PhD in atmospheric physics. Basically, he says that contrails causes global warming by preventing heat from escaping from Earth, and that contrails are mostly only formed when a plane flies through a cold humid patch. By simply re-routing planes around these cold patches, the contrails could be reduced.

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  • [–] 13 points 8 months ago (6 children)

    By simply re-routing planes around these cold patches, the contrails could be reduced.

    And routes now are generally chosen to be the most fuel-efficient, subject to regulatory constraints such as avoiding overflight of areas of high population density. So any alternate path will be longer and burn more fuel.

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

    According to this one study [1] that focused on Japanese airspace, 2.2% of the flights causes 80% of all contrail energy forcing (EF).

    A small-scale strategy of selectively diverting 1.7% of the fleet could reduce the contrail EF by up to 59.3% [52.4, 65.6%], with only a 0.014% [0.010, 0.017%] increase in total fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. A low-risk strategy of diverting flights only if there is no fuel penalty, thereby avoiding additional long-lived CO2 emissions, would reduce contrail EF by 20.0% [17.4, 23.0%].

    The re-routing can simply be achieved by changing the flight elevation by 2000 feet one or the other direction.

    [1] Teoh, Roger et al. “Mitigating the Climate Forcing of Aircraft Contrails by Small-Scale Diversions and Technology Adoption.” Environmental science & technology vol. 54,5 (2020): 2941-2950. doi:10.1021/acs.est.9b05608

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    My legit question is then, is the impact on the average temperature by reducing the visible trails greater or less than the impact of adding the emissions from the extra fuel spent.

    My gut tells me no, those number seem small, but small numbers often lie, and impacts to the chemical makeup of the atmosphere is an ongoing change whereas a trail of condensation is a short lived phenomenon.

    This is not an argument either way, it seems like a legitimate question to me. It’s also not the question that “chemtrails” conspiracy theorists would ask.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 child)

    Here's a short answer: For a hundred-year time span, "diverting up to 1.7% of the flights could reduce the total EF by 35.6%. The reduction in total EF is contributed almost entirely by the reduction in contrail EF, while the change in the CO2 EF as a result of a diversion appears to be negligible."

    Long answer:

    In that study, they created an algorithm that would divert flights vertically if they are going to create a large contrail, and if diversion is possible (the new airspace isn't already in use). The algorithm chooses a flight path that has the best total energy forcing (EF). They then applied that algorithm for 6 one-week periods of recorded data. Those weeks were spread around the year.

    From "Supporting Information" of that research report (the main text isn't freely available):

    To compare the climate forcing of contrails and CO2 emissions, the absolute global warming potential (AGWP), the time integral of the [radiative forcing] of CO2 over time, is used as a first-order approximation to quantify the CO2 EF and total EF (contrails plus CO2)

    Although approximately 25% of the emitted CO2 remains in the atmosphere after a millennium, we applied the 100-year [time horizon] to be in line with the Kyoto Protocol, and assumed that the AGWP is normally distributed in the Monte Carlo simulation

    For the six weeks of data, diverting up to 1.7% of the flights could reduce the total EF by 35.6% [...]. The reduction in total EF is contributed almost entirely by the reduction in contrail EF, while the change in the CO2 EF as a result of a diversion appears to be negligible.

    If an AGWP of a longer [time horizon] of 1000 years [...] is used to quantify the EF of CO2, this sensitivity analysis suggest that the overall reduction in the total EF will be significantly smaller at 12.2% [...]. In contrast, the total EF could be reduced by up to 50.1% [...] if a shorter [time horizon] of 20-years [...] is used.

    While the potential changes in the global mean surface temperature, quantified using the Absolute Global Temperature Potential (AGTP) are also important, we have refrained from quantifying it because the current level of scientific understanding remains low.

    Even when considering a thousand-year time span, diverting the flights still has a positive effect. And we can always play with the idea that mankind figures out a way to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, which would make those numbers for shorter time spans more meaningful.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    That’s great info, thanks for the reply, seriously. It’s why I ask the questions and give you my reasons for them.

    The part about the chemtrail types is because I have heard all kinds of arguments against them for tinfoil hat reasons. I’m very grateful to get some actual science.

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  • [–] 0 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 child)

    As said in the video everyone refused to watch, it doesn’t require all new routes but occasional 1-2% course deviations or altitude changes for a minority of flights. It’s also claimed that contrails have far, far more warming effect than any additional carbon that might be emitted by this. But hey, he posted it in a video so FUCK HIM, RITE?

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  • [–] 8 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Wouldn't rerouting be more fuel-intensive in most scenarios, though? I feel like burning more fuel to make fewer clouds isn't the right play.

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  • [–] 0 points 8 months ago

    According to him, the contrails have very potent effect on global warming. Apparently, contrails from just one year's flights has almost the same effect as all the CO2 emitted by all flights ever. Re-routing extends the flight by only so much, so the added CO2 emission has negligible effect.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (1 child)

    I'm not saying this is wrong because I don't know shit but when ships crossing the Atlantic were forced to switch to low sulfur fuel a few years ago the North Atlantic rose in temp a few degrees. Turned out the sulfur in the exhaust was causes clouds to form in the atmosphere and was shading the ocean and masking global warming in that region. Pretty much the opposite effect of what you're saying this dude is claiming.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    Speaking with my limited knowledge, there apparently are cooling contrails and warming contrails, but the warming ones are more common. I don't know why or when the contrails are cooling or warming.

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  • [–] 20 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    Depends on your definition of "chemical". Technically all trails are chem trails, including hiking trails.

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    • [–] 65 points 8 months ago (10 children)

    How do you think the conspiracy nuts will react if this bill becomes law and then there are just as many contrails in the sky as before?

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  • [–] 20 points 8 months ago (5 children)

    It would be pretty funny if that makes those people snap and they end up being the ones to drag Trump and his cronies into the street and tear him apart like zombies.

    Though they’d likely all just be shot to death while trying, which I guess maybe win-win?

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    what and shoot his very fine voters?

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  • [–] 8 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Well a key trait of all right wingers is stabbing each other in the back when it benefits themselves directly so they’d just claim they were woke trans terrorists after they shot the lot of them.

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Considering how stupid those who want this are, they'll just go oh see, they stopped doing chemicals in the trails now!. Or 50/50 chance want all jet planes banned 🤷

    Accurate representation of those wanting this

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Sadly they'll just think it's the federal govt doing the spraying that's why they ignore state laws.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

    Legality never stopped the USA from spraying radioactive mist (zinc cadmium sulfide) over Medicine Hat, Alberta and a couple other smaller towns not just Canada, but their own citizens too during the Cold War as a funny little experiment to see how radioactive fallout from nukes would move around the environment. Higher than average local birth defects are the legacy of that, which almost everyone is ignorant of.

    But yeah the conspiracy that it's widespread and regular behaviour is so fucking goofy.

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    • [–] 49 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    We live in the stupidest timeline.

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    • [–] 40 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Alabama State House. Not the U.S. House.

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    [–] 71 points 8 months ago (9 children)

    How are we this stupid?

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    • [–] 35 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    Should be easy for the airlines to comply with, since they don't leave chemtrails, they leave contrails.

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    [–] 25 points 8 months ago (6 children)

    So we banned ...water vapor. Well done, house committee.

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  • [–] 7 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    So we banned ...water vapor

    No. A chemical compound, a substance, or an apparatus into the atmosphere within or above this state for the purpose of affecting the weather, including temperature, climate, and intensity of sunlight.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    No, they are banning water vapour. Read the article.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    No, you read the article. Here's the direct quote

    Holley and others were speaking on House Bill 25 by State Representative Mack Butler, R-Rainbow City, which would create a Class B misdemeanor for the injection, release or dispersal of “a chemical, a chemical compound, a substance, or an apparatus into the atmosphere within or above this state for the purpose of affecting the weather, including temperature, climate, and intensity of sunlight.”

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    • [–] 24 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Red State voters living in abject poverty: "Republicans is gittin important stuff done!"

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago

    10 Years After SCOTUS Gutted Voting Rights Act, Alabama Turnout Gap Is Worse

    Apart from 2018, the white-Black turnout gap increased each year from 2012 through 2022. During last year’s election, the white-Black gap was 9 points — triple the size of the gap only a decade ago. Put differently, some 90,000 more Black voters would have participated in Alabama last year if Black turnout had reached parity with white turnout. The white-nonwhite turnout gap remained at 13 percentage points, the same as in 2020 — translating to roughly 150,000 ballots uncast by people of color.

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    • [–] 46 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    It sounds like they're mixing "chemtrails" and "cloud seeding". And they don't understand either...

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  • [–] 9 points 8 months ago

    Eh. They’re also blaming flooding on cloud seeding based on bad anecdotes.

    The camp mystic flood, that was a massive storm that dumped shitoads of rain in an area known to prone to flash flooding, all because a conservative commentator in ala-fucking-bama happened to be near camp mystic in Texas to see them seeding clouds… just before the flood started

    Probably, I suspect, because they don’t want to admit that GOP policies in Texas are fucking people over. Like the lack of being connected to either national power grid, or in the case of camp mystic, a dore lacking of storm/flood management infrastructure. (Including warning systems.)

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  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

    What the fuck!

    I just read the article, and I think it's completely misrepresenting the bill! From what I can see, the article is just inventing this link to the chemtrails conspiracy.

    Does this bill ever mention the word "chemtrails" or "contrails", at all?

    From what I can tell, the bill is completely talking about cloud seeding, which is definitely its own thing. Cloud seeding is fraught enough, it's a relatively complicated issue with very serious environmental impacts, it does not need to be mixed up chemtrails which are a bullshit conspiracy theory (the opposite of a serious issue).

    Hey Alabama Political Reporter go find your journalistic integrity, I think you dropped it somewhere.

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    • [–] 22 points 8 months ago*

    Whoopee. Now the fucking fringers have become the mainstream.

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