It states that half of aircraft pollution is from contrails made of aircraft soot.
I’d like to see the literature and discovery of aircraft soot.
As an engineer who has built aircraft, I find this fascinating. I would like to measure my amount of soot. How does one go about measuring how much soot I have?
Obviously if my exhaust ports are black that’s bad but I’m genuinely curious about this as I’ve always assumed “black smoke bad, white smoke ok”. As for contrails, disturbing the atmosphere is going to cause some freezing (clouds) at that altitude, at that temperature. How do you suggest we mitigate that? Fly lower and burn more fuel? Fly less and tell people to take the train or that their package will arrive next week?
Fly less. Is waiting a week for a package really that big of a deal? Is traveling less really that much to ask?
It’s totally ok to be skeptical of the claims. I can’t make a judgement on them as I know even less than you might. But that’s not a reason to doubt that human’s environment impact matters and that maybe part of the solution is for those of us with access to 2day delivery for everything and cheap flights live a teeny bit more like those who don’t.
It is easy to suggest to fly less but it is going to be impossible to convince society where core values include agressive "extra" consumption, which in turn is the backbone of the world's current economy. Flying is one of top "extra" consumption types out there. I know many people are trying to convince people of that, but the society is moving in the opposite direction - bigger cars (both us and eu), more travel. Maybe arguments used currently are not convincing enough? I mean, sure, keep trying and you will obviously reach a certain 0.00x% of the population, but that's not really going to make any difference
but contrails are not made of soot, where I define soot as dark unburned carbon, contrails actual are made of water. There is also a highly likely chance I am being to literal and the word choice of soot was a bit of poetic license on the part of the author.
As a bonus consideration it might be better if they were made of soot, it would be ugly but water vapor is a tremendous greenhouse gas, several times as potent as CO2, soot blocking the sun might have more of a neutral effect, And related, we worked hard to get sulfur out of our fuels but sulfur dioxide turns out to be a negative greenhouse gas, it has a net cooling effect, I am not saying we should deliberately add sulfur back in, the downsides are too great, but it is an interesting bit of irony.
Are there other sites that can suggest how much of an issue it is, and how much flight plan tweaking could improve this.
Remember kids a 1° C rise in temperature can mean 7% more water vapour in the air, and with water vapour being a greenhouse gas itself this can cause heating and holding yet more water.
They definitely increase the cloud cover where I live. Very noticeable, you can often see which clouds were created by them... And that's without the conspiratorial stuff.
I'm out of the loop, didn't the government admit this stuff a few years ago?
I was at a presentation in Croatia recently about weather modification in Yugoslavia. This is considered public knowledge there. When Yugoslavia fell apart, Croatia was no longer permitted to engage in weather modification.
The main method discussed was the use of small rockets. It was used for agricultural purposes.
The problem is the unsubstantiated logical leap from "weather modification is possible" to "contrails behind commercial aircraft are secretly dispersing chemicals in order to control weather".
If I was an evil government figure trying to secretly control weather, there are better ways of doing that (e.g. drones, rockets) than orchestrating a conspiracy that requires hundreds of thousands of people to stay quiet for decades.
The team behind this is world-class. Among other things, they have developed a python library that could be used to model contrails in your own projects.
Water vapour absorbs the thermal radiation (heat trying to escape earth) better than it absorbs sunlight (heat trying to enter earth). Therefore, the more water vapour in the atmosphere, the stronger the greenhouse effect.
They don’t cause net warming, it’s transient. If we stopped flying tomorrow it would go away quickly. But we keep flying.
But even with that the amount of warming this continuous effect creates is quite small and negligible compared to greenhouse gas warming and isn’t really worth talking about.
I think this link hit HN in part due to the new Simon Clark video on contrails which mentioned it. Simon discusses the claim that contrails can be avoided for a small fuel penalty, reducing the overall effect on climate change a given flight would have. Apparently some airlines are already exploring this and Google includes contrail impact estimates on their flight search. So maybe it is worth talking about.
Yes, also a mushroom cloud from a nuclear blast blocks light from passing through which reduces heating on the ground whereas contrails are thin which lets light through but still retains heat below them.
Would be great for shiptracks, too— which used to mitigate 1/3 of the warming impact of maritime shipping — until the 2022 clean fuel standards were implemented.
I’d like to see the literature and discovery of aircraft soot.
As an engineer who has built aircraft, I find this fascinating. I would like to measure my amount of soot. How does one go about measuring how much soot I have?
Obviously if my exhaust ports are black that’s bad but I’m genuinely curious about this as I’ve always assumed “black smoke bad, white smoke ok”. As for contrails, disturbing the atmosphere is going to cause some freezing (clouds) at that altitude, at that temperature. How do you suggest we mitigate that? Fly lower and burn more fuel? Fly less and tell people to take the train or that their package will arrive next week?
It’s totally ok to be skeptical of the claims. I can’t make a judgement on them as I know even less than you might. But that’s not a reason to doubt that human’s environment impact matters and that maybe part of the solution is for those of us with access to 2day delivery for everything and cheap flights live a teeny bit more like those who don’t.
As a bonus consideration it might be better if they were made of soot, it would be ugly but water vapor is a tremendous greenhouse gas, several times as potent as CO2, soot blocking the sun might have more of a neutral effect, And related, we worked hard to get sulfur out of our fuels but sulfur dioxide turns out to be a negative greenhouse gas, it has a net cooling effect, I am not saying we should deliberately add sulfur back in, the downsides are too great, but it is an interesting bit of irony.
Are there other sites that can suggest how much of an issue it is, and how much flight plan tweaking could improve this.
Remember kids a 1° C rise in temperature can mean 7% more water vapour in the air, and with water vapour being a greenhouse gas itself this can cause heating and holding yet more water.
I guess the map is posted today due to this recent video (worth a watch): https://youtu.be/QoOVqQ5sa08?si=sGK9Q9tUoFOW1QZg
Downvoted for this, at the very least, and also downvoted for the fact you think you're entitled to an explanation even with your tone.
There's plenty of basis for thinking it's uninformed or intellectually dishonest conspiracy mongering.
And please don't rant at HN.
I was at a presentation in Croatia recently about weather modification in Yugoslavia. This is considered public knowledge there. When Yugoslavia fell apart, Croatia was no longer permitted to engage in weather modification.
The main method discussed was the use of small rockets. It was used for agricultural purposes.
If I was an evil government figure trying to secretly control weather, there are better ways of doing that (e.g. drones, rockets) than orchestrating a conspiracy that requires hundreds of thousands of people to stay quiet for decades.
https://py.contrails.org
Why nuclear blasts - that also introduce lots of particles in atmosphere cause a cooling effect - "nuclear winter"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_absorption_by_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect
But even with that the amount of warming this continuous effect creates is quite small and negligible compared to greenhouse gas warming and isn’t really worth talking about.
https://youtu.be/QoOVqQ5sa08