Dissecting a debunking article written by Jay Reynold

The article can be read here: Earth Island Journal > Issues > Winter 2003 > Voices > The Other Side of ‘Chemtrails’

The article begin with sentence: "The article Stolen Skies: The Chemtrail Mystery (EIJ, Summer 2002), contained many inaccuracies which deserve correction."

The article trying to explain the error scientifically. Unfortunately, while the article may look scientific, but it is not scientifically correct. The explanation also do not any quote from scientific literature too, a common custom for a proper scientific article.

Let start with how the writer describe the formation of contrails:
"Contrails form when hydrocarbon fuel is burned and combines with oxygen. Hydrogen from the fuel, plus oxygen, yields water, which freezes quickly into ice crystals. If temperatures are above minus 40°F, it is unlikely that a contrail will form. If cold enough, the ice crystals forming the contrail will behave just as any other cloud. If enough moisture is already present in the air, the contrail can spread by growth of the crystals, or be blown into normal-looking cirrus clouds. If the air is too dry, the contrail will eventually dissipate, either rapidly or up to several hours later."

Let us look at how scientific article describe the formation of contrails:
Ground-based observations for the validation of contrails and cirrus detection in satellite imagery
"Aircrafts add warm and humid exhaust air to the tropopause region. When the plume consisting of exhaust and entrained air cools, its relative humidity increases. If the ambient air is cold and moist enough, saturation with respect to liquid water is eventually reached. Soot particles from the combustion process and other condensation nuclei then start to accumulate water vapour and grow to little droplets which immediately freeze: the contrail is formed. The temperature and moisture limits are given by the Schmidt-Appleman Criterion (Schmidt, 1941; Appleman, 1953; Schumann, 1996). In warmer and moist surroundings contrails can also be initiated aerodynamically (Gierens et al., 2009; Kärcher et al., 2009). If the ambient air is supersaturated with respect to ice, the contrail can persist for several hours."

We see the word particles in there. Let see another scientific articles:

LEOTC Project, Minister of Education, the Royal Society of New Zealand, The Kiwi Kids Cloud Identification Guide
"Contrails are formed when particles from aircraft jet engines mix with the water vapour in the air. The water vapour condenses and freezes around the particles causing long white trails across the sky."

Again the word particle is mentioned.  This is because the particle is the neccessary thing for contrails to form or more importantly to persist.



The debunking article also make another claim about modern engine being cleaner:
" Ironically, technical advances in engine efficiency have resulted in jet engines that burn fuel more completely, thus combining more hydrogen with oxygen and yielding more water for contrail formation. Better engines also have resulted in cooler exhaust temperatures, making it easier for the contrails to form. The prospect of a hydrogen-fueled jet which might be squeaky clean but leaves a massive contrail of water vapor would be sure to raise aesthetic questions.

  Jet aircraft do leave behind unseen carbon dioxide and oxides of sulfur and nitrogen. These emissions have similar consequences to other fossil fuel use. Aviation produces a relatively small amount of these pollutants (13 percent) compared to other transportation and a fraction of the global emissions (2 percent). Modern jet engines are among the most efficient of all internal combustion engines."

However, study show that modern engine require fuel with more sulfur content, which results in more particle production from the exhaust which cause more trails.
Airliners.net >> Aviation Articles >> Contrails: What’s Left Behind Is Bad News
"Tests were performed with a NASA jet aircraft examining the effect of sulfur levels in jet fuel exhaust. During the airborne test one engine was run on normal jet fuel and the other engine was run on fuel that emitted exhaust with a lower sulfur content. The high sulfur engine, representing most jet engines on modern commercial aircraft, produced a contrail that lasted through a larger range of temperatures and formed faster out of the engine. The low sulfur engine did the opposite.

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 was the aforementioned event, and it was likely to have excited meteorological researchers involved in contrail impact studies. The national airspace was shut down for three days, something that had not yet occurred since the jet age began in the 1960s and is not likely to occur ever again. Scientists took advantage of this unique three day period in history that lacked contrails. What they learned was shocking and is enough evidence to effectively silence any counterargument to their case. One measure of climate is the average daily temperature range (DTR). For thirty years this had been recorded and extra cirrus clouds in the atmosphere would reduce this range by trapping heat. "September 11 - 14, 2001 had the biggest diurnal temperature range of any three-day period in the past 30 years," said Andrew M. Carleton1. Not in three decades had there been such a large temperature spread between the daytime highs and the nighttime lows. Furthermore, the increase in DTR during those three days was more than double the national average for regions of the United States where contrail coverage was previously known to be most abundant, such as the Midwest, northeast, and northwest regions. The specific increase in the range was 2°F, which in three days was twice the amount the average temperature had increased by over thirty years time1. This is evidence that contrails do alter the climate of the land they drift above."


 The debunking article also contain an interesting statement:

"Active since 1997, the "chemtrails" hoax came to prominence during 1999 as millennium fears increased and originally focused on claims of poison chemicals designed to kill. Those dire predictions have not come to fruition. Later claims have focused on the idea that "chemtrails" are a form of amelioration of global warming. In fact, such geoengineering proposals have been made by prominent scientists, but assume that aerosols for blocking sunlight would be emitted high into the stratosphere, far higher than the contrails observed in the upper troposphere."

Some interesting point:

1. Chemtrails said to be active since 1997. From what I remember, this is the start of global warming program, carbon cut, etc.

2. Jay Reynold claim chemtrails are not an amelioration of global warming, he claim that it is a geoengineering  proposal to cool the earth. Interestingly at 2010, there is a very popular video, What In The World Are They Spraying, also popular as WITWATS, that tell people that those trails are actually geoengineering, an effort to cool the earth. In the succesive year, the producer of that film, Dane Wigington, talk in various show and article telling people that the real issue is global warming and those trails is an effort to cool the earth, to prevent runaway melting scenari, to slow down imminent planet meltdown.

It is scary that WITWATS looks like an implementation of Jay Reynolds idea. Jay Reynold is a known chemtrails debunker. The article seems to be written at winter 2003.

NASA's claim actually support the chemtrails believer.
http://mynasadata.larc.nasa.gov/804-2/contrail-studies/
Scientists at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia found that the increase in temperature over the United States from 1975 to 1994 closely matched the increase expected from the presence of contrails. Dr. Patrick Minnis is a senior research scientist at the Langley Research Center. He has measured a one percent per decade increase in cirrus cloud cover over the United States, which is likely due to contrails. Minnis estimates that cirrus clouds from contrails increased the temperatures of the lower atmosphere by anywhere from 0.36 to 0.54 degrees F per decade. Minnis's results show good agreement with weather service data, which reveal that the temperature of the surface and lower atmosphere rose by almost 0.5 degrees F per decade between 1975 and 1994.

If we look at the science, scientist do worry about contrails. The increase of concern about contrails bad influence on the atmosphere results in this article:
Gaseous and Particulate Emissions with Jet Engine Exhaust and Atmospheric Pollution
"Thus, the emissions of sulfate aerosol particles by aircrafts can significantly influence on the surface area of stratospheric aerosol layer and as a result on the radiative forcing as well as on the total ozone concentration. This exhibits the necessity of reasonable limitation on sulfate aerosol particles emitted. For modern aviation fuels the typical value of FSC does not exceed 400 ìg or 0.04%. Therefore, we can suggest for prospective jet engines the limitation standard for sulfate aerosol particle emission index of (1-2).1016 kg-1. "

NASA even ask people to observe contrails. Which was explained in previous article:

Nasa said: Look up!

Scientist also claim that those contrails is actually heating the earth:
Trails heating property disinformation that chemtrails expert often agree to

There is video which show that the temperature reading of contrails is higher than normal clouds or clear sky:
Infra red thermal reading shows that trails heat the earth!

This article give me more confidence that there is a scenario to try to make chemtrails as something good, as a geoengineering to cool the earth, when actually chemtrails is an effort to produce global warming.