We're getting played

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

Depends. How gay are the frogs?

One of the stupidest public consultations you’ve read about so far.

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.

State law. Kind of. It’s Alabama, so…

oh yeah. They're totally getting shot.

leopards and faces and stuffs.

sorry. maybe should have but a /s tag on that.

Trump would totally have them shot if he felt he'd thought he'd make a quick buck.

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".

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

Well said

A large portion of people are stupid, it's sad

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.

Google calculated that planes could avoid the air conditions that cause vapor trails, but it would cost around 2% extra fuel. That means it's a hard no from any airline.

We live in the stupidest timeline.

Seems to me that this reporting system is ripe for comical levels of exploitation and spam. Which should absolutely be encouraged. We can’t be too careful about the scourge of dihydrogen monoxide.

3-4 decades of purposefully undermining public education

Hell yeah, brother. People have elevated the presumed sanctity of their beliefs, no matter how stupid, to be the most sacred of liberties. Even over life and health.

More like 5-7 decades.. "anti-nerd" culture has been popular since about the 50's

And happy trails.

Sounds like a candidate for the easiest job in the world. “My job is to prevent something that doesn’t exist.” Okay. Sounds like a perfect nepotism gig for someone’s idiot relative.

“But the skies of today are not the skies of my youth,” Butler said.

No shit. There are more jets and more airports than there were in your youth.

No more air travel, I guess?

So clouds are illegal?

In his defense, the comment didn't say shit about breakthrough research, it said "watch this".

Say what you want to say and people won't dismiss it. Link to something random and who knows.

I thought they were just condensation?

Don't be so harsh on yourself. You are most definitely not as stupid as US Republicans.

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.

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.

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

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

Well yes, thats why I said "pretty sad" and didnt blame the commenter for it.

It's Alabama, so inbreeding.

this is just to much on the nose with the old man yells at clouds.

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.

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.

Yes, but the phenomenon occurs at specific altitudes, so you just fly slightly higher or lower.

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.

What?!? So how would the government control the sheeple then eh? What's next, the moon projection will be turned off? Lizard people life matters!

Hot air baloons are still allowed. Perfectly good option if you do not care too much where you end up or how far you will go.

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.

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.

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.

At this point, yeah ... fuck it, I'm in.

I'll bring snacks.

There are both cooling and warming contrails.

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.

Dirigibles should be okay too.

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

With all the conspiracy theories proven true lately I Am perfectly ready to believe that the chemtrails are some evil plot, but can we at least like test them first?

I don't believe you. Begin firing on my signal.