Re: Conspiracy Threads

[csnavywx]

The title says it all. I will again throw down the gauntlet. It wasn't taken up last time (for obvious reasons, I suspect). Before we see more posting more about "HAARP" or other "devious government schemes", I ask those subscribing to this to give a set of conditions under which they would be satisfied that it isn't true. If you can't do that without moving the goal posts or dragging the conversation into the weeds, then it should be discarded.

That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. Additionally, if you cannot think of a reasonable condition under which you can be convinced of a null hypothesis, then it is speculation at best.

Speculation is fine, so long as it is presented as such. However, don't expect the rest of us to take it seriously.

[snowsux]

6 minutes ago, csnavywx said:

I ask those subscribing to this to give a set of conditions under which they would be satisfied that it isn't true. If you can't do that without moving the goal posts or dragging the conversation into the weeds, then it should be discarded.

 I try to think as pragmatically as possible about things. The first time I ever heard of "chemtrails" was around 2009 after I'd started dating a girl who was originally from the west coast. I'd never seen anything like she was describing in the western PA skies, so I mostly dismissed her claims as moronic rambling. I did start to observe the sky on a regular basis though, and for years (when it wasn't overcast) all I saw were regular contrails behind jets, and regular cloud formations. I even googled what chemtrails are "supposed" to look like, and never remembered seeing anything like that above my area. Then around 2013, I started noticing it. During the summers of '14, '15, and '16, it was commonplace for the morning sky in my area to be absolutely covered in persistent contrails, often in a sloppy grid-like pattern. As the day wore on, the trails would expand to encompass the entire visible sky in a milky white haze. Sometimes persistent contrails would continue to form well into the afternoon, below the "haze" created earlier in the day. Often times they'd cast a dark shadow on the haze itself. It was really weird. One day in particular during the spring of 2014 stands out among the rest though. The haze had already formed by around noon, however the air traffic continued heavily into the afternoon, creating a secondary grid pattern under the haze. It was like nothing I'd ever seen before. People were pulled off on the side of the road taking pictures of the sky. I stopped in a pull-off area and talked briefly to a guy who claimed to be a retired commercial pilot. He was as baffled by what he was seeing as everyone else was. 

 I started to pay close attention to what days of the week this phenomenon was occurring, and realized that I never saw it on Sundays or on holidays. I also noticed that the aircraft that were making these persistent contrails seemed to be flying much higher than other jets. I looked at daily online air traffic maps which show spaghetti lines of all the commercial aircraft for any given day, and the lines didn't jibe with what I was seeing in the sky. I also did some research and learned about David Keith and his research. It sounded almost exactly like what I was seeing in the sky above my head most days. Then last spring and summer, it all but stopped. Even though we had a ton of precipitation here in 2017, the majority of the sunny and partly cloudy days felt brighter and warmer than they'd felt in years. Why the change? Also...not to sound "conspiratorial" or anything, but the whole "2 versions of the Sound of Music" thing is really freaky. 

 For some people, conspiracy theories on the internet are like a sport. These people get all hot and bothered trying to either prove or debunk things, to the point where it actually affects their moods. It goes hand-in-hand with how confrontational of a society we've become in general. Everyone knows they're right about everything, and they perpetually argue and fight about every topic imaginable. Personally I couldn't care less. I don't really like humanity as a whole, so people's opinions and world views mean absolutely nothing to me. If anything I'm merely trying to disprove what I've personally seen with my own eyes because I find it rather disturbing. If there's a logical explanation as to why I've been actively watching the sky since 2009, and only noticed these things between 2013 and 2016....I'm all ears. If there's any evidence that they existed in the 80's or 90's, then I'd love to see it. I'd love to see the classic persistent contrail "grid pattern" from a 1980's or 90's photograph. The internet has yet to produce such evidence though. 

 

[Sophisticated Skeptic]

19 hours ago, csnavywx said:

The title says it all. I will again throw down the gauntlet. It wasn't taken up last time (for obvious reasons, I suspect). Before we see more posting more about "HAARP" or other "devious government schemes", I ask those subscribing to this to give a set of conditions under which they would be satisfied that it isn't true. If you can't do that without moving the goal posts or dragging the conversation into the weeds, then it should be discarded.

That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. Additionally, if you cannot think of a reasonable condition under which you can be convinced of a null hypothesis, then it is speculation at best.

Speculation is fine, so long as it is presented as such. However, don't expect the rest of us to take it seriously.

 

Climate Change is just as much of a conspiracy theory, according to Republicans.  So if their going remove some of it, just remove the whole section.   

Forums are around to debate things. 

[csnavywx]

19 hours ago, snowsux said:

 I try to think as pragmatically as possible about things. The first time I ever heard of "chemtrails" was around 2009 after I'd started dating a girl who was originally from the west coast. I'd never seen anything like she was describing in the western PA skies, so I mostly dismissed her claims as moronic rambling. I did start to observe the sky on a regular basis though, and for years (when it wasn't overcast) all I saw were regular contrails behind jets, and regular cloud formations. I even googled what chemtrails are "supposed" to look like, and never remembered seeing anything like that above my area. Then around 2013, I started noticing it. During the summers of '14, '15, and '16, it was commonplace for the morning sky in my area to be absolutely covered in persistent contrails, often in a sloppy grid-like pattern. As the day wore on, the trails would expand to encompass the entire visible sky in a milky white haze. Sometimes persistent contrails would continue to form well into the afternoon, below the "haze" created earlier in the day. Often times they'd cast a dark shadow on the haze itself. It was really weird. One day in particular during the spring of 2014 stands out among the rest though. The haze had already formed by around noon, however the air traffic continued heavily into the afternoon, creating a secondary grid pattern under the haze. It was like nothing I'd ever seen before. People were pulled off on the side of the road taking pictures of the sky. I stopped in a pull-off area and talked briefly to a guy who claimed to be a retired commercial pilot. He was as baffled by what he was seeing as everyone else was. 

 I started to pay close attention to what days of the week this phenomenon was occurring, and realized that I never saw it on Sundays or on holidays. I also noticed that the aircraft that were making these persistent contrails seemed to be flying much higher than other jets. I looked at daily online air traffic maps which show spaghetti lines of all the commercial aircraft for any given day, and the lines didn't jibe with what I was seeing in the sky. I also did some research and learned about David Keith and his research. It sounded almost exactly like what I was seeing in the sky above my head most days. Then last spring and summer, it all but stopped. Even though we had a ton of precipitation here in 2017, the majority of the sunny and partly cloudy days felt brighter and warmer than they'd felt in years. Why the change? Also...not to sound "conspiratorial" or anything, but the whole "2 versions of the Sound of Music" thing is really freaky. 

 For some people, conspiracy theories on the internet are like a sport. These people get all hot and bothered trying to either prove or debunk things, to the point where it actually affects their moods. It goes hand-in-hand with how confrontational of a society we've become in general. Everyone knows they're right about everything, and they perpetually argue and fight about every topic imaginable. Personally I couldn't care less. I don't really like humanity as a whole, so people's opinions and world views mean absolutely nothing to me. If anything I'm merely trying to disprove what I've personally seen with my own eyes because I find it rather disturbing. If there's a logical explanation as to why I've been actively watching the sky since 2009, and only noticed these things between 2013 and 2016....I'm all ears. If there's any evidence that they existed in the 80's or 90's, then I'd love to see it. I'd love to see the classic persistent contrail "grid pattern" from a 1980's or 90's photograph. The internet has yet to produce such evidence though. 

 

There are several culprits that are far more likely to explain this, including:

1) Extremely rapid growth in overall air travel. Global air travel growth from 2010-2017 was greater than the entire period spanning from the first airplane to 2004(!). Growth rates in the past few years are remarkably fast (~45% total growth since just 2012).

2) Hub changes. Major carrier expansions (including freight) and/or moves.

3) Seasonality. Contrail formation is sensitive to tropopause height and RH near the tropopause. The upper atmosphere is naturally nearly pristine (few cloud condensation nuclei) and the injection of high densities of CCN in an environment otherwise supersaturated with respect to ice will produce prolific amounts of contrails, even where there were few clouds before.

The sinking motion you describe is due downward motion from imparted inertia and wingtip vortices over the first few minutes. More gradual fall is usually possible from the dissipation of this inertia, weak background subsidence and/or ice crystal fall streaks/streamers. The net effect is that newer contrails from aircraft flying at the same flight level will naturally come in higher, often by a couple thousand feet.

[LithiaWx]

On 2/6/2018 at 1:19 PM, csnavywx said:

The title says it all. I will again throw down the gauntlet. It wasn't taken up last time (for obvious reasons, I suspect). Before we see more posting more about "HAARP" or other "devious government schemes", I ask those subscribing to this to give a set of conditions under which they would be satisfied that it isn't true. If you can't do that without moving the goal posts or dragging the conversation into the weeds, then it should be discarded.

That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. Additionally, if you cannot think of a reasonable condition under which you can be convinced of a null hypothesis, then it is speculation at best.

Speculation is fine, so long as it is presented as such. However, don't expect the rest of us to take it seriously.

Those threads should not be tolerated. This is a science forum and the amount of debunked ridiculousness that gets posted from a few folks is anti-science.   Those posts and threads also bring the integrity of the entire board into question.  Most of the stuff you are referring to is part of the paranoid ranting from Alex Jones. 

[Vice-Regent]

Overall the big takeaway is that you should be concerned because we managed to warm this much with significant negative forcings. Carbon dioxide equivalent is somewhere around 510 ppm.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_equivalent

Carbon dioxide equivalent (CDE) and equivalent carbon dioxide (CO₂e and CO₂eq) are two related but distinct measures for describing how much global warming a given type and amount of greenhouse gas may cause, using the functionally equivalent amount or concentration of carbon dioxide (CO₂) as the reference.

 

Contents

  [hide] 

• 1Global warming potential
• 2Equivalent carbon dioxide
• 3See also
• 4References
• 5External links
• 6Bibliography

 

Global warming potential[edit]

Main article: Global warming potential

Carbon dioxide equivalency is a quantity that describes, for a given mixture and amount of greenhouse gas, the amount of CO₂ that would have the same global warming potential (GWP), when measured over a specified timescale (generally, 100 years). Carbon dioxide equivalency thus reflects the time-integrated radiative forcing of a quantity of emissions or rate of greenhouse gas emission—a flow into the atmosphere—rather than the instantaneous value of the radiative forcing of the stock (concentration) of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere described by CO₂e.

The carbon dioxide equivalency for a gas is obtained by multiplying the mass and the GWP of the gas. The following units are commonly used:

• By the UN climate change panel IPCC: n×10⁹ tonnes of CO₂ equivalent (GtCO₂eq).
• In industry: million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents (MMTCDE).
• For vehicles: g of carbon dioxide equivalents / km (gCDE/km).

For example, the GWP for methane over 100 years is 34^[1] and for nitrous oxide 298. This means that emissions of 1 million metric tonnes of methane and nitrous oxide respectively is equivalent to emissions of 34 and 298 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide.^[2]

Equivalent carbon dioxide[edit]

Equivalent CO₂ (CO₂e) is the concentration of CO₂ that would cause the same level of radiative forcing as a given type and concentration of greenhouse gas. Examples of such greenhouse gases are methane, perfluorocarbons, and nitrous oxide. CO₂e is expressed as parts per million by volume, ppmv.

CO₂e calculation examples:

• The radiative forcing for pure CO₂ is approximated by {\displaystyle RF=\alpha \ln(C/C_{0})} where C is the present concentration, {\displaystyle \alpha } is a constant, 5.35, and {\displaystyle C_{0}} is the pre-industrial concentration, 280 ppm. Hence the value of CO₂e for an arbitrary gas mixture with a known radiative forcing is given by {\displaystyle C_{0}\exp(RF/\alpha )} in ppmv.
• To calculate the radiative forcing for a 1998 gas mixture, IPCC 2001 gives the radiative forcing (relative to 1750) of various gases as: CO₂=1.46 (corresponding to a concentration of 365 ppmv), CH₄=0.48, N₂O=0.15 and other minor gases =0.01 W/m2. The sum of these is 2.10 W/m2. Inserting this to the above formula, we obtain CO₂e = 412 ppmv.
• To calculate the CO₂e of the additional radiative forcing calculated from April 2016's updated data:^[3] ∑ RF(GHGs) = 3.3793, thus CO₂e = 280 e^3.3793/5.35 ppmv = 526.6 ppmv.

[Sophisticated Skeptic]

On 2/7/2018 at 7:19 AM, csnavywx said:

There are several culprits that are far more likely to explain this, including:

1) Extremely rapid growth in overall air travel. Global air travel growth from 2010-2017 was greater than the entire period spanning from the first airplane to 2004(!). Growth rates in the past few years are remarkably fast (~45% total growth since just 2012).

2) Hub changes. Major carrier expansions (including freight) and/or moves.

3) Seasonality. Contrail formation is sensitive to tropopause height and RH near the tropopause. The upper atmosphere is naturally nearly pristine (few cloud condensation nuclei) and the injection of high densities of CCN in an environment otherwise supersaturated with respect to ice will produce prolific amounts of contrails, even where there were few clouds before.

The sinking motion you describe is due downward motion from imparted inertia and wingtip vortices over the first few minutes. More gradual fall is usually possible from the dissipation of this inertia, weak background subsidence and/or ice crystal fall streaks/streamers. The net effect is that newer contrails from aircraft flying at the same flight level will naturally come in higher, often by a couple thousand feet.

 

 

Typical debunk post.

all ufo’s out there are either weather balloons or swamp gas as well.

[csnavywx]

2 hours ago, Sophisticated Skeptic said:

 

 

Typical debunk post.

all ufo’s out there are either weather balloons or swamp gas as well.

Dodging it.