Slashdot Mirror
Study: Jet Exhaust Affects Weather
An anonymous submitter writes: "Warp 10 speeds may affect... Ooops, wrong story.. Apparently, jets are affecting the weather and contributing to about a 3 degree daily temperature variation. Even a single degree variation in overall temperature (climate) is significant, but I'm not certain how significant is 3 degrees in local temperatures." We mentioned this before - there was a Wired story - but now their work has been published in Nature and the AP has picked up the story.
This will only encourage the weird science crowd who are looking at the contrails as "chemtrails" and look at the whole thing as an effort to control global warming, or do other mean and nasty things.
Google reveals about 18,000 hits on the word "chemtrails" alone. Have a party.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
The "researchers" compared the weather of the 4 days following september 11th when most (non millitary) air traffic was suspended to the 'average' temperature, for those 4 days, of the past 30 years.
Anyone with even the smallest knowledge of statistics can tell you that this 'experiment' is absolutely non-scientific and the researchers admit it that global warming is likely responsible for most of the increase.
And anyone with even the smallest knowledge of scientific research can tell you that those results will never get published in any acientific journal since the basic requirement of all research today was not met. The "control group". There was no control group. No, the days before and after don't count as control group.
Apart from that, air traffic might have effect on weather. But my point is that we can't conclude from this "experiment" what that effect is. More (real) research is required.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
A more interesting study would be to stop all petroleum based engines for a month (including jets), and measure the impact on the climate. People are so narrow minded (let's study how the climate changes when the remaining DC-10s are removed from the airways). Alas, this will never happen, because people are addicted to their lifestyles. I would be happy to discard all conveniences so that a study like that might be done. I realize that it would have some serious side effects, but I think everyone could get through it. But the thing I wanted to mention, mainly, is that there is a bigger picture. It's not just airplanes that affect our world.
The problem is that global warming doesn't take into acount the previous warming and cooling cycles presented via geology. And since you're waiting for it, I'll take the bullet and say that global warming is a case of "figures lie and liars figure". And since you're mentioning proper scale, .000000057% (or close enough) is a pretty damn small slice of history to be working with. Fact is we aren't going to have an accurate snapshot either way until you can find similar planets in various stages of their lifecycle, go back in time, or vastly improve geological research. And until one of those three criteria is met, global warming is not even an educated guess.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Warp 10 speeds affect your ability to get chicks.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Guys.. the article says that the contrails actually decreased the temperature. FLY MORE! It's what we conservatives have been telling you people for years. Fly more, airline hires more, workers buy more, we all benefit.
It is clear to me, then, that we need to increase jet flights in order to fight global warming.