Slashdot Mirror
Airplanes Cause Accidental Cloud Seeding
An anonymous reader writes "A new study by a team of U.S. researchers found that commercial and private jetliners may be contributing to a form of accidental cloud seeding. When an airplane flies through a cloud, its propellers cause the expansion and cooling of the air behind them which can cause water droplets to spontaneously cool and crystals to form. The aircraft sets off a chain reaction in the cloud that can continue on for hours after the plane has passed by. The researchers also discovered that this phenomenon is more common near the poles, where many of Earth's weather monitoring systems are, and it could be skewing data that research teams are gathering in those areas."
Contrails are real. Jet exhaust contains chemicals. Those chemicals are pollutants. They can cause respiratory problems and maybe birth defects. But they can't cause mind control, other than the ability to twist some people into a knot when their brain power meets their ignorance in a paranoid delusion and motivates them to make fools of themselves and enemies of everyone sane.
Conversely, there are fundemental limitations of what this muddy dirtball can handle, and limits to what technology can accomplish.
The ideal course is to understand both, and proceed accordingly.
To do otherwise is to invite disaster.