Contrails Do Exist

[deirdre]

Ah, very clear. Except Christopher Hitchens (the late, GREAT) did not originate the 'quote'. Or to be more correct, Hitchens paraphrased and added his own "twist". Christopher Hitchens was honoring another great intellect, Carl Sagan:

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/50379-extraordinary-claims-require-extraordinary-evidence

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

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Hitchens made Carl Sagan's quote even "better". Not to impugn Sagan, but (I infer) to add "clarity" to the original, with some added text.

seems a bit redundant to me. I like the original better.

An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof.
— Marcello Truzzi, On the Extraordinary: An Attempt at Clarification, Zetetic Scholar, Vol. 1, No. 1, p. 11, 1978
Carl Sagan popularized this as "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".[15] However, this may have been based on a quote by David Hume which goes: "A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence".[16] This, in turn, may have been based on a statement by Laplace: "The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness."[citation needed

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrao...aordinary_evidence#.22Extraordinary_claims.22


OT but cool...also by truzzi

Truzzi, Marcello (1969). Caldron cookery: An authentic guide for coven connoisseurs. Meredith Press.

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[WeedWhacker]

seems a bit redundant to me. I like the original better.

You dare to one-up Carl Sagan??

What with facts, and historical references, and all that? (What is this World coming to??)

 

[deirdre]

You dare to one-up Carl Sagan??

What with facts, and historical references, and all that? (What is this World coming to??)

no I meant I like carl's better than Hitchens.

 

[Pete Tar]

I like the Laplace, I'm a fan of ye olde grammar.

 

[Belfrey]

Since Make a Left isn't here right now, I'll take a shot:

Early in the thread (post 8) MaL made an odd reference to the very famous Hitchens quote
("...the elementary rules of logic, that extraordinary claims
require extraordinary evidence and that what can be asserted
without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.")

basically preemptively saying: "I am aware of that quote, please do not mention it here"
which struck me as a peculiar starting point for a supposedly serious inquiry...
and all my posts in this thread attest to my still being somewhat bewildered by this approach,
and wondering about the credentials of this professor. Perhaps ol' Teach' es muy MaL...

I suppose that it could just be a busy-work assignment where it's understood that the teacher specifically wants to see some sort of math-based reasoning, rather than a general logical/scientific approach. What struck me at the time I responded is that Make a Left was still making statements that she did not want arguments "about how because the premise of 'contrails do not persist' is false, their whole argument is false." Which of course is a straw man. Her reasoning is very slapdash throughout the thread. Which I'm accustomed to in internet discussions, but still bothers me in the context of writing a paper for a science class.

 

[George B]

To speculate about the assignment could be endless but is rather interesting. If it was a "Climate" class one assumes it was based upon the scientific understandings surrounding atmospheric science. If so the assignment would have to address what the definition of Chemtrails was and what evidence and/or concept/s could be supported or refuted. Seems the math surrounding the visible trail of particulates was sufficient to satisfy his/her quest for information. Glad we were able to help! Would hope that there were other professors and classes addressing such subjects.

 

[Jazzy]

How much liquid would need to be sprayed to look like a normal contrail?

About sixty pounds of water per mile into dry air. (Off the top of me 'ead, Fermi-type calculation).

Supersaturated air multiplies that by a factor of up to 10,000 by adding water vapor to it.

 

[Hama Neggs]

I have yet to see any chemtrail believer address or even respond to the idea that no plane could carry enough material to "spray" a contrail-sized plume.

 

[Hama Neggs]

About sixty pounds of water per mile into dry air.

(Off the top of me 'ead, Fermi-type calculation).

And would it even actually look like a normal contrail. I doubt it.

 

[Make A Left At Reality]

This is from post #31, and it really confused me, since it seemed to have no clear relevance to the other member (Belfrey) quote that was being replied to.
Perhaps I just missed an exchange in the thread. I saw another referenced quote (post #36) that also gave me some pause....hoping it's possible to get to full clarity.

Here is what Belfry said, it was more of a paraphrase, but definitely a quoted idea.

That which is claimed without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

I understand I confused a lot of people by starting the post the way I did, but I felt that way I would get a more natural response. I really needed information for a paper that I am going to write. The class is "Weather and Climate Science," and writing a paper more about the psychology of the believers was not appropriate for my paper. Thus, the quote was not relevant to what I needed. WeedWhacker, you posted exactly what I was looking for, and that was something that really wasn't just saying well lets dismantle their argument based off of their premises. Instead, your video demonstrated that the idea of chemtrails was mathematically implausible due to the amount of actual "chem" would be needed to have a significant effect. Also, to clarify, I was not focusing on the idea of chemtrails "poisoning" us, but more on the side of how "chem" could effect the environment, which is negligible as demonstrated by the video you posted.

I agree with the quote, it makes sense. If somebody says, "I saw an alien hover over my neighbors house, but I can't prove it, because the never landed, they just hovered." Should be taken with a very large grain of salt, because it lacks any evidence whatsoever. I comprehend the quote, and in the grand scheme of things it is relevant; however, for the purpose I made this thread, which was seeking a very specific type of debunk, it was not relevant. Again, though in the grand scheme of the theory it is relevant.

 

[deirdre]

Also, to clarify, I was not focusing on the idea of chemtrails "poisoning" us, but more on the side of how "chem" could effect the environment, which is negligible as demonstrated by the video you posted

you might want to look more towards the work of David Keith et al then. no?

 

[Belfrey]

I really needed information for a paper that I am going to write. The class is "Weather and Climate Science," and writing a paper more about the psychology of the believers was not appropriate for my paper. Thus, the quote was not relevant to what I needed.

I don't see how it's relevant to the "psychology of the believers," either. Science is based on evidence, that's how it works. Right after using the "without evidence" quote the first time, you said (bolds mine):

The problem is that, whether you agree or not, they have some evidence. Their are contrails in the sky, the military has dumped chaff before, which actually has a constituent many believers say are in chemtrails, and articles like this one in 2011, http://news.yahoo.com/geoengineering-could-save-earth-destroy-054752927.html, or this article from 2009,
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/apr/08/geo-engineering-john-holdren.

But those things you listed are not really evidence for "chemtrails."

• There are contrails in the sky. -True, but this is not evidence that they are actually "chemtrails."
• The military has dropped chaff before. -True, but radar chaff is not "chemtrails." It doesn't make those persistent visible trails in the sky.
  
• There are articles which show that geoengineering is being studied, discussed, and proposed for the future. -True, but that doesn't mean that it's being done now (and there are actually relevant data which indicate that it isn't).

Again, if you just want to use the mathematical plausibility argument in your paper, that's fine - and we could suggest some others (like how much aluminum would have to be dispersed into the air to cause a measurable increase in soil at a landscape level). And I'm not saying that your paper should consist of, "They have no evidence. The end." They do make some specific claims of evidence, but the things they're pointing to - like those you listed - don't actually hold up as evidence, once examined.

In any case, you might find some of the research literature related to persistent contrails and their potential effect on climate worth mentioning in your paper. That's been a topic of study since at least the 1970s.