Debunked: ArtificialClouds.com claims silver iodide causes chemtrails/global warming!

[Gunguy45]

Firepilot is most likely working somewhere......and yes I agree, why get into it verbally 1 on 1? If he has facts..then just provide them in a public forum. I don't know about others...but I may mis-remember something SPOKEN 3 days ago...but with a written record...it's a different story.

 

[Rico]

Weather Modification, Inc. shows the planes they use on this page. One of them (the Lear Jet 35A) is capable of reaching up to 40K feet, but most aren't.

I've been corresponding with Dave by email. He suggested that we could have a debate, but he would only do it verbally. I've had enough experience (with creationists especially) to know that's a very bad idea with these sorts of things. It's easy to win a debate when you can make extraordinary claims without having to back them up.

He claims to have gotten information about cloud seeding directly from those who do it, I'm trying to get him to tell me who so I can contact them myself. Too bad "firepilot" isn't around, I understand he was an experienced cloud seeding pilot?

You guys ever seen this video?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZS6cA_kRqE

It shows a guy who interviewed a weather mod pilot with a preconceived notion of chemtrails. Obviously, everything the pilot said is true to what he knows, but the man with the camera became rather presumptuous and extruded the facts, linking them to his, again, preconceived notion of chemtrails. He left the building being more convinced of chemtrails while the pilot was probably scratching his head, and sadly, slandered by proponents by youtubers who don't know better. This sometimes proves how easily information obtained by the source can be taken out of context. While I'm not raising a flag that this is certainly the case with Dave's video, it's one of the many fallacies in science that this theory is vulnerable to, especially if he claims to have gotten this information from those who do it.

I've personally known a weather mod pilot myself. He certainly doesn't fly high enough to reach the stratosphere. I'm pretty sure he doesn't make much either for flying in stormy weather during the seeding season.

 

[Jay Reynolds]

I was really hoping Dave Dahl wouldn't be like Carnicom, Michael Murphy, G. Edward Griffin, Francis Mangels, and Dane Wigington. All of those, you don't see them actually come out in public where their claims can be discussed and debated. They all run away and stay 'aloof' so that they won't be asked inconvenient truths.

I am very disappointed in you, Dave.
First that silly act of posting using multipleID's, then back again and won't respond when you get a few questions.
Wish you would 'man up'.

 

[Belfrey]

He asked me to show him any errors, so I've been going through his transcript a bit more carefully. I might do a longer post about it later. But from his emails it strikes me that a central part of his claim is that persistent contrails will only occur when and where cloud seeding is done. He says:

I traveled a lot. I've seen chemtrails in many states and countries. In checking, I found that every place I saw them does silver iodide cloud seeding.


Can you name a country that's not cloud seeding?


Can you name a place that complains about chemtrails that's not cloud seeding?

So, it seems to me that here's an easy way to falsify his claim. My own city of Gainesville, FL is home to a pretty well-known chemtrails activist (Harold Saive), and persistent contrails certainly are well-documented in our skies. I can't find any evidence that there are regular, ongoing cloud seeding operations here. There were some experiments done in the state in the past, but not now as far as I can find. Nothing about state or county programs comes up in searches.

Under Florida Statutes (Title XXIX Chapter 403), any weather modification projects in the state have to get a permit with FL-DEP. I think I'll ask some folks at DEP to find out how many permits have been granted in the past few years. My guess is none, unless someone has a research project going.

One thing I'm understanding is that he thinks cloud seeding is happening on a MASSIVE scale, all time, practically everywhere.

 

[cloudspotter]

One thing I'm understanding is that he thinks cloud seeding is happening on a MASSIVE scale, all time, practically everywhere.
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How much silver iodide would that involve? I've just done a quick search and according to this site http://www.saltlakemetals.com/Silver_Value_Calculator.htm the value of silver per kg is around $520

 

[Danny55]

Here a price for Silver Iodide $300-350 per Kilo going upwards

http://www.alibaba.com/showroom/silver-iodide.html

 

[Belfrey]

Please forgive me in advance for how long this post is. Dave has asked me to point out any errors in his movie. There are statements there that are uncontroversial, and other statements that are more for dramatic effect, so I'll clip out and highlight the points that I'm disputing. The transcript can be seen here. In spite of Dave's claim that "every sentence is supported by a science paper or a government doc.", one soon sees that the citations are very sparse, especially for his more extraordinary claims.

Contrails provide some of the necessary cloud nuclei in the form of ice particles and other aerosolized particulates.
But the many chemical aerosols in this highly toxic exhaust still do not provide a sufficient explanation for the massive plumes they create which persist and continue to gather mass and form clouds.

There is no citation or support offered for this claim, that jet exhaust is not sufficient to cause the persistent contrails that are observed. There is also ample documentation to falsify this claim; persistent contrails have been observed since the WWII era, and the phenomenon has been studied from the 1950s to the present day (e.g. Appleman (1953), Hansen and Hansen (1995) and Schraeder (1997)). (In emails, Dave has dismissed such articles as "old news" and said that everything is different now. This is puzzling; has atmospheric physics changed somehow so that persistent contrails are no longer possible without the addition of silver iodide? Why is it that even papers published this year about contrail formation (such as Irvine et al. 2012) also don't say this?)

So what is this mysterious chemical that causes drastic climate change by covering the Earth with artificial clouds? It's called silver iodide, which is a combination of silver nitrate and potassium iodide. And you're about to see why this chemical is responsible for the huge, icy clouds that are routinely created by jets.

This last claim is the main one that's in dispute. Again, no citation for it. He then goes into a history of cloud seeding, which is mostly accurate as far as I know, until we get to here:

That is, artificial clouds made by jets are most often the result of attempting to make rain, and to increase the mountain snowpack that keeps rivers flowing in the summer.
While still referred to almost euphemistically as "cloud seeding," the technologies and capabilities of the weather modification industry have evolved over its 70-year history.
Today, we don't just sprinkle chemicals onto clouds. We MAKE clouds.

Again, we have the claim that contrails are usually the result of cloud seeding, and that cloud seeding makes clouds. Again, no citation or support offered, just a bald claim.

He then goes into the fact that cloud-seeding is paid for in some areas by a surcharge on utility bills, and gives some motivation for governments to wish to control weather. Those are not particularly controversial, no one says that cloud seeding doesn't exist. But he appears to think that it is going on at an absolutely massive scale, to the extent that the air all over the place is filled with silver iodide – wherever you see contrails, he thinks, cloud seeding has been going on.

It would be nice to get some records of how many cloud seeding flights actually take place. I strongly suspect it is nowhere close to what Dave imagines.

But the growing fleet of cloud-seeding aircraft continued to deploy more and more flights spraying this extremely hygroscopic material across the sky.
Now we can clearly see the two powerful forces at work creating artificial clouds: The spraying of millions of tons of silver iodide into the atmosphere by small aircraft, and the cloud-making effect of large jets passing through air that's thick with cloud-inducing silver mist. vs
Small cloud-seeding aircraft such as Bombardier jets and high-altitude propeller planes deliver their payloads using silver iodide flares that are ignited by remote control. The flares are typically fixed to the wings of the aircraft, and release the silver and salt mixture high into the stratosphere so it slowly drifts down into the moist air down below. 46​, ​61​, ​103​

He does give citations there (Wikipedia, and two different cloud seeding companies), but as far as I can find, none of them say that the seeding is done high into the stratosphere, into open air where there are no clouds.

When the pilots can see ice forming on the wings, they know liquid water is present in the air and there is the potential to create storm clouds.

Again, bald unsupported claim that they create clouds – storm clouds, in this case. They do cause existing clouds to produce rain or snow, so this could be just a wording issue.

So: how many sorties do cloud seeding aircraft fly in order to make it rain or snow? The answer is, "as many as possible." The more aerosols, the more chance of condensation that makes thick rain clouds. Commercial air traffic helps to facilitate rain by plowing through the field of silver mist, emitting the super-heated steam that freezes into expanding clouds.

Again, no citation. I suspect that this "as many as possible" quote came from one of his conversations with cloud seeding company staff. I suspect that they meant as many as possible into a targeted cloud system, but Dave seems to think they mean as many as possible, all the time, everywhere.

Shade from the artificial clouds also drops the temperature below, decreasing the pressure and creating a low channel that flows like a river, drawing in the moist air. This can allow some ocean storms to make landfall that might otherwise be repelled by higher onshore pressures.

No citation offered there, either.

Eventually, say the weather modification experts, the silver iodide disperses over such a wide area that they presumably have no noticeable effects. 46​, ​61​, ​103​
But we have now flown millions of silver iodide sorties in these ongoing aerosol operations and, unfortunately, our deliberate and inadvertent modification of the atmosphere can also inhibit natural rain cloud formation in more than one way... and that turns out to be a big problem.

Millions of these sorties? Where does he get that? No citation.

There is a limit to how much water can be extracted from the sky by enhancing and creating rain clouds.
With no rules about who owns the sky rivers, when California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado use cloud seeding to extract all the moisture from the air... what happens to Texas? In 2011 alone, the state of Texas lost approximately 500 million bees and ten percent of its forests due to drought. 77​

Now he is blaming the historic drought in Texas on cloud seeding? There is no evidence to support this remarkable claim. Citation 77 there talks about changes in rainfall patterns being driven by changes in ocean salinity – as a result of global warming, not silver iodide.

(Quote from the Texas Weather Modification Program Manager)

In 2012, we confirmed that the most arid parts of the Earth, where ocean surface salinity is highest, are getting even drier. Scientists also confirmed in 2012 that ocean salt levels in many areas have increased far more than expected. This is significant because most evaporation on the planet comes from the ocean, and the greater surface salinity, the less efficiently water evaporates into the atmosphere.78​

I think he got his citations mixed up there, because 77 would have related to this statement better than 78, which is a paper about how urban and industrial pollution can suppress rainfall while cloud seeding can enhance it, using the example of experiments in northern Israel which show that these two inputs can cancel each out to some degree.

Since cloud seeding uses salt-based chemicals, the very technique we use to make rain might also help to prevent rain.

Wait, is he claiming that enough cloud seeding is done to change the salinity of the ocean?

Next we get to an overlay of Dave's primary thesis, which is that this supposedly massive and pervasive cloud seeding is necessary and responsible for the formation of persistent contrails. Notice that there are absolutely no citations given for ANY of this. The idea that persistent contrails are related to silver iodide spraying appears to come directly from Dave's imagination.

With a telescope, from the ground you can sometimes see the flares burning on the wings of cloud-seeding aircraft. Since these aircraft are at cruising altitude and have relatively small engines, they make only a small contrail wake behind them that quickly disappears behind the plane.
Now, enter the second force: the huge jets which carry billions of passengers each year fly directly through the silver mist.
Unlike the small cloud-seeding aircraft that precede them, these jets have huge engines that are many times powerful, delivering a over quarter of a million pounds of thrust and creating enormous amounts of frozen steam as they climb to cruising altitude.
The vaporized water in the jet fuel instantly freezes around the silver iodide molecules, creating the huge plume of ice dust behind the plane. The more jets travel down the same flight path, the more aerosols and water vapor build up.
Exhaust moisture immediately becomes ice crystals bonding around the particles in the wake of the aircraft.
At 25-40,000 feet, artificial clouds spawned by these aircraft don't appear to move like rain clouds... they seem to be stuck in the sky.
But using stop-motion photography, we can see hours of cloud movement in just a few seconds. Now we can see what happens when the big jets fly through the silver mist laid down by flight after flight of the cloud seeding aircraft.
As the tracks continue, they merge and lose their contrail shape, and even begin resembling natural clouds.
If you haven't noticed this before, it's just because you're not paying attention.
It's not really your job to watch the sky. Most people don't, and few people are aware that in some parts of the world, including the western United states, artificially-created clouds are more common than naturally-formed clouds.
If we could see artificial clouds from jets move this way in real time, we might recognize them for the toxic swirls of gases and particulates that they are.
We might notice the profound affect jet clouds have on the weather we experience down here when they move in front of the sun, creating shade.
We might also wonder what the health effects of these toxic clouds, and whether they might be related to the increasing lung cancer rates we are seeing.
We might wonder, too, about the affects on smaller creatures: the bees, the birds, and the butterflies.
Weather modification companies, who obtain more and larger contracts every year, say that silver iodide cloud seeding is harmless. After all, silver iodide is inert, and spraying it in the air is like peeing in the ocean. It has no known adverse effect on the environment.
However, this analogy is not accurate. Thousands of weather modification aircraft spraying TONS of cloud-making chemicals into the air around the world is not so much like a person peeing in the ocean. It's a lot more like hundreds of people peeing in the swimming pool.
Earth's atmosphere is a relatively very thin halo of gases that surround the planet, held in place by gravity, and silver iodide has been building up in our soil and water for over 70 years.

Again, no citation. Where is the evidence that silver iodide has been building up? All of the studies I can find have found no measurable increase in silver in the environment, in areas with cloud seeding programs. See for example Tsiouris et al. (2002).

(Snipping the non-controversial statements about the effect of clouds on climate being a topic of legitimate scientific interest, that using weather modification for warfare is banned, and that cloud seeding for other purposes is legal.)

But silver iodide is an inorganic, non-soluble hazardous chemical that has been shown to be highly toxic to fish, livestock and humans. Numerous medical articles demonstrate that humans absorb silver iodide through the skin, lungs, nose, and GI tract. Even mild toxicity can cause serious health problems. 80​

This is interesting, because citation 80 actually goes into some detail in explaining how cloud seeding with silver iodide is harmless to health and the environment. "Environmental impact studies related to silver iodide usage in cloud seeding were conducted starting in the 1960s and continue to be conducted today; all findings to date indicate no adverse environmental and human health impacts (ASCE 2004, 2006; WMA 2005; WMO 2007)." That cited article is actually a good reference to debunk Dave's claims that cloud seeding is building up in the environment, and that it is having adverse effects on health and the environment.

(Snipping out the non-controversial parts where Dave gives reasons for why governments are interested in increasing rainfall, and concerns about the effects of climate change on water supply.)

BUT WHAT WE FIND UPON CLOSER EXAMINATION IS THAT THE "SOLUTION" WE ARE BECOMING MORE AND MORE DEPENDENT UPON-- CLOUD-SEEDING TO MAKE RAIN-- IS ONE OF THE MAJOR CAUSES, IF NOT THE MAIN CAUSE, OF THIS PROBLEM.
AND WE FIND THAT THE REAL DANGERS OF GLOBAL WARMING ARE THE GLOBAL DRYING EFFECTS RESULTING FROM OUR INTERFERENCE WITH NATURAL ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES, AND THE INHALATION AND INGESTION OF CHEMICALS THAT NOW PERMEATE EVERY ASPECT OF OUR ENVIRONMENT.

Dave seems to be saying here that cloud seeding is a major cause, if not the main cause of global warming. No evidence is offered to support this.

I think the rest can be snipped out, because it just reiterates the same claims in an exhortational manner, and no new evidence is offered.

An interesting point is that while Dave offers 112 numbered citations, as far as I can tell only 23 of them are actually cited in the text of the transcript (plus two from his "additional reference sites").

Dave offers this at the end:

Primary concepts to understand:

1. Silver iodide is dispersed as aerosolized cloud seeding nuclei in the stratosphere at about 25,000 to 40,000 feet, right above commercial air traffic. (Silver iodide is released using ignited flares which also contain salt and incendiary materials, including aluminum, strontium, magnesium and other chemicals.) This is done worldwide in over 50 countries to enhance precipitation due to growing water needs. You can read an excellent history of cloud seeding on Wikipedia, and read about precipitation enhancement in this PDF from the California Water Plan.

Again, none of those sources support the claim that silver iodide is released above commercial air traffic. I also don't know if it's true that cloud seeding flares contain those other trace metals.

1. Globally distributed weather modification practices to increase rainfall makes clouds. Clouds affect the climate by preventing the heat from escaping at night, and by cooling with shade in the daytime. Read The Importance of Understanding Clouds to learn more about cloud formation and how NASA is studying cloud-aerosol interaction.

But again, nothing in that link or any of his other sources supports the central claim that cloud seeding "makes clouds" in otherwise clear skies.

1. Super-heated water vapor destroys the Earth's protective ozone layer, and humans have injected hundreds of billions of gallons of water into the stratosphere (in the form of trillions of gallons of water vapor) through jet aircraft exhaust.

The first link there is about the "injection" of moisture into the stratosphere, not by airplanes but by increasing convection currents resulting from global warming. However, it's true that the effects of aircraft exhaust in the stratosphere are of scientific interest and concern, especially as they relate to climate change. There are components of aircraft exhaust that both increase and decrease ozone. According to Wikipedia:

At the high altitudes flown by large jet airliners around the tropopause, emissions of NOx​ are particularly effective in forming ozone (O3​) in the upper troposphere. High altitude (8-13km) NOx​ emissions result in greater concentrations of O3​ than surface NOx​ emissions, and these in turn have a greater global warming effect. The effect of O3​ concentrations are regional and local (as opposed to CO2​ emissions, which are global).
NOx​ emissions also reduce ambient levels of methane, another greenhouse gas, resulting in a climate cooling effect. But this effect does not offset the O3​ forming effect of NOx​ emissions. It is now believed that aircraft sulfur and water emissions in the stratosphere tend to deplete O3​, partially offsetting the NOx​-induced O3​ increases. These effects have not been quantified.[11]​ This problem does not apply to aircraft that fly lower in the troposphere, such as light aircraft or many commuter aircraft.

 

[Mick West]

Thanks Belfrey. It seems like Dave is largely practicing "science by assertion" here.

It would be good to boil it down to perhaps a three point claim/rebuttal 30 second debunking.

 

[Belfrey]

Thanks Belfrey. It seems like Dave is largely practicing "science by assertion" here.

It would be good to boil it down to perhaps a three point claim/rebuttal 30 second debunking.

Yeah, really I'd say that it boils down to these main claims:

1) That persistent contrails cannot occur without silver iodide.
2) That cloud-seeding activities dispersing silver iodide take place over open skies, at altitudes above that of commercial get aircraft traffic, in order to make clouds where none exist.

The first is directly contradicted by decades of scientific studies regarding persistent contrail formation. The second is simply not supported by any evidence - I suspect it wouldn't even work, but I don't have the background to address that. He seems to think that the presence of persistent contrails is evidence of near-ubiquitous cloud seeding, but that's just circular logic.

 

[Mick West]

I also think the second would not work. Persistent contrails need ice-supersaturated conditions in which to persist and grow. Silver iodide works because it mimics the molecular structure of ice (the lattice constant), and so if it were sprayed in ice-supersaturated air, then ice would immediately form on it, and it would form a contrail. The silver iodide would work here in exactly the same way as the ice crystals created by the jet exhaust, because of their molecular similarity.

Nobody sprays silver iodide at high altitudes, because there's no point. Your engines would create a contrail anyway.

So you can't load the air up with silver iodide. At least not the regions of the air that would support contrail formation.

Unfortunately this explanation is a bit inaccessible to the lay person. But I had at least hoped to get Dave to address it.

 

[Dave]

Anonymous guy, I appreciate the time on your thoughtful comments and the invitation from Jeff, who is also anonymous, to respond (does your grandpa know you're using his picture, Jeff?).

But don't put words in my mouth: I never once said that contrails would not appear at all without silver iodide; you should stick with direct quotes if you plan attack me rather than just arguing facts. I'm thinking it might be helpful if you attack the facts; attacking me doesn't change the facts. In fact, when contrails were first noticed (many years before cloud seeding), the concern was that they would give away the position of the plane to enemy aircraft. My contention is that contrails generally disappeared and were usually non-persistent until the use of silver iodide began to proliferate around the globe.

Your anonymous (and somewhat nasty) questions about my statements do not disprove any of my main assertions:

1. Persistent contrails and visible artificial clouds are created when steam from jet aircraft exhaust combines with enough cloud condensation nuclei;

2. silver iodide provides abundant cloud condensation nuclei and is sprayed in the stratosphere above commercial air traffic (25-40,000 feet) around the world;

3. silver iodide is used as cloud seeding material to induce and increase precipitation; but silver iodide bonds with moisture, and therefore causes the steam in the contrails to condense into frozen clouds;

4. over a gallon of water is produced from each gallon of jet fuel burned, and that creates thousands of cubic feet of frozen steam in the stratosphere (due to the low pressure);

5. spraying silver iodide above storm bubbles (moisture pockets around the clouds) can cause clouds to form where none were visible, and seeding around storms can expand, thicken and move the rain clouds onto land;

6. silver iodide is most commonly dispersed via aircraft by burning flares, and the flares use incendiary materials that include aluminum and strontium, which are showing up in water and soil tests across the US;

7. silver idodide- and salt-based chemicals can affect the evaporative efficiency of the ocean surface;

8. clouds trap (and can absorb and re-emit) heat, and that's why the coldest nights of the year are most often on clear nights... because the heat escapes from Earth;

9. silver iodide, aluminum and strontium are hazardous chemicals that we should not be spraying into our very thin layer of breathable atmosphere; and

10. the absence or presence of clouds, including artificially-ceated clouds, affects the climate more than CO2.


I invited a genuine debate. You refuse and would rather hide and snipe than call the weather modification experts as I did. Fine. You can selectively post snide comments here if it meets your objectives, whatever those may be.

My statements will be posted at artificial clouds dotcom should you be interested and, as always, I'm open to corrections about any of the information provided. Just provide me wrong instead of whining if you want my further attention.

 

[Belfrey]

Anonymous guy, I appreciate the time on your thoughtful comments and the invitation from Jeff, who is also anonymous, to respond (does your grandpa know you're using his picture, Jeff?).

Hi Dave. Not sure what you're talking about here regarding the picture. Is it my avatar? It's a forest canopy photo taken with a fisheye lens, from a project that I did in grad school. I don't have any photos from either of my grandfathers, both of whom have been dead for decades (one since before I was born).

But don't put words in my mouth: I never once said that contrails would not appear at all without silver iodide; you should stick with direct quotes if you plan attack me rather than just arguing facts. I'm thinking it might be helpful if you attack the facts; attacking me doesn't change the facts. In fact, when contrails were first noticed (many years before cloud seeding), the concern was that they would give away the position of the plane to enemy aircraft. My contention is that contrails generally disappeared and were usually non-persistent until the use of silver iodide began to proliferate around the globe.

I don't see anywhere where I have attacked you personally, only your claims (even in emails). I understand that it can feel "nasty" when something you've put a lot of time into is criticized.

Thank you for this correction. You have said that the emissions from airplanes "do not provide a sufficient explanation for the massive plumes they create which persist and continue to gather mass and form clouds." Then you went on to say, "So what is this mysterious chemical that causes drastic climate change by covering the Earth with artificial clouds? It's called silver iodide, which is a combination of silver nitrate and potassium iodide. And you're about to see why this chemical is responsible for the huge, icy clouds that are routinely created by jets." From that, I understood you to be saying that silver iodide was necessary for persistent contrails to form, because the exhaust itself was not sufficient. Now I understand you to have meant that it USUALLY is necessary, but not always? Do you have any evidence at all that contrails are more likely to be persistent because of cloud seeding operations?

Contrails usually are non-persistent - that has always been the case and continues to be so today. They only happen when the atmospheric conditions are suitable (high RH, low temp, ice-supersaturated conditions). Sausen et al. (1998) looked at how often aircraft encounter these conditions and found that "The global potential contrail coverage is calculated to be 16%." This is similar to other studies, such as Gierens et al. (1999), which analyzed atmospheric measurements taken by 5,269 flights in the MOSAIC project (Marenco et al. 1998), and found ice supersaturation conditions (where persistent contrails can form) in 13.5% of the data, overall (in both studies, the percentage varied seasonally and by location).

I will have some time later today to respond to your other points (if others don't beat me to it!).

 

[solrey]

Frozen steam, Dave? That's about all I need to know, thanks.

 

[Mick West]

Dave, you keep ignoring a key question here. Why don't the cloud seeding planes leave persistent contrails if they are flying in regions of the atmosphere that support persistent contrails? How does the silver iodide avoid making a cloud until a different jet planes comes along?

 

[scombrid]

In fact, when contrails were first noticed (many years before cloud seeding),

Cloud seeding was discovered in 1946. They've been doing it in California since 1948. NOAA and BLM have done various experiments since the 1960's.

My contention is that contrails generally disappeared and were usually non-persistent until the use of silver iodide began to proliferate around the globe.

This is demonstrably false.

2. silver iodide provides abundant cloud condensation nuclei and is sprayed in the stratosphere above commercial air traffic (25-40,000 feet) around the world;

Absolutely unsubstiated.

6. silver iodide is most commonly dispersed via aircraft by burning flares, and the flares use incendiary materials that include aluminum and strontium, which are showing up in water and soil tests across the US;

Levels of aluminum and strontium have not been shown to have increased above what is naturally present in soil or water.

8. clouds trap (and can absorb and re-emit) heat, and that's why the coldest nights of the year are most often on clear nights... because the heat escapes from Earth;

10. the absence or presence of clouds, including artificially-ceated clouds, affects the climate more than CO2.

There are heaps of papers that look at the contribution of contrails and contrail cirrus to the heat budget through their impact on radiative forcing. Every one of them disagrees with you.

 

[Belfrey]

1. Persistent contrails and visible artificial clouds are created when steam from jet aircraft exhaust combines with enough cloud condensation nuclei;

Well, partly. As I understand it (and I invite other metabunkers to correct me here), the cloud condensation nuclei come from the aircraft exhaust itself - in the right (supersaturated) atmospheric conditions, the moisture from the exhaust rapidly condenses and freezes, and those ice crystals along with other particulate matter from exhaust become the nuclei around which atmospheric moisture condenses further. The visible contrail is formed almost entirely from this atmospheric moisture. If the temperature is cold and the RH is high to the point where the atmospheric moisture is "ice-supersaturated", then it forms ice crystals that can persist for a long time, like natural cirrus clouds.

This is basically what Appleman figured out in 1953, and it has been refined but remains true to this day. Temperature and moisture (and not silver iodide) predict whether contrails will form, and whether they will be persistent. For an explanation that's fairly accessible to the lay person, check out the Air Force's Contrail Facts page:

Contrails have been a normal effect of aviation since its earliest days. Depending on the temperature and the amount of moisture in the air at the aircraft altitude, contrails can either evaporate quickly or they can persist and grow. Engine exhaust produces only a small portion of the water that forms ice in persistent contrails. Persistent contrails are mainly composed of water naturally present along the aircraft flight path.

Aircraft engines emit water vapor, carbon dioxide (CO2), small amounts of nitrogen oxides (NOx), hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, sulfur gases, and soot and metal particles formed by the high-temperature combustion of jet fuel during flight. Of these emittants, only water vapor is necessary for contrail formation. Sulfur gases are also of potential interest because they lead to the formation of small particles. Particles suitable for water droplet formation are necessary for contrail formation. Initial contrail particles, however, can either be already present in the atmosphere or formed in the exhaust gas. All other engine emissions are considered nonessential to contrail formation

For a contrail to form, suitable conditions must occur immediately behind a jet engine in the expanding engine exhaust plume. A contrail will form if, as the exhaust gases cool and mix with surrounding air, the humidity becomes high enough (or, equivalently, the air temperature becomes low enough) for liquid water to condense on particles and form liquid droplets. If the local air is cold enough, these newly formed droplets then freeze and form ice particles that make up a contrail. Because the basic processes are very well understood, contrail formation for a given aircraft flight can be accurately predicted if atmospheric temperature and humidity conditions are known.

2. silver iodide provides abundant cloud condensation nuclei and is sprayed in the stratosphere above commercial air traffic (25-40,000 feet) around the world;

Silver iodide does indeed provide condensation nuclei - so (as Mick pointed out) why wouldn't they directly cause the moisture in the air to condense if you released them under contrail-forming conditions (as described above) from aircraft at high altitude? Your claim that it's routinely sprayed above commercial air traffic (and in open skies) remains your unsupported claim. I have sent an email to Weather Modification, Inc. to ask them about it, haven't heard back yet.

3. silver iodide is used as cloud seeding material to induce and increase precipitation; but silver iodide bonds with moisture, and therefore causes the steam in the contrails to condense into frozen clouds;

As I have shown, no silver iodide is required for visible condensation to happen. It happens if the moisture and temperature conditions are right.

4. over a gallon of water is produced from each gallon of jet fuel burned, and that creates thousands of cubic feet of frozen steam in the stratosphere (due to the low pressure);

Frozen steam? That would be "ice." Think about how your calculations might change when you're dealing with a solid rather than a gas.

5. spraying silver iodide above storm bubbles (moisture pockets around the clouds) can cause clouds to form where none were visible, and seeding around storms can expand, thicken and move the rain clouds onto land;

But persistent contrails (which believers say are "chemtrails") are often observed in otherwise clear skies, far from storm clouds. Do you claim that cloud seeding is also responsible for these, or only right around the storm clouds?

6. silver iodide is most commonly dispersed via aircraft by burning flares, and the flares use incendiary materials that include aluminum and strontium, which are showing up in water and soil tests across the US;

Can you give a citation on this? I've done some searching, and I can't find any documentation in the literature of the chemical composition (other than the silver compounds themselves) of cloud seeding flare emissions. It's normal for aluminum and strontium to show up in water and soil test (indeed, Al naturally makes up 8% of soil on average). See the thread "Chemical composition of rain and snow" for some more information.

7. silver idodide- and salt-based chemicals can affect the evaporative efficiency of the ocean surface;

Are you saying that enough silver iodide is sprayed to affect the salinity of the ocean? Do you have any evidence for this claim?

8. clouds trap (and can absorb and re-emit) heat, and that's why the coldest nights of the year are most often on clear nights... because the heat escapes from Earth;

Not controversial. Nor is it controversial that contrails can have an effect on climate; the dispute is over your claim that cloud seeding is in any way involved in contrail formation.

9. silver iodide, aluminum and strontium are hazardous chemicals that we should not be spraying into our very thin layer of breathable atmosphere; and

Your own references show that the silver iodide is sprayed in such small amounts as to be undetectable, and poses no health or environmental hazard. You have not provided any evidence of aluminum and strontium spraying.

10. the absence or presence of clouds, including artificially-ceated clouds, affects the climate more than CO2.

The role of clouds with respect to climate change is a complex one, involving feedbacks with respect to CO2-driven warming - I don't want to get too far into it here. That contrails can affect climate is non-controversial, and an active topic of scientific study.

I invited a genuine debate. You refuse and would rather hide and snipe than call the weather modification experts as I did. Fine. You can selectively post snide comments here if it meets your objectives, whatever those may be.

My statements will be posted at artificial clouds dotcom should you be interested and, as always, I'm open to corrections about any of the information provided. Just provide me wrong instead of whining if you want my further attention.

I did email one weather modification company, and I'll let you know if they respond. If they don't, I'll try another. It's a shame that you won't tell me who you spoke to, so we can't find out directly from them whether your understanding of their statements is correct.

 

[Mick West]

Well, partly. As I understand it (and I invite other metabunkers to correct me here), the cloud condensation nuclei come from the aircraft exhaust itself - in the right (supersaturated) atmospheric conditions, the moisture from the exhaust rapidly condenses and freezes, and those ice crystals along with other particulate matter from exhaust become the nuclei around which atmospheric moisture condenses further. The visible contrail is formed almost entirely from this atmospheric moisture. If the temperature is cold and the RH is high to the point where the atmospheric moisture is "ice-supersaturated", then it forms ice crystals that can persist for a long time, like natural cirrus clouds.

Mostly correct. But it's not exactly "the moisture in the exhaust" that condenses and freezes - i.e. it's not the water that's a product of combustion that's condensing. What that water does is simply raise the relative humidity to above 100%, which then allows water to condense out on CCN. So it's the atmospheric water vapor PLUS the exhaust water vapor which is condensing.

Silver iodide does indeed provide condensation nuclei - so (as Mick pointed out) why wouldn't they directly cause the moisture in the air to condense if you released them under contrail-forming conditions (as described above) from aircraft at high altitude?

If the air is just ICE supersaturated, then the addition of CCN will do nothing. It would need to be WATER supersaturated.

The thing about silver iodide is that it's very similar in structure to ice. So it can act as an ice nuclei. i.e. ice will grow on it directly. Hence, unlike regular CCN, it should create a cloud in ice supersaturated conditions without any condensation being required.

This is all a little complicated, which is why Dave can get away with his silly theory in conspiracy circles.

 

[Belfrey]

I noticed that Dave had put the following statement on his invitation to debate page that he posted yesterday, thought it clarified his position on ocean salinity (since I suppose he might not return here to do it himself):

I have been misquoted as saying that cloud seeding affects the salinity of the entire ocean. No. What I am suggesting is that the local surface salinity of the ocean can be increased temporarily, and when this happens "temporarily" regularly in thousands of areas, it might significantly affect the evaporative efficiency. (We are constantly seeding clouds with salty chemicals on every continent.)

Of course, this is (as Mick said) "science by assertion". There is no evidence that cloud seeding is changing the local surface salinity of the ocean anywhere - and in fact, the sources I've found state that the increase can't be detected even in much smaller inland waters in areas where cloud seeding programs are in place.

One of those sources is the useful document that Dave lists as his citation number 80, which states that there is about 3 metric tons (3,000 kg) of silver iodide released over "specific areas of the western states of the U.S." and Canada each year for cloud seeding. That sounds like a lot, until you consider the numbers from this World Health Organization (2002) report:

In 1999, the estimated release to the environment in the USA via emissions, discharges, and waste disposal from sites listed in the Toxic Release Inventory were 270 000 kg for silver and 1.7 million kilograms for silver compounds. Releases to land amounted to 90% for silver compounds and 40% for silver, whereas nearly 60% of the silver releases were via off-site waste disposal (TRI, 1999).

Most of the silver lost to the environment enters terrestrial ecosystems, where it is immobilized in the form of minerals, metal, or alloys; agricultural lands may receive as much as 80 000 kg of silver per year from photoprocessing wastes in sewage sludge. An estimated 150 000 kg of silver enter the aquatic environment every year from the photographic industry, mine tailings, and electroplating (Smith & Carson, 1977). The atmosphere receives 300 000 kg of silver each year from a variety of sources.

 

[Dave Dahl]

I decided check back to see if my response had been posted. Thanks for that.

What do I find? A civil and sincere comment. Nice!

I wasn't referring to your pic, I was teasing "Jeff." Sorry if I confused you with your other anonymous forum participants who were unnecessarily rude. (I won't repeat what my friend said, who also posted his comments on your forum and is considerably more irritated.)

It does hurt my feelers a little that you put words into my mouth; I never stated that contrails are CAUSED by silver iodide, or that they ONLY persist when silver iodide is sprayed. In fact, the video does state that contrails are the result of steam in the jet exhaust from the combustion of hydrocarbons, and it's a lot of steam. But contrails mostly disappear without enough cloud condensation nuclei to bond with. Silver iodide provides the most effective condensation nuclei known, which is why the movie says MOST OFTEN, not "always."

Now, I can admit that you guys are all obviously smarter than I am, and probably more educated, funnier and handsomer. And you've been very helpful in pointing out the flaws in the somewhat unorthodox documentation I posted.

That doesn't prove me wrong. And if you've spent thousands of hours watching and recording weather and cloud movement, reading science papers and government documentation, speaking with scientists at NASA and the professionals at weather modification companies, then maybe you do understand this subject better than I do.

If you haven't, I suggest you ask YOURSELF some questions:

1. How many cloud seeding flares are burned over my city every year?
2. How many "precipitation enhancement" programs are within 500 miles of me?
3. What chemicals are in silver iodide flares to make them burn consistently?
4. How does breathing, drinking and eating those chemicals and metal aerosols affect me?
5. Could spraying the most effective cloud condensation nuclei known directly above air traffic possibly have NO effect on contrail cloud formation?
6. Can creating artificial clouds around the world possibly have NO effect on Earth's climate?
7. Can you name any countries that don't spray silver iodide in the stratosphere?
8. Can spraying salt chemicals over the ocean temporarily affect its surface salinity (after every storm)?
9. Can you name a place that regularly experiences persistent contrail clouds that DOES NOT spray silver iodide?
10. Is there a statistically significant correlation between the increasing cloud seeding programs and the increasing lung cancer rates? --how about between the appearance of "chemtrails" and the spraying of silver iodide in the same area?

If the answer to most of those questions is "I don't know," maybe you want to consider turning your attention to the people you love who are breathing and drinking the silver iodide, magnesium, aluminum and strontium that are in the flares. Start there. Find out. Don't worry about whether I'm right about the other stuff.

If you don't care to verify that from the source-- the people who are paid to do it and your local government reps who are approving the budgets-- I can only guess you'd rather just believe what you like. Maybe you have a lot invested in your "theory" and will never give it up when new information presents. That's okay. I'm not talking to you then.

Since I can't ever have the last word on this forum, I'll leave you with this: I've invited an actual debate and no one has accepted. My purpose in doing that is to fully vet the facts and discover any errors.

(One of you pointed out an actual mistake and I fixed it. If you can prove anything I said is wrong--not just poorly documented--I want to change it, and will not mind admitting I'm wrong as I did previously.)

If you're confident you're right about the above answers, and I'm wrong, at artificial clouds dotcom I still invite you to debate me if you think you know your stuff.

On the other hand, if your argument is that you don't care how many flares are burning over your house and you don't think it's harmful, then don't spend your precious time on my presentation. Go debate some more creationists. At least you won't be proven wrong later!

Sincerely,

Dave Dahl

 

[Mick West]

Dave, you need to start backing up your claims, rather than simply asserting them. Like

But contrails mostly disappear without enough cloud condensation nuclei to bond with.

Provide some evidence for that. It sounds on the face of it entirely wrong. If the contrail has already formed, then the presence of CCN has not further effect on it.

According to established and tested science, the CCNs for contrail formation come from the exhaust, and the ambient air. The persistence is a factor of humidity and temperature.

Reference:
http://science-edu.larc.nasa.gov/contrail-edu/science.html

 

[Mick West]

Oh, and: Los Angeles.

There are zero cloud seeding operations over Los Angeles, and lots of contrails in the winter. The weather in LA (and pretty much all of the West Coast) comes from over the ocean. So unless they are secretly cloud seeding at 40,000 feet over the pactific, then your theory is wrong in yet another way.

 

[Belfrey]

Sorry in advance for the extra quote tags - I keep trying to remove them, and the forum software keeps putting them back in.

I decided check back to see if my response had been posted. Thanks for that.

What do I find? A civil and sincere comment. Nice!

I wasn't referring to your pic, I was teasing "Jeff." Sorry if I confused you with your other anonymous forum participants who were unnecessarily rude. (I won't repeat what my friend said, who also posted his comments on your forum and is considerably more irritated.)

To clarify, I'm the "Jeff" whom you've been emailing with. Still a little puzzled by the picture comment, but we can move on.

It does hurt my feelers a little that you put words into my mouth; I never stated that contrails are CAUSED by silver iodide, or that they ONLY persist when silver iodide is sprayed. In fact, the video does state that contrails are the result of steam in the jet exhaust from the combustion of hydrocarbons, and it's a lot of steam. But contrails mostly disappear without enough cloud condensation nuclei to bond with. Silver iodide provides the most effective condensation nuclei known, which is why the movie says MOST OFTEN, not "always."

As I said, I accept your correction (only you have the authority to say what you meant), and I'm sorry that it hurt your feelings - although I also think that the misunderstanding was reasonable, based on the statements I quoted.

However, you have yet to demonstrate that silver iodide has ANY impact on contrail formation. As Mick points out, the scientific literature on contrail formation makes it clear that temperature and humidity are the factors that determine whether contrails are persistent.

Now, I can admit that you guys are all obviously smarter than I am, and probably more educated, funnier and handsomer. And you've been very helpful in pointing out the flaws in the somewhat unorthodox documentation I posted.

That doesn't prove me wrong.

It's your assertion - it's up to you to prove that you're right. The burden of evidence is on those making positive claims.

And if you've spent thousands of hours watching and recording weather and cloud movement, reading science papers and government documentation, speaking with scientists at NASA and the professionals at weather modification companies, then maybe you do understand this subject better than I do.

What you're doing there is known as an "argument from authority", and no offense intended, but we don't accept your authority on this matter. Bring in the NASA scientists and weather modification staff, tell us who they are and exactly what they told you. Show us the science papers that support your claim (as we've done for those that support our statements to you). We'll pay much more attention to what they say.

For my part, I've done as you suggested! I tried calling Weather Modification, Inc., but the fellow who answered the phone said that the two guys who could answer my questions were not in today. (I hadn't gotten any response from an earlier email.)

I then called North American Weather Consultants, Inc. and talked to Don Griffin. He was very gracious and knowledgeable, and took the time to answer my questions:

Q: At what altitudes is cloud seeding usually done?
A: As low as 5,000 feet, very rarely (perhaps in summer) up to 20,000 feet.

Q: Is it ever done into open skies, above the cruising altitude of commercial air traffic?
A: No, never. There would be no reason to do cloud seeding except into a cloud, and it's done well below the altitudes that jet aircraft cruise at.

Q: Can cloud seeding create clouds where none exist?
A: There has been some experimental research published suggesting that this could happen in certain conditions, but the clouds were short-lived and not useful for much. It's definitely not part of the standard cloud seeding work that's done anywhere in the world.

Q: Is any cloud seeding done in the eastern US that you know of?
A: Very little, if any, east of the Mississippi River.

Don said that he was happy to correct the misinformation that's out there related to "chemtrails", although he had not previously heard of Dave Dahl's claims. He also gave an off-the-cuff explanation of how and under what conditions persistent contrails form, which was exactly what Mick described above. He said that contrail formation had nothing to do with cloud seeding.

If you haven't, I suggest you ask YOURSELF some questions:1. How many cloud seeding flares are burned over my city every year?
2. How many "precipitation enhancement" programs are within 500 miles of me?
3. What chemicals are in silver iodide flares to make them burn consistently?
4. How does breathing, drinking and eating those chemicals and metal aerosols affect me?
5. Could spraying the most effective cloud condensation nuclei known directly above air traffic possibly have NO effect on contrail cloud formation?

So, today I reached the folks at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection's Division of Air Resource Management. Under Florida Statutes (Chapter 403), any weather modification projects would require a permit from them. They said that no one has gotten such a permit in recent years - in fact, not for as long as that legislation has been in place. And yet, we have plenty of persistent contrails - just ask our hometown chemtrails activist Harold Saive.

6. Can creating artificial clouds around the world possibly have NO effect on Earth's climate?

Again, this is not controversial. Scientific studies have found that persistent contrails can have an effect on climate.

7. Can you name any countries that don't spray silver iodide in the stratosphere?

Always difficult to prove a negative. It took quite a bit of doing - and awkward questions to receptionists who had no clue what I was talking about - to find the right people to assure me that it's not happening in my state. If there had been a program, probably it would have been fairly easy to find out.

8. Can spraying salt chemicals over the ocean temporarily affect its surface salinity (after every storm)?

Well, let's put this question more precisely as is relevant to the topic: could the amount and type of chemicals used for cloud seeding significantly affect the surface salinity of the ocean? Probably not, since it hasn't caused a detectable elevation even in smaller bodies of fresh water. Here's another question: why would they be seeding clouds over the ocean?

9. Can you name a place that regularly experiences persistent contrail clouds that DOES NOT spray silver iodide?

See above, I have established that no cloud seeding takes place in Florida, but Harold Saive would have you believe we're a "chemtrails" spraying hotbed. I suspect that even in the US, cloud seeding is much less widespread than you believe - the weather mod expert I talked to didn't think much (if any) was happening in the eastern US.

10. Is there a statistically significant correlation between the increasing cloud seeding programs and the increasing lung cancer rates? --how about between the appearance of "chemtrails" and the spraying of silver iodide in the same area?

I don't know, is there? You haven't established this.

 

[Mick West]

I would think that pretty much answers Dave's theory, but I'd be interested to hear his response.

One minor point:

However, you have yet to demonstrate that silver iodide has ANY impact on contrail formation.

As Mick points out, the scientific literature on contrail formation makes it clear that temperature and humidity are the factors that determine whether contrails are persistent.

Silver iodide would have no impact on contrail persistence. It might have a very minor effect on contrail creation. However there are ample CCN in the aircraft exhaust, so a minuscule increase in ambient CCNs would make practically no difference.

Plus, there's the issue that if you sprayed silver iodide in ice-supersaturated air, it would quickly nucleate ice, and precipitate out, hence there would not be any left in the ice-supersaturated air by the time a plane came along - and by that point the air would have less water in it.

All rather moot anyway, as all the evidence seems to indicate that they are NOT spraying silver iodide at that altitude.

 

[Belfrey]

I would think that pretty much answers Dave's theory, but I'd be interested to hear his response.

I emailed him, he replied (not surprisingly) that the guy I talked to was wrong, and he trusted his experts. However, he did finally give me the name of one of his experts, I'll try to give him a call.

 

[FreiZeitGeist]

1. How many cloud seeding flares are burned over my city every year?
2. How many "precipitation enhancement" programs are within 500 miles of me?
(...)
5. Could spraying the most effective cloud condensation nuclei known directly above air traffic possibly have NO effect on contrail cloud formation?
6. Can creating artificial clouds around the world possibly have NO effect on Earth's climate?
7. Can you name any countries that don't spray silver iodide in the stratosphere?
(...)
9. Can you name a place that regularly experiences persistent contrail clouds that DOES NOT spray silver iodide?

For Germany, Austria, Swiss and the whole central Europe (as far as I know) I´d allready answered these questions.
See this posting https://www.metabunk.org/posts/14895

In Europe "Cloud-Seeding" ist absolutly uncommon. We have enougth rain. But we use sometimes silveriodide to prevent the farmers, roofs and cars from massive hailing. For example, 1984 was a massive Hail over Munich with hailstone bigg as a Baseball. Roofs were massive damaged, cars standing on the street had dents all over. The financial damage only of this thunderstorm covered by the insurence-companies was about 1,4 Billions DeutschMark (Today, that would be 700 millions Euro - about a Billion US$)

One well-known company named "Mercedes Benz" - you might know it :-D also hires these "Hail-Flyers" to protect there completed cars standing at the company-site waiting for delivery.

So how could we use silver-iodide for Anti-Hailing-Actions if you believe, that Silver-Iodide "makes clouds"?

Hailstones are small ice-particles, that - due to the up/downwinds in the thunderstorm-cloud - are moved up and down beneath the cloud more times. The more they´re getting up/down, the more humidity they will admit and the greater the hailstones would get before they are falling down. Our "Hail-Flyers" put additive condensation nucleiods in or near the thunderstorm-cloud. These additional nucleoids would also get to hailstones and the humidity of the cloud spaced out to more possible nucleoids. In the end, there are more Hailstones in count, but they are all much smaler and not so dangerous as without the silver-iodide taken to them.

Sorry for my bad english. If you dont understand what i mean, try to translate this site with google: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagelflieger

 

[Jay Reynolds]

Hopefully Dave hasn't dug himself into a hole he cannot climb out of. It must be very disapponting to find that a deeply held belief he has spent much time and perhaps even money on has no real basis. This might take him some time to process, and I wish he had come to us earlier, because I do get the feeling that he wants to be accurate, but just missed the mark and got quite a bit of bad information and ran with it.

Too bad they don't come here first before jumping on a bandwagon that might get them scuffed up by jumping off.

 

[Belfrey]

Hopefully Dave hasn't dug himself into a hole he cannot climb out of. It must be very disapponting to find that a deeply held belief he has spent much time and perhaps even money on has no real basis. This might take him some time to process, and I wish he had come to us earlier, because I do get the feeling that he wants to be accurate, but just missed the mark and got quite a bit of bad information and ran with it.

Too bad they don't come here first before jumping on a bandwagon that might get them scuffed up by jumping off.

Based on emails I've since had with Dave, I don't think his belief is shaken at all. Ultimately the core of his claim - the idea that cloud seeding makes contrails "stick" where they otherwise wouldn't - didn't come from anyone but him. Even Dave doesn't claim that any authoritative source told him that. But he has absolutely convinced himself of the truth of it, and he will continue to present it as fact on his website.

He does say that the weather mod people gave him the info about high-altitude cloud seeding. I've so far been unable to reach his contact at Weather Modification, Inc. to verify this. I have the distinct impression that the guy who answers the phone has been instructed to screen out calls from anyone who just wants to ask questions about cloud seeding (and who would blame them?). I did send his contact another email. I'll post if anything comes of it, but I don't want to pester them any further than that.

 

[FreiZeitGeist]

I don't think his belief is shaken at all. Ultimately the core of his claim - the idea that cloud seeding makes contrails "stick" where they otherwise wouldn't - didn't come from anyone but him

Maybe the problem Dave has about silver-iodide and it´s usage is just in the words used for it...

This Methode is called "Cloud-Seeding"

Everybody knows, what a Seed is, You spread some seeds into Soil, give some water to it and it will starts to grow. Daves Video claims, that this happens with contrails, and for him, Silver-Iodide is "the Seed".

But the way Silver-Iodide is used, is not realy "seeding".

The clouds with tonnes of water in it, must be there, and the Silver-Iodide had to be attached to it for every kind of weather-modification.

In German we call this methode not "Cloud Seeding", it is named "vaccinating Clouds" ("Wolken impfen")
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolkenimpfen

Should this all just be a mis-interpretation of some basic words that gets common?!

"Vaccinating clouds" discripes this method more precisely than "Cloud seeding"

---

BTW, something I´ve forgotten in the last post. Yes. In Germany, Swiss, Austria and whole central Europe there are persistant Contrails. So much, that since 2004 "Chemtrail" is a common word in german-speaking parts of the Internet. Just type "Chemtrails Germany" in Youtube an you´ll get a lot of Videos showing (more or less) pesistant Contrails. For myself, I lived from my childhood in the range of an European Airport-Hub and know persistant contrails from the 70s.

 

[MikeC]

Dunno - you put crop seeds into soil to grow crops, and you put water seed into clouds to get water - seems reasonable to me

 

[JFDee]

I have got the impression of a semantic misconception starting from Dave's first posts.

The English expression is somewhat ambiguous. It should rather be "cloud harvesting".

Crop seeding will grow crops, but cloud seeding will not grow clouds.

 

[Mick West]

The use of "seeding" is a bit of a red herring. Cloud seeding generally refers to enhancing precipitation in clouds, but some scientists also refer to contrails as "seeding" the growth of new cirrus in clear air.

The important issue is what's actually physically happening, not what to call it. If there's even any debate about a word, the best thing to do is stop using it, and instead use some words that remove the possibility of ambiguity.

 

[Belfrey]

Success! Dave's contact at Weather Modification, Inc. replied to my email. Keep in mind that this is specifically the person that Dave told me was a source for his claims about cloud seeding altitudes. As a courtesy, I'm going to withhold his name until he replies to my request to allow me to post it here. [EDIT: He has given his permission. It's Hans Ahlberg, Vice President in charge of Operations at WMI.] But I can't resist posting his response:

[FONT=&amp]Hi Jeff. I did speak with Mr. Dahl but apparently he managed to take anything I said completely out of context or ignore whatever didn't match his thoughts. I specifically remember discussing the altitudes etc for instance. Answers to your questions below -

[/FONT]At what range of altitudes is aerial cloud seeding typically done?

Cloud seeding normally targets 2 main precipitation processes – warm or cold cloud. Warm clouds produce their precipitation droplets by collision/coalescence, with small cloud droplets collecting until the resulting drops are large enough to fall out. This process can be influenced by adding hygroscopic (means it attracts water) materials like salt or calcium chloride flares. Since most of this process happens low in the clouds the seeding (either burning flares or physically dumping salt powder out of a plane) happens at or near cloud base.

Cold cloud processes happen when the cloud areas containing liquid water are colder than freezing – either through cumulus lifting or orographic winds. Once the cloud water is cold enough to freeze it forms crystals which attract more water and vapor, eventually you get snow, graupel or hail which eventually can get to a downdraft area and fall out. If it's warm enough below the clouds then the ice will melt and get to the ground as rain. These clouds are treated with silver iodide either in the updrafts at cloud base, or by dropping flares into the clouds at the altitude of the supercooled liquid water. Silver Iodide is used as it is very similar in size and shape to natural ice nuclei, and so will help jump start the process at similar temperatures. Seeding is done to get the material into the SLW areas of the clouds to add more nuclei than nature typically provides, in hopes of freezing more of the water out to boost precipitation. Some projects use dry ice pellets dropped through the growing cumulus turrets to freeze the cloud water by contact, accomplishing the same thing. Cold cloud seeding is done at cloud base or at the altitudes where the SLW is, typically no higher than about 22,000 feet.



Is it ever done at altitudes of 25-40,000 feet? If so, is that common?

No, too cold up that high so all the water is already ice by then. Pointless to seed up there.



Is silver iodide ever released into open skies, to create clouds where none exist, or is it only done into existing clouds?

No, silver iodide can only make existing clouds more efficient. You cannot just make a cloud that will precipitate. And the amounts of seeding material released are so small that you cannot see any visible smoke anyway – the only exception to that is the hygroscopic flares which can leave thin trails of smoke behind the airplane, which don't persist.



To your knowledge, is there any connection between cloud seeding and persistent contrail formation?

None. The only airplanes we have that even fly high enough to make contrails are jets used for research, with cloud physics probes that are used to sample cloud particles and aerosols. When we have used small jets for seeding they flew at the normal seeding altitudes, with the only advantage of the jet being speed to get to growing thunderstorms faster.



To briefly summarize, Mr. Dahl thinks that cloud seeding is typically done above the normal cruising altitude of commercial air traffic, often into open skies with the goal of creating rain clouds where none exist, and that the silver iodide provides cloud condensing nuclei, which in turn causes aircraft to leave persistent contrails where they would not otherwise. He claims that cloud seeding thus has serious environmental consequences. Since he's making a lot of claims about your industry which we believe to be false, I'm hoping that you will contribute your knowledge.

He has the completely wrong idea, the physics don't work that way. Cloud seeding is used to try to make existing clouds that could precipitate on their own, more efficient. We use airplanes to get the seeding materials to the proper clouds at the proper times in their life cycles, and as we've discussed all the action happens at lower altitudes than jet traffic and contrails.

[FONT=&amp]
[/FONT]

 

[Mick West]

I think that deserves a "Debunked:" prepending to the thread title Thanks Belfrey

 

[Dave Dahl]

Guys, I'm grateful for your interest and follow-up. You're awesome and I appreciate the focus on facts.

I regret offending Hans but I suppose it was inevitable. However, I stand by my assertions even though I must go along with his professional opinion that cloud seeding is commonly done at 16-22,000 feet. After all, they're his planes, so let's run with that.

Since I feel like we're getting somewhere, maybe you all can help fill in some of the missing answers then. I'll list some of the questions I have which currently share the common answer "a whole lot," but are more difficult to quantify exactly.

Allow me to answer the first question as an example and I'll try to check back for arguments.

1. Does commercial air traffic fly through/mix with silver iodide aerosols from cloud seeding activity?

My answer: One of the busiest airports, LAX in Los Angeles, has about 1,500 to 2,000 planes taking off every day (and there are many other airports nearby). Another, McCarren in Vegas, brings in about 20 MILLION passengers every year, to put it another way.

Besides being very busy, these two airports have two other important things in common that make them great examples: A) they are surrounded by multiple cloud seeding programs all around them and B) all the planes take off from the ground; that is, they cannot possibly avoid passing through the silver iodide mist during cloud seeding events... which is before EVERY storm.

Now, let's say silver iodide is sprayed at only 20,000 feet. If you've been watching, you might have noticed that we see the most persistent contrails WHEN THEY ARE ACCELERATING AND GAINING ALTITUDE from zero to their desired cruising altitude. This is also when they are blasting through the silver iodide mist. I contend that the majority of US States conduct cloud seeding programs. In the United States, there are about 20,000 airports. So, Yes, commercial air traffic absolutely cannot avoid flying through and mixing with silver iodide mist, in many parts if the world, whenever cloud seeding events are taking place nearby.

How often is that? Negligible, you say? Wait.

Here are some of the other questions of quantity that I think are important. Maybe one of our experts can answer (Hans?):
2. How many silver iodide flares are used worldwide each year? How many imported to the US and burned over America's sky annually? How much total silver iodide is that released into our air? How much aluminum and strontium is that? (It seems a bit hasty to dismiss these chemicals that are sprayed into our air if you don't even know whether it's a lot.)

3. How many total weather modification companies are there worldwide? Or, approximately how many total cloud seeding aircraft? How many active cloud seeding programs are ongoing in the US? What percentage of the US is sprayed directly with cloud seeding chemicals? What percentage of the world?

4. How much total precipitation was there in the US from 1950 to 1980? How about from 1980 to 2010? We have been cloud seeding heavily for years, so we should have more overall, right? If we have less total rainfall and snowfall now, should we still believe that cloud seeding enhances precipitation overall, or should we believe that it focuses the precipitation where the cloud seeding activity is taking place without adding to the overall precipitation level? (Will the weather modification company reps say they increased the national total and it would have been even lower without cloud seeding?) IS AVERAGE ANNUAL PRECIPITATION IN AREAS WHERE WE ARE CLOUD SEEDING EVERY YEAR INCREASING... OR DECREASING?

5. Do silver iodide flares contain the toxic chemical I asserted-- silver iodide, strontium and aluminum? If so, what is an acceptable amount to spray above our heads? How will it affect our water and farm soil? Our skin and lungs? (Wait, wait... before we say it's not important..we'll need to know how much, right?)

6. Could cloud seeding, which involves dispersing salt-based chemicals, temporarily increase the salinity of the SURFACE of the ocean? If so, how much time is it temporarily increased, and in how many areas, and how does that affect the evaporative efficiency of the surfaces of the water bodies? Is it possible we are helping to inhibit evaporation? (Before we say that, we also need to know how much, right?)

There are more questions, some of which I still don't know the answers to. But if you can answer the above questions, I will have to confess you're ahead of me and I'll even reconsider my answer to #1.

If not, I guess you will have to confess you have a ways to go before you can claim "Debunked." : )

Thanks ahead for any helpful info you can offer.

Dave

Success! Dave's contact at Weather Modification, Inc. replied to my email. Keep in mind that this is specifically the person that Dave told me was a source for his claims about cloud seeding altitudes. As a courtesy, I'm going to withhold his name until he replies to my request to allow me to post it here. [EDIT: He has given his permission. It's Hans Ahlberg, Vice President in charge of Operations at WMI.] But I can't resist posting his response:

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[Mick West]

Dave, this is a site about debunking, it's not a site where people do research for you for free.

If you've got a theory, then state what it is, and state what the evidence is to support it.

 

[Danny55]

1. Not in Scotland. We do not practice cloud seeding here as we get enough rain.
2. None in Scotland, see above
3. See above
4. Difference in annual rainfall from 1952 to 1981 and from 1981 till 2011 was 1 inch more in Scotland. I posted that on one of the threads last week with the link to the figures.
5. Don't know as I've never seen them.
6. Don't know as there's not much ocean where I live. Which is Scotland. Where it rains a lot. So we do not use any cloud seeding techniques, other than saying "It looks quite nice out today" whereupon .. it starts raining.

 

[Belfrey]

If you've been watching, you might have noticed that we see the most persistent contrails WHEN THEY ARE ACCELERATING AND GAINING ALTITUDE from zero to their desired cruising altitude.

That doesn't match what I've seen at all, nor what the scientific research on contrail formation says, and for that matter it goes against what most "chemtrails" believers say, as well (and some of those guys spend a lot of time looking at contrails).

As for your questions, it seems odd that you have arrived at your beliefs and starting making those assertions without finding out those answers first.

 

[Danny55]

Belfrey, he might be talking about the view of a plane coming from behind a mountain or hill in his direction, where the trail looks like it's coming from the ground and climbing. A few chemtrail proponents have spoke about the planes leaving trails as it dives towards the ground.

 

[Mick West]

Belfrey, he might be talking about the view of a plane coming from behind a mountain or hill in his direction, where the trail looks like it's coming from the ground and climbing. A few chemtrail proponents have spoke about the planes leaving trails as it dives towards the ground.

Yes, this is a surprisingly common misconception
http://contrailscience.com/contrails-are-usually-horizontal/

 

[Belfrey]

Good point - the perspective can be tricky at those scales. Similar to how people see a spreading contrail from the a side angle, and think that it's "falling" or "dripping".