The 'Ice Budget' Argument

Jay Reynolds

Senior Member.
I think this topic is very important, since it goes to the premise of chemtrails. It probably should be first in line. One element of the argument which deserves good coverage, at contrailscience or metabunk, is to explain the "ice-budget" argument.

Essentially, this argument says that there is no amount of a substance could be carried in payload which could account for the optical density of a persistent contrail. The only possible source for such a mass is accretion of water vapor from the air onto the contrail particles formed by the exhaust.

Here is an early reference predating 'chemtrails' from the 1970's which found that the ice budget shows an aged persistent contrail contained four orders of magnitude (104​ or 10,000 times more) mass than the original ice mass generated by combustion:
http://ciresweb.colorado.edu/science/groups/pielke/classes/atoc7500/knollenberg72.pdf

Edit: outdated link, paper is at http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0469(1972)029<1367:MOTGOT>2.0.CO;2

Metabunk 2019-04-13 11-26-47.jpg

Maybe some graphic static or animated could help show this fact which would better explain the concept.

Any thoughts?
 
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I had some success at the conference explaining this argument to people. But it's a bit of limited audience. I had a nice chat with William Thomas about it, and he seemed to understand the argument, and why it disproved his Titanium Dioxide theory.

I've also been raising the point on AboveTopSecret that "only contrails can persist and spread, chemtrails will always quickly fade away", but did not get much traction, despite it being entirely true. It runs up against the wall of misunderstanding.

It think it needs additional authoritative sources, with figures.
 
A simple "How much does a contrail weigh per mile" might be a good way of phrasing it. How much does a cloud weigh?

"Persistent trails can't be chemtrails - do the math!"
 
I'd never really thought that the only reason it persists and is visible is due ~99.99% to accreted water from the local atmosphere.
As I understand it, whatever is actually contained in the exhaust apart from that initial hot water injection can essentially be taken as negligible.
 
I'd never really thought that the only reason it persists and is visible is due ~99.99% to accreted water from the local atmosphere.
As I understand it, whatever is actually contained in the exhaust apart from that initial hot water injection can essentially be taken as negligible.

It's a negligible part of the final persistent contrail, but it does need to be enough to momentarily raise the relative humidity above 100%. So while it's a small amount, it's not negligible.
 
Correct me if my math is wrong here, but:

The largest tanker in the world, the 747 supertanker, with a capacity of ~20,000 gallons.

Even at a low dispersal rate of 1 gallon per 100 feet traveled, you could only carry on doing so for 2,000,000 feet(20,000 * 100), or 378 miles... and that's a laughable dispersal rate at best. No matter what chemical I imagine that's nowhere near enough to create thick enough clouds to be visible from the ground and coagulant enough that they aren't ripped apart by atmospheric winds.

Also conveniently ignored by believers is the fact that there's only one such plane in the world...
 
Correct me if my math is wrong here, but:

The largest tanker in the world, the 747 supertanker, with a capacity of ~20,000 gallons.

Even at a low dispersal rate of 1 gallon per 100 feet traveled, you could only carry on doing so for 2,000,000 feet(20,000 * 100), or 378 miles... and that's a laughable dispersal rate at best. No matter what chemical I imagine that's nowhere near enough to create thick enough clouds to be visible from the ground and coagulant enough that they aren't ripped apart by atmospheric winds.

Also conveniently ignored by believers is the fact that there's only one such plane in the world...

Probably quite correct.
It's also a good example as to why some contrails are nice & thick as a 747 will go through between eight and about fourteen tonnes per hour in fuel when cruising.
Also, 378 (air) miles in a 747 takes about thirty-seven minutes.
 
Probably quite correct.
It's also a good example as to why some contrails are nice & thick as a 747 will go through between eight and about fourteen tonnes per hour in fuel when cruising.
Also, 378 (air) miles in a 747 takes about thirty-seven minutes.
Over that distance that 747 may lay 10,395 tons of persistent spreading contrail ice into a saturated (but de-saturating!) stratosphere. Where was all that stored? :)
 
Over that distance that 747 may lay 10,395 tons of persistent spreading contrail ice into a saturated (but de-saturating!) stratosphere. Where was all that stored? :)


It's magic. :)

I see you're from Tenerife. I've been there once myself.
I decided to celebrate the occasion by standing in one of the engines.

 
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Today at contrailscience I made a stab at the ice budget argument. How did I do? Any suggestions or graphics which would go well with this?

Mick wrote:
"Only contrails can create the cloud cover you sometimes see being formed."

The facts surrounding this are interesting. Water is part of our atmosphere in greater or lesser extent. It only becomes visible when the atmosphere is saturated. This is why we have clouds, ice crystals, rain snow or fog.

NO other molecule does this in our atmosphere. NO OTHER SUBSTANCE can produce a persistent contrail.

Because water is the ONLY molecule available in our atmosphere which can reach saturation, water is the ONLY SUBSTANCE which can precipitate or accumulate on a particle in sufficient amounts to crystallize and grow as contrails do. Since water is the only substance which can saturate our atmosphere, only water can cause a contrail to persist and even grow.

This is very important, because ANY solid substance sprayed will disperse and thin out into nothingness and become subvisible, and ANY liquid other than water will always eventually evaporate because it will never reach sufficient quantity to saturate the atmosphere.

This is the basis for the "Ice Budget Argument" which debunks the main myth of chemtrails.

You see, scientists have already gone up and found that a persistent contrail has crystals which grow when the steam in exhaust is within an ice supersaturated environment. When you see a contrail laid into a CLEAR sky which subsequently persists, it is an indication of two things:
A. The atmosphere is ice supersaturated
B. The atmosphere is very clean

Condition B above is important because if A exists and the atmosphere is NOT clean, then ice crystals will have already formed on the aerosols in place, and a cirrus cloud will already be in place. ONLY if the air is ice supersaurated and contains enough aerosols will a cirrus cloud be in place.

So, an ice supersaturated but clear sky indicates a clean sky with low aerosol content.

As for the 'Ice Budget Argument", here is an early reference predating 'chemtrails' from the 1970's which found that the ice budget shows an aged persistent contrail contained four orders of magnitude (10 to the fourth power or 10,000 times more) mass than the original ice mass generated by combustion:
http://www.google.com/urlsa=t&rct=j...8IGQAg&usg=AFQjCNGGiZ_piRGvTDFIvoqfMrOOFupbhg

An ordinary jet might burn one ton of kerosene fuel to make 1.3 tons of steam for each hundred miles.
A 100 mile long contrail will be about 1/2 the distance across the sky as seen from the ground.

But since the resulting contrail can grow in mass up to 10,000 times from water pulled out of the saturated atmosphere, the result would be a contrail weighing 10,000 times as much, or 1.3 x 10,000= 13,000 tons per 100 miles. There is the rub, however, because the largest ordinary cargo jet, an A380-800, can only carry at most 150 tons cargo + 288 tons fuel=438 tons.

Even if the contrail only grew 1000 times in mass by pulling water from the atmosphere, this would require a dispersion of 1300 tons per 100 miles, halfway across the sky, over twice the TOTAL fuel and cargo capacity of the largest jet.
 
This image by Mick shows what a 100 mile long contrails looks like:

Google_Earth-159-20121109-084030.jpg

And a view of the paper showing a fourth magnitude growth of ice crystals:
Ice Budget.jpg

Other useful images:
1. A real-life example of a nominal persistent contrail in a satellite image which dimensions can be measured would be good, and even better would be the same contrail viewed from the ground.
2. A google earth type image from a space perspective (from above) showing a tubular section of a 100 mile long contrail with associated dimensions and mass,
3. An image of a large jet with cargo and fuel capacities.
 
Condition B (no aerosols) is not needed as much as you'd think. Cirrus (and contrail) formation is mostly from water vapor condensing as liquid water, and then freezing. Those conditions need RHw > 100%. If RHi > 100%, then the water vapor will only deposit out on some molecular structure that's like ice (with ice itself being the most common). Hence RHi> 100% does not mean you will get cirrus clouds, even if there's lots of aerosols around. So contrails forming in a clear blue sky does not necessarily mean the sky is too clean for cirrus to form, it just means the humidity is too low.

I think you want to avoid any need to discuss homogenous vs. heterogeneous nucleation if possible. It's a bit confusing. Also the precise microphysics behind cirrus formation is not well understood, so it's best to keep it simple with a focus on humidity:

http://www.areco.org/minnis.pdf
 
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This recent article discusses the current level of uncertainty regarding contrail and cirrus microphysics, but generally reinforces the notion that it would be better to focus on humidity than on aerosols.

http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org...odeling/accri/media/Contrail Microphysics.pdf


The fact that the mixture must
reach water saturation to form a visible contrail is
the only empirical component of the thermodynamic
approach, and it is the only component that is related
to the ice-forming properties of emitted Aitken-mode
soot particles and the ultrafine liquid particles that
form prior to the formation of contrails. That is, these
plume particles act primarily as cloud condensation
nuclei and are poor ice-forming nuclei, at least prior
to water activation. Small differences in the assumed
ice nucleation behavior of the soot do not significantly
affect the SAC for visible contrail formation
Content from External Source
 
As far as condensation or freezing deposition is concerned, there are plenty of natural cloud condensation nuclei in the atmosphere for the vapor to liquid phase transition. This is why you cannot achieve RHw any greater than 100% before condensation occurs. In some circumstances condensation can occur a little below 100%.

In the vapor to ice phase transition, there are essentially no naturally occurring ice nuclei in the atmosphere. Thus it is fairly easy to attain high ice-supersaturations where the RHi is up to about 140%, and have no cloud form.

It's important to understand that ice saturation occurs at a moisture content well below water saturation (at temperatures below freezing). At typical cruise level temperature, ice-saturation (RHi = 100%) occurs when RHw ~ 63%. So this is how it is possible to have large cloud-free regions in the upper troposphere of the atmosphere where it is ice-saturated (RHw > about 63%). It is cloud-free because there are no ice nuclei. This is probably the hardest concept to understand, and to explain in easy terms to someone who sees a trail and jumps to "spraying".

In those conditions (ice-supersaturation), if you introduce some ice nuclei, that "surplus" vapor will start depositing. There are some ice nuclei in the jet exhaust; soot is one, and there is a complex process involving the small amount of sulfur dioxide that results in the production of ice nuclei. But the largest source of ice nuclei in a contrail is the frozen condensation.

As I said in another thread, water substance is the most amazing stuff. It is perhaps not a coincidence that on this planet any two or even all three phases can exist in a stable equilibrium at the same place. On other worlds, methane, ammonia, carbon dioxide or maybe sulfur will play this role. But we have water, and we are so lucky for it. Yay!
 
"Essentially, this argument says that there is no amount of a substance could be carried in payload which could account for the optical density of a persistent contrail. The only possible source for such a mass is accretion of water vapor from the air onto the contrail particles formed by the exhaust."

look up nano particulates. 300 million fit on a pin tip. these substances essentially levitate in the atmosphere. We can use SWIR infrared imaging to see the water content of these trails. This will show how much of the trail is actually made up of ice crystals/water vapor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLE-yFzytrk
 
aren't all particles nano? I though that was the definition of a particle. I bet I'm made up of billions of particles.
 
100lbs of nano particles weights the same as 100lbs of lead....

cptn, not all particulate would be 'nano', its just the hot new name. we used to call it airfloat when talking about powdered metal mesh sizes. sand, no, flour, no, 5micron lampblack, yes.
 
I found out there are 7 followed by 27 zeros particles in me. I wonder if you spread me behind a jet for 40 miles if you could still see me.
 
What has "nanoparticles" got to do with it? Can you pelase explain why you think this "revelation" is relevant or important?
 
"Nano" loosely means "measures in nanometers", or between 1 and 1000 nanometers (one micron) in size.

Conspiracy theorists sometimes use the term when they mean "nanotech", meaning some kind of engineered very small thing (the object might not be nano sized, but the engineering is on a nano scale). The morgellons folk sometimes describe suspicious fibers and glitter as being nano, as in nanotech.

Nano metals though usually just refers to the particle size. So nano aluminum is sub micron particles of aluminum. This changes the inhaled toxicity of a substance as it can penetrate the lung walls and the blood-brain barrier easier.

Nano aluminum would likely not last very long, as it would oxidize quickly with the huge surface area. It's used in rocket fuel.
 
aluminum black! ah how easy you used to be to order off ebay/unitednuclear... nice rockets indeed

(non oxidized Al) is pyrophoric, then would oxidize upon contact with air turning black, absorbing heat and contributing to global warming if anything? Al is stupid expensive and energy intensive to produce, not something you dump in the air... injection anywhere near a jet engine would make one HELL of a sparkler.....

im not sure as to the point of their claim however as dumping sub micron bits of X into the air sure wouldnt obscure light any good. all it would do is accumulate water ice and fall... making dirty contrails.. and 20tons would still weigh 20 tons. nor would it spread as well as a vapor which is passively 'nano' in many cases which negates the cutting edge zing.

as i said, a hype word. probably picked up from ipod commercials. ill stick to airfloat, as its much most descriptive and indicative of the lung hazards associated with it.
 
Nano aluminum would likely not last very long, as it would oxidize quickly with the huge surface area. It's used in rocket fuel.
It could only made into such a fine powder out of contact with air. It's used in thermite because of its high combustion energy. It is a very dangerous material.
 
its oxidized when you make thermite from it even, to make it O free, you have to ball mill it under argon and keep it under such for its whole life or chemically precipitate it in a zero oxygen environment when its oxide free it is pyrophoric and tends to bursts into flames whenever it touches air or most any substance. ive seen a kewl noob try to make it in a ballmill with helium, only to open the canister in the open air and have it erupt into flame..... again this is all besides the point because it just weighs too much and would show up as hug blocks of solid on radar.
 
Here is an early reference predating 'chemtrails' from the 1970's which found that the ice budget shows an aged persistent contrail contained four orders of magnitude (104​ or 10,000 times more) mass than the original ice mass generated by combustion:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CB8QFjAA&url=http://ciresweb.colorado.edu/science/groups/pielke/classes/atoc7500/knollenberg72.pdf&ei=40NsUO2UK4Tk2QWn8IGQAg&usg=AFQjCNGGiZ_piRGvTDFIvoqfMrOOFupbhg

Since this paper is from the 70's I'm wondering what impact modern engines would have on these figures?
 
Since this paper is from the 70's I'm wondering what impact modern engines would have on these figures?

I don't think it would have much. The initial contrail would be larger, which might affect the rate it grows, which might probably result in a smaller ratio.
 
The more efficient modern engines manage to squeeze thrust from the burning fuel and cunning design. This results in more work output by wasting less heat. This results in cooler exhaust gas, and the prospect of contrail formation at higher environment temperature.

In the charts I recently put up in https://www.metabunk.org/threads/us...mages-and-infographics.1007/page-2#post-59756
The Jet Engine point is a bit to the left (cooler), so the Environment point can be a bit to the right (warmer) and still get the mixing line to cross in to the "cloud' zone (above the blue line).
 
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I really should re-do this in a more artful way, it is somewhat stark, and I should have phrased the second to last sentence to read The basic math is 1.3 lbs water per lb of fuel burned per meter x 10,000 = weight of the persistent contrail per meter. I got rushed near the end of composition. The math will be hard for some people and I wish I had space on one page to show a real life example for a common airliner. If anyone wants to follow my lead and make improvements, especially someone with more artistic graphic design experience, please do so. I know some of you are artists and could improve on my crudity.

PS, also should read, "It is a physical impossibility for the Sabreliner to even carry 66,000 lbs...."
 
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The more efficient modern engines manage to squeeze thrust from the burning fuel and cunning design.
Fuel efficiency is all about combustion temperature and pressure.

Temperatures are limited by creep strength of the materials at the hot end (which begins before combustion), and the degree to which heat can be transported away from them. Pressures - the same.

Small changes in both material constituents and cooling techniques are now the name of the game.

Both of them rely on purer and simpler forms of kerosene, rather than anything else. These engines have to burn CLEAN.

They would all be better for burning hydrogen.
 
I really should re-do this in a more artful way, it is somewhat stark, and I should have phrased the second to last sentence to read The basic math is 1.3 lbs water per lb of fuel burned per meter x 10,000 = weight of the persistent contrail per meter. I got rushed near the end of composition. The math will be hard for some people and I wish I had space on one page to show a real life example for a common airliner. If anyone wants to follow my lead and make improvements, especially someone with more artistic graphic design experience, please do so. I know some of you are artists and could improve on my crudity.

PS, also should read, "It is a physical impossibility for the Sabreliner to even carry 66,000 lbs...."

Can we stick to just one set of units? Pounds and meters just looks naff, especially when it's spelled wrong. ;)
 
Can we stick to just one set of units? Pounds and meters just looks naff, especially when it's spelled wrong. ;)
Americans have rejected the metric system. Few ordinary people here actually have much idea what a kilo or a meter is. They are the target audience for this information, hopefully some will understand.

They know what 5 pounds of flour feels like, but things shrink over here, too. We used to have one pound cans of coffee, they are down to 14 ounces. Most people here can relate to a 2 liter soda bottle, and that is about the only common thing they touch in metric. I tried to stay away from tons because in the US it is 2000 lbs. I tried to blend the two as best I could, but at least use something ordinary 'yanks' could relate to. I don't mind the criticism, I hope someone else tries their hand at this. Video would be nice, good animation even better. This is what I began my original post looking for, and I hope we can eventually get something much more effective.
 
There's no problem using imperial units. The problem is mixing metric meters with pounds, you should use pounds per foot.
 
Americans have rejected the metric system. Few ordinary people here actually have much idea what a kilo or a meter is. They are the target audience for this information, hopefully some will understand.

Actually America uses the metric system for lots of things - the military use it - you will hear ordinary soldiers in Afghanistan talking about ranges in terms of "klicks" and metres on various TV programmes from there, and metrication is increasing for everyday items as manufacturing and supply become more world-wide.
 
Jay, is there any way you can compare the weight of the observed contrails with the assumptions used to create the Aurora Flight Sciences report commissioned by David Keith... vis.

key assumptions SRM.JPG

The payload dispersal rate, a goal of 0.03 kg/m, at the same density of water makes a useful comparison to the amount of water in a contrail.
 
Jay, is there any way you can compare the weight of the observed contrails with the assumptions used to create the Aurora Flight Sciences report commissioned by David Keith... vis.

key assumptions SRM.JPG

The payload dispersal rate, a goal of 0.03 kg/m, at the same density of water makes a useful comparison to the amount of water in a contrail.
So, according to Keith, a stratospheric geoengineering campaign's goal would be to disperse .003 kg/m (30 grams/meter).
Compared to the weight of the persistent contrail at 30,000 grams/meter, the geoengineering goal at 30 grams/meter would be exactly 3 orders of magnitude or 1000 times less, and possibly not even visible!

My personal goal in this is only to quickly show the ice budget argument to ordinary people in as simple a way as possible, I'll re-work this and hopefully someone more artistic might be able to make it more attractive.

What I am trying to do is develop a series of these which will be useful for quickly showing things. I'm told by Dane Wigington that one page handouts are very effective, and actually agree with that concept.
 
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The goal is 30 gm/m - 0.03kg - .003 looks like the minimum, and 0.1 the maximum rates.

So it is "merely" 1/1000th :)
 
So, according to Keith, a stratospheric geoengineering campaign's goal would be to disperse .003 kg/m (30 grams/meter).
Compared to the weight of the persistent contrail at 30,000 grams/meter, the geoengineering goal at 30 grams/meter would be exactly 3 orders of magnitude or 1000 times less, and possibly not even visible!

I think the other key assumption of a minimum spray altitude of 40,000 ft almost guarantees you wouldn't see it.
 
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