Vindog, your posts and associated discussion will probably be split off of this thread by the mods, because they are generally not on the thread's topic. (They will probably also be placed in "Rambles" because they don't follow the
posting guidelines.)
But while it's here in the
thread about 70 years' worth of books on clouds, let me bring it on topic for a minute. You say that you clearly remember contrails as always dissipating quickly when you were younger. Like many other people, I just as clearly remember that sometimes they persisted and spread into linear clouds. We could argue about whose memory is more accurate, but there's no point - because in the beginning posts of this thread, there is ample documentation that persisting contrails are nothing new. (
See also the pre-1995 persistent contrail archive thread for many more examples.)
We all tend to think of our own memories as perfectly accurate, but scientists who study memory know that they are amazingly fallible and malleable. That's an interesting topic in itself.