Thanks, Moose. My brother, an eco-warrior who lives in a mobile home (trailer)
and subsists on almost nothing, told me about this a year or 2 ago. My take on
this is that it would have been a temporary blip before everything returned to
normal without the contrail shadows.
But it's the use of energy which I find wasteful, especially short-haul flights
taken profligately.
Thank you for thinking of me, though ... :-)
Chris
On 2 Feb 2010, at 23:01, Moose wrote:
> A funny thing happened after 9/11. All commercial flights over the US
> were halted for a few days. During that period:
>
> - An amateur researcher in the middle of the country, who had been
> carefully recording surface temperatures for many years found a
> significant increase. Once air travel was resumed, it went back down to
> the prior trend.
>
> - There's an English born Jew who emigrated to Israel decades ago. He
> has been researching the solar energy falling on the Earth's surfaces.
> His concern is that it has decreased, which has reduced the total energy
> available for plants to grow, and thus the ability to produce food. One
> of the grad students he has working on his project is also in the US and
> noted a significant increase in solar energy intensity during the no-fly
> period.
>
> As I understand it, this is a result of the ice crystals created as jets
> fly at altitude. I've both heard that it's a direct result of the
> crystals creating a reflective layer that bounces sunlight back out of
> the atmosphere and that the same effect is a result of the ice bonding
> to tiny particles.
>
> In any case, airline travel appears to be one of those troublesome real
> world things that both cause a problem, the greenhouse effect from their
> output of CO2, and create an opposite effect at the same time.
>
> I have no idea what the balance is; I doubt anyone really does, but
> Chris might allow himself the occasional bit of air travel without too
> much guilt.
--
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