Suicide By Pesticide

Resilient Life Public Resilient Life
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    I just finished a 3 month on line permaculture course.  
    On page 57 of Bill Mollison's ( the person that coined the word permaculture ) permaculture design, manual, he says that as future designers, that are attempting to care for the planet, "we can do no worse than the designs around us". 

     I see some positive changes coming up.  Here are the first three.

    I am now convinced that we can "design"  a path that will lead us away from disaster by following permaculture principles.

    As to energy, over 2 years ago, Ray Kurzweil, chief engineer for Google, was saying that almost 1% of the worlds solar electrical energy was then coming from the sun and it that number doubles every 2 years.  It is now 2 years since I first heard that and I have found out that output is now at about 2%. meaning that his prediction is right on track.  Doing a little math then in 2027 we will have 128% of the worlds energy supplied by solar.   All remaining metals, factories, financing and fuels should be put to work to achieve this end.  Cheap, clean, local, and abundant energy will change the world for the better.

    We are going to need hemp production to be allowed again in the U S.  With way over 50% of the     U S population in favor of repealing the crazy marijuanna and industrial hemp laws, so I see a time ahead when people can grow their own houses (industrial hemp can be used to make structural members, basement blocks, insulation and roofing) and grow their own fuel ( up to 200 gallons of hemp oil per acre) to fuel anything with a diesel engine.

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The answer to your question is yes.   Not only that systems can be designed to produce abundant foods for generations to come.
Permaculture instructors have said this and they have said that we will only need 4% of the land currently under cultivation to produce the same amount of nutrition as 100% of our current production.

Check out youtube for     Geoff Lawton greening an oasis and watch him turn a desert into a garden in just 4 years.

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"If we were to prioritize our food budget (and holistically consider the potential savings in medical costs), which foods should we preferentially focus on to buy the organic version?"
You are right to point out that whether or not organic food is worth the extra cost is a holistic issue. I think you can get all the data you want at The Rodale Institute which has been studying this comparison for years and clearly points out the superior health value of the organic not to mention the presence of extremely untested chemicals present in the not organic. And their current studies are pointing out that GMO has no advantage at all.

But even if the health value was still in debate - holistically thinking we are subsidizing and encouraging the disastrous ecological effects and social effects of Big Ag chemical monocropping when we buy it. We might as well send a check directly to Monsanto and say "Good Work!". We vote with our dollars.  When we buy the Big Ag food, we are supporting all those practices which are hurting the bees, polluting water, destroying soil, creating massive international cartels of destroying farmer's rights to control their own seeds, etc etc etc. So step one, everyone who is even remotely awake - be determined that your money will not go to support this damage.

So my point is that looking at it holistically you have to look beyond your budget and even your own health and look at how these Big Ag products are produced in a way that is so harmful to the ecology and the jobs situation that it is not advisable to support it. Then get creative and do the work to find sources that are growing healthy food and healthy lives and support that. That way, the market grows and young people starting out in holistic healthy growing practices will have a market. We who came through adulthood with much greater opportunities to create good retirement incomes (I'm 67) I think owe the young people of today that we won't support damaging Big Ag and will instead buy our food from the Farmers Markets, the Co-ops, directly from farms and at the very least the Organic certified. That way a transition to truly healthy farming becomes possible. 

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Rodney, I agree with the other parts of what you wrote, but be careful following the extravagant claims of Kurzweil…he has a habit of mixing things up for people in ways that end up seeming purposely confusing and overly optimistic.

To begin, there is a huuUUUuuuge difference between getting 100% of your electricity needs from renewables vs getting 100% of your energy needs.

Electricity is roughly 1/2 of our total primary energy consumption, with the other half being petroleum and natgas used for transportation and other industrial purposes.

Renewables do not yet make any sort of a dent in those uses.  At all.  As in essentially zero.

You can double solar and wind farms to your heart's content and not change a thing in that equation.

Next,  the idea that one can simply continue to double difficult-to-scale industrial manufacturing and installation processes forever and without any difficulties is incredibly unrealistic.  Mr Kurzweil has not spent enough time in manufacturing processes, I suspect, to appreciate the realities involved.

There are many considerations that pop up at scale and we do ourselves no favors by ignoring them including manufacturing capacity, rare element scarcity, lack of appropriate electricity storage at scale, and capital requirements just to name a few.  

Just for wind, consider this:

Worldwide, 32,850 wind turbines with 70 to 100 meter blades generating 1.65 MW built every year for the next 50 years, or 1,642,000 total would be needed to replace the oil we burn in one year at a cost of 3.3 trillion dollars.

The limits to growth due to lack of material resources, such as shortages of steel, rare earth metals, cement, and so on would be reached long before then.

The DOE estimates there are 18,000 square miles of good wind sites in the USA, which could produce 20% of America’s electricity in total. This would require over 140,000 1.5 MW towers costing at least $300 billion dollars, and innumerable natural gas peaking plants to balance the load when the wind isn’t blowing. Natural gas production is likely to peak as soon as 2018 and we don’t have the LNG facilities to import NG from other countries, and NG is finite, even LNG imports are temporary.

There isn’t enough dispatchable renewable power from pumped hydro storage, biomass, or Compressed Air Energy storage to provide peak power and bulk storage either.

(Source)

I'm not saying it cannot be done, or that it shouldn't be done, just that I am allergic to the oft-repeated Kurzweil claim that repeatedly doubling renewables installations is somehow akin to doubling transistors on a micro chip.

Moore's law cannot and should not be extended to large scale, real-world energy issues.  It's inappropriate on a lot of levels but perhaps the most insidious is that it tends to provide some individuals with an 'escape hatch' from the possibility that we cannot maintain and extend our comfortable, easy lifestyles without some serious efforts, prioritizations, and difficult trade-offs.

I'm all for having the conversation(s), but we need to be realistic…and Kurzweil is anything but in this regard.

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So while I agree electricity on its own can't replace liquid fuel, and that there are resource limits (silver, for one, likely silicon for another) that would probably cap the growth rate after a few more doublings, there are a number of processes that, under conditions of almost-free electricity, would be able to generate liquid fuel.
Take hydrogen, for one.  If electricity were almost-free, a hydrogen economy might well be practical.   There are significant energy losses in changing from electricity to hydrogen, but if electricity is almost free, nobody really cares.  That might fix the ground transport problem.

Or some other processes, which require electricity to split off carbon from oxygen to construct synthetic crude.  Syncrude fixes the air and sea travel problem.

I think if electric power (via solar, or other intermittent power sources) ever does become "too cheap to meter" we will figure out ways to economically generate liquid fuels from that ultra-cheap electric power.  It will need time to be ramped up, so it might not happen in time to retain our current lifestyle (a la Hirsch report) but it might end up making a big difference 10-20 years out.

Just my thought.

Here's a chart of the growth in electrical generation in the US, run through a 12 point MA (w/o the MA, its pretty choppy).  Even with the MA, its not particularly steady, and it probably requires finance to remain in place to keep moving higher, at least at the current payoff rates.

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For a smile (with a touch of cynicism)
This is a conversation between two flies, in a world dominated by flies:

  • Flie 1: Okay… we are now very intelligent. We are perfecting everything. We evolve…Heated homes and lighting all night, we got accustomed quickly… but, I am starting asking myself if we will stop on time…  in clear, I an afraid that we are making the same mistakes as Them. Everyone knows that it is Their progress that finally destroyed Them, those idiots! 

  • Flie 2: Ho! Hey! Don't insult Them… think about all those nice cities They left us…

Cartoon by Franquin.

Worth getting the book (It is in French. The English version was never printed). A lot of its content is so true.

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… And I will continue to connect mine. I've read a great number of your posts and replies on this site and first of I respect your level of integrity and specialized knowledge of certain subjects. My brother is a chief in the navy and get the same reactions and replies from him as well. As for the nasa explanations of the subject they can go in a pile with the rest of the bs crap that been handed down by all the rest of anyone funded by government. If you are giving me a holler to passively suggest that spraying does not occur then ok. Your entitled to your 'educated' opinion. I have been a pilot long enough, have enough pilot friends that fly commercially and militarily, to know better than water vapor. I'm assuming you think the rise in aluminum, strontium and barium in the snow pack in mt. Shasta is natural ? Or the fact that the water vapor trails shut off and on suddenly in the same path in abrupt lines is natural as well. One of our greatest problems today is in accepting that the entire narrative and core beliefs we have in authority will be challenged like never before. I know with your background that will be extremely difficult to swallow. There are already patents for this material and patents for the methods of injection. If we are so trusting in the powers that we believe they will ask us if, when and how they can do something well… We have already lost. It is very clear to me what is happening on a daily basis as it is to a great number of people all across the world. There is no doubt in my mind that we ( UN ) are spraying.  You have got to accept the fact that the military wishes to own the weather patterns for a number of different reasons. You also must accept that the military industrial complex that ultimately rules our world is not there for the benefit of society but rather it's ultimate and unadulterated control. Do we now doubt the use of operations not declared by our trusted governments? 

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You never go back. I'm assuming that you are telling me that there is no "stratospheric aerosol program" or such a thing as the conspiracy ridden label of chemtrails…? What was Iran's latest discussion on the floor of the United Nations openly describing weather manipulation about? I am defiantly not worried about being marginalized, the comment was directed at this sites, as well as many others, ability to discuss a topic without becoming marginalized. I was not in fact complaining, yet explaining my understanding. The cloud you see in my profile picture was not more than 2000 feet above sea level. There is an astounding break in one of the clouds, as If the conditions you describe required for persistent contrails seems to be in the shape of a wall, then abruptly starts again. Look the problem here is that your clear 'factually' stated explanations of what these 'phenomenon' are, are the most openly stated rebuttal of the argument. The truth is in fact that our sky's are clouded in this crap daily. You speak to me as if I've seen one video and a couple pictures and I 'see what I want to believe'. I guess I don't see the sky go from blue to hazy white with my own eyes on a massive amount of days here in the Pacific Northwest. This is not something I wanted to believe. The thing I've realized is once someone decides to do their proper research without the constraints of a failed belief system maybe they will find the truth. Maybe they won't. The point is we need massive change and that change is not the political crap that Obama or the like speak of. It's a barn fire. Or else we are fu@&d. This article is about pesticides. climate engineering is the most powerful and utilized weapon of the western power structure to destabilize and topple governments and countries around the globe. This military industrial complex has always sought to control the weather. To say this is not happening is absurd. Pesticides are bad yes, but this chemical dump that is used to control weather patterns and God knows what else is the worse crime against humanity ever perpetuated. You never find anyone that finds out this is a real issue and goes back the other way to say, wait… Wait your right, chemtrails don't exist. I was wrong… 

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Help with funding ad at Bayer's meeting in Germany.

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I've spent a lot of time on Youtube, the home of all conspiracy theories from the whacko to the well supported rational ones, and I haven't been able to find any evidence supporting the existence of chemtrails, nor of any plausible motive or mechanism of action explaining why the government is supposedly doing this.

There are two general lines of "evidence" presented in support of chemtrails. One is all the contrails planes leave behind, which they have been doing ever since planes took to the air… These are actually just trails of water condensation from the engines' combustion, like the cloud that is left by your car on a cold morning, or your breath. The reason they linger around longer in the sky is because the air is so thin up there that it takes a while for the ice crystals to sublimate. Some videos show jets clearly turning their chemtrail makers on and off, or as you observe, the chemtrails just stopping as if hitting a wall. But this is due to encountering different atmospheric conditions and closer inspection reveals that this supposed turning on and off coincides exactly with the different turbulent clouds that the plane is flying through, meaning that the plane experiences areas of high and low humidity, and in high humidity in the clouds, the exhaust creates condensation and when not in the cloud the humidity is lower and the water vapour from the exhaust does not condense out.

The other line of "evidence" supporting chemtrails is all the heavy metal contaminants scientists are now measuring and increased rates of Alzeimer's. Well it's a pretty big leap in logic to observe heavy metals in the environment and then use that to conclude that the government is spraying us all with contaminants in an effort to control our minds or give us cancer or change the weather or what have you! Firstly, I did a basic calculation using aluminum concentrations (50 ug/l) given by a scientist at a panel in Sacramento I think it was, talking about all the aluminum and barium nanoparticles in the environment at Mt Shasta, and to get those levels you are looking at the entire world's industrial production of aluminum sprayed over just the western US, needing millions of flights a year given a typical jet's payload. Furthermore, where is the evidence for all these jets modified with these special tanks required to haul thousands of gallons of stuff up there? You'd think that with all the tens of thousands of airplane mechanics in the world tending to these millions of flights that someone would have seen something and posted it to Youtube? But nothing… Actually, all jets do have big tanks for hauling thousands of gallons, they are in their wings and they carry jet fuel…

What's actually happening is probably smog drifting over from China, weather moves west to east, from all their coal power plants and other industrial pollution. But that rational explanation is never put forward, only crazy conspiracy theories purporting the government is doing secret ops to manipulate the environment for some unknown reason, to control our minds and do experiments on us for some other unknown reason, using unknown mechanisms, without any evidence or whistleblowers other than white lines in the skies.

Is the government involved in weather modification schemes? Well given the droughts much of the world is experiencing, I'd be surprise if they weren't, and there is lots of evidence that rain can be seeded with spraying certain things in the atmosphere but not at anywhere near the concentrations people are observing, and they don't use aluminum and barium "nanoparticles" for this, they use trace amounts of silver iodide. And I've even heard it purported that these chemtrails are responsible for the climate change we are experiencing, that the droughts are being caused intentionally by the government to reduce the population! Well, ummm, maybe the climate is changing because of the billions of tons of CO2 and other greenhouse gases being dumped in the atmosphere, just like scientists have been warning for decades! But that explanation would just be too rational.

These chemtrail conspiracy theories IMO do damage to the alternative movement because they discredit the legitimate conspiracy theories by alienating a lot of people who might otherwise look at evidence supporting the real conspiracies going on out there. Then automatically everyone who believes in any conspiracy is branded a tinfoil hat whacko. But me, I follow where the evidence leads me, wherever that goes. There is heaps of evidence supporting the existence of financial conspiracies that go to the top leadership of the world, you'd have to be in complete denial to argue against that, but there is no evidence supporting chemtrails and only solid science explaining the existence of contrails.

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Bellinghamster,  I just want to reassure you that you are not the only one here with these impressions and suspicions–that climate is being modified locally by atmospheric spraying, and that those doing it are not interested in helping the common person.  And I understand that once one's conclusions "gel" around the reality of atmospheric spaying for power and profit, it is very reasonable to be outraged.
Historically, discussion this topic has been so full of vitriol and so light on science (and perhaps because they were not championed by an "authority") that discussion has come to little benefit.  Kind of like debating abortion.  Lots of sparks, nothing beneficial.  Mostly just drives people away from the website. I have also found that a post on geoengineering will bring out trolls–people who never post here on any topic but that one.  (I have the impression of an organized PR team for hire.) 

Cognitive Dissonance, a very smart guy, thinks your concerns are correct.

You are not alone.  And outrage sounds right.

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But it's nothing like abortion, abortion is a moral debate. Chemtrails is a scientific debate that has only one real answer – right or wrong. Either the government is spraying millions of tons of toxins into the air (a physically and economically impossible task) for the purposes of harming us or changing the climate or whatever other reason… or it isn't. Where is the evidence? That's all I ask for. Not opinion, I've seen enough of that on Youtube – I want evidence.

Edit: Here, look, China's smog pollutes the western US.

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Mark, I am sympathetic to the idea that the government might be conducting some sort of atmospheric spraying program, mainly because I could imagine that if you were somewhat worried about global warming but did not want to admit that for political reasons but you also wanted to test out if geoengineering might work, then the whole thing would be done and kept hush hush.

However, I cringe when people post videos of jets dumping fuel and exclaim that it's chemtrail spraying,  That fails on so many levels (e.g. why would 'they' use passenger jets when the weight limits are already mainly used up hauling humans?) and it's extremely easy to locate exactly where the fuel dump nozzle is on any given plane and then match that to the video.

Or when a condensation vortex is created by planes landing in high humidity conditions…I've seen people excitedly claim that's a chemtrail sprayer in action…again which just fails on a lot of levels the biggest one being that the phenomenon is quite easily investigated and understood to be caused by the low pressure zones that full-flap wings are specifically designed to create.

All of these and other such pieces of 'evidence' do a heck of a lot to discredit the entire movement of people who think something is happening up there.  I cannot discount that some of these are actually 'poison well' efforts meant to distract and discredit the movement, and those who would promote the idea of chemtrails should be hyper vigilant to themselves discredit these silly theories on their own.  And vigorously.

So what about the evidence that does exist?  The one thing that has bothered me a lot is that it seems to me that the precise test that would either prove or disprove the theory of chemtrails would be both relatively easy to perform, repeatable, and conclusive.

We already know the photon absorption spectrum of the sun in very high detail.  Briefly, each element has a unique 'fingerprint' of specific photon frequencies that they absorb creating dark lines on an otherwise perfect white-light spectrum.

The sun's unique fingerprint is formed by the relative amounts of each element that it has and the resulting image looks like this:

Yes, there are a lot of elements in the sun!

Now the test I propose is to get yourself one of these machines that can read such lines with an appropriate level of sensitivity, wait for a chemtrail to pass over the sun, take a reading, and then see what sorts of extra elements appear.

If you get big spikes in aluminum and boron and such, there's your proof.  All done.  Anybody anywhere with similar equipment should be able to repeat the test.  

Now it's possible that such a test would lack the requisite sensitivity but given the extraordinarily sensitive readings that astronomers regularly make using ridiculously small amounts of light, I am going to guess that having the sun's full power blazing through a dense cloud of barium and aluminum (so dense that it creates very high ground level concentrations according to the chemtrail community) should be child's play for today's instruments.

To my knowledge nobody in the chemtrail community has proposed or ran such a test, and I am confused as to why.  Data is a wonderful thing and this data seems very easy to collect, and it would be definitive and conclusive.

I have neither ruled chemtrails in or out, but I have ruled out much of the so-called 'evidence' because it's just bogus.  

I am interested in the elevated levels of metals on western snowpacks and would be very interested to know how those got there and, whatever the answer, we should really know.

As a final note, I am equally allergic, on the other side, of people who dismiss chemtrails on the basis of "it would be too big too hide, somebody would have talked."  History proves that's reasoning as equally faulty as mistaking a fuel dump for a chemtrail.  Both can be dispelled with a tiny bit of open minded inquiry.

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EU dropped pesticide laws due to US pressure over TTIP, documents reveal

EU moves to regulate hormone-damaging chemicals linked to cancer and male infertility were shelved following pressure from US trade officials over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) free trade deal, newly released documents show.

Draft EU criteria could have banned 31 pesticides containing endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs). But these were dumped amid fears of a trade backlash stoked by an aggressive US lobby push, access to information documents obtained by Pesticides Action Network (PAN) Europe show.

On 26 June 2013, a high-level delegation from the American Chambers of Commerce (AmCham) visited EU trade officials to insist that the bloc drop its planned criteria for identifying EDCs in favour of a new impact study.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/22/eu-dropped-pesticide-laws-due-to-us-pressure-over-ttip-documents-reveal
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Bayer is one of the big producers and sellers of neonicotinoids. They recently popped up a poster on their PR site that states that Bee Colonies are 'stable or increasing".
https://www.bayercropscience.us/news/blog/2015/may/050615-good-news-on-bee-health

Here is a direct link to the poster

https://www.bayercropscience.us/~/media/Bayer%20CropScience/Country-United-States-Internet/Documents/Our%20Commitment/Bee/Good%20News%20on%20Bee%20Health.ashx

Ain't Corporate Propaganda wonderful?

 

 

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Thank you for addressing Chemtrails Chris.  I remain a skeptic due to lack of solid data.  Of photon absorbance analysis you said,

Now the test I propose is to get yourself one of these machines that can read such lines with an appropriate level of sensitivity, wait for a chemtrail to pass over the sun, take a reading, and then see what sorts of extra elements appear.

If you get big spikes in aluminum and boron and such, there's your proof.  All done.  Anybody anywhere with similar equipment should be able to repeat the test.

The answer is, it's complicated.  It's complicated mainly because we don't know the particle size range we are dealing with.. if indeed these metals are being seeded into the atmosphere, either as oxides or salts.  For sure, they would have to exist as particles, even if they were being delivered as a soluble starting material in the fuel itself (one theory I have seen mentioned).  The particles, if they were not sprayed directly as dry powder, would form as nonvolatile residue, as the fuel droplets become combusted.  The problem analytically is that particle size effects scattering modes;
Before radiation used for remote sensing reaches the Earth's surface it has to travel through some distance of the Earth's atmosphere. Particles and gases in the atmosphere can affect the incoming light and radiation. These effects are caused by the mechanisms of scattering and absorption.
Earth's atmosphere
Scattering occurs when particles or large gas molecules present in the atmosphere interact with and cause the electromagnetic radiation to be redirected from its original path. How much scattering takes place depends on several factors including the wavelength of the radiation, the abundance of particles or gases, and the distance the radiation travels through the atmosphere. There are three (3) types of scattering which take place.

Scattering

     
Sunrise and SunsetRayleigh scattering occurs when particles are very small compared to the wavelength of the radiation. These could be particles such as small specks of dust or nitrogen and oxygen molecules. Rayleigh scattering causes shorter wavelengths of energy to be scattered much more than longer wavelengths. Rayleigh scattering is the dominant scattering mechanism in the upper atmosphere. The fact that the sky appears "blue" during the day is because of this phenomenon. As sunlight passes through the atmosphere, the shorter wavelengths (i.e. blue) of the visible spectrum are scattered more than the other (longer) visible wavelengths. At sunrise and sunset the light has to travel farther through the atmosphere than at midday and the scattering of the shorter wavelengths is more complete; this leaves a greater proportion of the longer wavelengths to penetrate the atmosphere.

Mie scattering occurs when the particles are just about the same size as the wavelength of the radiation. Dust, pollen, smoke and water vapour are common causes of Mie scattering which tends to affect longer wavelengths than those affected by Rayleigh scattering. Mie scattering occurs mostly in the lower portions of the atmosphere where larger particles are more abundant, and dominates when cloud conditions are overcast.

Nonselective Scattering The final scattering mechanism of importance is called nonselective scattering. This occurs when the particles are much larger than the wavelength of the radiation. Water droplets and large dust particles can cause this type of scattering. Nonselective scattering gets its name from the fact that all wavelengths are scattered about equally. This type of scattering causes fog and clouds to appear white to our eyes because blue, green, and red light are all scattered in approximately equal quantities (blue+green+red light = white light)

continued here;   Interactions with the Atmosphere

Not saying absorbance testing could not be done.. just that there would probably need to be a number of assumptions made about the size and refractive index of the particles... does not sound simple. 

If it were me, I would want to interrogate air sampled from up high directly for the particles.  Commercial jets generally run 50:50 mix of cabin recirc. and outside bleed air, and one high tech filter company (Aerospace | Pall Corporation) suggests having a separate filter on the bleed air.  Now THAT would be an interesting thing to sample (suggest doing an acid extraction on the filter element) to see what's what, though you would be looking at a time average of course.

What snow melt results are you referring to Chris… this?

https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-shasta-snow-and-water-aluminum-tests.t137/
 
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I am unsure what the chemtrail community thinks the climate impacts of observed contrails are supposed to be but the fact of the matter is that those contrails are generally up high, forming cirrus clouds that warm the climate - they don't cool it like low elevation clouds would. The effects on temperature may not be what you expect. From the three day hiatus of flights over the US after 9/11, we learned that the day time temperatures rose when the contrails had all dissipated but the night time temperatures cooled even more since those cirrus-contrail clouds weren't trapping in the heat. The current prevalence of contrails isn't some geoengineering test unless it is one to make climate matters worse. The current warming effect of cirrus-contrails is larger than all of the warming caused by all of the cumulative carbon dioxide emissions to date.

Aviation makes a significant contribution to anthropogenic climate forcing. The impacts arise from emissions of greenhouse gases, aerosols and nitrogen oxides, and from changes in cloudiness in the upper troposphere. (link)
Those linear contrails can persist and spread when the atmosphere is supersaturated with ice crystals to form regional coverage of cirrus clouds.

The sheer number of contrails can be astounding in their impact when atmospheric conditions are right to yield cirrus cloud formation.

 

Overall, and despite their short lifetime, contrails may have more radiative impact at any one time than all of the aviation-emitted carbon dioxide that has accumulated in the atmosphere since the beginning of commercial aviation. It is important to note, however, that the emitted carbon dioxide would continue to exert a warming influence for much longer than contrails, should all aircraft be grounded indefinitely. (link)
Although the impact of contrails is larger than that from the greenhouse gases from aviation at present, if we grounded planes (like after 9/11) that effect would disappear within hours/days. The CO2 effects would continue to last for hundreds of years. So, ultimately, it is still the emissions that are the larger problem for global climate.

This neither proves nor disproves the idea of chemtrails but Mark_BC raises a lot of important reality check questions about the physical constraints on what could actually be done assuming something was doable. Physics still matters. Chris' idea for some relatively simple tests to detect possible contaminants within contrails is a good idea. For that matter, some simple sampling of those contrails could be done by flying through them with the right equipment.

Curiously, if chemtrails do exist, I think that the contrails that are assumed to be the evidence are probably a red herring that would mislead you as to where to look. If you were being nefarious about this you wouldn't want to dump this stuff in a way everyone could see. You could better dump it all along the flight path where contrails are not forming…

Mark

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I also agree that either they are spraying or they are not, and that this is a physical event.  Eventually, we will probably all know "The Truth."  The Warren Commission findings will be unsealed after 75 years, so we'll know about that too.
But in the mean time, here we are.  Sitting in the middle of incomplete information and (for me) a strong impression that there is a geopolitical chess game afoot.

I personally do NOT have a background in physical chemistry or atmospheric science.  I will pretty much be at the mercy of intelligent people that I trust to help explain to me how things work.  And I would like to know more about this topic. I am soliciting information and synthesis by those with sufficient background.

-------

Philosophy of Science

Scientific understandings begin as ideas that initially have little supporting data and are unproven.  Many of the ideas falter and are abandoned.  Some grow. Over decades, some become regarded as "true" and some, so "true" as to be dogma.  The point I am trying to make here is that unproven ideas form one of the legitimate stages of "science." 

Scientists, as a group, move much like a herd.  It takes time to get the herd moving a new directions.  It is not just the information itself.  It is a sociological phenomenon where a group of human beings shifts their consensus understanding.  Decades are needed for big paradigm shifts.

On "being certain"

One of the stages of understanding is "being certain."  This means that one's view has "gelled" on a certain cognitive model and one's identity has linked to the model.  At this stage information gathering shuts down or is significantly curtailed.  On the good side, certainty offers stability and a foundation to move on to the next area of exploration.  On the bad side, when we become certain of something that it turns out is not true, it is very, very hard to catch on to the error.

Hence the famous Carl Sagan quote:

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken.”
And Mark Twain:
“It's not what you don't know that kills you, it's what you know for sure that ain't true.”
And last, the late Zen teacher, Shunryu Suzuki, from San Francisco:
“If your mind is empty ... it is open to everything. In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few. ” 
I am requesting here is that everyone stay curious and willing to learn.  And I personally would like the assistance of those in the group with enough basic science background to help evaluate merits this field.
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Sand_puppy, you are responsible for the genesis of a rant. Cogitation initiated.

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Not knowing anything about atmospheric absorption testing, I read a few things and  found this publication which made it all seem very doable, especially since they are using the same tests to measure smog particulate concentrations (which are a range of sizes).

http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de/doas/paper/spec_euro_06_richter.pdf