Geoengineering with Contrails

You heard that right: we are not talking about chemtrails here. The aviation industry is busy trying to turn their 'contrail-cirrus cloud making pollution' into a geoengineering solution!

Two major aviation "climate mitigation" areas of study have been underway for over a decade: biofuels, or sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and "climate optimized routing of flights." We will save SAF for another post and focus on "creating less warming and MORE cooling contrails" right now!

After the flight groundings following 9/11/2001, David Travis concluded that cirrus clouds created by aircraft exhaust were trapping heat at night. This set off alarm bells in the academic and climate change world. A second series of publications in 2009 cemented the idea that contrail-induced cirrus clouds (persistent contrails) were a problem the airline industry could no longer ignore.

A single E-3 Sentry (AWACS) circling off the coast of the United Kingdom creates cirrus clouds that cover an immense area. Source: COntrails Spreading Into Cirrus (COSIC)

A single aircraft operating in conditions favorable for persistent contrail formation appears to exert a contrail-induced radiative forcing some 5000 times greater (in W m−2 km−1) than recent estimates of the average persistent contrail radiative forcing from the entire civil aviation fleet.

Source: Haywood, James M., et al. "A case study of the radiative forcing of persistent contrails evolving into contrail‐induced cirrus." Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 114.D24 (2009).

In 2010, Ulrich Schumann from Germany’s DLR addressed the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Colloquium on Aviation and Climate Change. He made a radical statement that intrigued me on the final slide of this presentation: “less warming, more cooling contrails; predictable for operational planning”

How did Schumann intend to fulfill the “predictable for operation planning” part? In the same presentation he introduced a software program: The Contrail Cirrus Simulation and Prediction (CoCiP).

The entire “chemtrail conspiracy” requires proof of this: intent. This was the first concrete piece of “evidence of intent” that I was able to find, so naturally I wanted to know more. I contacted Dr. Rangasayi Halthore from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Aviation Climate Change Research Initiative (ACCRI) in 2017. I assumed since he was in charge of the “biofuels for contrail control” ACCESS flight experiments, maybe could clarify the FAA’s position and explain in detail what Ulrich Schumann meant by “MORE cooling contrails.” After three phone calls he agreed to a written interview. His response shocked me.

We would like to have more CIC’s (Contrail-Induced Cirrus Clouds) during day and none during night. - Dr. Rangasayi Halthore. FAA ACCRI

There was that word again: MORE. I have argued since I started researching geoengineering, weather modification, and space weather modification technologies over 15 years ago that even if people were wrong about their “chemtrail conspiracy” beliefs, the airline industry should STOP making clouds, not make MORE.

Having two scientists separated by the Atlantic ocean saying the same thing seven years apart certainly raise more concerns. Why not take a position like “we should end all cirrus cloud creation” instead of “clouds by day, none by night?”

The answer is simple: geoengineering. The idea of solar geoengineering is to mimic volcanoes by injecting chemicals in the stratosphere that reflect incoming solar radiation, known as Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI). Of course, this is not the only form of solar radiation management (SRM):

• Surface reflectivity (reflective crops, microbubbles in the ocean, painting rooftops white) but these cannot work if contrail cirrus trap heat at ground level at night.

• Marine Cloud Brightening (MCB) or injecting sea-salt water into clouds over the ocean to increase their reflectivity. MCB is an intentional program to mimic ship tracks which formed marine stratocumulus clouds from burning bunker fuel (heavy fuel oil) in international shipping tankers. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) banned bunker fuel in 2010 much to the chagrin of climate engineering advocates.

• Cirrus Cloud Thinning (CCT) or Cirrus Cloud Seeding is a method of getting rid of (melting away) contrail-induced cirrus clouds (at night). CCT is not solar radiation management (SRM), it has been dubbed Earth radiation management (ERM).

A summary of this article so far with quotes and sources highlighted in red.

Geoengineering - could contrails cool the planet?

Most recently, the Royal Aeronautical Society met in March of 2021 and the truth is becoming more transparent.

Could contrails actually help cool the planet? (NASA)

This presentation was followed by one from Robert Whitfield of Greener by Design, who chairs the Governance Sub-Group of the Greener by Design Contrail Avoidance Group. When the Contrail Avoidance Group first met, two options for reducing climate impact were on the table. The first was changing cruise altitude to avoid forming evening and nighttime warming contrails, as in Fig 2. The second was, earlier in the day, deliberately flying into ISSRs in order to form contrails to reflect sunlight – ie cooling contrails. Both options had been proposed by Hermann Mannstein. It emerged that half the group thought that both options should be explored but half the group foresaw political reluctance to consider deliberately forming contrails on the grounds that it could be considered geoengineering. Consequently, a governance sub-group was formed to consider the sensitivities in this area.

The likelihood of contrails’ formation can be modified along with some of their properties, eg engines with tailored combustion systems and synthetic fuels may result in fewer, or smaller, particulates upon which the ice can form. However, these approaches will take a long time to have any effect and, even then, the impact will only be a partial mitigation. Therefore, the option that offers the quickest and the biggest impact is direct contrail management.

Source: CONTRAILS AND CONTRAIL MANAGEMENT Greener by Design Specialist Group

CoCiP is still in use and the Predictive Real-time Emissions Technologies Reducing Aircraft Induced Lines in the Sky (PRE-TRAILS) program has begun. Google AI is already working with American Airlines on contrail avoidance (or creation) today. There is so much more to the story and nobody’s talking about any of this.

Chemtrails: It’s Geoengineering!

What’s in a word. Semantics, gotta love ‘em.

• Chemtrails

• Contrails

• Persistent Contrails

• Spreading Contrails

• Contrail Cirrus

• Contrail Induced Cirrus (CIC)

• Contrail Induced Cloudiness

• Aviation Induced Cloudiness (AIC)

• Aviation Induced Cirrus

• Induced Cirrus Cloudiness

• Man-made clouds

• Artificial Clouds

I choose to call them plane farts, but whatever your take is: #CirrusCloudsMatter.

Clearly, scholars and aviation industry insiders are taking advantage of sky pollution to create a geoengineering solution. Stay tuned as we follow up on this story and hopefully bring you updated interviews with the scientists involved in Contrail Control.

---