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Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Bon appetit 
Taller tales
| | Yet I've always felt a bit suspicious about what high altitude aviation does to atmosphere, and to climate. Contrails lace the sky with clouds that nature otherwise would not put there. Often they go away. Often they do not. They spread into a high lacy haze that drifts across the globe, reflecting sunlight out into space and cooling (or is it warming?) the Earth below. (Dig this picture from space.) |
| | Sept. 11th, 2001 Climate Impact "Experiment" |
| | It had been hypothesized that in regions such as the United States with heavy air traffic, contrails affected the weather, reducing solar heating during the day and radiation of heat during the night by increasing the albedo. The suspension of air travel for three days in the United States after September 11, 2001 provided an opportunity to test this hypothesis. Measurements did in fact show that without contrails the local diurnal temperature range (difference of day and night temperatures) was about 1 degree Celsius higher than immediately before (Travis et al., J. Climate, 17, 1123-1134, 2004); however, it has also been suggested that this was due to unusually clear weather during the period (Kalkstein and Balling Jr., Climate Research, 26, 1-4, 2004). |
| | I've watched a few contrails here in Santa Barbara spread out to cover nearly the whole sky. And guess what that contributes to? Try global warming. Well, at least some folks think so. |
| | Wacko or not, the absence of commercial aviation in the U.S. is at least an invitation to all kinds of interesting science. When the current news trails off, don't be surprised to hear about some interesting discoveries made in the absence of airplanes. |
| | While that jury stays out on the whole subject (for some of us, anyway), I had a fun time shooting pictures of contrails spreading across the sky at sunrise and again at sunset yesterday. (That's the series above.) I also have a third set of plain old sunrise shots, assembled without regard to the avaition without which the pictures never would have happened, because the sky would have been cloudless and clear. |
Conspiracy
To the manner taught
| | Manners are the outward and visible sign of an inward and justifiable aspiration. We mimic those whom we admire in hopes of achieving their station. Only in that sense does the trickle-down theory actually work. There are only two explanations for the manners meltdown: |
| | - The well-mannered are not admirable.
- The well-mannered are not really in charge.
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| | In either case, they will fail to inspire polite behavior. |
| | Unless manners aren't really melting down. Or melted a long time ago. Since I'm still being corrected by admirable people, I suspect melting is a localized phenomenon: it only happens when I cause it. |
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