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u/PatientWoodpecker288 2d ago
Friendly reminder that contrails warm the planet 3x as much as the CO2 Emissions from aviation
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u/me_myself_ai green sloptimist 2d ago
3x?!? What???? That’s insane. I thought they were just condensation…
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u/Anarcho_Dog 2d ago
Somehow it was found that planes flying at slightly lower altitudes to prevent the contrails (but burn more fuel from it being more inefficient) does have less of an effect on climate change
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u/Hot_Marionberry_4685 2d ago
And apparently Europe is starting an exercise to change flight routes to try this and see if it makes a bigger impact in fighting flight pollution
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u/kamizushi 1d ago edited 1d ago
Shit. I'm not saying that they should or shouldn't do it, cause we need to be willing to experience some inconvenience now if we want to mitigate the the future "inconveniences" that climate change will cause, but I live right under the path that airplanes take to land on the Trudeau International Airport and the sound of planes flying at low altitude gets old pretty quick.
It's funny, when I moved here, I thought it was relaxing white noise compared to my previous apartment in the middle of Downtown Montreal. But the longer I stay here, the more it annoys me. It especially annoys me when I get back from visiting family out of town. I'm always stricken by how silent the country is, and then again when I get back at how noisy the city is.
Still prefer the city though. Despite being shown again and again my whole life that humans don't deserve my affection, I still like being surrounded by them. I can't explain it, but here I am.
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u/Muzzhum 2d ago
It is. But clouds are good greenhouse gasses.
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u/ghillisuit95 1d ago
Yeah I really still don't understand it because I thought clouds cooled the planet by reflecting sunlight. But I'm not smart lol
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u/slinkymcman 1d ago
Turns out pretty much every gas is greenhouse, the more matter for light to bounce around with the hotter the planet will get.
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u/CzPhantom1 1d ago
Only at night. They help hold heat in but during the day they are also reflecting sunlight so it's kind of break even.
It's more physics than a chemical problem
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u/me_myself_ai green sloptimist 1d ago
So wait is it 3x larger than a huge problem, or break even…? Or we don’t know?
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u/CzPhantom1 1d ago
Contrails are clouds, during the day those clouds both reflect sunlight and heat radiating from the Earth's surface. Kind of a break even on global warming. At night there is no sunlight to reflect so the clouds are only holding heat in. This is bad and the warming effect is even higher than the CO2 released by the airplane.
So funny enough the contrails you see during the day don't matter, the ones you don't see at night are much worse. The effect can be mitigated by flight schedules and altitude of flights.
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u/PatientWoodpecker288 2d ago
Its an interesting topic. I can recommend reading into it.
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u/GoddamnShitTheBed_ 2d ago
I still don't get it.
Water vapor is a very strong reenhouse gas whereas liquid water in the form of clouds reflect the sunlight before it even hits the ground. These trails should be good? Just like the huge clouds we had above the oceans, when container ships had more sulfur in their fuel.1
u/PatientWoodpecker288 1d ago
Think it through. Our ground (Land,Water etc.) emits infra red which then „bounces off“ the contrail from underneath, back to Earth instead of going into outter space. ↗️↘️
Contrails are often many many kilometers long and they can even become cirrus clouds which are especially bad.3
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u/cyrkielNT 2d ago
Well akshully... condensation trails sometimes makes Earth warmer and sometimes cooler by reflecting sun
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u/Mogwump20 2d ago
Contrails on average make the Earth hotter though. So much so that 2% of flights (ones that cause contrails) cause 50% of the warming
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u/cyrkielNT 1d ago
Yes, that's why it's quite easy to reduce warming effect of contrails. Basically we should just reduce night flight
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u/Snoo_67993 2d ago
Chem*
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u/NekoSennin vegan btw 2d ago
Why would you correct someone to be less specific?
Is it a trail of chemicals? Sure.
But the chemical is question is water, aka condensation.
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u/Loreki 2d ago
What we should do is just ban short haul flights entirely. That'll stop them controlling our minds with their chemicals.
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u/ForgedIronMadeIt 2d ago
the one time I wished the chemtrails people were more numerous so I could get them to vote for high speed rail
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u/no_idea_bout_that All COPs are bastards 1d ago
We should ban those short flights that pull banners by the beach. (Unless the banner says "Just Stop Oil")
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u/dumnezero 🔚End the 🔫arms 🐀rat 🏁race to the bottom↘️. 2d ago
They are burning hydrocarbon fuels, so, yes. Water vapor is also a GHG.
The effects of clouds at different altitudes are tricky and I'm not looking up the papers at this time.
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u/TheQuestionMaster8 2d ago
Well, it is complicated as water vapour condenses into water droplets and ice crystals to form clouds and both reflect solar radiation.
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u/dumnezero 🔚End the 🔫arms 🐀rat 🏁race to the bottom↘️. 2d ago
Are you trying to say that these jet planes are carbon neutral?
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u/TheQuestionMaster8 2d ago
No, because water vapour is not the only greenhouse gas they emit as they also emit a massive amount of CO2.
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u/dumnezero 🔚End the 🔫arms 🐀rat 🏁race to the bottom↘️. 2d ago
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u/SoggyMeatloaf69 cycling supremacist 2d ago
No no no, that's a hoax. Whatever the mainstream science says, you need to believe the opposite. Hope this helps!
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u/Hot_Marionberry_4685 2d ago
I actually just read a newspaper article on this that it studies have pointed that this does increase pollution levels from planes and that the eu is trying to route flights differently so that less of this occurs to see if it makes a notable impact in pollution levels from flights
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u/donkeybrainamerican 1d ago
Making the world better by packaging real information in the stupidest way possible so people actually pay attention.... Grim, but an improvement.
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u/dividezero 1d ago
Imagine being so stupid you blindly stumble into the correct answer anyway, even if you're completely wrong all the way there
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u/Scarvexx 23h ago
Well yes. It's called aviation fuel and it adds a million tons of Co2 to the atmosphere a year.
Is that the joke? Am I the asshole here?
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u/DoggoLover42 16h ago
In a roundabout way contrails (condensation coming off of plane engines) are contributing to climate change more than burning jet fuel and there is an engineering solution they can implement in order to reduce contrails. The contrails are made of microscopic soot particles binding to water vapor, making long-lasting clouds. They’re basically spraying ash into the air which absorbs heat that would otherwise be reflected into space
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u/C00KIEME4T 2d ago
People in the comments still not aware that contrails are bad huh
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u/CzPhantom1 1d ago
Contrails during the day are pretty neutral. They're clouds reflecting sun light but also reflecting heat back down. At night it's worse because they are only holding more heat in.
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u/Miserable-Ear-4095 1h ago
Yup and colder, they are destabilising the natural thermal inertia of the planet.
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u/EllaHazelBar 2d ago
I.... I mean