The Evil "Chem Trail"

I have heard a theory circling around lately: that the jet contrails that airplanes leave behind are actually hurting the environment, and some people are going as far as saying that the government is putting chemicals in the trails to further increase global warming. These two theories are what is being discussed in this post.

The first theory is based off of a sound principle. Water vapor, the main principle of clouds and jet contrails, is a greenhouse gas, trapping heat in the earth's atmosphere. Although water vapor does not have much as much of a negative effect as carbon dioxide does, there is a lot more water vapor in the atmosphere than there is carbon dioxide. So, basically, this theory is saying that adding water vapor into the air is artificially increasing the amount of greenhouse gasses in the air, therefore increasing the rate of global warming.

To a minimal extent, this is most certainly true. But when one looks at the number of contrails that exist, and compared that number to the number of clouds that exist in the atmosphere, the number of contrails is minimal. For this reason, contrails are not having a drastic effect on the environment, or at least that is how I see it.

The second theory is based in conspiracy. What people are thinking is that water vapor dissipates into the atmosphere after a short period of time, but many jet contrails actually stick around in the sky for hours. They think that these contrails cannot be made of just water vapor, there must be some chemicals in them. They speculate that these chemicals are placed there by the government to increase global warming and cause a global disaster. This, my friends, is most definitely not true. But now you may be wondering what the real deal is with those pesky contrails that just do not go away.

Well, water vapor will dissipate into the atmosphere at different rates depending on the temperature, the altitude, and the humidity. My theory is that those contrails just will not go away because of those changing factors. The temperature and the humidity might have reached the air's saturation point at that altitude, making it impossible for any more water vapor to dissipate, because the air is literally filled to capacity with water.

So, as you can see, contrails are really not much to be concerned about yet. Although there may be a problem that most people are looking past, it is highly unlikely that any earth processes are going to be made worse by these contrails, and it is absolutely impossible that the government is trying to worsen these properties by using contrails.