[burkaman]

It links to this post which has a little more technical explanation: https://notebook.contrails.org/comparing-contrails-and-co2/

And also this paper which is a very in-depth technical explanation: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S135223102...

I understand why you're reminded of chemtrails, but it is not crazy or conspiratorial to look at these giant lines in the sky and think "those things must be doing something". You can't then make the leap to "it's intentional and it's a biological weapon to control my mind and I don't need any evidence to believe this", but you can take the next step of looking into decades of research on the topic and deciding if the conclusions make sense to you.

[dylan604]

Where I'm from, contrails are so small and irrelevant compared to the giant cumulonimbus clouds that form in the high heat and humidity. It's like tears in the rain in comparison.

[burkaman]

I don't know what to tell you, they are not irrelevant even if they visually look irrelevant from where you are. Small things can have a big impact, CO2 is only ~0.04% of the atmosphere (compared to the ideal level of ~0.03%) and it's causing us major problems.

[pixl97]

Right there is local climate too that has different effects.

Imagine a large city in an area that is always cloudy versus one in a sunny desert. They are both the same size, but the one in the desert is going to have an absolutely massive amount of evening heat release due to the urban heatsink effect.

[grues-dinner]

> not crazy or conspiratorial to look at these giant lines in the sky and think "those things must be doing something"

I think more accurately it's not crazy to think they might be doing something. I could equally be convinced if researchers crunched the numbers and concluded they might seem big but they're negligible on a global scale. In fact the same figure of "only 3%" of flights really have an effect" could easily have cut the other way.

A bit like how wind turbines look huge and numerous but are (as yet and for the foreseeable future) completely negligible on the scale of global wind power.

In fact plenty of times much closer to home, thinking "this very obvious thing must be having an effect" and failing to verify that it actually does has screwed me over repeatedly in everything from bug fixing to installing floorboards.

[burkaman]

Sure, I meant "must be" in the colloquial sense of "I have a suspicion", not "I am absolutely certain". Like "it's 5pm, must be a lot of traffic on the highway right now". If traffic turned out to be light I would be mildly surprised, update my assumptions and move on with my life.

[grues-dinner]

Fair enough, it was pedantic. But the distinction is exactly where conspiracists come unstuck.