Large Ground-Based Telescopes May Become Worthless in 40 Years
Global warming and artificial clouds created by jet contrails may increase so dramatically in the next decades that they may change the Earth's climate and seriously hinder our ability to study the skies from ground-based telescopes. Contrails from jet aircraft are significantly increasing the cloudiness of the Earth, reflecting sunlight back into space by day and radiating heat back to Earth at night. In the future, all large optical and infrared observatories may need to be space-based. However, ground-based radio astronomy should be able to continue unimpaired.
Comments:
Sounds like we'll all be seeing through contrails as amateur astronomers unless our jets begin to fly on something else. You'd think in this day and age, we wouldn't need to do so much business travel. Why not tele-commune? If people in India can do our jobs from there, why can't we do our jobs, where-ever they are, from here?
It's about time someone recognized this problem. Today in Seattle (3-4-06)the entire sky was marred by spreading contrails (see image of old and new "contrails"). Instead of what would have otherwise been a clear blue sky there was a crosshatch pattern of contrails of varying widths that continualy drifted overhead.By the time evening came the contrail cover was so bad I decided it wasn't worth setting up my telescope.The previous post mentioned that a change in the jet fuel might help the problem, but I think that there HAS been a change in the jet fuel and that IS the problem. I have been an Amateur Astronomer for 35 years and it wasn't until the last 6 or 7 years that the phenomenon of spreading contrails was a problem. Before 6 or 7 years ago a spreading contrail was a rarity that happened only in certain weather conditions , now spreading contrails are the norm and happen in multiples almost every day. If there is someone out there who can shed some light on this subject please do, maybe we can put a stop to it before the light is almost completely extinguished from our telescopes.
Excellent comments George. I have been viewing the sky for over 30 years and agree with all you've said and more. I did notice for a period of time after 911 (when most plane flights were canceled) an obvious transparency I haven't seen in years! I later saw a weather science special with weatherman Vince Gibbons where he talked about this atmospheric stratification phenomenon after 911 and its effects on global warming and weather prediction. It is time we realize our impact on the environment and begin to make change before something more life threatening than poor stargazing occurs (although serious enough to amateur astronomers) I personally can't see any easy solution; perhaps a change to hydrogen fuel. This may help with transparency, but may have less effect on air turbulence and unsteady air.
It's time for the world to take some real notice what we are doing to the planet at large. America is the leader in everything. We need to step up and show the world how to do it. But it's not going to happen while Bush is in the White House. I voted for a jackass !
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