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Contrails from planes criss-cross the skies in Las Vegas on April 11. (Marianne Donnelly)
NEW YORK—Depending on whom you ask, the white plumes left behind from aircraft are chemical trails or contrails.
Contrails are regular airplane exhaust, while chemical trails are airplane exhaust with added chemicals.
Two organizations submitted a resolution in Suffolk County to regulate any entity spraying chemicals into the atmosphere from up above including aluminum oxide, sulfur, and salts, citing potentially harmful effects.
Exemptions are made for agricultural and vector control spraying. A public hearing about legislation based on the proposal was held in Riverhead on Dec. 6.
The legislation seeks to raise local and international awareness on the serious impact of geoengineering, said Rosiland Peterson, who helped write the initial legislation.
The term geoengineering describes activities that are designed to manipulate the climate through two
broad categories, removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and forming a barrier to reflect sunlight away from the earth, or solar reduction management (SRM).
Injecting aerosols into the stratosphere, mimicking a volcanic eruption, is one technique that is used.
Geoengineering is becoming a popular option to combat climate change, as a bevy of reports from government and scientific entities examining the subject over the last several years’ show.
This is already happening: at the turn of the century at least 26 governments were conducting weather-alternating experiments, including the United States military, according to a 2011 report by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars titled “Geoengineering for Decision Makers.”
The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and the Department of Defense Space Test Program conducted the charged aerosol release experiment, which was essentially shooting a rocket into the atmosphere that dumped more than 100 kilograms of aluminum oxide into the atmosphere.
Peterson likened it to “the use of our atmosphere as a physics laboratory.”
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a July 21 study that an increase in particles high in Earth’s atmosphere has offset a third of the climate warming influence of carbon dioxide during the past decade.
Peterson, and three individuals from Long Island Sky Watch, the other organization behind the proposal, are concerned about the negative impact of reduced photosynthesis on plants and trees, lack of sunlight leading to reduced solar panel production, less absorption of Vitamin D, and decreased crop output.“All life on earth requires direct sunlight through the photosynthesis process,” said Peterson, who is co-founder of the Agriculture Defense Coalition, and has studied geoengineering for almost a decade.
SRM will “reduce the amount of direct sunlight reaching the Earth,” added Peterson, which equals reduced photosynthesis.
The legislation will be voted on by the Suffolk County Health Committee on Dec 15 and, if it passes, will go before the Suffolk County Board for a vote on Dec 20, according to Long Island Sky Watch.
