posted 01-08-2001 11:49 AM            

I received this message this morning from someone who dares to take it one step beyond where such research stops at the "chemtrail" websites and message boards. If there is one thing I have learned from Jay Reynolds over the past year, it is to go one step beyond, a challenge not many take. Not that long ago, like most, he was my nemesis. However, trusting "my instincts and my own eyes" as to what I was witnessing was factually and acutally incorrect, and in proving that to myself in an attempt to prove him wrong, I got control of my self-induced paranoia. Removing the veil of paranoia is removing blinders.

Since I haven't seen anything from Jay posted here lately, I am taking the liberty to publish this e-mail he sent me. I've seen his personal e-mails published at other boards. If there is one thing you can count on, it is Jay Reynolds will contact any person whose work is quoted for purposes of chemtrail existence.

Yes, Jay, I can guess why. My guess is people will believe what they read without taking the initiative to look beyond or question. Been there, done that, but never again.

Dear Deb,

I noted a few weeks ago that some consternation has developed over at the
carny-com board about SF6 gas being used as a tracer in experiments, with
the leap of logic falling off the cliff towards a conclusion that this was
connected to purported "chemtrails"(actually normal contrails). Further, the
hypothesis was raised By Deborah of Boston that SF6 might currently have
some effect on purported "global warming"(as yet unproven).

Even though I sent her copious references and links regarding the negligible
effect of this trace gas, especially compared to other positive forcing
emissions, and encouraged Deborah to seek out the attached paper below, she
never responded or referred others to the information I sent her. I later
saw that she has made public claims that I was harrrassing her, even though
she never bothered to tell me about it or document her claims.

As I told her via email, I did not contact Dr. Maiss myself, until it became
apparrent that she had not. So, last week I wrote him and he has graciously
supplied me with his research results which show that
trends in atmospheric SF6 concentrations have declined, and a reversal of
the levels is now underway, this change being most likely due to
economization and awareness of it's forcing potential.

I hope that this can put to rest that partiular speculation, and that people
can now go on to more important matters such as using FlightExplorer to
actually identify the planes people see leaving contrails, as you have done.
This instance is illustrative of what real research can accomplish, as
opposed to speculation without follow-up, even the "global warming"
promotion websites have not done this research, and continue to display the
false upwards trend, can you guess why?
Jay Reynolds
=====================
Dear Jay Reynolds,

please find attached a copy of our SF6 paper. The percentage of SF6
emissions that comes out of the civil use of SF6 as experimental tracer is
hard to quantify but far below 1% and thus can be ignored. The quantity of
SF6 emissions due to military tracer experiments is unknown but might be
higher. To answer the question, if the reversal of the upward trend in SF6
emissions stabilises, more recent SF6 measurements are to be looked at.
Please ask my co-author, Dr.
Brenninkmeijer (carlb@mpch-mainz.mpg.de), on that, since he continues work
in that field of science. The slowing down of the emissions of SF6 might
have multiple reasons. In our paper, we showed that the awareness on wasting
SF6 to the atmosphere seems to be triggered by the market price.

I hope I could answer your questions. If there is anything else I can do for
you, please do not hesitate to ask.

Sincerely,
Manfred Maiss
================================================
Dr. Manfred Maiss
DFS Deutsche Flugsicherung GmbH
German Air Navigation Services
ATM Operations (Division FDF)
P.O. Box 100551
D-63005 Offenbach am Main
Phone +49- (0) 69-8054-1321
Fax +49- (0) 69-8054-1399
E-Mail manfred.maiss@dfs.de
Internet http://www.dfs.de
==================================
A reversed trend in emissions of SF6 into the atmosphere ?M Maiss* and C
A M Brenninkmeijer Max-Planck-Institut für Chemie, Air Chemistry Division,
P.O. Box 3060, 55020 Mainz, Germany, E-mail: carlb@mpch-mainz.mpg.de ; * Now
at: DFS - German Air Navigation Services, P.O. Box 100551, 63005
Offenbach, Germany, E-mail: manfred.maiss@dfs.deKey words Sulfur
hexafluoride, greenhouse gas, emission, observations, Izaņa,
Spitsbergen
Abstract Sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) has an extremely long
atmospheric lifetime and forms the most potent greenhouse gas known. Since
it further shows the potential for a substantial emission reduction of
CO2-equivalents, the Kyoto protocol has placed SF6 in the focus of attention
of scientists, process engineers and policy makers. Maiss and Brenninkmeijer
(1998) inferred from sales data (1953-1996) and atmospheric observations
(1978-1996) a chronology of the accumulation of SF6 in the atmosphere that
starts at low natural background levels in the 1950s and shows a clear and
distinct increase up to the year 1996. Since that time, no further sales
data are available but ongoing atmospheric monitoring of SF6 reveals, that
the trend of rising annual emissions seems to be broken about three years
ago. From a new 8year record of SF6 observations from Izaņa (1991-1999) -
the longest high-precision record of SF6 in the northern hemisphere - we
derive annual emissions of SF6 that have declined from peak values of
6700 tons/yr in 1995 to around 4900 tons/yr in 1998. This is a reduction by
27%, equivalent to 43 million tons of CO2, and probably first of all due to
the growing awareness of the climatical relevance of SF6. This has
stimulated a less lavish release practice in all applications. Different
scenarios of changing industrial application practices are discussed. A
relationship between market price and release rate of SF6 is shown
suggesting also an economical motivated emission
reduction.
1. Introduction
Worldwide, the dominant uses of SF6 are in
gas-insulated equipment for electrical transmission and distribution systems
and in blanketing or degassing of molten reactive metals such as magnesium
and aluminum. The industrial production of SF6 began in 1953 with the market
introduction of SF6-insulated circuit breakers in the United States. Since
then, production has
grown steadily but at an increased rate since 1972
when the use of SF6 in gas insulated switchgear (GIS) became widespread.
Releases from these "closed" and other more recent "open" applications have
accumulated nearly entirely in our atmosphere and have caused an increase of
the atmospheric burden from virtually zero in 1953 to (92,000 tons SF6 in
1996 (Figure 1).

Figure  SEQ Figure \* ARABISCH 1. Atmospheric history
of SF6 inferred from background air analyses since the 1970s and from
accumulated emissions reconstructed from revised sales data (extracted from
Figure 5c of Maiss and Brenninkmeijer (1998)). The conversion of the global
mean surface concentration to the corresponding total atmospheric burden is
described by a second scale.

Although total emissions of SF6 are far lower
than those of the other greenhouse gases discussed in Kyoto, its longevity
makes it an important target for reductions. With a large global warming
potential (GWP100)  23,900 times greater than that of CO2  and an
atmospheric lifetime of most likely about 3200 years, it is the most potent
greenhouse gas evaluated by the IPCC (1995). At the Kyoto Summit on Climate
Change, SF6 was included into the basket of the six "greenhouse gases" on
negotiation: CO2, CH4, N2O, HFCs, PFCs and SF6 . The United Nations'
Framework Convention on Climate Change has encouraged the assessment and
regulation of SF6 emissions (Cook 1995). Anyhow, it is desirable that users
of SF6 establish a policy aimed at minimizing the  in contrast to CO2 
virtually irreversible accumulation of any released SF6 in the atmosphere
for thousands of years.

Figure  SEQ Figure \* ARABISCH 2. Recent
atmospheric SF6 observations and trends: (a) Data for Spitsbergen and
Izaņa with a de-seasonalized smooth trend of the Izaņa record. Data for Cape
Grim and fitted curves of the long-term trends, globally and for both
hemispheres are adapted from Maiss and Brenninkmeijer (1998). Different
scales give the conversion of global mean surface concentrations to the
corresponding atmospheric burden. (b) Annual release and increase rate
obtained as derivative of the global trend and the smoothed Izaņa record in
Figure 2a (c) Rough estimate of the US market price of SF6
The present
study is also an update of the observations and interpretations given by
Maiss and Brenninkmeijer (1998) for the years until 1996. For a better
understanding of the emission inventories for NCGGs it adds eight years of
new SF6 data for the period 1991-1999 from the global atmospheric watch
station Izaņa at Tenerife, Canary Islands, which is the longest atmospheric
SF6 record available for the northern hemisphere. The last three years of
this record and observations from Spitsbergen, all published for the first
time, reveal a drop of the SF6 increase rate in the atmosphere that is
surprisingly large and distinct. The reasons behind that improvement are
discussed since corresponding SF6 sales data are yet not available for a
cross-check.
2. Results and Discussion
Time integrated samples are obtained
biweekly from Izaņa and instantaneous spot samples from Spitsbergen. Both
sets which were originally collected as pressurized high volume air samples
for isotope analysis, have been analyzed additionally for SF6 (see Maiss et
al. (1996) for the sampling technique). Since 1996 analyses of SF6 have been
made at the Max-Planck-Institute for Chemistry (MPI-C) at Mainz by gas
chromatography (GC) using a HP-6890 with electron capture detection (ECD).
The accuracy, expressed as standard deviation of 10 repeated analyses of
10 mL aliquots, with intermediate calibrations, was on average better than
(0.015 pmol mol1. Samples prior to 1996 were analyzed for SF6 using the
Heidelberg cryo-trapping GC/ECD system (Maiss et al. 1996). Its high
analytical precision of (0.3% for SF6 is now also realized for the GC/ECD
system at the MPIC. Both data sets refer to the same calibration scale,
with the Heidelberg data published by Maiss et al. (1996) re-analyzed in the
present study for small blank effects in order to obtain a consistent data
record. Compared to the earlier published results, changes vary between 0.1
and +0.05 pmol mol1 and are  depending on the date of analysis 
irregularly distributed over the years 1991-1993. Izaņa data including the
partly revised ones are shown in Figure 2a and are available on request
under the e-mail address carlb@mpch-mainz.mpg.de of Carl
Brenninkmeijer.
Figure 2a shows recent observations of SF6 at three
background air monitoring stations, Cape Grim, Izaņa and Spitsbergen. Cape
Grim data and fitted curves for the long-term trends of the mean surface
concentration, globally and for both hemispheres (NH and SH) are taken from
Maiss and Brenninkmeijer (1998). The global trend in Figure 1 and 2a is
based mainly on the Cape Grim data. Since the 1970s it followed closely a
quadratic time dependency. At least from 1997 onward the observations of
Izaņa show that this more than 20 year old trend is now no longer valid. A
shorter 2year record from Spitsbergen is added in Figure 2a in order to
verify that our Izaņa observations display not a single stations artefact.
Indeed, the Spitsbergen data describe the same reduced concentration
increase. A mean
offset with respect to the Izaņa record of
0.07 pmol mol1 is observed which agrees with the respective offset for data
from Alert (82°N, 63°W) (Maiss et al. 1996). This offset reflects the
average latitudinal gradient in the NH. Until 1996 the mean surface trend of
the NH is quite well expressed by the Izaņa record. It is reasonable to
assume that Izaņa observations represent the mean trend of the NH also in
the following years. In order to extract a long-term trend from the Izaņa
data, oscillations shorter than one year were filtered out using Fast
Fourier Transformation (FFT). The remaining signal is a smooth
deseasonalized SF6 trend (Figure 2a) which deviates significantly from the
extrapolated trend fit of the NH from 1997 onwards.
Figure 2b provides
annual increase rates obtained through the time derivative of the global
trend fit and the smoothed Izaņa record. As a rule of thumb, these values
have to be multiplied by a factor of 25,000 in order to get annual emission
rates in tons of SF6 (Maiss and Brenninkmeijer 1998). A decline from peak
values of 6700 tons/yr in 1995 to around 4900 tons/yr in 1998 is observed.
This is a reduction by 27%, equivalent to 43 million tons of CO2.
Importantly it means that the trend of steadily increasing annual releases
now is broken.

Figure 3. Annual release rates inferred from atmospheric
observations compared to cumulative sales of SF6 revised for different
end-use applications according to Figure 4 of Maiss and Brenninkmeijer
(1998)

Figure 3 allows to compare the recent drop of observed release
rates with the cumulated annual turnovers of the different end-use
applications. The drop is so large, that  except of the sector "utilities
and accelerators"  changes of any single application practice are not able
to explain it alone. Even the total of all applications anounced to be
medium-term phased out (open systems in the electronics industry, the
degassing of aluminum, the
filling of tires, of sound-insulating windows,
and of sport shoes) has only a potential of an emission reduction of
<1000 tons/yr. Thus a major part of the observed release reduction must come
from the major applications: magnesium industry, electrical applications.
Without any sales data from 1997 onward, Figure 3 leaves room for a variety
of speculations about which application contributes how much to the observed
decline. Probably above all the growing awareness of the climatical
relevance of SF6 has stimulated a less lavish release practice in all
applications.
Figure 2c suggests that the price of SF6 might have been a
promoter of the observed emission reduction. The given estimates of the U.S.
market price of SF6 for larger volumes admittedly are rather uncertain
(Philip Bolin, product manager at Mitsubishi Electric Power Products Inc.,
Warrendale, PA, personal communication) but their changes might be
interpreted in the following way: The increasing demand from 1993 onward,
approaching probably the limits of existing production rates, made the price
of SF6 soar. Thus, a less lavish release practice probably was a clear
economic answer from many users of SF6. This impetus eased the market after
the "panic years" of 1996 and 1997. The economic pressure felt might be an
interesting real world example in terms of hotly discussed policies applying
equivalents to a tax per ton CO2. However, since the price has eased again,
measures have to be taken motivating further reductions, the feasibility of
which has been suggested by Maiss and Brenninkmeijer (1998), in order to
guarantee that the recent emission rate reductions are not a transient
phenomenon.

Acknowledgement. We wish to thank the staff of the stations
Izaņa (Emilio Quevas) and Spitsbergen LSF for carefully collecting the air
samples, Volker Walz and Rolf Hofmann for SF6 measurements, and Harald
Schäfer for the re-analysis of chromatograms. In particular we thank
Ingeborg Levin for cooperation in SF6 analysis. Special thanks go to Jochen
Harnisch for his always motivating discussions. The air sampling program
which has made many of the actual SF6 measurements possible was supported by
the European Union (DGXII) (CO-OH-EUROPE until December
1999).
References
Cook, E. (1995). Lifetime Commitments: Why climate
policy-makers can't afford to overlook fully fluorinated compounds.
WRI - World Resources Institute, Washington, DC,
IPCC (1995). Summary for
Policymakers and Technical Summary of the Working Group I Report.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - IPCC 1995.
Maiss, M., Steele,
L.P., Francey, R.J., Fraser, P.J., Langenfelds, R.L., Trivett, N.B.A., and
Levin, I. (1996). Sulfur hexafluoride - a powerful new atmospheric tracer.
Atmos. Environ., Vol. 30, Nos. 10/11. pp. 1621-1629.
Maiss, M. and
Brenninkmeijer, C.A.M. (1998). Atmospheric SF6 , trends, sources and
prospects. Environ. Sci. Technol., Vol. 32, pp. 3077-3086.

posted 01-08-2001 08:59 PM            

We are not on the same wavelength. So be it.