Charles Fisher probably thought this line in his critical article about bottled water (with a special focus on Fiji water) would hit hard:
Each water bottler has its own version of this oxymoron: that something as pure and clean as water leaves a contrail.
That’s not an oxymoron. Contrails are made of 100% water.
Ignoring that, and the pervasive hand wringing about how we should value external impact over internal cost, it’s a pretty good read.
Lloyd Budd says
I had to look up the contrails 😉
Joshua McKenty says
I often wonder if contrails are the most obvious impact of modern society on the globe, since they can be seen for 100s or 1000s of miles, and have no corollary in pre-modern society.
Mark says
Most visually obvious, perhaps. The most measurable impact would probably be radio waves… you could measure those from outside the solar system.
But if someone were time-warped in from 1700 and stuck in the middle of nowhere, contrails might just be the first human-observable indication that something funky is going on.
Andy says
Wow, great read. Thanks for linking to it.