Bronze-level articleChemtrails

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==External links==
 
==External links==
 
* [http://www.skepdic.com/chemtrails.html Chemtrails entry] in [[The Skeptic's Dictionary]]
 
* [http://www.skepdic.com/chemtrails.html Chemtrails entry] in [[The Skeptic's Dictionary]]
 +
* [http://www.esowatch.com/en/index.php?title=Chemtrail] Chemtrails at Esowatch
 
* [http://contrailscience.com/ Contrail Science], a blog debunking many specific reports of chemtrails
 
* [http://contrailscience.com/ Contrail Science], a blog debunking many specific reports of chemtrails
 
* [http://www.csicop.org/si/show/curious_contrails_death_from_the_sky/ Curious Contrails: Death from the Sky?], Ben Radford, [[Skeptical Inquirer]], Volume 33.2 (March/April 2009)
 
* [http://www.csicop.org/si/show/curious_contrails_death_from_the_sky/ Curious Contrails: Death from the Sky?], Ben Radford, [[Skeptical Inquirer]], Volume 33.2 (March/April 2009)

Revision as of 11:06, 11 August 2011

Some dare call it

Conspiracy

link=:category:
Secrets revealed!
The revealers

Chemtrails are an alleged conspiracy by which cranks claim that aircraft contrails are a form of chemical dispersal through which the government is attempting to poison people from above. This is a relatively recent conspiracy theory, having reached its peak in the 1990s, but is still going strong despite the evidence for the conspiracy being laughably lacking.

Contents

Contrails

Contrails from London City Airport, as viewed from Hackney.

Contrails are formed when hot high-pressure jet exhaust gases mix with rarefied cool air. In a process similar to cloud formation, the water present in the jet exhaust freezes quickly, forming a white haze. Since this process generally completes several hundred feet behind the aircraft, passengers on commercial airliners typically do not see contrails forming, giving weight to the claim that "chemtrails" only come from special military aircraft. Commercial planes also, of course, don't have windows that face the rear. This feature of contrails can often be seen in photos of purported chemtrails. However, the fact that there is a gap between the aircraft and the formation of the contrail is completely inconsistent with the idea that the planes are pumping out particulate matter and chemicals into the air as one would expect to see the trail form immediately behind the aircraft.[1]

Note that contrails are different than the grayish "vapor trails" sometimes seen when flying low with flaps extended. These are formed of liquid water from compression of moist air under the wing.

On days when cirrus cloud formation is occurring, there is more moisture in the upper atmosphere, and consequently, contrails may linger longer before evaporating. Since cirrus clouds often precede a general overcast or haze, the casual observer could easily assume that the contrails have caused the overcast, or become the overcast.

Chemtrails

The supposed purpose of the chemtrail campaign is admittedly unknown, but speculation includes:

  • Sterilization for genocide or population control
  • Administration of drugs for mind-control or pacification
  • Suppression of human evolution
  • To combat and control climate change [2]
  • To mask the appearance of Planet X/Nibiru
  • Various activities associated with grand conspiracy theories.

The alleged composition of chemtrails varies from one wingnut to another. According to the website of chemtrail "expert" Clifford Carnicom,[3] they may contain barium, calcium, magnesium, titanium, metallic salts, and microscopic fibers. Another site claims they are composed of “an oil based substance of unknown content” and “unknown biological components”.[4]

The alleged effects of chemtrails are incredibly varied. A claim of increase in respiratory diseases is common. Weather alteration is often mentioned. In chemtrail site forums nearly every unexplained headache or car-windshield spot is attributed to chemtrails.

It is known that barium (supposedly included in chemtrails) has the ability to prevent activation of certain T-cells, although this process is reversible and not a proven in vivo effect of barium exposure.[5] This has been made to fit into a wider secret plan to weaken the immune systems of the chemtrail targets.[6]

Photo evidence

Some photographic evidence of chemtrails supposedly exists, and is often touted around forums dedicated to the conspiracy. One particular photo shows what appears to be ominous looking tanks of "stuff" inside a commercial jet airliner.[7] However, leaving Paranoiaville and landing in Realityland, the image is of flight testing equipment. Tanks of water are used to simulate the weight of passengers (without using real people) and the fluidity and pumping equipment allows the weight distribution to be altered.[8] Other photographic "evidence" is just what it looks like; normal contrails of exhaust gases and condensed water vapor. More dramatic trails can be generated by injecting water into jet engines to create a more "smoky" exhaust either during take-off or for testing purposes.

Black ray

A black ray contrail

In the event that an aircraft is flying directly away from the setting or rising sun, the contrail may cause a spectacular crepuscular ray, known in chemtrail jargon as the "black ray", after it's sinister appearance. This has little to do with the chemicals sprayed into the contrail and everything to do with how the Earth blocks out the sun and due to the aircraft's high altitude, the opposite effect of noctiluminescent clouds. Basically, part of the contrail is lit, and part is in shadow as the sun sets or rises and the black part can be seen to move over time. It's not evil, it's the Law of Shadows... okay, that does sound a bit evil, but it's not really.

Germany admits to it!

At least one YouTube clip[9] claims to show a German news agency lifting the lid on military planes generating chemtrails and spraying barium into the atmosphere, according to the English subtitles. The actual German audio tells a rather different story: it's not about weather manipulation and chemicals, but about chaffs deployed from fighter planes during military exercises that were falsely registered as rain clouds on meteorological radars.

Here is a step-by-step instruction how to fabricate your very own "proof" of chemtrails, much like the above video:

  1. Pick a somewhat sensationalist news item about the use of chaff by the German military from a German TV station known for broadcasting low-budget movies and softcore porn. Don't worry, most people won't know that this isn't actually reliable news reporting in the first place.
  2. Add English subtitles, conveniently replacing all occurrences of "chaff" (German "Düppel") with "chemtrail", relying on the fact that the majority of your audience won't know that the German word for "chemtrail" is, well, "chemtrail". (If they knew, they might just notice that the word doesn't occur at all in the clip.) Make it appear as if the report is about actual "clouds" of chemicals, rather than false positives showing up only on radar screens.
  3. Add some subtle mistranslations that make it appear as if there is some form of evil intent behind all of this. Why talk about unintended distortions in radar images, when adding a slight twist will allow you to accuse the military of actively counterfeiting them?
  4. Replace more words in your subtitles, for example write climate instead of the more boring and mundane weather radar. Remember: your audience doesn't understand German, so you're free to sell them anything you want. Just make it marginally fit the video image.
  5. Upload on Youtube, hyping it as a "Mainstream Media Exposé".
  6.  ???
  7. Profit!

Chemtrail history and culture

Chemtrail theories were first brought to prominence in the 1990s by paranormal pusher and talk radio host Art Bell. Aided by the internet, it is now a world wide phenomenon and chemtrail watchers all over the globe exchange photographs and videos of their favorite contrails on forums and youtube.

Chemtrails were mentioned in US House Bill HR2977,[10] which banned various types of weapons in space. The reference to chemtrails was eventually removed, but the original inclusion is cited as evidence that they are a real phenomenon. Given that the original bill was introduced by Dennis Kucinich, it perhaps reveals more about Kucinich than about whether chemtrails are real.

The chemtrail conspiracy is most popular among those familiar with the New World Order and who claim that the spray is designed to pacify populations, either by making them sick, or some sort of mind control. Like many other pseudoscientific terms, earnest use of the word "chemtrails" immediately identifies the person using it as a crank, and is enough to harm credibility and provoke ridicule among those of a more rationalist disposition.

Chemtrail conspiracies make no sense

The very existence of the Grand Conspiracy required to administer chemtrails may be challenged on the basis of the difficulty of maintaining such a conspiracy for so long. Aerial spraying from high-altitude would be an extremely inefficient and inexact mode of delivering chemicals to ground-based targets. Pesticides, for example, are often sprayed on crops from airplanes flying at thirty feet. Wide-area mosquito spraying may be done from an altitude of 150 feet. Chemtrails are supposedly deposited at 30,000 feet or higher, where winds would likely disperse them unpredictably. If there were a campaign to introduce foreign chemicals to the population, it would be simpler and more effective to put them in the water supply (see water fluoridation), or the food supply; or if inhalation were necessary, to release them from ground-based vehicles - and have you seen the smoke coming suspiciously out of some cars?

All evidence presented by the conspiracy theorists focus on pictures of the sky. It is all perfectly consistent with contrails. No other evidence such as detection of chemicals or pictures of actual chemical spraying planes or documentation detailing the government's plan has ever been forthcoming.

Fighting the good fight

Websites devoted to raising awareness of chemtrails have failed to ignite the indignation of the masses to the extent that the chemtrails have stopped. So (in typical grand conspiracy fashion) the chemtrail believers claim that the powers that be, rather than revealing their evil purpose by overtly suppressing this knowledge, are covertly suppressing it by recruiting their agents in science and the media to ridicule it as bizarre, kooky and unbelievable.

Since awareness-raising efforts have so far proven ineffective, the pseudoscientific practice of cloudbusting using orgone energy has now been brought to bear on the problem of chemtrails.[4]

Our Sylph Allies

Cloudbusting warriors at the (in)famous Whale.to have been pleased to learn that they do not fight the evil government chemtrails alone. They have allies in the clouds! These nebulous allies, the sylphs, help eat up the poisonous "chemsoup", especially when boosted by orgone energy sent up from cloudbusters. You can observe a sylph in action here. Please note exactly how distinguishable the majestic sylph is from, say, a normal wispy cloud (see Pareidolia).

See also

External links

Footnotes

  1. See any picture of a crop duster, possibly the closest thing that reality has to a chemtrail or aerobatics aircraft that intentionally lay trails behind them. These do not feature a gap as jet contrails do.
  2. CBS News video: Local news report claims the government is controlling weather using airplanes
  3. Clifford Carnicom-Chemtrails
  4. 4.0 4.1 Metatech-Chemtrails and cloudbuster tech
  5. L T Peçanha and G A Dos Reis - Functional heterogeneity in the process of T lymphocyte activation; all modes of T-cell activation, except PHA-induced mitogenesis, were blocked in a reversible and dose-related manner by Ba2+
  6. Barium, Chemtrails & Immunosuppression, Bob Lee, Rense.com
  7. http://www.rense.com/1.imagesH/inside11.JPG
  8. Boeing.com - 787 Dreamliner testing
  9. Chemtrail Proof - German Military Exposed.
  10. Text of HR2977
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