Six Reasons why "Chemtrails" are a Hoax
I first heard about "chemtrails" about five years ago, from an individual on a pre-Y2k preparedness forum. About six months later, I logged onto one
of the chemtrail forums, and followed many links, evaluating both pro-chemtrail and anti-chemtrail research. I have also talked to many people about
these phenomena, including meteorologists, commercial airplane pilots/crew, and other aerospace engineers with direct experience with large fixed-wing
aircraft. I came to conclusions that I would like to discuss below; but first, I'd like to tell you about me, because it may (or may not) give you
some insights as to why I believe what I do.
First, I want to emphasize that I do not speak for, or act as an agent for, my employer, The Boeing Company, in any way, shape, or form. My views are
completely my own and do not necessarily reflect the views on anyone else at Boeing. As a matter of fact, I doubt if most of my colleagues have even
heard of chemtrails. However, with thirty years in the aerospace/defense business, experience as a pilot (small aircraft only) and a habit of reading
a lot, I hope that my views have something to back them up. Okay, here's my read on the view that some contrails are more than normal jet engine
exhaust:
It's completely bogus. The idea that long-lasting contrails are anything other than normal contrails, in my belief, fails on six counts:
1. The existence of a huge and sinister plot is completely lacking in evidence.
2. The logistics of a massive spraying program would be an order of magnitude higher than the Manhattan Project, the Apollo Moon Landing, or
the Vietnam War -- and simply could not be hidden from any oversight.
3. There is no evidence whatsoever of aircraft modified to perform some of the spraying methodologies that are proposed.
4. Anecdotal "evidence" of any illnesses caused by contrails is not backed up by any reliable data (and is actually contradicted by others).
5. There has never been any evidence of anyone collecting some of this "chemtrail" material in situ, having it tested by any reputable
laboratory, and presented to anyone.
6. Every characteristic of chemtrails can be just as logically and rationally explained by normal contrails under normal (but differentiating)
atmospheric conditions.
Now let's look at those counts in a bit more detail.
(1) The existence of a huge and sinister plot is completely lacking in evidence. The President; Congress; SecDef; Director of the FAA; the
entire command structure of the various armed services; every military man or woman who flies, maintains, fuels, and overhauls aircraft; every
commercial pilot and crew member; every meteorologist; and every aerospace engineer who builds, sells, modifies, or maintains the entire fleet of
worldwide commercial aircraft comprise a group of about half a million people. Every one of them would have to be in on the plot. And in the X number
of years that this "chemtrail" stuff has been going on, NOT A SINGLE ONE OF THEM has come out and said anything about it! What is the chance of a
plot that requires the help of a half-million people being secret for more than six milliseconds? Zero.
As a matter of fact, there is no evidence of any sort of plot of any kind by the Bilderbergers, Illuminati, International Zionists, CFR, NWO, the
International House of Pancakes, or anyone else.
Is our government corrupt and immoral? I believe so. Is the UN controlled by a bunch of socialist third-world losers with their hands out for the US
to feed them and fight their wars for them? I think so, too. But that does NOT mean that they are heading a huge, secret, centuries-old plot to have
the Black Helicopters Manned By Crack Bolivian Troops In Blue Berets Haul Us Off To The Secret Concentration Camps In Roachspit, Texas Where We Will
Be Forced To Knit UN Flags And Eat Ebola-Burgers. It just means that they're crooks! So what else is new?
(2) The logistics of a massive spraying program. In order to have the massive worldwide spraying that the chemtrail-protagonists talk about
would require thousands of aircraft, flying 24/7 shifts, with the additional support infrastructure, a bazillion pilots and ground crew, and the
combined efforts of every employee at Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and even Airbus Industrie. It isn't there.
(3) There is no evidence whatsoever of aircraft modified to perform some of the spraying methodologies that are proposed. The only things I
have ever seen on an aircraft that shoot things out (besides the engine exhaust) is the toilet and the fuel dump orifices, often at the wing tip. If
the aircraft are squirting chemicals out of the fuel dump nozzles, what's in the fuel tanks? Poisonous chemicals? Huh-uh. (One exception to this is a
military version of a civilian aircraft called TACAMO, a Navy variant of the AWACS aircraft. It has these oddball nozzles near the base of the wings.
But they're still fuel-dump nozzles; they've merely been moved inboard because the TACAMO has reconnaissance pods at the wingtips, and they don't
want to jettison JP-8 over the million-dollar electronics.)
Bear in mind that you don't just strap in a couple of big tanks and poke the nozzles out through the aircraft fuselage. There are VERY stringent
engineering details to be worked out regarding structural integrity, movable center of gravity, environmental protection for the crew and
poison-loaders, etc. Almost all major mods to an aircraft are done under subsequent contract to the original builder. Since no one at Boeing knows
anything about such mods (and I've asked around) this means it either wasn't done, or everyone else (but me) in the company is in on the secret.
Huh-uh.
(4) Anecdotal "evidence" of any illnesses caused by contrails is not backed up. One of the hypotheses of "chemtrails" is that they're
toxic/infectious/bad juju. Various people report that they came down with flu-like symptoms after a heavy "spray day". As someone who does a lot of
travel (domestic and international), I've flown out of a lot of airports and through a lot of other aircraft's contrails over the past five years.
If the poison-chemtrail hypothesis had any merit, there would be tons of sick passengers crawling off the 0900 shuttle to LAX; I've never seen 'em,
nor has anyone I've talked with. If there is some weird residue in the contrails other than water with traces of JP-8, you'd see aircraft taxiing
into the concourse with some sort of crud over the leading edges. I've never seen any of that, nor has anyone I've talked with.
One possible explanation for those flu-like symptoms? Flu. There's tons of it going around, and it's been that way since 1918.
(5) There has never been any evidence of anyone collecting some of this "chemtrail" material in situ, having it tested by any
reputable laboratory, and presented to anyone. With all the interest in this crud, why hasn't anyone ever flown up to a "chemtrail", sampled
some of the stuff, and brought it back to a reputable lab for test and reported on it?
One site purporting to talk about a laboratory testing a sample told how some individual scraped "something" off the side of a house, and sent it to
one of the chemtrail protagonists. This individual sent it to a laboratory where he says they reported it had some bacteria in it. But then the
individual says the lab "changed its mind" and said there was nothing wrong. Not only that, but our friend said he would not tell us the name of
either the lab or the investigator because of ... of... something or other. That sure raises a credibility issue to me! Another researcher says he has
the information, but he wants to be "compensated" for all the work he's put in before he tells us his tale. Puh-leez!
If there were just one case of someone with any credibility collecting some of this junk before it falls to the earth and gets worms on it, then sends
it to a lab where objective individuals can review it under open conditions and publish their findings, that might lend a bit more credence to the
whole chemtrail business. I'm waiting, but I don't think I'll skip dinner.
(6) Every characteristic of chemtrails can be just as logically and rationally explained by normal contrails under normal (but
differentiating) atmospheric conditions.
But first, let�s take a minute and discuss what contrails are, anyway.
Contrails happen when the water vapor from the jet�s exhaust freezes into an ice cloud. If the temperature is at or below �40 degrees and the
relative humidity is at a hundred percent or greater, then the ice cloud will stay frozen, and even act as a nucleus for other ice clouds to
form around. This is why sometimes a contrail will �spread� to form larger clouds. If you have enough aircraft flying and making contrails, and the
atmospheric conditions at that altitude are �proper� for contrail formation and persistence, then you can have the entire sky covered with thin
clouds.
If the temperature is above minus forty degrees or less than 100% relative humidity, then the ice crystals will sublime (turn back into
gas without going through a liquid phase, like dry ice) in about a minute or less and the contrails will disappear.
This increased cloud cover, by the way, can have serious long-term effects, when you think about it. More cloud cover means cooler days (because the
clouds block the sunlight coming in during the day) and warmer nights (because the clouds block the heat radiating out into space at night). This
�diurnal temperature delta� or the difference between day and night temperatures, could have some long-term effects, because most plants and animals
in a particular environment have adapted to a temperature difference of so many degrees. When this figure is left, the plants and animals might not
be able to thrive.
So when you put it this way, contrails can have a possible bad effect on the environment. But that�s not what the chemtrail-believers are talking
about.
Now to the �weird chemtrails�:
�Dashed� contrails? Sometimes you�ll see contrails that start and stop, just like dashed lines. Some Chemtrail-believers say that such
things are �proof� of chemtrails, because the start and stop contrails are the result of the �spray nozzles� getting stuck or something.
Now does it seem kind of odd to you that a powerful gang running secret plot which includes a million people can�t seem to be able to keep a simple
on-off nozzle working? Actually, the reasons that you have start-and-stop contrails is because the atmosphere is not constant and smooth; it�s very
turbulent (which is why we have clouds and wind). It�s pretty common to have one spot at, say, 35,000 feet where the temperature/humidity is at
�40/100%, yet only a quarter mile away, the temperature�s a degree or so higher, or the humidity is a percentage point less. That�s enough to stop
the contrail from persisting. And believe me, an aircraft flying at 550 miles per hour covers that quarter mile in just a couple of seconds!
Circular contrails? Often, an airport may be backed up and the air traffic control folks might �stack up� aircraft in a circular holding
pattern for a half-hour (or even longer). If that plane�s flying in a circle at the proper temperature/humidity profile, you�ll see circular
contrails.
Two �side-by-side� contrails, one that dissipates in a matter of minutes, and the other which persists for hours? The chances are that they�re
not side-by-side, but one is a thousand feet or more higher than another. When you�re looking at aircraft at a cruising altitude, you simply can�t
tell which aircraft is closer. You have no frame of reference except the sky, and besides six miles high is just too far for us to have any kind of
depth perception at all.
�Tic-tac-toe� contrails? No matter where you live in the continental United States, you are probably within view of at least one North-South
and one East-West air corridor. So you might be seeing three aircraft on the DFW (Dallas/Fort Worth to LAX (Los Angeles International) corridor and
four from Phoenix Sky Harbor to Seattle-Tacoma International corridor. These flights could be five minutes and two thousand feet apart, but if
they�re high enough, you�ll see seven lines crossing � just like a tic-tac-toe. (you probably won�t see any X�s or O�s, though).
Conclusion
So why the big deal with "Chemtrails"? I think there're popular on the boards for several reasons.
1. Conspiracies are fun! If you think you know what they're REALLY doing, maybe it makes you feel more powerful and on the "inside". Only
the "sheeple" believe all the government lies, where WE know better. You remember the sheeple, of course -- they were those poor fools who believed
that Y2K was going to be, at worse, a bump in the road. Shows how dumb they were, right?
2. Most chemtrail conspiracy theorists simply don't know much about things that would help them to disbelieve such hypotheses: stuff like
engineering, meteorology, government procurement, military force structure, etc. But most importantly, the most of these individuals simply don't
understand how scientific investigation and research works. They confuse opinion with facts, equate hypotheses with theories, do not reason logically,
engage in ad hominem arguments, cannot or will not read peer-reviewed journals --- the list goes on and on.
Maybe I shouldn't get so exercised about the whole chemtrail business. In a way, it's like the belief in the Easter Bunny -- it keeps the folks
happy; and as long as they don't try to shoot down a "chemtrail" plane, or assassinate or otherwise harass people who disagree with them, they're
harmless.
But there are so many important things in the world that I consider a real priority -- Government intrusion into our lives, a nutburg foreign and
domestic policy, the chance that a natural disaster may justify all those old Y2K preps, the pollution of our atmosphere and destruction of our
environment by hydrocarbon burning -- that I hate to think that well-meaning but naive people on these and other forums are wasting their time on what
is no more than a silly and cruel hoax.
[edit on 23-9-2004 by Off_The_Street]