Popular Science: Chemtrails vs. Contrails

If you haven’t found enough things to fear these days, the recent invention of “chemtrails” ought to satisfy even the most gullible. Fear of the Clouds! Now why didn’t I think of that?

Well, the professional paranoids did and have been riding that pony since 1998. The idea began from an Air Force University paper speculating on the uses of weather in warfare, a normal topic in a military organization. Every military tries to take advantage of environmental conditions, from Alexander the Great losing men to flash floods, weather forecasting for the Normandy landing, fog interfering with laser-guided munitions or dust storms stopping the tanks during the invasion of Iraq.

Somehow, this speculative paper metastasized into the fear that someone (the government? aliens?) is spraying chemicals into the stratosphere. Maybe I’m being too logical by asking, “Why would any government would want to do this?” Governments have done illogical things before, of course, but if the goal is to inject chemicals into the citizenry, spraying them at us from seven miles overhead is lucridous. It’s much more effective to put them in our water supply. Rush Limbaugh orated on chemtrails on Jan. 7th, 2014, which tends to confirm my point: If Rush thinks it’s true, it probably isn’t.

Spraying from airplanes is not new. Crop-dusting, sky writing and cloud seeding have been with us for nearly a century. Those who fear chemtrails may not realize how busy the sky is as a highway to elsewhere. There is a regular daily parade of jets over Mendocino heading northeast or southwest on the Great Circle Route between Alaska, Asia and North America. I find no objective evidence whatsoever that the contrails they create are anything but ordinary clouds.

Usually contrails are made by injecting hot wet exhaust into cold dry air. The atmospheric conditions can either evaporate the contrails quickly, let them trail miles behind and spread out to generate flat sheets of cirrus clouds. This is not new; I heard this in weather class fifty years ago. A pattern of contrails, some triggering cirrus clouds, is normal.

Could these vapor trails actually be doing good? This rapidly heating planet needs more shade! One of the geo-engineering schemes afoot is to shade the planet temporarily with a drone system that automatically maintains fields of contrails by spraying water into the stratosphere. While we wait for the international community to enforce carbon laws and Kyoto treaties, some government may already have taken the bull by the horns and started generating a thin crucial shade. I don’t know if this is true but the political inaction over global warming is frustrating and ultimately dangerous for all. This may have induced some billionaire to start generating the shade already. If so, the shade from sprayed water is welcome.

Is there any objective evidence for chemical trails? Samples from the ground or, better yet, from the air? Nope, none I’ve seen or heard of. Rainwater near the suspected trails shows no unusual components. If you ask the proponents for hard evidence, they say you are part of the conspiracy. The only attempt I’ve found is a picture of a modern jet airplane interior with all the seats removed and large barrels put in their place. The barrels are full of water being pumped around to determine aircraft stability with different load distributions. This is supposed to be a “caught in the act” proof of making chemtrails.

If we have a deep belief, whether it is religious, environmental or otherwise, we should base that belief on hard objective evidence. Otherwise, we’ll run the risk of joining those terminally gullible folks who are afraid of the clouds.

Dr. Walt McKeown was a Navy scientist for many years. Now retired and living in Mendocino, his popular “Science Sunday” talks are given on the last Sunday of every month at Gallery Bookshop, Main and Kasten Streets, Mendocino. The next talk, “A Thousand New Worlds,” is at a new time:6:30 p.m., Feb. 23. Adult refreshments are served. Readers are invited to respond to Dr. McKeown by email to BeaconScience@mcn.org.

Dr. Walt McKeown was a Navy scientist for many years. Now retired and living in Mendocino, his popular “Science Sunday” talks are often given at Gallery Bookshop, Main and Kasten Streets, Mendocino. Readers are invited to respond to Dr. McKeown by email to BeaconScience@mcn.org.