
'Chemtrails' not real, say atmospheric science experts - aburan28
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160812103718.htm
======
firloop
The idea of chemtrails is appealing to so many people because it's a way to
express outrage toward the elites or upper echelons in society.

The theories are always a bit vaporous (like the chemtrails themselves), but I
think it's stemming from an honest, genuine sense of frustration that one is
being cheated or manipulated by a system that doesn't represent them.
Chemtrails give a head to this boogeyman.

~~~
unsignedqword
Those theorists are quite irrational, but what I find most ridiculous about a
lot of them is not the theories themselves, but the idea that they have the
ability to actually fight back.

Sensationalists like Alex Jones assert crazy ideas such as the government
tainting our tap water to perform mass mind control and yet at the same time
spread this message that they can resist against the upcoming "New World
Order." With chemtrails specifically, on YouTube, you'll find videos of people
spraying vinegar bottles outside when they see airplane contrails outside,
believing it to be some sort of deterrent against their effects. If I believed
that the government was capable of shit like super-effective mind control and
all that other shit, I'd pretty much believe there's no hope for the world and
recline to live the rest of my life in a bunker somewhere.

~~~
omegaham
This. If the government is really that omnipresent and controlling in our
lives, are they really going to let some blogger who knows the Truth run amok
and post it everywhere?

Yes siree, this government is capable of faking the Moon landing, concealing
the existence of aliens / lizard people, and executing 9/11 to invade Iraq,
but they are _powerless_ against some random dickhead with a laptop who
spotted the holes in the Official Story that this omnipotent cabal just
couldn't cover up. Riiight.

~~~
WayneBro
Not this. "The government" is just groups of people. Some groups, such as the
NSA, certainly do have the ability to be close to omniscient (or as much as it
matters here). Their motto is "Total Information Awareness" for crying out
loud!

Didn't you ever read Brave New World? You don't publicly kill the Truth-
knowing bloggers. You drown them out with by a million distractions. See also:
Mao's Hundred Flowers campaign.

I'm not going to argue every stupid conspiracy theory that anyone can
name...but I don't need to. There are plenty of actual conspiracy facts that
should be sufficient to convince anybody that this kind of shit actually
happens. COINTELPRO, Operation Mockingbird and MK Ultra to name a few.

The modern "skeptic" gets it all wrong - they don't question anything and come
to conclusions way too quickly. That's because they're not actually skeptics,
they're just afraid of getting out of their mental comfort zone.

------
engi_nerd
The chemtrail people are nuts. I have some experience with them from my NASA
sounding rocket days.

Some sounding rocket missions do release chemicals, including lithium, into
the upper atmosphere to study how high-altitude winds behave. That lithium, by
the way is a different form than you'll find in psychoactive medications and a
very small amount is released anyway.

But many chemtrail people believe that _every_ sounding rocket mission
includes chemical releases. Some were very upset about one mission I worked,
which had no releasables at all. It was an underflight calibration of the EVE
instrument on SDO, so all we were doing was staring at the sun for about 10
minutes. But no, we must have been hiding something, because we were sinister
and evil.

~~~
dingo_bat
What's a sounding rocket?

~~~
engi_nerd
_Sounding_ is an old nautical term meaning "to measure something". You may
have heard/read the expression "sound the depths", describing the process of
seeing how deep the water under the keel of a sailing vessel is. That's the
origin of the term.

Sounding rockets are rockets launched for scientific research purposes. NASA
has the most robust Sounding Rocket program, but there are others out there.

Your typical NASA sounding rocket has two or three motor stages and can send a
~1000 lb payload to an altitude of about 280 miles, with about 10 minutes of
time above 62 miles (the official demarcation between 99.99% of Earth's
atmosphere and space). These are not orbital missions -- you go up and you
come back down in the space of 20 to 30 minutes or so.

Science objectives include things like observing comets, the composition of
the interstellar medium, the dynamics of the Sun, trying to find direct
evidence of dark matter, understanding the dynamics of the ionosphere, wind
currents in the upper levels of the atmosphere, and many more. For only $1 -
$6 million USD per mission, a sounding rocket is a relatively cheap way to do
some science in space, and the science payoffs have been huge.

------
unsignedqword
_" Caldeira said. "I felt it was important to definitively show what real
experts in contrails and aerosols think. We might not convince die-hard
believers that their beloved secret spraying program is just a paranoid
fantasy, but hopefully their friends will accept the facts.""_

I doubt they will convince any conspiracy theorists. Often, the opposite
occurs, i.e. _' the backfire effect'_: when they are approached with factual
evidence, they end up feeling more strongly about their views than before,
despite however wrong they may be.

~~~
blowski
Usually quoting a combination of other conspiracies that turned out to be
true, and the 'first they ignore you, then they laugh at you' cliche, like
somehow those things add credence to their story.

Carl Sagan's 'Demon Haunted World' book from the 1990s is a fascinating read
on how the world is obsessed with conspiracy theories and pseudoscience.

------
dsr_
Given the inherent implausibility of a massive global conspiracy that has such
obvious effects but no coherent explanation of... anything... it seems to me
that it would be more useful to study why and how people come to believe in
these things.

The problem is in people's heads, not the sky.

~~~
dsabanin
I agree, the problem is in the heads of the people who blindly trust
everything they are told. Why is it so outrageous to assume that chemtrails
might be a covert experiment to manipulate climate (or has some other
purpose)? I'm not saying that it is, but is it outrageous to doubt official
narratives? Since when is that scientific?

Doubt is reasonable, there's no problem here. Unquestioned belief in "common
sense" and what authority figures say is not. A lot of people have a lot to
gain by leading the public to believe certain things. Isn't it too naive to
assume that you are always being told the truth, when some stakes are so high?

~~~
alistairSH
_Why is it so outrageous to assume that chemtrails might be a covert
experiment to manipulate climate (or has some other purpose)? I 'm not saying
that it is, but is it outrageous to doubt official narratives?_

If it were a single national airline, or even a subset of airlines, then maybe
there would be cause for concern. But, a global conspiracy involving airlines,
private airplanes, multiple governments, and tens of thousands of employees?
That is patently ridiculous. Has anything on that scale ever been kept secret
for long?

~~~
TranceMan
Manhattan project[0]

It may fail your 'for so long test' \- could you define how 'so long ' is?

0
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project)

~~~
Oletros
Manhattan project was circumscribed to one country on one place and didn't
involved a worldwide collaboration between almost all the airlines

~~~
TranceMan
Wikipedia disagrees in the second sentence of the link.

------
jimmytidey
"The survey results show that 76 of the 77 participating scientists said they
had not encountered evidence of a secret spraying program"

Hang on...

~~~
rdiddly
Yes, really curious what the 77th one said.

I quickly arrived at the conclusion chemtrails had to be bullshit when I first
heard of it in the 90s. But it's amusing bullshit nonetheless.

------
andrewstuart2
> "We wanted to establish a scientific record on the topic of secret
> atmospheric spraying programs for the benefit of those in the public who
> haven't made up their minds," said Steven Davis of UC Irvine. "The experts
> we surveyed resoundingly rejected contrail photographs and test results as
> evidence of a large-scale atmospheric conspiracy."

Not that I disagree with their expert opinions, but this is not a scientific
record. This is not a hypothesis with reproducible experiments that prove or
disprove the hypothesis. This is the aggregate opinion of many highly-educated
people.

~~~
triplesec
To be fair to them, a scientific record is in many ways just the aggregate of
the agreements of the practitioners of [insert experimental / theoretical
discipline here] who agree that a particular set of data and theories seem to
be well-formed. So, scientific record is an aggregate opinion, backed by data.
Sometimes the data are experiments, but these experiments require peer
validation, or else any old crackpot wcould have their theories accepted.
Other times the scientific consensus is less-well-backed by experiement
(String theory anyone?) sometimes correctly, sometimes not. This is how
induction works!

------
arca_vorago
I see an awful lot of derision of "conspiracy theorists" but very little
actual discussion about the known factors that play in this conversation.
First of all, lets state the fact that the very term conspiracy theorist was
part of a post public non-acceptance of the Warren report program by the CIA
to silence and ridicule the reports critics by labelling them. Then lets
understand that this same technique is being used today but they have higly
evolved their propoganda.

I'm one of HNs resident "conspiracy theorists", but I also highly value
logical and rational thinking and evidence/citations in thos theories. The
people I talk to don't think that every line in the sky is a chemtrail,
rather, they are concerned and geoengineering and its unforseen side effect
consequences, and dont trust those in power to be either competent or non
malicious.

To then lump all the people concerned about this and to only specifically
discredit chemtrails but not talk about that bigger picture is fine, but what
isnt is for everyone to start ridiculing conspiracy theorists as if they are
all one crazy irrational monolithic group. Great discrediting technique, but
not good for intellectual discussion focused on finding truth or educating
people.

I especially dont like all the people taking this chance to wax one or two
sentences poetic about just how irrational theorists are, suddenly shifting
and not even referencing the subject matter presented. (on a similar note, I
think Hanlons razor, often invoked by those doing the ridiculing, is actually
a logical fallacy on its face).

Now, to play a little devils advocate, heres a youtube link that is
interesting. Notice how he doesnt say this is happening, just that he is
interested in this tech. Please ignore the sensational title and the horrible
videos attached by association.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfH5_BiaP8Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfH5_BiaP8Y)

------
hellofunk
I'm surprised to see this article in 2016. I thought chemtrails were debunked
decades ago.

~~~
joezydeco
There are people that still believe the Earth is flat. You will never, ever,
change the minds of these believers.

~~~
catdog
The Flat Earth Society has members all around the globe.

------
Cozumel
'The survey results show that 76 of the 77 participating scientists said they
had not encountered evidence of a secret spraying program'

I just want to know what the 77th said!

------
SagelyGuru
Am I the only one to detect some sleight of hand at work here? How can "the
experts" "resoundingly reject" the existence of a secret program? Surely, by
definition, they would know nothing about its existence if it is SECRET?!?

As you can see, it is the widespread governmental secretiveness that provides
the fertile ground for such "theories".

------
mathiasrw
> 76 of the 77 participating scientists said they had not encountered evidence
> of a secret spraying program,

Have they been looking for evidence? If not this study is pretty worthless.

------
throwaway420
> The survey results show that 76 of the 77 participating scientists said they
> had not encountered evidence of a secret spraying program, and agree that
> the alleged evidence cited by the individuals who believe that atmospheric
> spraying is occurring could be explained through other factors, such as
> typical airplane contrail formation and poor data sampling.

Whatever so called chemtrails are, pretty much anybody honest would have to
admit that this really isn't any kind of new science or information that
really proves anything one way or the other.

~~~
mattaltieri
What about the 77th guy? I'd love to hear what he had to say...!

------
spacemunkay
"76 out of 77 scientists had not encountered evidence"? Lol. What's that one
guys evidence? I want to hear about that. I bet the researchers were like...
REALLY dude!? C'mon! Props to them for still sticking to their data.

------
madaxe_again
But, but, water is a dangerous chemical, which has been used for societal
control forever!

Reply with a self addressed envelope to receive your free tinfoil trilby.

~~~
rounce
Indeed sir, I'm glad you share the wider concern. There has long been
established (and denied by the establishment) that there is an undeniable link
between consumption of this 'dangerous chemical' and death in humans.
Conspiracy if there ever was one!

------
benmarks
The numerous cockpit Chemtrail toggle switches are worth stockpiling for when
you come across crackpots.

------
brownhats
In other news, 76 of 77 atmospheric science experts continue to receive access
to government grants and facilities by touting the company line.

------
bballer
Give this a listen

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1eVTy0bBCg&t=115](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1eVTy0bBCg&t=115)

Its a NASA scientist Dr. Douglas Rowland at the minimum admitting geo-
engineering and that there are different types of "chemtrails" and that they
have dumped lithium into the atmosphere.

~~~
Oletros
No, he is not admitting geoengineering or chemtrails being what you think
chemtrails are

