“Well, they are on to us,” said Jeff.
He and I were sitting at our favorite Waffle House, enjoying some scattered and smothered along with our coffee and eggs, when I looked up to notice that he was reading what we old folks call a “newspaper.”
Newspapers, for those of you who were never taught to write cursive, were made, surprisingly enough, out of paper; on that paper, they printed the news. You may remember paper from such things as Jepp revisions and cardboard checklists.
News used to be facts that people reported on without focus groups or assemblies of six or seven talking heads yelling at each other while on TV.
The riveting news story that Jeff was referring to was indeed bad tidings for all of us who have taken part in a decades-long conspiracy. The legislature of Louisiana, along with at least six other states, voted to ban chemtrails from the skies above the land of the free.
The jig is up.
“Ignorance has no political party,” Jeff said, “but it sure seems to lean in one direction nowadays.”
Overlooking his partisan yet true comment (all seven states with chemtrail laws in the works are from the same party), I begin reviewing the history of chemtrails.
From watching movies like “Twelve O’Clock High,” I remember that our bomber and fighter pilots laid down a buttload of contrails over Europe during WWII. Your basic B-17 could barely carry ten brave men and their bombs to the target. How could they carry deadly chemicals as well? I have to assume that there were different chemical generators during that time because they were burning avgas in round engines back then, not Jet A.
A few years ago, at my local general aviation home drome, I was approached by some very somber people who were there to survey and report back on the chemtrail activity at our airport. They gave me a couple of pamphlets that explained the whole thing.
According to them, most all of the so-called “fuel tanks” on a big jet are used as chemical hoppers containing all sorts of nasty stuff like LSD and other drugs that turn an unsuspecting public toward a direction of gayness, hacky-sac playing, and tie-dye shirt-wearing. “It is making us stupid!” the person handing me the pamphlet said.
I had to agree that something had made that person absymally stupid, but I did not think it was the aerospace industry’s fault.
Jeff chimed in with, “We should have made the chemicals invisible. Those chemtrails were cloud-like and gave the whole thing away. This newspaper story says we are also changing the weather with contrails. I wish we were. I would not have taken all of those delays waiting out the fog in New Orleans if we had chemtrails that worked.”
I agreed that our conspiracy to make suspicious dim bulbs get even dimmer from our chemicals in the sky scheme had failed. They imagined a problem, assumed without evidence that it was true, and are now making laws to make the nonexistent problem go away or at least pay a heavy fine.
“I think that the geniuses making laws against imaginary and magically evil science need to go further,” said Jeff.
Grasping what he meant, I got out a pen, and we listed a group of other aviation conspiracies that we thought our group of pointed-headed owl entrail-searching and ouija board viewing lawmakers should get busy outlawing right now.
Thunderstorms should be made illegal nationwide. Anybody who has watched a Marvel Universe movie knows Thor is the god of thunder, and Thor is not a Christian in any way, shape, or form. He is a daggum pagan!
Fog is mysterious and probably conjured up by illegal aliens who need the cover to come in and do whatever it is they are doing. If we could outlaw fog or at least fine it a lot, it would be easier to take a CAT III approach, and RVRs would be a thing of the past.
Air pockets have vexed the flying public for too long. Any turbulence must be generated by the Tri-Lateral-Commision and should be banned immediately.
Flying at night should be outlawed. If God wanted us to fly at night, she never would have invented happy hour. Plus, a lot of skulduggery can happen in the dark, and you can’t see the chemtrails when the moon isn’t out.
Jeff and I, being old general aviation pilots, have outlived our chance to lay down some sweet chemical mind-altering drugs in the sky. We left the Waffle House comfortable in the thought that younger pilots are out there right now doing imaginary things that will puzzle certain members of the public to the point of printing a letter (most likely using a crayon) to their representatives.
At last—unity in delusion.
Both fringes, different vibes, same sky.
It’s the only conspiracy where a red hat from the far-right and a hemp hoodie from the far-left can share a lawn chair, gaze up at Delta Flight 236, and shout in perfect, paranoid harmony:
“They’re spraying us again!”
‘I agreed that our conspiracy to make suspicious dim bulbs get even dimmer from our chemicals in the sky scheme had failed.’
I wouldn’t be too hard on yourself.
There were without a doubt many deadheads at Grateful Dead outdoor concerts who were very appreciative of the free drugs from the sky - so it wasn’t a total failure of effort.
Nothing beats that deeply provocative all-knowing smile of a person who believes in chemtrails. They are basically in physical pain, longing to be asked what they know about the subject.
It really burns them until someone fakes some sort of interest in their opinion on the matter and may holy Odin come to help us, once they let go, its a waterfall or garbled up incoherent liquid fecal matter with the viscosity of a 0W oil.
I had one a year or so ago. Total bafflement.
Pilots should always have a picture available to provide the evidence. Then just tell them that “they” are trying to keep it a secret.
The thing is, there is just a glimmer of reason behind con trails.
Very little research has been done on the exhaust gas, water vapour mix in con trails, just getting samples is hard.
Much of the research that is there used exhaust gases from jets on the ground and – shock horror – they are full of particles, unburnt aromatics of various sorts, and lots of nitrogen dioxides and carbon mono and dioxides.
And then during the pandemic, when all flights were grounded, it took three days for the con-trail clouds to disappear over us – we live under one of the main East West jet routes in Europe – my record is counting 35 contrails being left at once one sunset.
It was strange having natural clouds.
As for thunderstorms, have you lot never gone spraying silver salts in them to make them drop rain and not hail?
Again near us there used to be an old boy with a trailer fitted with rockets who would fire them into the cloud for the local Cognac grape growers.
Eventually the airforce said he could not do that any more, so now they use “chimneys”, hot gas tubes into which the silver is sprayed.
Works very well too, have had just one very localised hail storm over vines, last year, on a day when the guy meant to light the chimneys was at the beach.
The lesson here, I think (and yes, I do try to think) is that we need to elect more intelligent people to political office. Elections are a popularity contest and such contests often lead to choosing charismatic, well, idiots.
I taught chemistry for 25 years and won’t claim to be an expert. Yes, there are probably a few moles of unoxidized, oxidized, and whatever compounds in those darn contrails. Where is the evidence that such products of combustion are harmful to anyone or anything? Show me a peer-reviewed study in a reputable journal and I’ll take a look. Otherwise, it’s just guessing, rumor, conspiracy theories, and blogs… the curse of the internet.
I think contrails are rather majestic and I’m going to watch Strategic Air Command again this evening just to enjoy the beauty of those contrails behind the Convair B-36.
Well for what it’s worth, about 40 years ago, the town voted to ban “Fade Outs” at our local airport. Well, I can say, with confidence, with ban on the books, that there have been no Fade Outs to date. But then again, we’ve never received, from the town supervisor, what is a Fade Out.
An AVSIG acquaintance had time flying cloud seeding in the Calgary<>Red Deer AB hail corridor.
Release something into air below clouds, which somehow reduces size of hailstones.
(They are increased in size by up and down trips.)
Insurance companies paid for the effort.
But YYC was hit bad by hail a few years ago.
Thanks a lot, Kevin. It’ll take me ten minutes to wipe all the coffee from my laptop that you made me spit. But worth it; hilarious!
A perennial nut case in Victoria BC claimed that leaves on some trees going bronze was caused by the US gummint spraying chemicals.
Reality is that a variety of trees does not lose its dead leaves until spring (unless heavy rain kocks them off).
Shopping centre may or may not have known exactly what it was planting. A PnR lot in the region had oak trees planted, but they were a mix of ‘pin oak’ and a cultivar.
Pin oaks - no e - lose their lower branches with age, more clearance for vehicles I guess. (The name comes from using the stub of lower branches for fasteners in wooden boats of old.)
Don’t see any evidence that this conspiracy theory is a fever dream of the far left. Vaccinations are the best example of where the anti-science nut brains of the far right meet the ones on the far left.
Humans have the need to believe in something …why spoil it
Great article Kevin, humor makes the idiocy of some of the human beings in our population slightly more bearable. However, I feel I must note that the Chemtrail crowd isn’t completely incorrect. Contrails do have chemicals in them and most scientists believe that commercial aviation plays a part in effecting our planet’s climate. Contrails contain H2O, and CO2 both of which are known greenhouse gases. They also contain NOx, Sulphur compounds, particulates, and other trace metals that can affect the atmosphere. There is significant evidence to show that contrails can lead to cirrus cloud formation. It has been estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( IPCC) that world wide, commercial aviation contributes 3.5 to 5% to anthropogenic radiative forcing which is a measure of how much solar energy is captured by the Earth compared to how much is radiated back into space. In other words, the gases and particulates produced as a result of burning hydrocarbon fuels and the contrails and clouds produced by high flying commercial aircraft can cause more of the energy from the sun to be retained by the Earth. No doubt this comment will bring out a few idiots in our crowd who base their opinions on beliefs unrelated to science and facts as well.
Love the write up Kevin, it was terrific and many many many of the responses were just hilarious. you just gotta scratch your head on some of the ideas that people have.
Nothing like a little humor in the morning. I was at first stunned bu the whole Chemtrail thing. Then I found out a number of the technicians in the lab I supervised in a major Aerospace firm were firm believers in this concept. They were also very religious conservative evangelicals. I decided that to argue and sense into this was not worth my time. One person asked me what I though, I said “I believe that a person can be and usually is a rational calm reflective thinking being, but that people can be seen as a flock of scared sheep”. Asked for clarification. I said if you think a government was trying to poison or drug a large number of people, why would they be so stupid as to use one of the most inefficient ways possible. ? If you were trying to drug a large number of people seeing that say here in SOCal most of our water is imported , why would you pick such an expensive ineffiecnt way to distribute a chemical. ? I said look up the way the atmosphere works. if you spray something at 35000 feet where does it go?
Since Avweb is political now, which party is trying to ban the release of carbon dioxide? (CO2 is plant food)
The vapor trails were gone for a few days after September 11, 2001 when the airlines were grounded The surface temps went up nationwide.
At least my theory as an 8yo had some logic. I was convinced that all clouds were formed by contrails grouping together. I never stopped to wonder where clouds came from before planes started flying!
Love it. Thanks Kevin and Russ.
Here is an excerpt from a reply posted to an article on the phenomena of “blue smoke” from powerplants back in 2002, again printed on paper.
Power Magazine September 1, 2002
The phenomenon of SO3 and blue smoke [in powerplant exhaust] (“One flue over the cuckoo’s nest,” July 2002, p 26) has been well understood and in fact intentionally practiced in another industry for more than 40 years. In the late 1980s, as a young engineer starting a career in Cold War defense aerospace, I was given an assignment to study aircraft condensation trails. Much of what I found had been declassified in the early 1960s.
The key to hiding the contrails left behind high-flying aircraft was addition of SO3 (or chlorosulfonic acid which doesn’t freeze in onboard tanks) to the exhaust. The SO3 creates such a high concentration of nuclei for condensation of combustion-product …
It continued explaining how it made the contrail invisible by scattering light blue with many tiny droplets rather than white with fewer larger droplets.
So the irony is that there may be chem-trails but you can’t see them and they would only be from military stealth aircraft. What you can see is just water. The same was true at a coal fired powerplant before scrubbers removed SOx to avoid acid rain.
It really isn’t rocket science (contrail forecasting and analysis). It isn’t any different than the HVAC psychrometric charts or the aviation weather science that gives temperature-dewpoint spread. You look at the fuel air mixture for combustion, the resulting temperature and water vapor pressure and then mix in cold air and see how it drops the temperature and the water vapor pressure fall with mixing ratio. From there the calculations from the combination of temperature and water vapor pressure is no different than HVAC and temperature-dewpoint spread, though HVAC calcs are usually for atmospheric pressures closer to sea level than the tropopause where contrails are most prevalent. This methodology even predicts if it will be transient or persistent as the mixing ratio increases.
It turns out contrail formation tendency varies with the fuel composition slightly, but not much with jet vs. piston. All of the energy and combustion products are dissipated in the wake. Anyway, the science is will understood by those who have reason to understand it. Obviously the folks in the tin-foil hats don’t.
Kevin, you missed one. As writer Douglas Flint once put it in his “Mechanic’s Tale” column, they should outlaw gravity so we can all fly for free!
@bobd: Extremists believe in chemtrails not because they’re liberal or conservative, but because they don’t trust the government or science. That kind of distrust exists on both sides.
I think the photo of the “chemtrails” switch is a phony. All the Chemtrail switches I’ve seen had red toggle guards over them.
@Tom_Waarne: Red toggle guards? Luxury. Ours had biometric locks and required a blood sacrifice under a full moon.
Am I reading an old Flying magazine here? Back in our day we had to wait for our printed copy of our favorite magazine to show up in the mail box. I and many others immediately flipped to the back pages where we would find Len Morgan’s monthly entertainment pages. After that we went to another very enjoyable read, the author’s name being “Peter” Garrison. Could it be? Don’t get me wrong I’m not accusing you of any sort of plagiary or the like. It’s just that I enjoyed those articles so much. Reading them actually drew me to aviation and learning to fly. I still read Len’s articles when a close freind of mine picks them off the Braniff web site and passes them on. We can generate days of chat of any one of them.
Your writing style is very close to those two and I’m anxious to see more articles from you. Thanks for the memory jogger and the putting a little humor in a very annoying subject.
This reminds of the time when some legislative branch (in Indiana?) discussed (but I don’t think it passed) a law to make pi = 4. If memory serves, the reasoning (if such a thing exists among legislators) was the pi = 3.14159… is too difficult to for children (and politicians) to learn. I could be mistaken about the ‘reasoning’.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. I think it was Daniel Patrick Moynihan who stated that “You are entitled to your opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.”
Circles will remain circular regardless of the opinion of humans… and don’t get me started on the flat-earthers.
Sorry to disappoint, but Pete and I are not related. I did get to see his Melmoth way back in the 1970s when he flew it into KLAL when I was a fuzzy faced line boy. Be sure to write to Flying and tell them that I am ready for the big show. BTW, the Flying guy i miss the most is Gordon Baxter. best, kg
Yah but then do own science.
Conspiracy theorists refuse to examine facts such as photos of contrails from high-flying B-29s over the Pacific in WWII.
They slide-by-you. They mis-represent what seem to be facts, for example one major claim that an objective person fell for said that country executives had decided on a certain date in a meeting - but the quoted meeting did not occur until well after the decision.
Skepticism is good.
(Research reported by the Seattle Times found that elementary school children were quite good at spotting errors AI software, because they had thinking skills and used them.)
Best op-ed ever in AvWeb! Bravo! I’m so embarrassed about how stupid humans have become.
Sorry I forgot to mention Gordo. He certainly deserves to be there.An oversight on my part. It comes with age. Wherever you go, I’ll be looking for ya and I’ll put in a good word at Flying for you.
It was Len Morgan of Braniff who was in the back of Flying Mag. I never knew him when I was at BNF.
Evidence? You want EVIDENCE?
What’s wrong with you? Haven’t you seen the YouTube and Fakebook videos?
You apparently haven’t been on “X” lately.
Gee, I’ve got to start… if it’s on the internet, it must be true! Nobody would ever fake a youtube video…
For decades I’ve managed to eat breakfast, go through my day and get to bed without having a stranger ask me if the earth was flat. This year it’s happened three times. Each time I mention that we can all observe the Earth’s curvature by watching a sunset, distant clouds, etc. Twice the people asking about flat earth theories have accused me of being part of a vast conspiracy involving government agencies, etc. as they mutter something rude.
The upshot is it makes someone like me, a person who has to comment on public forums, feel very important. So at least my ego gets a boost, right?
What I think is worth mentioning is what many peopl believed in the 1970s: psychic powers. Telekinesis. Ghosts. All of that junk was in style then. Seances and such in the 20s and 30s. So if we reflect on how silly we were in years past, we may not be at some kind of nadir. It may be that we are more aware of our historically normal amount of human fallibility.
I always keep my favourite spoons hidden in steel containers…
When asked, what are you spraying? I reply, it is a chemical that, when mixed with the THC in your blood stream, makes you gullible enough to fall for anything on the internet.
Reducing carbon dioxide emissions is not a political issue. It is a human survivability issue…
The number of “flat earthers” is growing.
Their website now boasts members all over the globe.
“What I think is worth mentioning is what many peopl believed in the 1970s: psychic powers. Telekinesis. Ghosts. All of that junk was in style then.”
Only in the 70’s, huh? That’s hilarious.
What is silly here is confusing doing something for personal interest and individual reasons, like learning to fly or trying to contact grandpa on the other side, and equalizing those pursuits with today’s growing cult of stooges that believe government, science and ‘all them others’ are coming to get us - turn us gay if we’re not already, explode our hearts, turn their beer into toilet water, and so much more.
To get a fuller scope of the madness that we all crave, it also appears that within the feed lot of chemtrail conspiracy theorists other ideas are getting slopped around also, like unwitting chemical enslavement to big pharma, a sudden ability at mind control, or sterilizing certain people to slow their procreation. Hold my beer!
Despite the outlandishness of the beliefs and the complete absence of evidence, a 2016 study showed that the idea of nefarious governmental chemtrails is held to be ‘completely true’ by 20%-30% of Americans.
And that was 9 years ago.
One group is pursuing personal awareness for/from their own reasons without much regard for fear - and has always been doing so and will continue to do so - the other fear everything, everyone is out to get them, especially as in this case, wait for it… government.
Kevin’s blog shows the pervasive weakness we increasingly suffer from today - an astonishing lack of critical thinking and creative imagining, which he brilliantly illuminated with humor and wit and punctuated with references that some true believers are even trying to use political influence - 12 states now and counting - to enact laws against reason, science and social responsibility. This must be resisted and revealed whenever recognized.
“The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.” C. Hitchens.
-By the way, doesn’t a Lunar eclipse show our flat earth is round, like a Necco candy? Details, people.
Obviously the chemtrail conspiracy is not real.
But the UK government this year has funded research into spreading aerosols into the atmosphere in the name of “fighting climate change.”
So I have no problem with states prohibiting the idea. We don’t know enough about the downsides of such a program. At least the UK study admitted that acid rain was a potential side effect.
I generally don’t trust people who say, “we shouldn’t ban that, because it’s not happening.” If it’s really not happening, then banning it isn’t going to hurt anyone. But it usually is happening, or at least being thought about.
Depopulating the planet by chemtrails makes little to no sense, because “they” (the people who allegedly wish to do so) breathe the same air and drink the same water. Also, it would be a tedious act to get a whole industry of blabbermouth pilots to STFU about the secret. Can’t even attend a funeral without learning about someones “pilot license”.
Much simpler appears to just put mentally unstable morons in government positions and give them a couple of red buttons.
• Dismantle/ Defund Healthcare
• Cut/ Kill Retirement
• Start & maintain wars across the planet
• Mess around with radiation
• Make sure water and food gets poisoned
• Drive people insane with negativity and scares
Who needs chemtrails?
If you’re a legislator it’s hard to solve society’s real problems. It’s a whole lot easier to solve imaginary problems. You never worry about proving that your law worked. You can just declare success.
Our ban on elephant attracting contrail chemicals has been a huge success. You don’t see any elephants on your streets, do you?
Oh, c’mon people, the world can be flat and round at the same time. We just live on a really large pizza!
I once had a guy justify to me his “proof” that the world is flat. If it was indeed a ball, those people living in the (so called) southern hemisphere would just fall off!
I have to assume the Venn diagram for chemtrail believers and flat-earthers has to be a perfect circle.
Just another viewpoint…
https://www.instagram.com/p/DLz_vqYs0O8/?img_index=3&igsh=MWJ3djRjdmZ4MmN6Mw==