Basic Labs is a real lab and these test results are accurate. The test method listed (EPA 6010B) is a precise way of determining the amount of any element in a sample. The results from Wigington’s property showed 375,000 parts per billion ppb of aluminum, along with some small amounts of barium and strontium. This 375,000 number has become almost mythological in the Chemtrail (or “covert geoengineering”) community. It was even included in a lawsuit that Geoengineering Watch filed against the US government in 2016:
Per a test in Shasta County, near Redding, California, a double-lined pond (which completely prevents contact with soils), had 375,000 ppb of aluminum in the waters. Because the pond was lined, it collected precipitation; and the aluminum in the water cannot have come from the soil, but had to have fallen from the sky.26
The somewhat tortuous description there is an attempt to get around a fundamental problem with all these tests: basically, that aluminum is a very common element in nature. We don’t think of it as such because we think of aluminum as a metal—things like soda cans, food containers, or aluminum foil. But in nature, aluminum is a very common component of rocks, and since soil contains lots of weathered rock dust it’s a common component in soil. How common? In Northern California the top few inches of the ground typically contain around 7 percent aluminum in the rock form (technically aluminosilicates). It can range anywhere from 5 to 15 percent in California,27 but it’s safe to say aluminum is everywhere.
The CDC says:
It should be noted that aluminum is a very abundant and widely distributed element and will be found in most rocks, soils, waters, air, and foods. You will always have some exposure to low levels of aluminum from eating food, drinking water, and breathing air.28
Since aluminum is everywhere it’s going to show up everywhere, in the air, the water, and the soil. In clean water there’s almost always some aluminum; it’s impossible to keep out. In natural streams it’s typically 100 ppb,29 so 375,000 does actually seem really high. What’s going on?
The problem here, and the key thing to explain to your friend, is that what was tested was not water, but “sludge,” the stuff that was collecting at the bottom of the pond. Basically, windblown dust, or soil. It says it right there on the test, next to “Matrix.” We can also see the muddy bottom of the pond in a shot in the WITWATS documentary. The pond location is also situated in a U-bend in a dirt road, and since it does not rain in the summer in California, those dirt roads kick up a lot of dust.
Since dirt is (conservatively) around 7 percent aluminum, that’s literally 70,000,000 parts per billion. It does not take much dirt mixed into the water to get to 375,000 parts per billion—especially if you consider the testing procedure Geoengineering Watch posted on their site at that time (it’s still there now, just not directly linked):
If you are testing a pond, then the only thing different is how you collect the sample. The very bottom of the pond is where the elements stack up. Turn your jar upside down and get the mouth to the bottom of the pond or still water … the older the pond the higher the readings. Turn the jar over and collect both the water and a LITTLE of the bottom sediment.30
That’s the worst way possible of testing water. The sample will inevitably contain an entirely random amount of the dirt from the bottom of the pond, and as such will produce a random (but likely quite large) amount of aluminum. I attempted to explain this to Dane Wigington in 2013, when we had a debate:
Mick: Regarding those tests, the issue basically is that sludge contains dirt and dirt is 7 percent aluminum, and so you are going to get high aluminum rate in those tests. And yet those tests were used in the film as evidence of spraying.
Dane: Now at face value, Mick, again, if those tests, if that material had any contact with dirt, any form of dirt, I would fully agree with you. But, this sample came from a pond that is lined with not one liner, but two, this is Firestone EPDM pond liner. It’s biologically safe for fish, there is no water source into this pond except rainwater and well water. It has virtually no contact with dirt, soil or any type, kind, and that reading was high because it was taken near the bottom of the pond where there’s some of the fish feces and so forth that are down at the bottom of the pond, but that was no less reassuring to us that that sort of fish sludge could contain that much aluminum, but, on that test there is absolutely no contact with the earth in any way, shape, or form.31
Rather bizarrely Wigington seems to claim that a pond exposed to the air for years would be pristine. Possibly realizing how this sounds, he then says the sludge is “fish feces and so forth.” But any pond is going to have dirt in the bottom. These types of mistaken and misrepresented tests have been repeated for many years, and many can be found in the Geoengineering Watch lawsuit, even after they were explained years ago. Another one is described as:
Pure white snow at 8,000-foot elevation on Mount Shasta had 61,100 parts per billion (ppb) of aluminum, over 4 times more than the mud beneath the snow and tens of thousands of times the expected maximum level in a snow sample. The samples also contained 83 ppb of barium and 383 ppb of strontium. The only route for these heavy metals to enter the precipitation system is from the aerosolized clouds.
The problem here is that the test result was based on a sample taken in the middle of June. While there is still snow on the summit of Shasta in June, it’s old snow, coated with dirt. A search of photos on Flickr taken that date on Mount Shasta show images of exactly that—pockets of largely melted snow, covered in reddish brown dirt, naturally laden with aluminum.32
Show the original tests to your Chemtrail-believing friend, then show them the charts that show how much aluminum is in the soil. Show them the word “sludge” on the test, and the images of the muddy water in the pond, and the location on the dusty road, and the dirt on the snow. They should understand that these are simply the normal variations that come from aluminum being in dirt. Then show them that the main Chemtrail promoters are still using this sludge and dirty snow as evidence and ask them if they really should be treating these individuals as authorities on the subject.
Chemtrail Patents
Another very common claim about Chemtrails (or covert geoengineering) is that there are patents for it. The argument is quite simple: patents are for real things, there are patents for Chemtrails, therefore Chemtrails are a real thing.
There are three main problems with this theory that you can explain to your friend. The first one is quite simple, but something that most people don’t even think of. If it’s a secret government program, then why is it patented, and why are its records publicly accessible? What’s the actual benefit of patenting the technology for a program that you are planning on denying the existence of for decades? Would it not be a far better strategy to keep it secret?
The second problem is that most of the patents listed are not even for technology that’s related to secret spraying of climate modifying aerosols from planes. The biggest list of patents was created by Geoengineering Watch back in 2012, where they say:
For anyone doubting the existence of the phenomenon of geoengineering/weather modification, please take a minute to read through this extensive list of patents from America on equipment and processes used in just such programs. The evidence is clear.33
They then follow it up with what is indeed an extensive list of patents. The problem is that the majority of them are for entirely non-controversial technologies, like skywriting, or cloud seeding. And those are just the ones even tangentially related to “Chemtrails,” there’s a whole bunch more that are seemingly random, chosen perhaps because they contained a key word like “aerosol” or “spray.” Here are some of the actual patents listed as “evidence”:
1631753–An electric water heater
2097581–A steam generator for sterilizing lab equipment
2591988–A method for making white paint pigment
3174150–A self-focusing antenna
3300721–A radio for spaceships
3564253–A giant space mirror for reflecting sunlight onto the Earth
3899144–A towed aerial target that leaves a powder trail for visibility
3940060–A ground-based smoke ring generator for punching holes in clouds
3992628–A temporary laser shield
4347284–A snow camouflage blanket to hide tanks under
4415265–A spectrometer for analyzing chemicals
5056357–An ultrasound measuring device for liquids
5327222–A flow speed sensor
5631414–A device for measuring radiation from the ocean
6110590–A method of making silk
5486900–A device for measuring how much toner is left in a photocopier
We might forgive the compiler of the list for initially being a little overenthusiastic, but the persistence of this list after at least five years of people pointing out the mistakes is a testament to the resistance of the list compiler to any form of correction. The last one in particular, a device for measuring how much toner is left in a photocopier, is something I have attempted to tell the Chemtrails folk about several times. I’ve written a detailed explanation on Metabunk34 which I share every time it comes up, and I’ve even posted a comment on the Geoengineering Watch page, which was instantly deleted.
This resistance to facts is a bit disheartening, as it means this list is just going to keep coming up year after year. But it’s also a useful tool. Go over this list with your friend and ask why Geoengineering Watch never changed it even after they were shown it was wrong.
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If we strip away all the nonsense patents, the patents for skywriting, and the patents for ordinary cloud seeding, then there are actually a handful of patents that are genuinely for spraying stuff out of planes for the purpose of geoengineering (climate modification). This bring us to the final argument that Chemtrail promoters make regarding patents: that the existence of these patents means geoengineering is “real.”
Firstly, they mean “real” in the sense of “a topic which people research.” This is a nonsense argument because nobody ever denied people have been thinking about geoengineering, or even researching possible ways of doing it. What is denied is the claim that people are actually doing it today. And that’s the second way in which patents supposedly make Chemtrails “real,” the core question of their argument: Why patent something if it’s not being used?
This demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the patent system, missing three key facts:
• Patented technology doesn’t need to work in order to be patentable
• Even if the technology works in theory, it does not have to exist
• Patents are often filed speculatively
In the United States between 1790 and 1880, when you patented something you were required to provide a miniature model explaining how your invention supposedly worked.35 There has never been a provision in US law that an invention must meet a defined standard of operability and functionality in order to be patented. Current patent law requires only that the invention be useful for something, be a new idea, not be obvious, and be described well enough so someone could implement the invention based on the patent.36
There are many patents that technically fit these descriptions but are basically wild and crazy things that are either very bad ideas or could not possibly work.
One of the more famous examples of this is US 3216423, “Apparatus for facilitating the birth of a child by centrifugal force”—which is basically a circular table, to which a pregnant woman is strapped. The table is spun around until the force of the spinning pops out the baby, which is then caught in a net dangling between her legs.