The Chemtrails conspiracy theory claims that some of the white trails left behind planes high in the sky are actually being deliberately sprayed for nefarious purposes. In popular discussion of the topics (by non-believers), the theory is often described as one involving spraying some kind of mind-control poison. But that’s really a fringe version of the theory, not believed by many. The most common explanation given by most Chemtrail believers is that the trails are part of some kind of plot to control the weather and/or the climate.
More specifically, the most common versions of the theory claim that there is a secret program of climate modification called “geoengineering.” In this version of the theory, the long-lasting trails left by planes are some kind of substance that blocks out the Sun and are designed to cool down the planet to counteract the effects of global warming.
This theory is to some degree based on very real science. Geoengineering is a real subject with reputable scientists researching it. Going back well over fifty years, there have been numerous proposals for methods of cooling the planet by spraying chemicals into the air. But none of these proposals have ever made it past the theoretical research stage. The only significant experiments that have been done have been simulations on a computer—kind of like an advanced weather forecast. This is for good reason—engineering the climate to reverse the effects of global warming is not something to be entered into lightly. It is something that would have to be done on a planet-wide scale because the climate is a global system and local changes quickly spread out across the entire planet. It’s also something where we don’t really know what the effects would be, or how to safely stop it once started.
Suppose that we gave it a go, only to find that it drastically reduced rainfall in China causing crop failure, widespread famine, the deaths of millions, the collapse of the Chinese government, and followed quickly by global economic crises, war, etc. Conversely, it might cause massive monsoonal flooding in India and Bangladesh, with similar catastrophic and destabilizing results.
Given these genuine and significant concerns, it’s clear why nobody would secretly be carrying out a program of geoengineering. Why would they, if they don’t know what the result would be? Why would they do it if the treatment had an unknown probability of being far worse than the disease?
This argument against the “covert geoengineering” theory is especially valid if we consider how old the Chemtrail theory is. The first version of the theory arose in 1997 among the more typical conspiracy theorists at the time—anti-globalists concerned about a “New World Order” who thought there was a depopulation plan involving spraying chemicals to make people sick.1 This theory quickly morphed into the geoengineering theory with the writings of William Thomas. Consider what the age of the theory means for your friend—exactly what could they have been spraying twenty years ago if even now the most advanced geoengineering scientists don’t know how to manage the potentially cataclysmic side effects of geoengineering? If we don’t know now what the side effects might be, then how on earth could anyone have thought it a good idea two decades ago?
As well as debunking all the claims of evidence, which we shall do later in this chapter, a key part of helping your friend out of the Chemtrails rabbit hole is supplying them with genuine information about the true state of geoengineering research. While a full review of the scientific literature would be ideal, it’s generally not practical. Focus on the state of geoengineering field experiments—tests that have actually been done in the wild, spraying things from planes to see what a particular geoengineering technique will do.
It turns out that there have been practically zero such tests (at the time of this writing in 2018). In 2009 Russian scientist Yuri Izrael sprayed some smoke out of a helicopter at around 650 feet above ground see how much it blocked the Sun.2 The most well-known geoengineering researcher in the world, David Keith, described this as nothing more than a publicity stunt, as it did not really replicate anything like geoengineering. The second test (and so far the last, and arguably only) was in 2011 by the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, in which smoke from ships and salt from planes was deliberately sprayed on clouds at low altitudes to see how it changed them.3
Besides those two events, there’s still only been a handful of proposals for field experiments. In 2013, Keith and others published a paper that discussed various proposal for possible tests.4 In 2014, a test was proposed using a tethered balloon to do the spraying.5 Planning was started for this test (the SPICE test), but it never happened due to a variety of objections.
Keith hopes to try again in 2018, with a variety of tests. The previously proposed balloon experiments will hopefully take place. That should give the researchers an idea of whether tethered balloons are a viable method. In addition, a variety of substances (sulfur dioxide, aluminum oxide, and calcium carbonate) will be sprayed from planes at high altitude. In each instance less than a kilogram (two pounds) of each material will be sprayed.6
Not only have there been no real field experiments to date, but there’s still considerable discussion whether geoengineering will even work, which method to use, what the side effects will be, and what will happen if we do it and then have to stop. A 2016 analysis of the state of geoengineering research carried out by the American Geophysical Union listed twelve different areas of uncertainty that still needed to be resolved and concluded:
Any well-informed future decision on whether and how to deploy solar geoengineering requires balancing the impacts (both intended and unintended) of intervening in the climate against the impacts of not doing so. Despite tremendous progress in the last decade, the current state of knowledge remains insufficient to support an assessment of this balance, even for stratospheric aerosol geoengineering (SAG), arguably the best understood (practical) geoengineering method.
Few would assert that the current state of knowledge is sufficient to support a decision to deploy. Ultimately, any decision to deploy decades-hence will necessarily involve a tradeoff confounded by risks associated with either choosing deployment or choosing not to. … Research should thus aim to address key uncertainties associated with SAG, such as those listed here, in order to support well-informed future decisions. Up to now, geoengineering research has been dominated by scientific questions, but as research proceeds, it will need to also address important outstanding engineering or design questions. Instead of asking, “What will geoengineering do?” we will have to ask, “Can geoengineering do what we want it to do, and with what confidence?”7
If your friend thinks that secret geoengineering is an obvious explanation for the “Chemtrails,” then you should try to supply him with as much information as possible about the actual state of geoengineering research. Explain just how uncertain the world’s preeminent scientists in the field are now about the effects and effectiveness of geoengineering. Explain how the theory started in 1997, and yet we still have not gotten around to doing any high-altitude field experiments. Explain how the most recent assessments still discuss it as something we might do “decades hence.”
But as well as looking at the implausibility of the theory and the evidence against it, we also have to look at the claimed evidence for the theory. Like all mature conspiracy theories, there’s a broad spectrum of variants of the Chemtrail theory. These in turn are based upon a varied set of claims of evidence. As with 9/11, there’s a core of these varied beliefs and claims of evidence, and there’s a single website that is most frequently referenced by 90 percent of believers. With 9/11 it’s Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, run by Richard Gage, and with Chemtrails it’s Geoengineering Watch, run by Dane Wigington.
While looking at the more esoteric variants of any theory can be an important part of helping your friend out of the rabbit hole, in almost every case a significant portion of their belief is going to be based around a relatively simple core set of beliefs. This is especially true with Chemtrails. When attempting to understand and help someone who is deep down the Chemtrail rabbit hole, the most productive approach is to directly address these core claims of evidence. These core beliefs are all brought up in the core website—Geoengineering Watch.
This concentration of evidence is very useful in the “consider the source” aspect of debunking. People like Gage and Wigington are believed because of their good nature and seeming expertise. If you can demonstrate conclusively to your friend that the core promoters were wrong about one particular claim of evidence, then this allows your friend some mental freedom to begin to question other claims of evidence. It also gives you more leeway in questioning the claims. You can directly ask your friend: “If they are wrong about A, is it possible they are wrong about B?” Remember that this is not meant to entirely discredit the other claims by association, rather to raise the need for some fresh scrutiny of those claims.
I’ll briefly list the core claims of Chemtrail evidence here, and then go into each one in more detail and discuss how to approach the topic, and how to deal with common rejections and objections to the facts. The claims of evidence are presented roughly in the order of likelihood of your friend bringing them up.
Contrails Do Not Persist—By far the most common misconception underlying the theory is that since contrails are just condensation, then they should always quickly evaporate (like your breath would on a cold day). In reality, contrails are a type of cloud, so they can do whatever clouds do, including persist. We also have extensive historical evidence of contrails persisting (sometimes for hours) in decades’ worth of books about clouds and weather, as well as extensive collections of old photographs.
Weather Modification Exists—Weather modification (a.k.a. cloud seeding) is a technique for increasing rainfall by spraying things into a cloud to prompt the formation of raindrops. Many Chemtrail theorists have simply never heard of it, so when they first come across an actual example of cloud seeding they think that it proves the Chemtrail theory. But cloud seeding has been done quite openly for sixty years, it’s done with small planes on existing clouds, and it does not leave a trail.
Videos Show Chemtrails Being Sprayed—Sometimes described as “irrefutable proof” of Chemtrails, there are several videos of planes leaving a type of contrail called an “aerodynamic contrail” that forms over the wing, and not from the engines. The misidentification of these types of trails as a kind of spraying appears to be based purely on a lack of knowledge of this type of contrail. The best approach here is to try to fill in the gaps in their knowledge.
There Are Photos of the Inside of Chemtrail Planes—These are either photos of pre-production planes with ballast barrels, or other known planes with tanks inside of them, like firefighting planes. All of the photos presented as evidence of Chemtrails have been verifiably explained as something else.
Chemical Tests Prove Chemtrails—Here your friend will show you a variety of chemical analyses of air, water, or soil that they say show unusually high levels of some chemical element (often aluminum, barium, and sometimes strontium). These tests are almost invariably the result of misunderstanding how much of these elements naturally exist (soil in California, for example, is 8 percent aluminum on average). They are also often the result of poor sample collection techniques, or just misreading the units in the results (confusing milliliters with microliters).
Modern Jet Engines Can’t Leave Contrails—Most large planes use a type of engine called a high bypass jet engine. Older (low bypass) engines got their thrust (the force that pushes the plane forward) largely by shooting out the jet exhaust from the back of the engine. Newer high bypass engines use the power of the jet engine turbine to turn a very large fan at the front of the engine, and a much larger portion of the thrust comes from the air pushed by that fan. Chemtrail theorists claim that this means that it can’t leave contrails. The problem here is that contrails are made from the exhaust gases of an engine, and not from the thrust. Both high bypass and low bypass engines burn fuel the same way, so they both leave contrails. Conveying this can be a bit of a challenge.
Patents Prove Chemtrails—The argument here is that since patents for geoengineering, weather modification, and spraying things out of planes exist, then that proves there’s a covert geoengineering program using Chemtrails currently in effect. They will give you a long list of patent numbers and names. The information they are missing here is that there are many things for which patents have been issued and which do not exist (for example, when was the last time you saw a space elevator?). There’s also quite a lot of patents on their list that really have nothing to do with geoengineering, or even spraying.
Photos Show One Plane with a Contrail and One with a Chemtrail—This is something you might see for yourself quite often if you watch planes for a while. One plane is leaving a tiny non-persistent trail (or even no trail at all) while another plane, seemingly at the same height, leaves a thick persistent trail that spreads out. The missing information here is how much the atmosphere varies in just a few thousand feet (even a few hundred). Contrail persistence is quite sensitive to small changes, like how water freezes at 32°F, but not at 33°F, and so planes very close together can leave different contrails.
The Government/UN/NASA/CIA Has Admitted “It”—there’s a variety of reasons given for this belief in admissions, but it’s generally a misunderstanding of either research into possible future geoengineering, or unrelated things like weather modification or space sounding rockets (rockets carrying scientific instruments for research purposes).
There are other claims of evidence that are made by Geoengineering Watch and others. For example, there are claims that UV levels are blindingly high, or that the trails are the wrong color, or that planes fly in odd patterns to alter the atmosphere so HAARP can cause earthquakes. These claims have been addressed on sites like Metabunk, and you can find the explanation there with a bit of googling. But it’s best to try to put the more esoteric claims aside for now. They largely rely on unreliable information or subjective assessments that in turn are only given credence because your friend has a tendency to believe in the promoter of the theory. If you can get through the explanations of some of the more fundamental core beliefs then it will make handling the more esoteric ones more straightforward, since you will have removed that tendency to blindly believe.
Contrail Science
To understand some of the problems with the false claims behind Chemtrails, it’s helpful to have a basic understanding of the science behind contrails. I will keep this as simple as possible, and there’s plenty of other resources to find more detail.
There’s one simple fact that’s related to the vast majority of confusion about contrails (and hence the Chemtrail theory), and that is: contrails are a type of cloud. Contrails have been classified as clouds by the World Meteorological Organization for decades. Like other clouds, contrails have now been included in the Latin taxonomy of clouds, informally as cirrus aviaticus (aviation cirrus) and more formally cirrus homogenitus (man-made cirrus). Contrails are man-made clouds, like the clouds sometimes found over power stations (cumulus mediocris homogenitus), but they are still clouds nonetheless.
What is a cloud? People often only have a loose idea and think of clouds as “water vapor.” But water vapor is actually an invisible gas. Clouds are made of trillions of tiny drops of liquid water suspended like fine specks of dust in the air. If the clouds are cold enough (usually very high up in the sky) then they are made of trillions of tiny ice crystals.
When people tell you that a contrail should quickly dissipate, they usually refer to it as “condensation.” They compare this to the condensation of your breath on a cold day. Here they are partly correct. Contrails from jet engines form because hot jet exhaust has water vapor in it, just like how your breath is warm and humid. When this hot, humid breath (or jet exhaust) hits colder air, then the low temperature makes the water vapor condense. It condenses into a cloud, physically not much different to a tiny part of a typical cumulus cloud you might see in the sky.
But the condensation cloud from your breath quickly vanishes. This is because in order for a cloud to persist the air needs to be humid enough. For a liquid water droplet cloud to persist it needs a relative humidity of 100 percent, e.g., inside a region of cloud or fog. For your breath to form clouds that persist you would essentially have to already be standing inside of a cloud, and your breath would just be adding a little more condensation to it.
Why then do contrails (sometimes) persist in a clear blue sky? If contrails are condensation clouds like your breath, then why don’t they vanish almost instantly like your breath vanishes? It’s because contrails freeze.
Contrails from engine exhaust start out exactly the same as the condensation from your breath, as a cloud of billions of micro-droplets of water. But since the temperature is very cold in the upper atmosphere (-40°C/-40°F), the droplets freeze. Once frozen they cannot evaporate. A contrail is the frozen breath of a jet engine.
If the humidity is very low the cloud won’t last very long, even frozen ice will fade away at very low humidity (a process called “sublimation,” where a solid goes directly to the gas form). But the level of humidity needed for ice clouds to persist is much lower than the level needed for water clouds. Water clouds need 100 percent relative humidity with respect to water, but ice clouds need only 50 percent to 70 percent (the actual amount decreases with temperature).8
This explains why we get contrails when there’s hardly another cloud in the sky. Ice clouds (like cirrus clouds) need a higher humidity to form than they need to persist. The entire sky can be just ripe for clouds to live in, but they just need a little bump of moisture to get them to spring into existence. The water in the jet exhaust provides that little bump, popping the humidity up high enough for water vapor to condense, quickly freeze, and then form ice clouds. These ice clouds are contrails, and if humidity is high enough they are persistent contrails.
Concepts such as relative humidity and trillions of micro-drops instantly freezing can feel rather alien and incomprehensible. Don’t worry too much if it takes you a while to get used to them. Conversely, if you are already familiar with the science, or if it all seems quite straightforward to you, then keep in mind that it almost certainly will not seem that way to your friend. Give it time. It can help to show a variety of different versions of the explanation (like in the books we shall discuss in the next section).
Another key concept to understand is that clouds form in two ways; the most common is by warm air rising until it cools below its dew point. Most clouds you see in the sky form this way, and if you look at a time-lapse of clouds forming you’ll typically see them seeming to boil upwards.
A less common type of formation is the “mixing cloud;” this is formed when two volumes of air with different temperatures and humidities mix together, and the resulting mixture is cool and humid enough for a cloud to form in. Exhaust contrails are mixing clouds; they form from the mixing of humid exhaust gases with outside air. In the glossary of the American Meteorological Society, the definition of mixing clouds says, “An example of a mixing cloud is a condensation trail.”9
Finally, and crucially, there’s two types of contrails. The contrails described thus far, where exhaust gases mix with outside air, are called “exhaust contrails.” The other type is called an “aerodynamic contrail.”
I cannot stress strongly enough how important knowledge of aerodynamic contrails is to the effective debunking of the Chemtrail theory. There’s many videos and photos that chemtrail believers present as “irrefutable proof” of spraying that are simply aerodynamic contrails. Even if you don’t yet understand the science behind how exhaust contrails work, you still need to understand that these aerodynamic contrails exist and that they are different from exhaust contrails.
You’ve probably seen a type of aerodynamic contrails if you’ve ever landed in a plane in damp weather. Condensation clouds form over the wing because the air flowing over the top of the wing drops in pressure. If it’s humid enough this pressure drop can trigger condensation. Usually when you are landing, any clouds that form on top of the wing almost instantly dissipate when the pressure returns to normal. Sometimes you see long cylindrical streamers of cloud coming from points on the wing—these are vortices formed by spinning air which keeps the pressure low and the aerodynamic contrail visible for much longer—but when the air stops spinning, the contrail fades away just like it did over the wing. Hence, aerodynamic contrails are short-lived at ground level.
The story is very different at high altitude. If it is cold enough then the drop in pressure over the wing will cause the water vapor in the air to both condense from vapor into tiny liquid water droplets and then freeze solid into tiny ice crystals. This process fixes the aerodynamic contrail in the air (by freezing) in the same way an exhaust contrail is fixed. But because these aerodynamic contrails follow a different mechanism of formation, the atmospheric conditions required to form are also different. You still need the humidity, but because the temperature drop is caused by the pressure reduction over the plane’s wing, you don’t need the air to be so cold. Because of this, aerodynamic contrails can form at much lower altitude than exhaust contrails. Exhaust contrails typically start at around thirty thousand feet over the continental United States, but aerodynamic contrails can form as low as twenty thousand feet, or even lower in cold weather.