Perhaps you've come across the dire warnings on the Internet: "HIGH ALERT!! REPORTS ARE COMING FROM EVERYWHERE PEOPLE!! RED ALERT ** HOSPITALS JAMMED AS BANNED PESTICIDE IS SPRAYED FROM THE SKIES (formerly on http://home.earthlink.net/~ravenlmr/index2.htm.)

What's all this about, you ask? It's called "Chemtrails," a purported government program to deliver poisonous or mind-controlling substances to the general population by spraying from airplanes.

Some Typical Chemtrails websites :
http://www.rense.com/politics6/chemdatapage.html
http://www.carnicom.com/contrails.htm (Lots of pictures, letters from New Mexico)

The Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) site for October 13, 2004 shows a striking picture of contrails over the southeastern United States. The site is full of incredibly inflammatory statements, such as "The exhaust of an airplane engine can create a contrail by saturating the surrounding air with extra moisture." (Actually, the comments are seen as inflanmmatory only by believers in "chemtrails," supposed government spraying of biotoxins and death via seemingly innocent "contrails.")

Source: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap041013.html

The APOD page links to general NASA sites on contrails, such as this one:
http://asd-www.larc.nasa.gov/GLOBE/contrails/

Our local "chemtrails" enthusiast, Cliff Carnicom of Santa Fe, has announced on his website that "NASA has recently adopted a public strategy of abusing its position of national and public service by attempting to indoctrinate the citizens, including children, that the aerosol operations are a "normal" and expected consequence of daily life and aircraft. Nothing can be further from the truth, as is also apparent from an honest and thorough examination of the issue. ..."

Source: http://carnicom.com/nasa1.htm

Contrails ("CHEMTRAILS") are NORMAL. The International Space Station crew sees them all the time, except when airplanes are not flying, as happened in the days after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Here is the report from www.space.com from September 14th, 2001:

"Three days after suicide airplane hijackers toppled the World Trade Center in New York and slammed into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., the station crew noted an obvious absence of airborne jetliners from their perch 240 miles (384 kilometers) above Earth. 'I’ll tell you one thing that’s really strange: Normally when we go over the U.S., the sky is like a spider web of contrails,' U.S. astronaut and outpost commander Frank Culbertson told flight controllers at NASA’s Mission Control Center in Houston. 'And now the sky is just about completely empty. There are no contrails in the sky,' he added. 'It’s very, very weird.' 'I hadn’t thought of that perspective,' fellow astronaut Cady Coleman replied."

Source: http://www.space.com./missionlaunches/missions/airtraffic_absence_010914.html

 

Old-timer Debunks Chemtrails!

John Day, meteorologist (Photo credit :Willamette Week )

Chris Lydgate of the Willamette Week (Oregon) wrote a detailed report on Sept. 26th, 2001 on the "CHEM TRAIL" phenomenon. Lydgate wrote about Portland observers of the "Chemtrails," and even New Mexico's own Cliff Carnicom (see http://www.nmsr.org/chemtrls.htm). He also included comments from an old-timer meteorologist who puts the kibosh on the "Trails." He wrote "If there is a giant conspiracy to spray chemicals from the sky, chances are good that Professor John Day is not a part of it. The author of six books on meteorology, Day is a world-renowned expert on clouds, a professor emeritus at Linfield College and a regular contributor to the McMinnville News-Register, ... When he hears the word 'chemtrail,' however, Day's frosty mustache droops, and his sky-blue eyes darken. 'I don't happen to warm up to that phenomenon,' he sighs. Despite his reluctance to be drawn into the controversy, Day graciously agreed to examine photographs of chemtrails to see if he spotted anything unusual. 'This is a perfectly normal situation with cirrocumulus cloud and a single spreading contrail,' he declared after inspecting one photo for a full minute. Then he flipped to the next. 'Nothing weird about that. Cirrostratus cloud...' And the next. 'The criss-cross pattern is a consequence of planes flying criss-cross patterns....' And the next. 'I've seen many situations like this one....' Contrail formation, Day explained, depends on the relative humidity of the atmosphere-- he ratio of what is to what could be at a particular temperature. When relative humidity is low, contrails dissipate within seconds. But when relative humidity is high, especially at the subzero temperatures of the upper atmosphere, the addition of even a tiny amount of water vapor acts as a catalyst. Under these conditions, contrails may linger and spread to cover the whole sky. ...At length, Day extracted from his bookshelf a well-thumbed edition of Peterson's Field Guide to Clouds and Weather, which he co-authored in 1991 (a good 10 years before chemtrails became widely discussed), turned to the section on contrails, and pointed to a photograph of a thick, white plume--a plume that looked for all the world like a chemtrail..."

Source: http://www.wweek.com/flatfiles/News1982.html

 

USA Today takes on CHEMTRAILS!

If you see a contrail from a plane, does that mean that the government is again spraying deadly chemicals or biological agents on its citizens? A 7 March 2001 article by Traci Watson in USA Today describes the "chemtrail" phenomenon. She quotes Patrick Minnis of NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, VA, who said "If you try to pin these people down and refute things, it's, 'Well, you're just part of the conspiracy ... Logic is not exactly a real selling point for most of them.'' Watson also writes that "The cloud-forming contrails that conspiracy theorists find so ominous are 'perfectly natural,' Minnis says. The odd grid and parallel-line patterns are easily explained as contrails blown together by the wind, scientists say. "

Source: http://usatoday.com/usatonline/20010307/3117139s.htm

 

CHEMTRAIL FEARS THRIVE ON INTERNET

From NMSR Reports, Vol. 5, No. 12, December 1999

The Attorney General's office recently contacted NMSR member Kim Johnson to help answer questions from constituents regarding the alleged dangers. Here is Kim's letter, reprinted with permission. -editor

M. Kim Johnson

October 31, 1999

Attorney General's Office

State of New Mexico

I have finished a review of letters sent to the Attorney General of New Mexico's office from several writers. In each of these letters, the writers express concern that aircraft are spraying biological or chemical materials into the atmosphere for unspecified purposes. One of the letters quotes anecdotal incidences of sickness that might be tied to the aircraft activity. The letters refer to "chemtrails" as well as contrails.

I have read the letters and reviewed the referenced web pages . In so doing, I have viewed a number of photos purporting to be of aircraft spraying the chemical or biological material into the atmosphere. I have also discussed these letters with another scientist familiar with upper atmospheric phenomena from Sandia National Laboratory and an retired general and fighter pilot who is an Air Force Hall of Fame Member inducted in at the same time as Neil Armstrong and former President Ford.

In summary, there is no evidence that these "chemtrails" are other than expected, normal contrails from jet aircraft that vary in their shapes, duration, and general presentation based on prevailing weather conditions. That is not to say that there could not be an occasional, purposeful experimental release of, say, high altitude barium for standard wind tracking experiments. There could also be other related experiments that occur from time-to-time which release agents into the atmosphere. However, not one single picture that was presented as evidence indicates other than normal contrail formation.

The variation in presentation is explained by the tropospheric conditions and, to some extent, the positioning of aircraft engines. When the troposphere experiences a relatively stable, supersaturated condition (water vapor in excess of 100% humidity without condensation), then any disturbance that causes formation of ice crystals provides nucleation surfaces for the supersaturated moisture to condense upon. When a jet engine burns its fuel, the major byproduct is water vapor. When the exhaust passes over the rear stabilizer of an aircraft, the tips or ends of the stabilizer cause the exhaust to expand rapidly. When it does, the temperature decreases rapidly within a turbulent flow, and ice crystal formation is forced. Generally, this makes it look as if the jet were spraying a cloud from the ends of the stabilizer. If the atmosphere is not at saturation, the contrail will not persist. The formed ice crystals will sublimate into the surrounding atmosphere. Hence, the appearance of a short, well formed vapor trail. If the water content is very low, then no discernible contrail will form at all. All the exhaust water will be absorbed by the atmosphere before there is time to form ice crystals.

If the atmospheric water content is not consistent with altitude (picture atmospheric "waves" of high water vapor content below a layer of low water vapor content much like waves on the ocean), then a jet will alternately pass through air that allows contrail formation and air that does not. This gives the appearance of a dashed line if the plane is flying at, or near the perpendicular to the waves. If the atmosphere is highly supersaturated, then the formed ice crystals may act as nucleation centers for a continual spreading of the contrail. In other words, the contrail actually causes the supersaturated moisture to condense, spreading out from its original path. This causes the formation of a cirrostratus cloud structure, far in excess of what would occur from a simple contrail.

One other phenomenon observed is the formation of contrails off wing surfaces along with the engine exhaust contrails. This can be caused when the air is highly supersaturated and the expansion of the air coming off of the wing surface is sufficient to cause ice crystallization. In this case, it appears that the whole plane is leaving a trail. This can often be observed by a passenger flying in a commercial airplane when entering cold, supersaturated air, particularly in the winter when close to a storm front.

There were no pictures or evidence that indicated anything other than the above contrail formation phenomena. Anecdotal stories of persons getting sick after contrails from obviously supersaturated tropospheric conditions lend no basis for belief that there are chemicals or biological agents being released. This type of story provides as much credence to "chemtrails" as does the belief that drinking milk is causally linked to heroin addiction. (Almost all heroin addicts in the US drank milk as children.)

Please contact me if there are any questions.

Sincerely,

M. Kim Johnson, Physicist 

 

CONTRAIL INFORMATION RESOURCES

contrailscience.com

Ian Goddard's "CONTRAIL ANALYSIS" site, and MORE...
http://IanGoddard.net/contrail.htm and http://IanGoddard.net/contral2.htm

Jay Reynolds' Dynamite Contrail Info Sites:. Contrails - or 'Trails-con?
http://goodsky.homestead.com/index.html
More about Jay Reynolds...http://www.navarrone.com/contrails/chemtrails1.html

CONTRAILS IN HISTORY! Did long contrails (now called "chemtrails") exist in the 40's? You bet!! See RESOURCE NOTES ON JET CONTRAILS AND ASSOCIATED ITEMS: http://www.astro.ku.dk/~holger/IDA/notes.html  ! This site has a HUGE number of links to every aspect of contrails.

DEBATE OVER CONTRAILS INTENSIFIES...http://www.politicalwomen.com/debate.htm

Scientific Studies Regarding Aircraft Contrails and Cloud Formation http://www.borderlands.com/contrails/contrail.htm

Especially for Kooks...
http://www.watchingyou.com/kooktrails.html

 NMSR Site Map