No Scientific Evidence of #Chemtrails
Belated Merry Christmas in 2022 to all of my non-contrarian Medium article readers, in this article I’ll be tackling a recycled conspiracy theory about chemtrails, which is being reposted all over social media, especially on Twitter, so without further ado, let’s get into the article
➡️️ Context
Twitter is being bombarded with Tweets [1] about chemtrails and all sorts of claims about supposed population harm and more.
- Undermining a whole narrative
One Tweeter decided to make a comment replying to a dubious author about what’s being dropped onto people from this picture:
No long the vaccines that have Graphene Oxide inside them now, the narrative of GO being inside the vaccines evidently failed so now the narrative is being goalpost shifted [2] towards chemtrails, I’m not even going to bother addressing this, it’s wild & ridiculous.
References: [1] https://twitter.com/search?q=chemtrails&t=B_bScltaKTGw9Ka3rwG5zA&s=09
[2] https://grammarist.com/idiom/move-the-goalposts-and-shift-the-goalposts/
➡️️ 77-Person Expert Consensus Study
A study published in IOPScience [1] by Christine Shearer et al 2016, responded with 77 experts about the evidence of whether Chemtrails/SLAP (secret large-scale atmospheric program) [1], the abstract of this starts with the following “Nearly 17% of people in an international survey said they believed the existence of a secret large-scale atmospheric program (SLAP) to be true or partly true. [2] ”
The 77-Person Expert Consensus Study [1] looked at various website which promotes the supposed exposure of chemtrails, depicting them as real, the website examples that this study mentioned were ‘Geoengineering Watch’ and ‘Global Sky Watch’ to name a few (note the URLs will not be cited, I won’t promote fringe theories on Medium). The websites claim condensation trails, or contrails [3], should evaporate right away, and therefore persistent trails are evidence of chemical spraying. This claim lacks evidence-based information and is based on assumptions.
The study goes further in detail about two surveys [4] [5] that were made by the authors, these two surveys were given to the different individuals that made up the 77 expert consensus, and these were the criteria: (1) atmospheric scientists with expertise in condensation trails and (2) geochemists working on atmospheric deposition of dust and pollution on the Earth’s surface. A quote from the study shows how these experts were chosen “Expert participants were selected by using the ISI Web of Science to identify the authors of the most-cited peer-reviewed publications covering these topics that have been published in the past 20 years (1994–2014).”
- Results of this study
In response to the general question of whether they have ever encountered evidence that indicates the existence of SLAP, 76 of the total 77 expert respondents (98.7%) answered no. As can be seen below:
- Conclusion to this study
Results show that 76 out of 77 (98.7%) of scientists that took part in this study said there was no evidence of a SLAP, and that the data cited as evidence could be explained through other factors, such as typical contrail formation and poor data sampling instructions presented on SLAP websites.
This study shows us further proof that chemtrails are not real, other factors can explain what they are too, this study is very reliable and the experts showing were robust and based on the authors of the most-cited peer-reviewed publications in the past 20 years.
Reference: Christine Shearer et al (2016) — [1] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/8/084011/meta
[2] Mercer et al (2011) — https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/6/4/044006
[3] https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/apl/noise_emissions/contrails/
[4] Survey 1 — http://nearzero.org/elicitation/review/a2592e56-cb21-4849-baa2-560d456707c8
[5] Survey 2 — http://nearzero.org/elicitation/review/d172e2d8-89fa-4bcc-a90f-c28a58bc7cf0)
➡️️ Other Information that Supports Chemtrails Don’t Exist
Proponents of this conspiracy theory argue that if normal condensation trails dissipate relatively rapidly, those that persist should contain additional substances [1]. This claim has been dismissed by the scientific community [2]. There is no evidence that the so-called chemical trails differ from the normal water trails left by high-altitude aeroplanes in certain atmospheric conditions. [2]
The UK Government chimed in on this theory as well when they had an FOA request [3] come in. They explained the science behind contrails, climate change and other factors. The scanned document goes on to explain that the trails that can be seen and be seen in images are contrails from aircraft and nothing more, the document goes on to explain that there are two forms of contrails, those that are persistent and those that are non-persistent.
A fact sheet presented by government agencies in the year 2000 [4], also helps add some more information on contrails and a whole lot more. Which helps refute claims on supposed “chemtrails” from aircraft.
References: [1] James, Nigel (2003). “Contrails”. In Knight, Peter (ed.). Conspiracy Theories in American History: An Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. pp. 197–199. ISBN 978–1–57607–812–9. https://books.google.com/books/about/Conspiracy_Theories_in_American_History.html?id=qMIDrggs8TsC#v=onepage&q&f=false
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20130306001902/http://www.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-051013-001.pdf
[3] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/295186/14_0355.pdf
[4] https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/policy_guidance/envir_policy/media/contrails.pdf
➡️ ️Conclusion
The overwhelming evidence presented from the study of 77 experts, the scientific community and other entities, show that chemtrails are nothing more than a made-up theory.
💥 Thanks for reading, Lawrence. Please consider a small contribution, in the form of a beer as all articles are created in my small amount of spare time: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/LawrenceRob