Some of my friends whose eyes have been opened by the blatant lying and gas-lighting over the last 3 years by the “follow the Science™” crowd have justifiably become much more skeptical now of every “scientific” claim by corporate media. I understand and can sympathize. However, if we ourselves intend to not become the very thing we criticize we must remain true to the scientific method and analyze the data with a dispassionate eye and not one that is soured by the identity of the proponent. Somebody who is right on 10 things and can still be wrong on one. Likewise someone wrong on 10 things can still be right on one.
Chemtrails is one of those things. As a chemist I’m more highly attuned to detecting the misunderstandings of the chemtrail believers. It’s understandable. Some of these facts would not be general knowledge for a non-chemist. Hopefully I can provide some context here to help my friends understand the topic better.
I’m going to address point by point the issues he raises in this video here:
Q1) Seeing condensation trails one day and not the next or during the day and not at night
A1) The atmosphere is not a blank slate of “nothingness” into which material is deposited. It is a complex dynamic mixture of water (gas, liquid, solid) as well as erratically changing wind and temperature gradients (this is the source of turbulence we feel on planes, we are flying into and out of these massive “hard” air streams like a boat hitting the wake of another boat or wave). So with that said, he presumes that the atmosphere is a constant unchanging canvas and that is simply not the case. His question is tantamount to asking “why does it rain one day and then the next day it does not?”
Q2) One aircraft leaving a trail horizon to horizon with an aircraft next to it leaving “virtually” nothing (seen in video)
A2) The aircraft are at different altitudes, we just can’t “see” the difference in height between say 30,000 ft and 35,000 ft or even 25,000 ft
Q3) Claim that we seen the trails for craft at 20,000 ft and that contrails are impossible at this altitude and temperature range
A3) This is patently false and have no idea why he would say such a thing. It betrays a gross ignorance of basic chemistry related to vapor pressure, condensation and phase changes (gas-liquid-solid) related to dew point and humidity. Any combusted gas contains water vapor period. The temperature does not need to be below freezing to have condensation from gas to liquid. I’m sure we have all observed a morning where when we were breathing outside and it was only say 50 F and we could “see” our breath. This is always on particularly humid days. This is because the air is already saturated with water vapor and our “hot” breath is well above the dew point of water in the air at that temperature and humidity. And at 20,000 feet the temperature is going to be well below what it is a ground level and is commonly below freezing anyway (even though we don’t need sub freezing temperatures to get condensation). Anyway I could go on and on but this is a howler of a claim
Q4) High bypass jet engine, by design can’t produce a condensation trail, 85% of air is non combustible
A4) Here we throws in a bit of “truthful but not honest” claims. Ok, so what if 85% of the air is non-combustible… 15% of it is, and it is that 15% that produces pure water vapor (it must chemically, combustion = CHx + O2 –> CO2 + H2O
Hot gas when cooled will condense into a liquid or a solid depending on temperature and relative humidity. Now the reason sometimes we don’t “see” any contrails is precisely because of a confluence sometimes of very low humidity and low temps and high wind. Basically the moisture condenses straight to microscopic ice particles that are then immediately dispersed by winds that are well over 100 mph. That is, it’s there, we just can’t see a 20 ft trail from 7 miles away. When the trails do maintain for a period of time this is because winds at that altitude are gentler to non-existant and humidity is high so we have suspended liquid water droplets (clouds) because it can’t redissolve into the air by evaporating.
If you watch the end of the video where it shows an array of planes with just massive amounts of contrails behind them I can see why this would make someone believe something is being released. But, if you look more closely at this zoomed in videos you can see there is no apparent single point of exit for some material, that is, the white vapor is coming from everywhere across the entire plane, the entire length of the wings with no gaps, tail, edges, everything. Why is this? What is going on? This is a phenomenon in chemistry known as disturbance of a super saturated solution.
Normally a solvent (eg water is the easiest example here, but air can also be a solvent) can only hold a certain amount of a solute (solid or liquid compound that is dissolved in it). Anything amount above that, and it will not dissolve further. However under certain special conditions we can “trick” it into holding more than it should, that is we can heat the solvent slowly and dissolve more material (solubility normally increases with temperature). Then if we slowly decrease the temperature and DO NOT DISTURB the solvent the material will stay in solution. But if we disturb it, it will suddenly BOOM ALL crash out at once, even beyond what should have dissolved. We do this in the lab by scratching the side of the glass container or sometimes simply tapping the bottle. (By way of example this is what happens with a heated water on the stove that is over the boiling point of water but it is not actively boiling. If you drop the tiniest particle in it (pasta for example) in there the whole thing will explode in a huge bubbling explosion). This is what is happening in those videos (super saturation disturbance). The sky is supersaturated with moisture and now we have this massive hot fast moving object ripping through it disturbing it and we see just massive condensation in its wake not even from the engines but from what is already in the sky and is being disrupted and dropped out of super saturation.
Q5) Trails where there is no commercial traffic
A5) Ok, is there non-commercial traffic there? I’m sure the answer is yes (military), otherwise why qualify it in that way “commercial” traffic, why not just say “no traffic”. He can’t, because that isn’t the case
Q6) Found 61,000 ppb of aluminum “in” snow on Mt Shasta
A6) These things are normally quoted in ppm (parts per million) not ppb (parts per billion) so I’m sure it sounds a lot scarier to say 61,000 of something vs 61. But moving on. If you blow up the video they show part of the lab report and it states the sample is from some area 3/4 mile above a parking lot (?) Ok, well I think this is simply a reflection of either pollution from the parking lot (exhaust) over what period of time, it’s not clear. At a minimum we can’t disentangle such pollution from the effect he is promoting.
Q7) Citing patents showing proposals to either fight global warming or make it worse (?) by using aluminum compounds in the jet fuel
A7) Ok, some idiots thought this would be a good idea. That doesn’t prove they are actually doing it (although I would not necessarily be surprised if they tried in some isolated tests). However it would not cause the “chemtrail” effect seen. Small unburnt aluminum oxides or similar are too small to be seen with the naked eye from such a distance. I find it hard to believe they have been injecting aluminum compounds into jet fuel for the last 30 years and not a SINGLE person in the fuel industry has stepped up to say anything? Not a SINGLE whistleblower? That just strikes me as highly suspect. Unless… it is so routinely done that no one thinks anything of it… read on…
Researching this a bit further (addition of aluminum to jet fuel (which is essentially kerosene with varying degrees of additives depending on application) I found very quickly two papers after a cursory web search, one from 2001 and another more recent (2018) discussing the use of aluminum nanoparticles as additives to enhance ignition and combustion in kerosene based (jet fuel) systems. It appears the technique would mainly have military application as it pertains to increasing energy density for hypersonic propulsion. However it can’t be ruled out there is not also light or irregular commercial application of this technique, that is, yes, perhaps “they” have indeed been adding “aluminum” (actually an organic complex AlH3•Et2O) to jet fuel, but not for any sinister purpose but merely to increase speed and/or range/efficiency. But at a minimum it seems highly probably the military is deploying this technique but doesn’t publicize it in order to prevent “the enemy” learning of these little tricks (the military is rather protective of their secrets). So the elevated levels of aluminum found by folks like Dane Wigington at elevation would then be a function of such usage.
Incidentally most of the articles he has streaming by when trying to show us the weight of all the documentation they have accumulated have to do with cloud formation. This is not a conspiracy. It is well known that the agricultural industry has an interest in seeding the skies to help with cloud formation to induce rain in times of drought. This is not what I presume chemtrail proponents are referring to when they speak of chemtrails, but often this is the evidence cited to prove the claim, even though it is totally uncontroversial and no one denies it. Classic Motte and Bailey strategy… cite rainmaking efforts as evidence for something more sinister, then when it is pointed out retreat and claim “oh I know that, just showing these things have been done for other reasons” yeah, we know, no one is claiming otherwise.
Q8) “Aluminum does not exist in the environment in free form naturally”
A8) CORRECT! So then why claim it is on the snow on some mountain, it wouldn’t exist there even if it were being dumped as metallic aluminum from the sky. It would react on its way down to the surface. Plus the “Welsbach” materials he cites from these studies make it clear it is aluminum oxide, not metallic aluminum . This is just incoherent. Cake and eat it to reasoning.
My charge to the chemtrail proponents like this fellow would be simply this: Send a plane up there yourself and sample the “chemtrails” directly and see what is in them. That would put this to bed pretty quickly. This is one of the few purported conspiracies going on right before our eyes, so why not simply check it out first hand. Taking samples from the ground introduces way too many variables. Go directly to the source. When they occur they are up there all day long, there is plenty of time to send a plane up there to sample it. (Apparently I’ve been told they have done this? Ok, can someone give me a direct link to what they found? Dane was interviewed by RFK but gave a cagey response about what was found, as well as we’d have to compare it to a “normal” plane to know what is differential between the two).
Chemtrails just doesn’t pass the bar of the Occam’s Razor analysis. It is either condensation from combustion (a known thing) or it is a worldwide conspiracy that has been going on for 30+ years among heads of state, fuel suppliers and airlines and not a single person anywhere ever has stepped forward to blow the cover on this. Not even an anonymous report submitted to newspapers. Nothing. Which is more likely here?