By Ben Horner
Chemtrails vs. Contrails
Reefer Madness was a propaganda film from the 1930’s that
completely changed societies perspective of marijuana. Many films, news articles and other forms of propaganda
have been used to create the war on marijuana, hemp and all forms of cannabis.
This war has been waged on the users and suppliers of cannabis at great public
cost and massive incarceration rates for minorities and other poor people. During this same time, commercial tobacco and
alcohol companies heavily advertised and generated wide spread belief that
their products were socially acceptable and healthy for consumption.
Today, perception of marijuana, tobacco, alcohol, and
prescription medication is changing, as we better understand their effects and
side effects. This synthesis of social perception is what defines modern
societies in this ever-changing world; i.e. zeitgeist of a society. Corporate
and governmental bodies often cling to the propaganda of the pasts that supports
their interests, as we have seen in the movement across the country to reform
marijuana laws. Is this also the case with climate change and climate
engineering programs like Solar Radiation Management?
During the nineties, U.S. researchers and environmentalists noticed
unusual lingering exhaust from jets flying in the sky. Unlike typical
condensation trails caused by jets flying at high altitudes, which dissipate
fairly quickly depending on the humidity and temperature of the atmosphere,
these jet produced lingering liner clouds that crisscrossed the skies.
Observers recorded these all over the world, as they remained suspended in the
sky and gradually formed hazy cloud formations. These curious observers became
convinced that these trails were not jet contrails, based on historical
observations and coined the word ‘chem-trail’, combining the word ‘chemical’
and the word ‘contrail’. Most credible institutions and government officials refute
observations of these chemtrails, as a misunderstood conspiracy theory. The Oxford Dictionary defines this aerial
phenomenon as:
Contrail: (noun) a trail of condensed water from an
aircraft or rocket at high altitude, seen as a white streak against the sky.
Chemtrail: (noun) a visible trail left in the sky by
an aircraft and believed by some to consist of chemical or biological agents
released as part of a covert operation.
Skeptics of contrails insist that there is no such thing as
chemtrails, and what people are seeing in the sky is what is characterized as
multiple persistent contrails. Persistent contrails form if the atmospheric
conditions are just right, and are rare. So why are their so many more reports
of multiple, visibly persistent contrails?
NASA completed a study in 1996 called SUCCES, Subsonic Aircraft:
Contrail and Cloud Effects Special Study. In this study, the conditions for
forming persistent contrails were measured using a NASA DC-8 fitted with a
variety of sensors to determine air moisture, ambient air pressure and
temperature. The study determined that they could predict the environmental
conditions needed to form persistent contrails, and that by adding moisture,
soot and sulfur that the persistence and duration could be enhanced and that these
contrails could be used for climate change.
Conspiracy theories regarding chemtrails vary significantly.
Some hypothesize that the government is using these trails to disperse harmful
materials into the environment. Whether misinformation or paranoid delusions
spurred theories about chemtrails being used for mind control, de-population
and other forms of apocalyptic doom is debatable, a simple Google search can
tell you that there is a ton of speculation on both sides of the spectrum of
believers and debunkers. Regardless, plenty of research has been done on the
use of particulate materials for Climate Engineering (CE) and Solar Radiation
Management (SRM).
In May of this year, researchers from American Enterprise
Institute, out of the University of Texas, released a policy paper titled, Solar Radiation Management: An Evolving
Climate Policy Option. In this paper, plans for using aerosols sprayed into
the atmosphere may be the most cost effective way of dealing with global
warming. How to gain support for an international SRM program to reduce global rises
in temperature is considered. Using man made particulates and reflective dust
to reflect the suns radiation out we could cause a controlled cooling of our
planet and prevent Al Gore’s environmental doomsday (Inconvenient Truth, 2006)
from becoming a reality. Cost for implementing a global SRM program to mitigate
the effects of global warming is small on the front end, but more research and development
is needed to calculate the cost and long-term effects of such climate
modification programs. A significant portion of the paper contemplated how environmentalists
and partisan politics would challenge the United States domestically.
Internationally, fears of America acting unilaterally to implement weather
modification are cited. The paper suggested that European support being very
difficult due to a general dis-trust of America for recent unilateral actions
in the Middle East and breaking from the Kyoto Treaty. India, Russia and China were
also considered for possible alliances in an international SRM
implementation.
In Denmark, a global think tank
called Copenhagen Consensus Center released a paper in 2012 called, An Analysis of Climate Engineering as a
Response to Climate Change. In this paper, it is suggested that the global
community allocate an average of approximately 0.3% of its $250 billion annual
climate-change budget ($750 million per year) to SRM and AC research over the
next decade, with a preference for SRM because of it’s low cost. This paper
also discussed many of the political challenges of implementing an SRM program.
Absent a more dramatic change in climate, public support for implementing such
a program is not considered likely, so international partnering in global
research is advised. It should be noted that the very same American Enterprise
Institute, out of the University of Texas, that produced the SRM paper this
year, produced the Copenhagen paper.
It seems possible that the United
States is actively researching impacts of persistent contrails on a regional
basis. By utilizing the data on where to find the sweet spots in the sky, from
research projects like SUCCESS, the U.S. can proceed classified testing, without
causing any alarm, by simply having tight air traffic controls. In a post-9/11
world, we do have tightened air traffic controls and could direct traffic
towards altitudes and regions in the sky that have the correct conditions for
forming persistent contrails. If the jet fuel was modified, as described by
Hughes Aircraft Company’s 1991 U.S. Patent No. 5003187, full scale research and
development for a global SRM program could be implemented for the sake of
national security fairly easily, and with a degree of secrecy.
Such research would give the U.S. a
strategic advantage for future SRM programs, as well as with many other
counties who, like us are spending more and more on CE. The task of controlling
the worlds’ climate may be the key to global sustainability and is being
lobbied for on an international level. Within the last four years, major policy
research organizations have also conducted studies, convened conferences, and
published reports on the subject of SRM and CE. Some of the larger efforts of
this sort have been by those of AEI, the Bi-partisan Center, the Climate Institute,
and the Council on Foreign Relations, the Hudson Institute, the National
Academy of Sciences, and the RAND Corporation. These groups have direct
connections to the military industrial complex and the largest shareholders in
global holdings. These organizations have been used for public policy setting,
also known as propaganda.
