Chemtrails in the Sky Are Evidence of Nefarious Activities for Broad-Based Conspiracy Theorists

By Alexander Zaitchik, AlterNet. Posted January 27, 2009.

The Kucinich bill wasn't the first time someone in government acknowledged the chemtrails conspiracy theory. Far from it. State agencies have given more careful attention to chemtrails than any other conspiracy theory, after UFOs. And they have addressed its activists with a seriousness it is impossible to imagine with regard to, say, 9/11 Truthers.

In 2000, the EPA, NASA, FAA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a joint "Aircraft Contrails Factsheet" that sought to address the fears and claims of the increasingly rambunctious chemtrails crowd. The six-page illustrated report explains the science of contrails, such as the role humidity plays in the variance between how long contrails linger and spread, sometimes forming cirrus cloud cover; and their zero impact on human health.

The report admits a link between contrails and climate change, but says this is not the purpose of the global air travel industry. The EPA report also includes photos of contrail clusters of the kind found on chemtrails sites. Although the word "chemtrails" does not appear in the report, the structure and tone make it clear that the exercise is aimed at the chemtrails conspiracists, delivered as a school nurse might talk to a student about excessive masturbation in a roundabout way in order not to embarrass herself or the student.

The Air Force, on the other hand, has no qualms about talking straight to the chemtrailers. The USAF followed the EPA's multi-agency report with its own 24-page fact sheet on emissions. The report included a section titled "The 'Chemtrail' Hoax." Here the military bluntly addresses the idea that "the Air Force [is] involved in spraying the U.S. population with mysterious substances [and] conducting weather-modification experiments." It explains that long-lasting contrails are not new and have been under official study since the 1950s, and that the grid patterns highlighted by chemtrailers result from the National Airspace System being structured on a four-directional grid with aircraft flying at designated increments of elevation.

Inevitably, the official "denials" only served to further excite the chemtrails legions.

More popular than ever, chemtrails is the perfect 21st century conspiracy. It combines the 20th century fear of poisonous fallout with anxiety over very real changes in climate and pollution of the atmosphere, including by some of the very toxins and metals said to be ingredients in "chemtrails soup."

Like most conspiracies, there are grains of truth in its basic components. The planet is under attack. The climate is undergoing drastic changes. Governments do lie. Pollution is causing more and more respiratory illness. The military does have secret weapons programs, some of them involving high-frequency weapons and weather modification.

How individuals choose to deal with these truths -- and the larger context of civilizational crisis and individual powerlessness -- is up to them, of course. But there are healthier and much more relaxing ways of projecting skyward than imagining genocidal Illuminatic air fleets spraying toxic soup.

There is one good alternative we all learned in boy and girlhood, before computers and Internet-driven conspiracy theories began draining so much of our personal and cultural energy. It involves going outside on a nice day, finding a warm patch of grass and watching the clouds (contrails, too) as they spread, crisscross and drift.

It's amazing what we can see in the clouds. Frolicking bunnies, mating mountain goats, leaping unicorns, comforting angels. All sorts of wonderful, fantastical things…

See more stories tagged with: conspiracy theory, chemtrails, haarp

Alexander Zaitchik is a freelance journalist.

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