What are these chemtrails, should we be worried ?

Watch the video and make up your own mind.

Warning, some strong language

Seems a little "tinfoil hat" to me, actually. But that's just me.

The chem trail thing has developed over the past decade or so, thanks a lot to the net. Early on people were getting upset because they were being told that the trails caused by aircraft in the sky were due to the government spraying people. I'm not picking sides there, but it's important to know about vapour trails and what they are. Perhaps and just perhaps, they may affect the atmosphere and by extrapolation ourselves, but it's a big leap to it being a conspiracy.

I watch this kind of thing on late night TV a lot. Sometimes it makes me laugh out loud, other times they throw something in that might be worth thinking about and there are occasions where I do in fact think that yes that does seem odd. It's a mixed bag.

With the advent of all this amateur stuff on YouTube we get even more pseudoscience from some woman called Glenda in outer Wyoming getting upset over something they don't understand in their bathroom.

Okay that's a bit mean on face value, but my point is that videos like this are never going to make my mind up. There's just too much speculation, unbelievably wild conjecture and largely nothing at all scientific to explain it all. Frankly a lot of it is alarmist garbage and there are plenty of people that just make things up.

Despite saying that; I do however think it's good that people make things like this so that if (perish the thought) anything naughty is being done then it gets questioned, discussed and proved one way or the other. I say keep on making the videos - always be vigilant, and keep asking questions.

So in summary; this video does nothing to educate me, but I am still glad it's there.

Great post Freddy 

This is all new to me.

I was thinking It's a mixed bag too, some of the video does seem to be utter rubbish but other bits seem to make a bit of sense, none of it is scientifically proved though, like you said.

They seem to be saying that aluminium is being sprayed out of the aircraft, there also does seem to be a bit of evidence out there that says aluminium levels in water, snow and soil has been increasing. If the two are connected is another matter.

For now I'm going to keep an open mind and try to do a bit more research.

Thanks

A good place to start is to understand what a vapour trail (or contrail is) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrail

Whether some have substances in them (either added or as a side effect) or not is obviously where the debate begins - giving us the conspiracy theorist's term chemtrail.

I've known about condensation trails since the 1970's, and have known people since the 1980's who were convinced that the governments of the world are using them to spread all sorts of things from viri to cancer causing agents to mind control drugs and chemicals. In a way, some of that is at least partially true. Not the bit where the government(s) is(are) involved, or about viri or mind control drugs, but the bit about cancer causing agents may have a miniscule basis in fact. After all, jets, both military and commercial, burn jet fuel, which is somewhere between kerosene and diesel fuel in structure. Those petroleum products produce a wide variety of carcinogens when they combust, and since those condensation trails come from the exhaust of these jet engines, it stands to reason that the contrails would contain cancer causing agents. How much they spew, and where they go when the condensation disperses isn't fully understood, I'm sure. I'm also willing to bet that the particulate aluminium that the video mentioned could well have come from commercial and military aircraft, but I'm reasonably certain it didn't come from the contrails. The outer skins of aircraft are made from sheets of aluminium, all riveted together, yes? (yes) as aircraft fly, all sorts of vibrations are going on from front to back, and those vibrations are causing/allowing movement between the various riveted parts, which in turn causes some of that aluminium and other metals to flake off and go tumbling through the air in sub-micron sized particles. the same is likely true for unpainted aircraft parts that are directly exposed to the wind; but this time it's the friction of the air itself that causes tiny particles of aluminium and other metals to ablate from the surface, again in sub-micron sizes. Again, this is most likely not some sort of government plot to make us all political zombies (we do a great job of that all by ourselves, after all), but simply an unexpected/unwanted side effect of using the technology currently at our disposal.

Thanks Dave, that's a nice summary 

I knew about the trails since I was a kid when I was into aircraft and wanted to be a pilot - I did fly planes but that's another story.

But the so called 'chemtrails' didn't enter my life until about 2005 when it was mentioned in a chat with an old friend. Along the lines of "have you ever seen something like this"...provided a link to image of vapour trails...then me saying "yes they are aircraft vapour trails"...to the reply..."oh okay, mystery solved" etc

I then explored it a little to get to the bottom of it and was surprised to read all these people thinking they were something deliberately being sprayed into the atmosphere. I grew up in a place where there were a lot of planes flying around and I assumed people knew that it was vapour condensing. But it appeared that was not the case - people genuinely did not know what they were and were jumping to all kinds of conclusions.

I suppose that's what you do when you don't know what something is - it's natural, but still it surprised me.

Thanks for your detailed replies chaps 

I've seen these vapour trails all my life, plenty of large aircraft fly over my house but had never heard of chemtrails until recently. The conspiracy theorists think that some years ago other chemicals were added, for whatever reason, I'm not sure the conspiracy theorists even know that themselves.

Anyway I did a little bit of research and can't find any real evidence for chemtrails, obviously these aircraft are putting out pollutants into our atmosphere which isn't exactly a good thing but that's not the chemtrails some would have us believe.

The best scientific research I found was this: 

Chemtrails conspiracy theory gets put to the ultimate test

Until some real evidence comes along I don't believe in chemtrails.
An inquisitive mind never rests.   

QuoteThe best scientific research I found was this: 

Good find 

Like he says it still won't convince the hard-core conspiracy theorist's as they are obsessed with their ideas and rarely listen to reason.

Phil Plait sounds about right to my ears.

I'd forgotten about him, just off the Bad Astronomer site to have a gander.

Here are his more recent musings.

Some of this probably has it's origins in the 50's military experiments where chemical and in some instances radioactive agents were sprayed over cities.

However the sheer scale of cover up required with the use of civilian airliners is frankly ridiculous.