BEST OF THE WEB: Cosmic COINTELPRO: Baiting chemtrails conspiracy theorists with straw men

Increasingly persistent airplane condensation trails, which CorpGov does not want people to notice

The chemtrails conspiracy theory has been circulating for a while among the same sorts of people who believe that 9/11 was an inside job and celebrities are being controlled by the CIA. In brief, chemtrail enthusiasts think that those white trails of vapor you see pouring out of planes are actually nasty chemical or biological agents that governments are using to geo-engineer the weather, create a vast electromagnetic super-weapon, control the population, or - well, you get the idea. There's no science or proof whatsoever behind this, but plenty of people are still willing to entertain this vaguely supervillain-esque notion.

On October 1, Chris Bovey - a 41-year-old from Devon, England - thought he'd troll the chemtrails camp. During a flight from Buenos Aires to the UK, his plane had to make an emergency landing in São Paulo and dumped excess fuel to lighten the load. Since he had a window seat, Chris decided to film all the liquid being sprayed out of the wing next to him.

Chris Bovey

Touching down, he uploaded the video with a caption that suggested it could be evidence of chemtrails, hoping to mess with a couple of friends who he knew might fall for it. The video now has 1.1 million views, nearly 20,000 shares, and dozens of comments telling viewers to "wake the F up," or accusing naysayers of being "stupid paid shills."

He then claimed (falsely) that he'd been detained at Heathrow upon arrival, been interrogated by the authorities, and had his phone confiscated. That riled everyone up even more, with "conspiraloon" (Chris's term) website NeonNettle.com picking up the story and reporting it as evidence of chemtrails.

[embedded content]

Mick West - editor of anti-conspiracy theory website Metabunk, which published an article explaining why Chris's video was a hoax - explained the history of the chemtrails theory to me. "It started back in the late 1990s," he said. "People just noticed contrails - the condensation trails behind planes - for the first time, and got this idea that a normal contrail shouldn't persist for very long. So if anything lasted for more than a few minutes, it must be something being sprayed."

While chemtrails advocates might accuse sheeple of believing everything their governments tell them, they themselves tend to believe a lot of the stuff their internet tells them. West thinks its the proliferation of unverified "evidence" online that's led to this particular conspiracy theory remaining so popular.

"People share things that look interesting without really looking into them, and they take the word of whoever's posting it that it's a real thing," he said. "I knew from the start that it was some kind of hoax, but people want to have their worldview confirmed, so when they see something that seems to fit their worldview they jump on it."

In Chris's case, that involved being invited onto a radio show hosted by Richie Allen, a friend of David Icke - the man who claims we're being ruled by a group of lizard overlords disguised as world leaders. On air, Chris admitted that the whole thing was a hoax and got into an argument with the host about the validity of the chemtrails theory.

Since then, Chris has been subject to a stream of "vulgar abuse" from pissed-off conspiracy theorists - which, admittedly, is completely his own fault. I gave him a call to find out how he was doing.

VICE: So I hear you've been receiving some pretty bad abuse since you duped these conspiracy theorists?

Chris Bovey: Yeah, I got some really foul messages. I got accused of being a government paid shill - so where's my paycheck? The worst bit of abuse is on my Facebook page. I left it up there because it's so insulting that it made the guy look like an idiot.

Someone else said I was going to hell for breaking the First Commandment. I'm not religious; I don't know what the First Commandment is. Maybe it's, "Thou shalt not post fake chemtrail hoaxes." [Note: it is actually, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me."] Other people were saying I'd been leaned on to change my story, saying that it was really a chemtrail-molecule dump.

VICE: Why do you think people were so quick to believe your video was evidence of chemtrails?

Chris Bovey: I think people want to believe it, and I think people are so distrusting of the government. It says a lot about our government that people are actually prepared to believe that they would do this. It's a lack of basic scientific understanding. It doesn't take much research - if you go onto contrailscience.com, you can quite easily see it explains why they're formed.

VICE: Have people stopped claiming that the video is evidence of chemtrails now that you've come out and explained it?

Chris Bovey: Not at all. There are still people sharing it as we speak, saying "chemtrails" in all sorts of languages - some I don't even recognize.

I've got a good 500 people who sent me friend requests, and I accepted them, but today I deleted them all because they kept on inviting me to "like" various strange pages. I knew these kinds of people existed - that's why I posted it. But I absolutely didn't realize how strongly these people believed this. With a few of them, I've tried to reason with them by sending evidence to explain why they are wrong, and they generally just called me a shill and blocked me.

VICE: How long have you been interested in chemtrails?

Chris Bovey: I remember seeing them as a little child when I was at primary school on the River Dart, where I grew up in South Devon. On the playground I used to look up in the air and notice that some planes had longer trails and wonder why. Of course, at that point I didn't realize it was an Illuminati plot.

VICE: Why did you admit the video was a hoax and not keep it going?

Chris Bovey: At the time, I was getting a little bit uncomfortable with it, partly because I didn't want my sane friends thinking I was an idiot. So it was an ideal opportunity to come clean and also a great opportunity to prank them.

VICE: Do you think there's any evidence to support the chemtrail theory at all?

Chris Bovey: No, it's just completely debunked. There's zero evidence - zilch.

Comment: Yes indeed, chemtrails are a dead end.

And what that dead end is concealing is FAR more revealing:

Chemtrails? Contrails? Strange Skies

Chemtrails, Disinformation and the Sixth Extinction

Excerpt from Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection , published by Red Pill Press:

So-called 'chemtrails' are often described as evidence of aerosol spraying of anthropogenic toxic substances on a mass scale from high altitudes as part of a government plot to poison the population.¹ This is claimed in spite of the fact that far simpler and more efficient means of delivering toxic substances to masses of people have long existed (and been applied), such as the fluoridation of 'drinking' water,² the genetic manipulation of the food supply³ and the nuclear explosions conducted around our planet⁴, just to name a few.

It should also be pointed out that high-altitude spraying is an extremely inaccurate delivery method. Permanent winds at this altitude (about seven miles up) can reach hundreds of miles per hour and aerosols can take up to two years⁵ to reach Earth's surface.⁶So, when you spray from airliner cruising altitude, you can't know where and when the released aerosols will land, and you might actually end up spraying yourself.

That being said, there is evidence that the ruling elites in various countries have, indeed, conducted aerial spraying of toxic substances, but these were low-altitude spraying that allowed greater control over where and when the agent would reach the ground. For example, the CIA sprayed infectious agents over Cuba:

Fort Detrick SO [Special Operations] Division microbiologists assisted in several covert attacks against rural and agricultural areas in Cuba. These attacks involved aerial spraying with swine flu virus, dengue, and other lethal infectious agents. As a result, hundreds of farm animals and several humans died.⁷

High-altitude spraying has also been tested by releasing sulfur dioxide and other aerosols for the purpose of cloud-seeding⁸, but this doesn't require control over the time and location of the landing and has been shown to be generally ineffective.

Another factor that makes the 'chemtrails' theory iffy at best is the 'evidence' collected by proponents of the theory. They point to high levels of aluminum, barium and strontium found in ground and water samples.

Aluminum is the most abundant metal in the Earth's crust. Every year about 100 million tons of aluminum is produced.⁹ It is extensively used in the car industry, plane industry, boat industry, building industry, etc. From this perspective, it's not surprising to find high levels of aluminum in most if not all ground and water samples. Such levels do not imply that this aluminum comes from jet spraying.

Barium¹⁰ is found in nature as a free element.¹¹ It is used for numerous industrial applications: glassmaking,¹² fluorescent lamps, and screens.¹³ Barium is also used as an 'atmospheric aerosol spray for enhancing/refracting the signaling of radio/radar waves along military jet flight paths, missile test ranges.'¹⁴ So toxicology results indicating high levels of barium in some water sources near barium production and usage sites are hardly surprising.

Finally, strontium is a natural element, the 15th most common element on Earth. It is also massively produced (about 300,000 tons a year¹⁵) and used in screens for TVs, computers and phones. In addition, one radioactive isotope of strontium, called strontium 90, is present in radioactive fallout. Since 1945, 2,051 nuclear explosions have occurred on planet Earth.¹⁶ Many of these explosions happened in the atmosphere and were conducted in places as far apart as the Pacific Islands, China, the US, Algeria, Australia, Russia and Kazakhstan. Thus it is not surprising to find high levels of strontium (radioactive or not) all over the planet.

In short, there are numerous industrial sources of the elements claimed to be evidence of 'chemtrail spraying of populations.'

Contrails have been observed since WWI, when bombers managed to reach high enough altitudes for cold air to allow contrails to form.¹⁷ The phenomenon was so obvious that bomber pilots complained that contrails were giving away their position.¹⁸ Chemtrailers claim that 'chemtrails' are thicker and longer lasting compared to contrails. So, basically the only valid piece of evidence brought by 'chemtrailers' is the fact that jet planes did not previously leave any persistent and thick condensation trails behind them and now they do. This observation is in fact valid. Indeed, around the end of the 1990s, something changed and thicker contrails started being observed more frequently. Incidentally, the term 'chemtrails' was first introduced by journalist William Thomas in 1997.¹⁹

A condensation trail, or contrail, is the result of the condensation of jet fumes. Here, unlike noctilucent clouds, atmospheric dust doesn't play a major role since jet engines already release massive quantities of particles,²⁰ particularly sulfur molecules²¹ that are some of the most efficient condensation nuclei.²²

However, temperature plays a major role. The cooler the ambient air, the stronger and longer lasting the condensation. The cruising altitude for an airliner is about 10 km (7 mi), this is just below the stratosphere,²³which has cooled down "by several degrees since 2002".²⁴

© Climate Change Blog adapted by sott.net

Temperature of the stratosphere over the period 1948-2011. At the beginning of the century (green vertical line), the temperature of the stratosphere started to decrease.

Far from the conspiracy theory proposed by the 'chemtrailers', data strongly suggests that persistent contrails are a direct consequence of the cooling of the stratosphere, a far more troubling state of affairs than 'chemtrails' released in the upper atmosphere, where the high winds make it unlikely that anything released in a given location will filter to the ground anywhere near a 'targeted' location, or anytime soon.

[...]

By attributing the cause of these cosmically-induced events to humans, the elites maintain the illusion that they are, at least to some degree, in control; if they are causing it, then theoretically, at least, they could stop it.

'Chemtrails' can be stopped if enough people petition the world's governments to cease the 'sprayings', missile tests covering up for incoming comet fragments and meteor fireballs can be stopped if military budgets are reigned in, global warming can be reduced by controlling man-made greenhouse gas emissions, and global dimming will vanish if we stop polluting the atmosphere. The message behind all the chemtrails COINTELPRO is: 'man is in control and all is right with the world'.

However, contrails triggered by increased cometary activity, overhead cometary explosions, cosmically-induced weather disruptions and the accumulation of cometary dust in the atmosphere cannot be changed by the elites, even if just theoretically. The intimation that the cosmos is threatening the survival of humanity is a stress too intense to be borne by most people.

Even if 'chemtrails', global warming and missile tests are not actually stopped in practice, the very idea that they can be stopped is enough to invite people to continue supporting the illusion of control, wishfully thinking that all it will take is a public awareness campaign, new elections, political advocacy, protests, the scapegoating of 'guilty parties', etc. But it's all a lie, and if the public realizes this, the only place their stressed brains can go for relief is to think that 'the gods are angry' and, collectively, to try to find the real reason. Again and again throughout history, this has resulted in the masses coming to the conclusion that the 'gods' are angry because of the corruption and violence perpetrated by the elites in their efforts to get and maintain greater power.

1. Svensmark, H., Calder, N., The Chilling Star, p.76-77


2. Haigh, J D., 'Climate variability and the influence of the sun', Science, 2001, 294: 2109 - 2111


3. Steiger, B. & Steiger, S., Conspiracies and Secret Societies: The Complete Dossier, p.91-93


4. 'Fluorine Compounds Make you Stupid - Why is the Government not merely allowing, but promoting them?', Sott.net, 4 February 2008


5. Renter, E. 'Another Study Finds GMO Compounds in 100% of Pregnant Women and Fetuses', Activist Post, 27 October 2012


6. Since 1945, more than 2,000 nuclear explosions have been conducted. Their total yield is estimated to be approximately 510 megatons, equivalent to about 40,000 Hiroshima-size atomic bombs.
   
   See: 'General overview of the effects of nuclear testing', CTBTO


7. 'Atmospheric aerosols: what are they and why are they so important', NASA, August 1996


8. Fall speed can also be drastically reduced because of electromagnetic forces exerted on the particles. See chapter 26: 'Hurricanes, lightning and tornadoes'.


9. Albarelli, H.P., A Secret Order, p.13


10. Steiger, B. & Steiger, S., Conspiracies and Secret Societies: The Complete Dossier, p.105-107


11. 'List of countries by aluminium production', Wikipedia


12. 'Barium', Wikipedia


13. It makes up 0.0425% of Earth's crust.


14. Lide, D., (2004). CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, p.4


15. Ullman, F., Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry. Wiley-VCH


16. Purdey, M., 'Chronic barium intoxication disrupts sulphated proteoglycan synthesis: a hypothesis for the origins of multiple sclerosis', Medical Hypotheses, 2004, 62(5):746-54


17. 'Strontium', Wikipedia


18. 'International Day Against Nuclear Tests: Translating Words Into Action', Arms Control Association, 2 September 2011


19. About 33,000 feet, the altitude at which airliners fly today.


20. Steiger, B. & Steiger, S., Conspiracies and Secret Societies: The Complete Dossier, p.98


21. Eden, D., 'Chemtrails, what's going on?', Viewzone, July 2013


22. 15,000 particles / cm³ vs. background concentration equal to 6-18 particles / cm³
    
    See: Fahey et al., 'Emission Measurements of the Concorde Supersonic Aircraft in the Lower Stratosphere', Science, 6 October 1995, Vol. 270 no. 5233 pp. 70-74


23. Panel on Atmospheric Effects of Aviation, Atmospheric Effects of Aviation: 'A Review of NASA's Subsonic Assessment Project', p. 14


24. Svensmark H. & Calder N., The Chilling Star, 2007, pp.126-131


25. The stratosphere covers the 20-50 km altitude range.


26. Laštovička J. et al., 'Global Change in the Upper Atmosphere', Science, 24 November 2006, Vol. 314 no. 5803 pp. 1253-1254

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.