First, the trails are NOT coming from the back of the jet engines.
Wouldn’t this fly in the face of the fact that virtually all identified ‘chemtrail’ planes show the trails coming from the engines?
Second, the trails are not merely water trailing off the edges of the wings because as the plane passes, in addition to the wing trail emissions, there are clearly SPRAYS coming out of several sections at the rear of the wings in clear addition to any water that may be washing off the wing during landing.
Which is just a simple misunderstanding of how wake vortices work (which is understandable, it’s a complicated process, which is way outfits like NASA spend a lot of effort on researching it). But, again, it’s a well-known, and well-documented effect.
Surprisingly, the report contains enough actual facts to make some sort of analysis as to what was going on. Using flightradar24, CuzzieBro established that the plane in question was Thia [sic] Airways THA461, and it was at a height of 37000ft when his pictures were taken. Not surprisingly, neither CuzzieBro nor Clare bothered to take the extra step of trying to figure out if the atmospheric conditions at that time were conducive to contrails.
So, again, using the guide Clare recommends, let’s find the upper atmospheric readings for a nearby weather station (in this case, Adelaide Airport), for that day. The results…?
At a height of 370000ft (11277m), for Adelaide Aiport on the 31st of October:
Temperature: -54C
Pressure: 223hPa
RelH%: 42%
And then we plot that on the Appleman Chart…
…which would make you think that maybe, just maybe, what was photographed were contrails?
Steven Clougher, over at MysteriousNZ, in regards to the cruising altitude of NZ domestic flights, states that…
When on internal flights, around 27,000ft is common
36,000ft for international flights, as I recall
Is this true, I wonder? (Surely it is, after all, Steven is on record as being vehemently against conjecture). How about a quick check on Flightradar.com to find the altitude of planes over NZ airspace at the moment?
It lists one domestic flight – AirNZ Flight 526 from Christchurch to Auckland. Its altitude…?
36975ft.
Click to embiggen
And actually, as I write, I can watch Jetstar flight 261 from Auckland to Wellington (the plane just south of Waiuku in the image above) climbing out of AKL to a height of … 30000ft (as it gets close to passing over New Plymouth).
But, hey, don’t let reality get in the way of your assumptions, eh?
So, here’s where I’m not sure. At the higher altitude (within normal 747-400 cruising range), it would seem that contrails were almost certain to occur, at the lower one (assuming some altitude drop on approach to Auckland), we’re in the ‘maybe’ range. But if that’s the case, why has Clare deemed her observation as a ‘chemtrail’ certainty when it goes against the advice of the guide she herself has been advising people to use when trying to determine what and what is not a ‘chemtrail’. Am I grossly over-estimating the altitude of a 747-400 that’s twenty minutes from its arrival time?
Can someone with a greater handle on the science in this situation steer me right? Thanks.
(I should point out, I’m not being entirely disingenuous here, I honestly think I must have made a mistake if Clare is so being so adamant about her observation).
You really have to wonder whether or not chemtrail-hoaxers even bother to check their sources when making their various accusations.
Clare’s posted a list of various videos showing various clouds and contrails from a mix’n’match of media sources. (This includes some Warner Bros. cartoons that date back to the 1950s, presumably long before the modern ‘geoengineering’ conspiracy that is Clare’s new theory du jour came into being — let’s put that aside for now).
The one that piqued my interest was the last video, entitled, interestingly enough: “CHEMTRAILS ADMITED BY CHINA (see correction below)”.
So, has China ‘admitted’ to laying chemtrails? And just what did this correction have to say? Turns out…
CHINA USES WEATHER MODIFICATION TO MAKE IT SNOW.. BUT THAT KINDA STUFF IS CONSPIRACY… RIGHT? * THIS IS ABOUT CLOUD SEEDING… SORRY FOR THE CONFUSION
So, the video’s actually about cloud-seeding? Indeed, if you watch it, that’s exactly what it’s about — and there’s no sign of chemtrails. The cloud-seeding is being done by shooting cigarette-sized sticks of silver iodide (not aluminium, or barium, then) at clouds.
Apropos of nothing in particular, I would also like to direct people to this series of comments. Not only for another example of Clare’s breathtakingly hypocritical attitude as to what is and isn’t acceptable as evidence, but also for that fact that it looks like there’s a new “disinformation agent” on the block! (Although, I didn’t get the memo. The NWO really needs to get its internal comms sorted out…)
Craego, a commenter over at Northland NZ Chemtrails asks a good question of those of us who spend time debunking chemtrail believers [edit: comment has now been deleted, presumably in another bout of site ‘cleansing’ by Clare] …
LMFAO now WHY would anyone with half a brain waste their time creating a webpage trying to PROVE that something they believe doesnt exist, does not in fact exist??
Yes indeed, a question that requires a LMFAO and a two question marks! (And no apostrophes). That aside, why do we do it?
Now, my ‘debunking’ days started when I was browsing through YouTube one evening, and stumbled across a video showing what it purported to be ‘chemtrails’. To me, they looked like normal contrails, so I asked the poster why they thought they were ‘chemtrails’. The answer: ‘because real contrails don’t persist for more than a few seconds’. I was pretty sure this wasn’t right, so I asked a meterorologist and a commercial pilot about the science behind contrails. Of course, the fact of the matter is that contrails can persist for minutes, or even hours — it all depends on the conditions at the time. The evidence for this (both scientific and observational) is irrefutable.
But, browsing around the (many) sites dedicated to chemtrails, it quickly became apparent that this piece of misinformation (that persistent contrails = chemtrails) is deeply entrenched in the chemtrail believers’ community. However (as I quickly found out), if you point this out to them, you get labelled as a ‘shill’ or ‘disinformation’ agent. Here’s a fantastically representative example of this happening over at uncensored, where the “persistent contails = chemtrails” meme is repeated (again), and when I point out the inaccuracy of this statement, the original poster (surprise surprise, Clare Swinney), starts shouting ‘disinformation agent’ at the top of her voice, whilst completely avoiding the actual mistake she’s made (again).
So, why continue? I’m never going to change the mind of someone like Clare, so why persevere?
The thing is, not everyone is like Clare, and there are probably plenty of people (like myself) who do catch a whiff of this thing called ‘chemtrails’ on the internet, and then do some ‘research’ to discover what it’s all about. And if you’re the type of person who believes what they read, then if the only type of site you find when googling up ‘chemtrails’ are the likes of Uncensored, Northland NZ Chemtrails and Pacific Chemtrail, then you’d very quickly start to believe that a persistent contrail is a chemtrail, that the presence of aluminium and barium in water samples is somehow unnatural, and that a pretty sunset or a 22° halo indicates the presence of man-made chemicals in the atmosphere.
Chemtrail believers often decry ‘disinformation’ agents who spread incorrect facts, but are amongst the worst perpetrators of such behaviour themselves. Hence the desire to add some balance (i.e. facts) to the discussion. Hopefully people doing some online reading on the ‘chemtrail’ phenomena will also stumble across sites like this one, Contrail Science and Contrails North NZ that will let people realise that those long white clouds formed by planes are nothing but condensed water vapour and nothing to worry about.
After all, there are plenty of things that are worth worrying about in this day and age, so having one less thing on that list is surely a good thing.
So, in our last episode, we’d just discovered that Murphy’s geoengineering article had stirred up some interest. What’s the skinny…?
00:00 – 00:10
The ‘people’ want someone to investigate.
00:10 – 03:00
We’re off to talk to G. Edward Griffin. What does he know about it all? He’s aware of it! “It’s an open and shut case,” he says. Some reminiscing about early jet travel. A quick explanation of contrails. Which. Is. Wrong. He totally lays the “persistent chemtrail = contrail” meme on us. Seriously? They are going down this path?
03:00 – 04:00
Some talk (from scientists, I assume) about geoengineering and the moral implications thereof (and whether or not geoengineering could actually be controlled).
04:00 – 05:20
Griffin tells us that it seems to be NATO countries doing the spraying (and New Zealand, and Australia, and Cuba, it would seem). “Anyone who wants to investigate that,” he points out, “has to take that fact into consideration.” Griffin offers to help.
05:20
“We’re not scientists.” Ne’er a truer word spoken.
05:20 – 06:00
Some more words of wisdom from Griffin; rallying the troops for the investigation ahead.
06:00 – 06:40
Some DJ going on about criss-cross contrails.
06:40 – 07:20
Conspiracy website owner gives his theory: spraying is to counter global warming.
07:20 – 07:30
Yes, geoengineering has been discussed.
07:30 – 08:05
We’re off to Northern California! Dane Wigington owns some land and has tested some stuff.
08:05 – 08:10
Slo-mo handshake! Awesome!
08:10 – 08:20
Dane establishes some credentials.
08:20 – 09:30
We look at the sky. It’s cloudy. Supposedly all contrail-formed cirrus. Oh, there are some contrails. Apparently on cloudy days it gets hazy and harder to see to the horizon. Go figure.
09:30 – 13:30
Aluminium! Thousands of times higher than normal! Apparently. Some results from a nearby skifield show aluminium levels of 61100ug/l. Which is a lot. That’s interesting. (I hope they didn’t take the snow from anywhere where people might have skiied.) The soil is more acidic than in the past as well, apparently. He doesn’t really seem to be following the sampling guidelines though. The assumption here, of course, is that it’s all down to the ‘chemtrails’. Not any other sort of airborne pollution (or something else entirely)?
13:30 – 14:15
Sad music. Young girl tell us to ‘wake up’. Oh, awesome, more non-scientific sampling. “We collected some rain-water in some jars.”
14:15
And more sampling. Surely that pond in the video isn’t the pond he’s talking about? Anyway, further analysis in part 3…
So, what’s the hullaballo about? Have the film-makers really stumbled across something that breaks the story open? Or are they just rehashing the same old misinformation and logical fallacies that are typical of other chemtrail believers? Let’s take a look…
00:00 – 00:55
Ohhh, scary music. A Delta airlines plane (not leaving contrails?). Some credits. Shaky hand-held video of some contrails.
00:55 – 01:50
Clips of some news shows reporting on the ‘chemtrails’ phenomenon. Oh god, someone just said: “A contrail would be dissipated by now.” They’re not going to go down the “persistent contrail = chemtrail” path are they?
01:50 – 02:15
We’re off to San Diego. There’s a ‘Geoengineering’ panel at a scientific conference. They’re discussing the ‘plausibility’ (I really like the way he said that, you totally know he believes they’re actually doing it) of blocking sun-light with substances sprayed into the atmosphere.
02:15 – 02:20
When asked about existing programmes they stated clearly that no such programmes have ever been implemented.
02:20 – 02:30
Oh, but people still think geoengineering is happening, because they think that’s what contrails are.
02:30 – 03:45
Some journalist is interested in geoengineering. The scientists are sceptical that there are any existing chemtrail programmes. Nick Smith! NZ FTW! Some guy: “the government doesn’t seem that capable to do something on such a large scale.” Indeed.
03:45 – 04:50
What? Chaff? Why are we talking about chaff? Why are they showing a plane leaving contrails when we’re talking about chaff? And now some cirrus cloud? Could they not find any file footage of actual chaff?
04:50 – 05:30
Nick Smith again! Lockwood! NZ FTW! “This conspiracy theory does not have an iota of truth.” Much amusement in the House.
05:30 – 06:00
What? Cloud seeding now? Oh, we’re back to geoengineering. More clouds = more sunlight reflection. Picture shows some giant mirrors in space. Here’s John Holden, adviser to President Obama for Science and Technology: “There are a variety of schemes that have been discussed for geoengineering. Classic example is injecting reflecting particles into Earth orbit.” Earth orbit? Not just dropping it out of a plane then into the stratosphere then.
06:00 – 06:25
Who’s this guy talking about aluminium in the stratosphere? Turns out aluminium is quite shiny and reflective. Who knew?
06:25 – 08:30
Someone else talking about aluminium. Yes, it’s shiny. Uh-oh, turns out aluminium is even shinier than sulphur, and the authorities are trying to hide this fact? More talk about aerosol engineering possibilities. Actual scientist: If we do more research, then it’ll probably turn out that it’ll be harder to do that we imagine. We need to look at the environmental impacts.
08:30 – 11:00
Question to the scientists: What are the effects of sub-micron sized particulates and aluminium on human health, waters and soils? Scientist answer: we haven’t researched that yet. “There could be something terrible that we find tomorrow that we haven’t looked at.” Fair enough. Video shows some research done with aluminium nano-particles on rats. Ok. Documentary maker is, for some reason, excited by the fact the scientists haven’t researched this yet. “They’ve let the cat out of the bag!”
11:00 – 11:34
Random and illogical leap of faith #1: “They’re proceeding because they have an agenda that’s separate from trying to thwart this crisis of global warming. There’s obviously…” (obviously?) “…several other objectives: depopulation, control, weapons aspects, communications aspects, all kinds of things, wild cards we know nothing about.” Where did all that come from?
11:34 – 13:30
More discussion on ins and outs of geoengineering, from actual scientists: “We might get desperate enough to want to use it.” “What would we do in the year 2040 or 2060 if there’s a severe climate crisis…” “You don’t want people going off and doing things that involve large radiative forcing, or go on for extended periods, or for that matter, provide lots of reactive surfaces that could result in significant ozone destruction.” “It’s hugely risky.” Well, the scientists don’t seem that keen on the idea.
13:30 – 14:30
The doco-makers look at the benefit/risk breakdown of large-scale geoengineering. Yep, it’s risky. Random and illogical leap of faith #2: the doco makers now seem convinced that the scientists, despite all they’ve just said, want to forge ahead (or already are) with geoengineering, regardless of the impacts.
14:30
So, Murphy writes a story about it. Turns out aluminium (mentioned in the geoengineering research), is turning up in massive quantities way above normal levels in rain, soil and snow.
End of Part 1.
So, to summarise…
Scientists are talking about geoengineering. They think it’s risky, and there’s more research to be done. It might, possibly, be a last-resort measure to counter global warming in the future. From this, the documentary makers have concluded that they’re up to ‘something’. Turns out aluminium is turning up in the environment. What’s up with that? On to part 2…
WWII American bombers on a, errr, 'chemtrail' run.
The assertion that you can tell a contrail from a chemtrail by watching how quickly they dissipate (contrails disappear ‘within 30 seconds’, chemtrails last for minutes or even hours), is a fairly common and widely disseminated ‘fact’ amongst the chemtrail-believing community.
It is, of course, completely wrong. Visit contrailscience.com’s page on the ins-and-outs on the science of persistent chemtrails for a good overview. It’s just a matter of physics: given the right combination of temperature, humidity and air pressure contrails can persist and (depending on wind) even spread out and form clouds. It’s just water vapour, after all.
Most chemtrail sites avoid the topic, or regurgitate the incorrect “persistent contrail = chemtrail” meme, but at least one chemtrail site does acknowledge the reality of the situation, at chemtrailcentral.com they write…
… it is scientifically accepted that normal contrails may persist for hours and spread … the speed of dissipation of a contrail can be from a few seconds to hours. This varies with differing atmospheric conditions due to seasonal, daily, and frontal weather changes as well as global placement as varying local temperatures and humidity at flight levels provide differing ranges of persistence.
But, for the most part, it’s something the chemtrail-believers, once they’ve grasped, seem completely unwilling to let go. On this discussion over at uncensored, we have the usual recipes for contrail/chemtrail misdiagnosis.
The original photos shown are, as per usual, nothing out of the ordinary. They could be contrails. There’s nothing about the photos that would make you think they were anything else.
In order to support the argument, commenter CCCP claims that aluminium is being found in Christchurch rain water (the photos are from Auckland, but, whatever…), and then links to a Youtube video, made by none other than Clare Swinney, in which the persistent contrails = chemtrails meme is repeated, and the presence of aluminium (and, for good measure, barium) in the rain water is pinned on the ‘chemtrails’.
Astonishingly, in her video, Clare Swinney has actually resorted to some genuine science to try and support her claims. She’s sent off her rain water sample to a lab, and received back a nice breakdown of the elements found within. The numbers shown are…
Aluminium – 0.058gm/m³
Arsenic – 0.0011gm/m³
Barium – 0.0025gm/m³
Boron – 0.0166gm/m³
So, yep, there’s some aluminium in there, but is it suspicious that a (tiny) amount of aluminium (and the other stuff) should be found in a rain water sample? Short answer: no. The World Health Organisation point out that…
Aluminium is the most abundant metallic element and constitutes about 8% of the Earth’s crust. It occurs naturally in the environment as silicates, oxides, and hydroxides, combined with other elements, such as sodium and fluoride, and as complexes with organic matter … The concentration of aluminium in natural waters can vary significantly depending on various physicochemical and mineralogical factors. Dissolved aluminium concentrations in waters with near-neutral pH values usually range from 0.001 to 0.05 mg/litre but rise to 0.5–1mg/litre in more acidic waters or water rich in organic matter.
In a large monitoring programme in 1991 in the United Kingdom, concentrations in 553 samples (0.7%) exceeded 0.2 mg/litre (MAFF, 1993). In a survey of 186 community water supplies inthe USA, median aluminium concentrations for all finished drinking-water samples ranged from 0.03 to 0.1 mg/litre; for facilities using aluminium sulfate coagulation, the median level was 0.1 mg/litre, with a maximum of 2.7 mg/litre (Miller et al., 1984). In another US survey, the average aluminium concentration in treated water at facilities using aluminium sulfate coagulation ranged from 0.01 to 1.3 mg/litre, with an overall average of 0.16 mg/litre (Letterman & Driscoll, 1988; ATSDR, 1992).
And the barium? It’s not surprising to find a (very small) amount in a random sample. Here’s WHO’s factsheet on barium. Again, the levels found in Clare’s sample are well within normal ranges. And from this site we learn (emphasis mine)…
Barium is surprisingly abundant in the Earth’s crust, being the 14th most abundant element … Because of the extensive use of barium in the industries human activities add greatly to the release of barium in the environment. As a result barium concentrations in air, water and soil may be higher than naturally occurring concentrations on many locations. Barium enters the air during mining processes, refining processes, and during the production of barium compounds.
Refining processes? Clare Swinney just happens to live down the road from New Zealand’s largest oil refinery. You’d surely be more surprised to find no trace of barium in any sample taken in the area.
Anyway, my point?
Just because a contrail persists, doesn’t make it a chemtrail.
Just because there are some ‘chemicals’ (ie. naturally occurring elements) in some rain water, doesn’t mean they came from a ‘chemtrail’.
There are normal, rational explanations for most things in life, and the existence of persistent contrails and the presence of chemicals in water are two of those things that can be explained quite easily with a solid scientific basis, without having to resort to a massive worldwide conspiracy.
How can you tell the difference (answer: you can't)
…it’s probably a chemtrail.
Now, of course, there may be such things as chemtrails, but to distinguish a chemtrail from a contrail (which, given the photographic evidence displayed on various conspiracy websites and youtube), you’d presumably need to do some sort of analysis of the cloud material itself to be able to truly tell one from the other.
A long straight line of ‘cloud’ emanating from a plane could be either, couldn’t it? (There are ‘chembows’ and the like, of course, but we’ll leave those for another day; for the moment let’s just look at our classic long white con/chem trails).
But no. Without fail, any contrail spotted in any form is always labelled a chemtrail.
Here we have Clare Swinney complaining that a recent WordPress theme is using a chemtrail in one of its photographic elements (it’s actually a commonly used wikicommons stock photo that can be found on dozens of sites in a variety of contexts, but the argument here would be that it’s all part of the NWO agenda to make chemtrails seem like a ‘normal’ occurrence). But what marks out the contrails in that photo as chemtrails? Nothing.
Even more hilariously is this interplay between a commenter on the site, and Clare…
Says Raymond, pointing out that persistent contrails (as per previous information posted by Clare) are possible…
Planes taking people somewhere. Just like if you wanted to go see someone in christchurch there is a good chance if the atmosphere supported it(very comon) that your plane could be leaving a nice big contrail right over Roses head and she would think its a chemtrail.
So then your’ve said it yourself the air temp up there would of been about -40 to -50degC and there was moisture in the air so the ice couldn’t just sublime back meaning the contrail was persistent.
You have implied that the trails were left by planes “taking people somewhere,” yet, as is typical for your statements, there is no evidence to support it. Those, I believe, are chemtrails in that picture.
“No evidence to support it”! Classic. Clare’s belief trumps any other speculation, it would seem. But it gets better, as Clare then states, as part of her argument against the trails shown being contrails:
I don’t know what the temperature was when the photo of the cherry tree was taken.
Surely this is another case “no evidence” then? But Clare doesn’t let such contradictory viewpoints stand in her way. Oh no, if it’s a persistent contrail, whether or not anyone has proof to the otherwise, her belief that it’s a chemtrail is all that’s required to make it so.
Conspiracy Nutbars of New Zealand 
