Chemtrails Not Contrails: Believers See A Different Truth
[Original headline: Conspiracy theorists look up
Some argue jet contrails are U.S. chemical spray]
Chalky lines streak across the sky.
To most people, they're contrails, particles of ice that form around jet exhaust and dissipate as the ice descends, melts and evaporates.
A small but vocal band of Internet and talk-radio believers, however, sees a different truth out there. They see ``chemtrails'' -- the residue of a secret government program to spray chemicals on an unknowing American public.
Federal agencies and scientists repeatedly have issued denials that chemtrails exist.
``They're just contrails... nothing more,'' said Dr. Thomas Schmidlin, a geography professor and weather expert at Kent State University.
But chemtrail believers discount such statements as part of the government conspiracy and cover-up.
``It's a story that's going to break, and people are going to be held accountable for this,'' said Michael Castle of Columbus.
The two sides have waged a sometimes-polite, sometimes-nasty debate for about four years, with neither side budging in what sounds like a plot from The X-Files.
Even U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Lakewood, stepped into the murky fray late last year by introducing a bill that would ban chemtrails as weapons.
Theories for spraying
Believers such as Castle say they don't know why the chemicals -- barium and aluminum salts, polymer fibers, thorium, silicon carbide -- are being sprayed from aircraft.
They theorize about experiments to control the weather and curb global warming, about advanced military radar and anti-bacterial chemical weapons. Chemtrails, they say, could be the cause of Gulf War syndrome.
They point to contrails that linger for hours and spread into clouds, to multiple contrails that form shapes in the sky, to contrails from unmarked planes.
``It's a form of pollution that's untold,'' Castle said. ``It's over every city. It's like a pall of bad air.... It's horrible, horrible.''
Kucinich's bill listed chemtrails as one of the types of space weaponry that should be banned. Also listed were particle beams, electromagnetic radiation, plasma or extremely low-frequency energy radiation, and mind control.
The bill has been rewritten, said Kucinich spokeswoman Kathie Scarrah, and the references to chemtrails and the other types of weapons were quietly eliminated.
She said she's unable to say why chemtrails were listed in the original version. But the bill was reworked into more general terms in an effort to win support for banning weapons in space, Scarrah said.
Government response
Since the chemtrail conspiracy theory surfaced four year ago, federal agencies have been flooded with thousands of telephone calls, letters and e-mails from angry people demanding to know what's being sprayed and why.
In late 2000, four federal agencies -- the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration -- jointly published a fact sheet on the formation of contrails.
Earlier, the Air Force put out its own fact sheet that called chemtrails ``a hoax'' and tried to dismiss opponents' arguments.
``In short, there is no such thing as a `chemtrail' -- the actual contrails are safe and are... natural phenomena,'' wrote Air Force Col. Michael Gibson in a 2000 letter to Congress. ``They pose no health threat of any kind.''
Kent State's Schmidlin said contrails, or condensation trails, are formed by the exhaust from burning jet fuel at high altitudes -- up to 40,000 feet. Water vapor may also condense over the wings of high-altitude planes.
Whether contrails form depends in part on the humidity at that level, and they may linger in the sky for 20 minutes to an hour, he said.
There is a logical explanation for strange-shaped contrails, said Patrick Minnis, an atmospheric scientist with NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia.
The tracks in the sky may shift with winds, he said. Multiple tracks are left behind by planes flying in different directions or at slightly different times.
Minnis, an expert on contrails and an active debunker of chemtrails, said people are noticing contrails more often because of increased aircraft traffic.
Contrails may form wispy cirrus clouds and could contribute to global warming, he said, but that's a new issue under study.
But explanations offered by Minnis and other contrail experts don't satisfy chemtrail believers.
Believers get involved
No one knows how many people believe in chemtrails. In June, about 75 believers met at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton for the second statewide rally organized by Ohio Citizens Against Chemtrails.
Believers are circulating Internet petitions asking Congress to disclose what is being sprayed, seeking the cessation of all spraying and requesting enforcement of existing federal laws that prohibit exposure without informed consent.
Castle, a 52-year-old polymer chemist and an environmental risk assessor, said proving that chemtrails are real could be done for $20,000. That's how much it would cost to collect and analyze samples from behind high-flying jets.
When asked why he got involved in the chemtrail fight, Castle said he has no idea.
``It's been belligerent courage from Day One,'' he said.``I feel strong in my belief. I know it's terribly wrong and affects me and my family and my environment.''
• Story originally published by:
Beacon Journal, Akron / OH | Bob Downing - Mar 16.02
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