Some planes in the sky leave trails that persist and spread, and other planes, in the same sky, leave short-lived trails, or no trails at all.

This difference is often used as evidence of the “chemtrail” theory, which states that the longer lasting trails (or some of them) are being deliberately manipulated for some reason.  So you see helpful images like this.

These trails are actually called contrails, sort for “condensation trails”.  They are not smoke from the engines, they are formed when the water in jet exhaust (and there’s a lot of it, like car exhaust on a cold day) mixes with wet cold air, and condenses out as ice crystals.  Contrails are actually a type of cirrus cloud.  When the air is wet and cold enough the trails can stay around for a long time, and sometimes spread out.

Now there are two main reasons why some planes leave trails and some do not.  The less common reason, is that different planes have different engines.  Some engines need different conditions to leave contrails.  Here, for example are an Airbus A340 (maiden flight: 1991) on the left, leaving contrails, and a Boeing 707 (maiden flight: 1957) not leaving contrails. Both are flying at 33,000 feet (part of a German test to study contrail formation), but the newer engines of the A340 produce more water vapor at a different temperature, and so make contrails.

So, on to the main reason why you see trails on some planes but not on others, and I’ll emphasize it, because although it’s simple, it’s also easy to miss.

The planes are at different altitudes.

Yes, it’s really that simple.  The reason that one plane makes contrails, or makes contrails that persist, and the other plane does not, is that they are in different regions of air.   For simplicity, let’s refer to these regions of air as wet air and dry air, although the differences are a bit more complex.
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The Chemtrail theory proposes that some of the persistent white trails we see in the sky behind airplanes are not actually normal contrails, but are either modified contrails, or some kind of different trail entirely. The theory states that the trails contain chemicals that do something, and that there is a huge secret operation to create these trails that has been going on since at least 1999.

I personally don’t believe in this theory. I’m an avid cloud watcher, and a private pilot (only single engine VFR), and the photos and videos of supposed “chemtrails” all look like contrails to me. So I’ve been discussing this on this site, and quite often proponents of the theory come on to join the discussion.

Unfortunately this frequently devolved into me (or other commenters) saying “show me the evidence”, and the chemtrail theorists saying “there’s lots of evidence”. Then no evidence gets presented, or if it does it’s something I addressed months ago.

The problem here for the theorists is that there seems to be no one place that simply lists all this evidence that they claim is out there. Without this central evidence repository, they just bring up the random bits of supposed evidence in a haphazard and counterproductive manner.

So I’ve decided to help, and on this page to arrange as well presented, organized and honest a representation of the best evidence for “chemtrails” that I can muster.

What I’ll do is take each claim, such as “the government has admitted it”, or “persistent trails have been observed in conditions that should not support them”, and I’ll find the five (or so) best examples of evidence for that particular claim. I’ll leave it up as a work in progress – anyone can challenge a particular piece of evidence, and anyone can suggest a new piece in the comments section.

If the evidence is something I’ve looked at before, then I’ll just add a link to the relevant article. If not, then I might add a comment, or maybe write a new article.

I’ll start out with less than five pieces of evidence, to allow suggestions to be quickly added. Also feel free to suggest new categories. My hope is that eventually this will grow to be a definitive collection of the best evidence for the chemtrail theory.

I apologize for the incomplete nature of this list. I hope to refine it as time goes by. Please feel very free to speak up with any suggestions, which should make it into the list within a few hours.

Persistent Trails were not observed before 1998 (date varies)
(Note:  not all theorists agree with this, some simply state things are different)

1. California Skywatch / Rosaline Peterson – Notes on Discovery Show Transcript, page 8, claims a review of outdoor photos says contrails changed in the late 1980s.

2. Many individual accounts of recollecting contrails not persisting.  Details vary.

3. Ideally I’d like a science book or pre 1990 book that says how long contrails last.  Lots of books say they last for hours.  Any counter evidence?

4.

5.

Persistent trails have been observed in conditions that would not support persistent contrails (Specifically RH <70% and/or temperature >-40F)

1. Chemtrail Central’s Trail Research Report

2. WatchTheSky.org Chemtrails captured on NWS Doppler Weather Data

3. Holmestead – How to detect unusual trails

4.

5.

Trails appear in grid patterns

1. William Thomas

2. Educate-Yourself

3.

4.

5.

Unidentified Spray Planes have been photographed

1. I await candidates. First check here and here.

2.

3.

4.

5.

People Get sick after Chemtrail Spraying

1. William Thomas “Emergency Rooms Jammed”

2. I think there’s a KTLA video about this, some mountain community?

3.

4.

5.

Chemical Analysis has shown the presence of unexpected chemicals in rain water.

1. KSLA Barium contrails.

2. Arizona Skywatch – Phoenix Air Particulates.

3. Clifford Carnicom – Barium, etc. Confirmed in rainwater.

4. What in the World are they Spraying

5.

The government has admitted spraying/bioweapon testing/geoengineering/weather modification.

1. Welsbach patent

2. British bioweapon tests

3. Owning the Weather in 2025

4. AP: Obama looks at climate engineering (Alex Jones likes this story)

5. Kucinich and HR 2977.

People don’t remember persistent contrails

1. There’s several individual claims of this, but also several claims to the contrary. Awaiting some kind of study, or even a poll. But I’ll post pretty much any link you think is good evidence of this.

2.

3.

4.

5.

The sky is a different color now

1. See above.

2.

3.

4.

5.

There are open plans to spray aerosols into the atmosphere to mitigate global warming.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

The government are doing similar things, and have done before, so why not this?

1. HAARP

2. I’m a little reluctant to include this category, but since it’s brought up, I might as well.

3. Fake Moon Landings (yeah yeah, it belittles your cause, I’ll remove it if you think so, speak up, either way).

4.

5.

I am very willing to add, remove, reorder, or edit the above, based on any suggestions in the comments section below.

For a contrail enthusiast, I picked the wrong place to live. We hardly ever get persistent contrails here in the summer, but things have been picking up a bit as we go into fall, and today we had this:

A very nice triple set of contrails of three planes that, within about 10-15 minutes of each other flew north along the same flight path.  This was taken today, October 26th, 2009, at around 11:20AM in Santa Monica, California, looking east.

It’s actually a 180 degree panoramic shot, the trails are NOT curved, they were straight, and are just distorted because of the nature of the photo (it’s stitched together from about 10 individual images).  It looks a lot stranger in this photo than it did in real-life.

There’s a couple of interesting things about this photo.  Firstly the middle trail peters out on the right of the photo (the south).  This is probably to do with the jet changing altitude.

Secondly there’s a trail in the bottom right corner that crosses the other two at right angles.  This was from a jet that was flying in a westerly direction, probably towards Hawaii.

Note the large amount of Cirrus clouds,  that usually indicates a change in the weather due to a new weather system bringing in a moisture laden front at high altitude.  It’s often a precursor to rain.   Indeed the weather is set to change.  Today in Santa Monica, the high was 83F, tomorrow it drops suddenly to 63F.  Quite a dramatic change

Contrail season in Los Angeles is also the start of the local “Chemtrail” season, where people see these trails, and figure it’s part of some secret government spraying program – not realizing it’s only the weather.

Well, it looks like the cat is out the bag. The secret government has slipped up and allowed the release of a History Channel special that spills the beans on the whole Chemtrail program!

Several clips from this show are available on youtube:

The unfortunate thing about the show is that, regarding “chemtrails” it’s all theory and zero facts. Far from “validating” any chemtrail theory, the show simply repeats the theory.   What’s more it’s basically just a platform for William Thomas to repeat the same nonsense he’s been spouting for the last ten years, totally ignoring both science and common sense. For Example:

Thomas: I think most of us in North America have been wondering about these plumes criss-crossing the sky in grid patterns, rows, and the now-familiar X’s, and many of us have wondered what these trails are.

Well, actually no – most people don’t wonder what these plumes are. And for those that do, we know EXACTLY what they are. They are contrails. This has been explained time and time again, with vast amounts of scientific and historical evidence behind the explanation. What evidence does Thomas give? None. Zero. Zip. Nada.
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Okay, it’s not actually a contrail.   But it’s a related phenomenon – a plume of hot humid air is rising from a volcano, and where it hits the cold upper air, the water vapor it contains condenses out.  Possibly into ice, but it’s hard to tell.

The brown clouds are volcanic ash.   The white round cloud is condensed water.

Here’s a wider shot:

You can see the plume must be very high.  See it has cast a shadow on the cloud layer, which has been pushed away from the volcano by the rising air.

Here’s the original image from NASA

http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/scripts/sseop/photo.pl?mission=ISS020&roll=E&frame=9048

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Contrails form when the water in engine exhaust mixes with cold moist air and freezes. Normally you see this at 30,000 feet with jet engine exhaust. But in some parts of the world, these conditions can be found at ground level. Here’s a car leaving a contrail in Whitehorse, Canada.

(Photo by Yukon White Light, original here)

Over time these contrails can spread out to form a haze that covers the area.

From a distance this ice fog (Seen here in Fairbanks, Alaska) can look just a like layer of cloud or mist:

Here the individual car contrails quickly merge into a single sheet due to their small size and large number.  A jumbo jet obviously creates a much bigger contrail, something more like the building in the middle of the above photo.   That’s why you get the more distinct white lines in the sky.  And of course, at around 30,000 feet, it’s much more likely to be 40 below than it is at ground level – except for Alaska in the winter.

At the South Pole, they regularly have contrails at ground level:

Here’s an article from 1957 describing how these ground level contrails can persist and spread – just like contrails at high altitude:

[Update 2010-4-26]

See also:

http://orsovolante.blogspot.com/2010/04/ma-come-fanno.html#googtrans/it/en

Which discusses several photos from this photographer:

http://www.airliners.net/search/photo.search?photographersearch=ivandalavia

Like:

Taken in Russia, where there are many places the temperature drops below -40 degrees. Note this is a helicopter, not normally something you’d see leaving a contrail as they don’t go high enough. But when contrail conditions go all the way to the ground, then pretty much anything can leave a contrail

I took these photos around 8AM this morning, Feb 4th 2009, in Los Angeles.

They show Cirrus Uncinus clouds, with a contrail running through them.

Cirrus uncinus clouds (or “Mares’ Tails”), according to wikipedia:

Cirrus uncinus is a type of cirrus cloud. The name cirrus uncinus is derived from Latin, meaning “curly hooks”. Also known as mares’ tails, these clouds are generally sparse in the sky, and very thin.

The clouds occur at very high altitudes, at a temperature of about minus 40-50 degrees Celsius. They are generally seen when a warm or occluded front is approaching. They are very high in the troposphere, and generally mean that precipitation, usually rain, is approaching.

And indeed, looking at the forcast, rain is coming, predicted for tomorrow and the next three days.

The long “tails” of the cirrus uncinus clouds are actually precipitation – very high snow in the form of tiny ice crystals falling through the air.  The wind blows these sideways, giving the distinctive hook shape.

The contrail in the same region is persisting for the same reason the clouds persist – it’s in a region of the atmosphere where there is moisture.  Notice the abrupt end of both the the contrail and the clouds at the left of the second photo. Contrails are a form of cirrus cloud, and if there is enough moisture in the air, a contrail will eventually spread to be indistingushable from the surrounding cirrus.  In this case though, the cirrus uncinus would have been exactly the same even if there were no contrails.

This is an actual photo, not photoshopped.  

The stork is not at the same altitude as the contrail, it’s actually quite a bit lower.   It’s the same thing when you see two planes, one making a contrail, and one not – they are just at different altitudes.

I find clouds fascinating.   If I see a lenticular cloud while driving I might nearly crash the car while straining for a better view.   I’ve only seen mammatus clouds once in my life, and stopped to try to take a photo.  I’m quite fascinated by contrails and contrail shadows, especially the “black beam” shadows that seem to extend in front of the contrail.   

Yet my fascination is not shared by the general population.  When I saw the mammatus there was nobody pointing up at the sky.    Other people on the freeway were not swerving their cars, despite the impressive black beam in front of them.   Why not?

Unfortunately, the answer is rather simple: they’re just not that into clouds.  

Yes, my cloud obsession is simply not shared by other people, much in the same way that I don’t understand my friends interests in certain sports, or cars, or the contestents on American Idol.   They might be similarly bemused by my lack of interest in such things.  But the point here is that most people’s interest in clouds is limited to A) is it sunny? and B) might it rain?

So it’s hardly surprising that the gradual increase in contrails over the last 30 years has gone much without comment.   Each year the sky looks pretty much the same as last year.    But then, you get some people who, for some reason, started looking at the sky with more interest, and they noticed, for the first time, that the sky sometimes gets covered by contrails that spread out into a layer of cloud.

They then sometimes slip down a slipperly illogical slope – if they had not noticed this before, then that means it was not there before, hence it just started, and hence again it must be something deliberate.   So the “chemtrail” theory is born – these persistent contrails are actually some kind of nefarious deliberate spraying by the powers that be.

You’ll note that this theory is based on one fact in the theorist’s mind: “I did not notice this before”.

So, if you did not notice something, and hence it did not exist until you noticed it, then what about all those people who have NOT yet noticed that contrails spread?  Do the contrails not spread for them?   

The reality is that the vast majority of people simply don’t pay much attention to clouds, or planes in the sky. The contrails have been there all their lives, and they might as well be noticing the type of covering used on the road outside their house, or what hairstyles the newsreaders have   For most people it’s stuff that is simply there, and does not impact their lives in one way or the other.  It changes slowly over time, but day to day you don’t notice any change.

Sometimes though some people notice things that others have not, and then you can get into an argument about how things are, or were.  One such argument took place in 1971 between celebrity activist Arthur Godfrey and Senator Gordon Allott, R-Colorado,  over possible effects of the then proposed supersonic transport (the SST, a high speed plane like the Concord).   

One of the concerns Godfrey raised about the SST was the possibility of excessive contrail coverage.  The problem of contrails creating clouds was well known in 1971, and Godfrey was well aware of this from personal experience.  But Senator Allott was simply a person who had never noticed these spreading contrails, and hence we get the following newspaper clipping from the March 11, 1971 Missouri Mexico Ledger: (See the 4th story across at the top: “Godfrey calls SST ‘Nonsense’“)

Godfrey tangled with Sen. Gordon Allott, R-Colo., when he said present jetliners are environment hazard enough without adding SSTs to the skies. Godfrey said he’d seen, on hunting trips to the Colorado Rocky Mountains, blue skies ”clouded over” by jet contrails by 9:30 in the morning.

Allott said he’d lived in Colorado all his life without ever seeing jet contrails form clouds—and said he has too much respect for the environment go go on hunting trips and shoot animals.

If a US Senator failed to notice these spreading contails spreading in 1971, is it really that surprising that people still don’t notice them now?  Or that people who believe in “chemtrails” are simple people who have only now, for whatever reason, taken an interest in the skies.

Contrails are a common sight now, but prior the the advent of commercial jet travel in the late 50s, there was little reason for planes to fly high enough to form contrails.  However, during the Second World War, high altitude airial dogfights over the UK were quite common.  Contrails in the clear blue sky were a common part of wartime Britain.

This excerpt from a Pathe newsreel shows this quite clearly.   It’s a piece about a nice little english village called Meopham – which is in Kent, between London and the bombers.   The shots of the contrails are between pretty pastoral scenes, and puppies playing with kittens.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuDN4WNwmJ4

(Click on “Watch in high quality” on the Youtube version)

There are two shots of the same contrails. Interesting because you can see that the trails have persisted and drifted to the right. Judging by the amount of change, probably over 20 minutes. You can also see a new contrail being formed.

These contrails look a bit odd, fragmented. We are used to seeing contrails that are long and straight. But the contrails in the film were formed by actual fighter planes, where the pilots were trying to kill each other. Hence they would be climbing and diving, twisting and turning in an attempt to out-maneuver each other. The contrails would start and stop as they climbed in and out of contrail altitude.

While these few contrails are interesting enough, it was just a skirmish on the way to where the real action was taking place:  London, where the dogfights must have been incredible, leaving a criss-crossing web of trails:

The above photos show dogfights during the Battle of Britain in 1940.  The German bombers were accompanied by fighter planes which would try to defend the bombers from the British fighters.   They were at a high altitude to avoid anti-aircraft fire.  Hence you get these amazing patterns of contrails which tell a tale of life and death at 28,000 feet above London.

The British won the Battle of Britain by 1941, establishing control of the airspace, moving the battle to Europe.  This did not end the contrails, but brought a certain order to them.   Bombers departing for Europe would climb to cruising altitude before crossing the channel, and this created another kind of story in the sky:

The above photo shows St Paul’s Catherdral in London, with departing bomber contrails behind it.  This is probably the best photo of a persistent WWII contrail, showing the trail spreading and dropping “mares tails”, exactly like modern contrails sometimes do.  It’s such a good photo you might think it’s a fake, but the original came from the Hulton-Deutsch Collection and can be found in the Corbis photo library as part a retrospective titled “V-1 “Buzz Bombs“.

Here’s another book with contrail photos from 1945:

(High definition version here)

Here’s some American newsreel footage of contrails at the Battle of the Bulge, 1945: