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I’ve collected together a few photos of persistent spreading contrails from the past from 1991 back to 1940, just to show that this is nothing new, and that skies exactly like those shown on the “chemtrails” conspiracy web sites have been happening for the past 60 years. Mostly these are just photos I found on the internet, but several, like the first four, are scanned from books, so can be physically verified.

1991, From the book Peterson First guide to Clouds and Weather

Here are four photos of contrails, scanned from the book. You can see these photos on the Amazon page linked above. Click on the photos for larger versions. I suspect the actual date of these photos is pre-1991, but that’s certainly the latest possible date.

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What is a contrail made of? Mostly ice, since the primary exhaust emission of a jet aircraft is water vapour, which freezes within a couple of seconds, and forms the visible part of the contrail. If the air is fairly humid, then the contrail can persist for quite a while, and even spread out, turning into a sheet of cloud.

Jet engines also emit the usual things engines emit: carbon dioxide, smoke, and small amounts of unburnt hydrocarbons, oxides of nitrogen, carbon monoxide and small amounts of other things. Aircraft emissions are regulated.

Some people think that if a contrail stays in the sky for a long time, that this is very unusual, and that it means the government is spraying something in the air, either to change the weather, or to poison people. They call these persistent contrails “chemtrails”

Of course, persistent contrails are nothing new, they have been around at least since the 1940’s - when planes were able to get to sufficient altitude. But some people believe in the “chemtrail” theory so strongly that they ignore this fact, or they say “well, SOME of the persistent contrails must be chemtrails”.

One person who was convinced of this was Clifford Carnicom, who put a report on his web site that he said showed that “contrails” were poisoning the air. What happened was someone called Sue Miller collected three samples of rain and snow. She then sent them to someone called Therese Aigner, who then sent them to a lab to be analyzed for Aluminum, Barium, Calcium, Magnesium, and Titanium.

When the results came back, they detected very low levels of those elements, but Miller said: “This devastating data points to a deliberate atmospheric release of massive quantities of material containing Aluminum, Barium, Calcium, Magnesium, Calcium, and Titanium.“

Scary stuff. But what do these results actually mean. All three samples were about the same, so lets look at the first one:

The “Result” column is the amount the substance found in mg/L (milligrams per liter). The units here are important. Sometimes concentration is measured in ppm (parts per million), which is the same as mg/L. Sometimes they are measured in ppb (parts per billion, so 1 mg/L = 1 ppm = 1000 ppb). Make sure you use the right units when looking at things like this

The second column, the MDL is the “Method Detection Limit”, defined as the smallest amount where you can be 99% sure that there is a non-zero amount of the substance. If a number is below the MDL, then you can’t be sure that it’s just instrument noise. If something is less than MDL, then you can’t say with any certainly if any of the substance exists. The best you can say is “there might be some, but we can’t say for sure, but it’s definitely less than the MDL”

The third column (EPA) is one I added for some perspective. It lists the allowable limits for drinking water from the EPA. If the EPA has not set a limit, then I put N/A.

Most of the substances are lower than the MDL, so we can’t really say if there is actually any of these substances in the sample. But the “chemtrail” people say “Tests were ordered for several elements that should NOT be present in normal rain/snow“. So is that right? Should the results come back as zero?

There are two problem here. Firstly if there actually WAS zero aluminum in the samples, then the tests would STILL come back as “less than MDL”, because of “noise” in the instrument. If an instrument has an MDL level, than means it can’t detect zero values with any confidence.

Secondly, we DO expect these substances in rainwater. Aluminum is the most abundant metal in the earth’s crust, so is found in dust in the air, and hence in rainwater. The EPA says:

• Virtually all food, water, air, and soil contain some aluminum
• Everyone is exposed to low levels of aluminum from food, air, water, and soil.

The EPA has not set safety limits for aluminum, the limit listed above is for taste and color reasons.

Calcium, likewise, is found in abundance in rocks (and hence airborne dust), as is magnesium and Titanium. There are no EPA limits set, because they are not particularly toxic.

The only substance with a measurable result was Barium. This was present in the samples a concentration that was just 5% of the allowable EPA limits for drinking water. Not a dangerous amount, but should it be found in the air (hence rainfall) at all? The CDC says ”

• Barium gets into the air during the mining, refining, and production of barium compounds, and from the burning of coal and oil.
• The length of time that barium will last in air, land, water, or sediments depends on the form of barium released.

So yes, barium is in the air, from such things as burning of coal and oil. And seemingly from this test result, not at a dangerous level.

Quickly looking at the pH value - that measures the acidity or alkalinity of a solution, where a value of 7 is considered neutral. Drinking water ranges from 6.5 to 8.5, so the value here of 7.5 is nothing unusual for drinking water. “Acid rain” for example is defined as having a pH of less than 5.0. But rain is usually slightly acidic (pH of around 5.6) because of the carbon dioxide in the air, however it varies depending on location and atmospheric pollution (and can be has high as 8.5) . In the US rainwater is usually under 5.6, so getting a value of 7.5 is somewhat suspicious. since rainwater pH is constantly being measured, it’s very unlikely that such a high pH would have gone unnoticed. The fact that this one set of sample has a high pH suggests that either the samples were contaminated during collection, or that they were actually ground water, and not rainwater.

There are a lot of planes in the air, several thousand at any given time over the US. This animation shows all the tracked air traffic in the air at once. Each dot is a jet. Click on the image to see a 24 hour animation.

The animation is interesting since it shows there are broad flight paths that a lot of planes follow. This (along with wind) explains the parallel trails, and the grids.

If you have Google Earth installed, then click here for near-real time flight tracking of ALL the tracked flights in the US. It looks like this (click for a closer look, there’s more than there initially seems):

Given all these jets flying along regular airways, it’s hardly surprising that when the weather is right, that parallel persistent contrails will show up and then grids where the paths cross. In fact it’s surprising we don’t see more!

And here are some more Flight Pattern Visualizations. Pretty stuff.

See FBOWeb for more info on flight tracking:

“Chemtrails” are supposedly long lasting contrails that are being deliberately created by the government for some sinister purpose. In reality, these contrails just look like normal contrails. It’s a fringe conspiracy theory that spread over the internet, mutating as it goes for survivability. But where did it begin? What is the origin of the word “chemtrail”, and who started this particular conspiracy theory?

Google Groups archives internet news-groups back to 1981, but the earliest mention of chemtrails was from May 8th, 1999: on alt.fan.art-bell

This cartilage gel that Art’s plugging could be used for the joint ache
that chemtrail victims complained about last night…say…wait a
minute…maybe chemtrails were deployed to boost cartilage gel sales…!

Here we have mention of chemtrail victims, and “joint ache” as a symptom.

In may of 1999, we have this:

CHEMTRAILS OVER AMERICA

Issue #2 April 7-16, 1999

Dear Friends and concerned sky-watchers,

A March 17, 1999 radio interview going out to 15 million
listeners

Again referencing the Art Bell show. So it seems that radio show was perhaps the start of the phenomena. The “Chemtrails over America” bulletin apparently had issue #1 on march 9, 1999. That also seems to be about the time people started taking photos of normal contrails.

Judging by the earliest postings, it seems like hypochondria plays a large part. People start to connect the contrails with illness, and suspect they must contain some kind of poison.

Looking at the previous year (1998) on usenet, there is NO mention of chemtrails. The word “contrail” crops up 324 times, mostly in reference to meteors and rockets. There are a few references to the affect of contrails on climate change. But NOTHING about deliberate contrail creation, or anything like “chemtrails”.

The web site chemtrailcentral.com was registered on May 6th, 2000, about a year after the “chemtrail” idea was created. The earliest archived page from there indicates a lot of local media involvement, and their archive indicates nothing before 4/24/2000, which said:

Monday a KHOU crew met with Chemtrail Tracking USA Club co-founders Lorie [Kramer] and Dona of Houston and member Rhonda from Ft. Worth, as well as other local members of the Yahoo! based club for the taping of a story on Chemtrails and public concern over their purpose and health impact. Reporter Ron Travino and cameraman Nathan visited for several hours at the house of Lorie, taping, talking, asking questions, and viewing photos and videos.

On chemtrailcentral, there’s actually a thread about the history of chemtrails. There people give their recollections of how it all started. Most date it to late 1998 or 1999. A few people report earlier contrails (1989, 1991) , and then surmise it must have stated earlier.

A post there by 3T3L1 quotes chemtrail debunker Jay Reynolds:

derivation of the word “chemtrails”
Posted on August 26, 2001 at 09:06:54 AM by jayreynolds
was by Val Valerian(pseudonym for Former USAF captain [John] Grace)
in April 1999. Grace/Valerian recognized that the power of suggestion
worked against his claim and proposed coining a new term more suggestive
of his claim

That does not sound unreasonable, since the earliest reference to the word I have is April 1999. This page claims to be reporting from March 29th 1999, but could have been written after the fact, based on photos taken that day. It’s archived back to October 1999.

The original pages from Val Valerian/Valdemar Valerain/O.H. Krill/John Grace, can be found on archive.org. The earliest real mention of spraying on his pages date back to emails 13 Jan 1998. John Grace is a UFO conspiracy theorist who published several books on shadow governments and suchlike, he also faked documents to support arguments in his books.

“Procrustean Science” is a wonderful phrase I came across on the internet in a paper on “Indigenous siderophiles in the lunar highlands”. It’s a rare phrase, deriving from the legend of Procrustes, who was an inn-keeper that liked his guests to fit their beds exactly. If the guests were too short, he would stretch them on a rack, and if they were too long, he would chop off their feet.

In Procrustean science, the bed represents the theory, and the guests represent the facts and observations constituting the evidence. If the facts do not fit, then they are simply altered to make them fit the theory.

That’s the problem with chemtrail theory, they start with the theory, and then pick and choose facts, and narrowly interpret information in a way that fits the theory. They problem is that you can do that for ANY theory. Just constantly refine your interpretation so it is always correct.

Real science does not work like that. It starts with the facts, and then considers all possible explanations, and narrows in on the theory that fits the facts, rather than picking and adjusting the facts that fit the theory.

This is just a video of some of the material on this site. Feel free to use it anywhere you like.

Some people think that persistent contrails (high altitude aircraft vapor trails) are unusual, and are evidence of some secret government plot to modify the weather, or spread some population controlling drug or toxin. This is based on a misunderstanding of how contrails form, persist and spread. It is also not a new misunderstanding.

Back in the 50’s in America, contrails were a fairly rare sight in many parts of the country. Air travel was a fraction of what it is now, commercial jet travel did not start until 1958, and military operations were generally limited to particular areas. So it was not surprising that when someone noticed a contrail for the first time, they might think it to be unusual.

This account from 1951 reads almost exactly like the misunderstanding of current contrails:

Galveston, Texas, Sunday, October 28, 1951, in The Galveston Daily News:

Mystery Veils Vapor Wreath in Gaveston’s Sunny SkiesIt wasn’t a sky-written soft-drink ad and the weatherman couldn’t offer an explanation either for the fat white streaks of vapor hanging motionless in Galveston skies around noon Saturday.
But it seems fairly certain that a six-engined B-36 left the heavy white trail in its wake as it circled over the city.
Neither municipal airport nor civil aeronautics authority official had a flight plan on the bomber. Both outfits however, believed that the jet-powered B-36 was on a training mission from Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth.
An Air Force spokesman at Carswell Base refused to comment on either the bomber or its “vapor trail” when contacted late Saturday by The News.
Mystery of the massive vapor streaks was their long steady persistence in breeze-stirred skies rather than their expulsion from the jet-powered plane. Airport officials commented that a vapor trail usually fades away swiftly, as in sky-writing.
They also said that planes may leave vapor trails when flying at high altitudes. But it was unlikely, they added, that the air would remain still enough to keep the vapor from fading swiftly.
Another odd thing - onlookers said the bomber engines rather than the jet exhausts were pushing out the vapor clouds.
The only thing certain about the vapor mystery seems to be that the B-36 was flying at altitudes between 10,000 and 25,000 feet when it circled Galverston.

There are several components of the misunderstanding. Winds at altitude differ significantly from winds on the ground. Sky-writing happens at a much lower altitude and is totally different. The B-36 was the largest American bomber EVER, 50% larger than the B-52, and could easily cruise at 40,000 feet. So estimates of its height over Galverston could easily be underestimated, if based on experience with more typical aircraft. The B-36 also did not use its jet engines at cruising altitude, only for takeoff and dash attacks.

Here’s a photo of B-36 contrails at 37,000 feet, from the Operation Teapot nuclear tests on 6th April 1955, in Nevada:

All the trails are from the same B-36 jet overflying the test site (it was an aerial test).

And here is an account of a B-36 leaving persistent contrails at 20,000 feet.

Another account from a year earlier (1950), where the vapor trails (contrails) are mistaken for some kind of UFO. Typical of the flying saucer craze of the time. This from the Waterloo Courier, April 16, 1950:

Here’s another from the San Mateo Times, Jan 12, 1950:

And another from the Kingsport Times, Tennessee, Feb 11, 1954 (click on the image to zoom in):

Some people believe that persistent contrails are actually evidence of a secret government spraying program called “chemtrails”, which was begun in the 1990s, for some purpose such as weather control, population control or more exotic purposes.

A common claim made by those believers is that it is only in recent years that chemtrails have persisted, and back when they were young (usually implying sometime before the 90’s), they remembered “blue skies”, which they don’t see any more.

I live (in 2007) in Los Angeles. The sky is generally blue here. In fact it’s blue about 300 days of the year. It’s often hazy in the morning. But I’d say the sky is blue, and if asked to recall what the color of the sky was, I think I’d say blue, especially if I were recalling a day at the beach or some such thing.

Were the skies different before 1980? Personal memory is not a good yardstick, so perhaps the photographic record. Now, until recently most of the photos people put online were from digital cameras, and hence quite recent. But now the older folks are starting to scan in their old photos, so we get things like this album:

http://picasaweb.google.com/WynnWagner/WynnSFirstPhotoBatch
This is a batch of photos from the 1960’s and earlier. While there is not much that looks like a contrail in any of the photos, there are a LOT of photos that show the kind of hazy sky that chemtrailers believe did not exist when they were young. In fact, nearly all the “blue sky” shots show some form of haze or cirrus clouds. The only time a sky approachs the “deep blue” of chemtrailers childhood imagination is when the camera is pointed nearly straight up, such as in the photo of the South Dakota capitol. Even there, you get the haze.

So why no persistent contrails? Well, it’s not just no persistent contrails in the photos, it’s no contrails at all. In fact, there are no planes in the sky!

Here are some more albums of old photos
1979 http://picasaweb.google.com/photos.hall/Crete1979
1980 http://picasaweb.google.com/kldelpha/TripWest1980

Back to the claims of the chemtrailers. Are the skys different now? Sure, there is more air traffic, hence more contrails. But is there evidence of this? Look on picasaweb at people’s vacation photos. You see blue skies, hazy skies, cloudy skies. You really don’t see many contrails.

Look for photos of places that people consider to be hotbeds of chemtrail activity. Any place you are familiar with, say San Diego. Look for photos of San Diego. How many have contrails in them? Almost none.

What does this mean? It means confirmation bias, it means selective memory. Most of the time the sky is hazy. Most of the time it does not have persistent contrails in it.

Sometimes, of course, they do. We can be selective with the past as well as the present. We don’t remember them because they are rare, but they are there:

Applegate Lake, 1981, persistent contrail above the horizon.

1970s - Two parallel contrails, with a third being formed

1969, morning contrails that will spread and cover the sky: