How many people are interested in chemtrails? Not very many I suspect. But how to measure them? One way is to see how popular they are on the internet. You could measure how many web pages mention “chemtrails”, but that could give a distorted picture, as the people who believe in chemtrails might tend to be much more likely to post their beliefs on the internet. Lots of people knit, for example, but only a tiny fraction of them make knitting web sites.
We could count blog posts, but that has similar problems, as people who believe in conspiracy theories seem quite keen on spreading those theories, and so are more likely to blog about them
The best way that occurred to me was to measure search terms. Simply see how many people were googling for “chemtrails” vs. other words. In this Googlified world, if people are interested in something then they google it.
Here’s my raw data:
| Google Blogs | Google Images | Video | News | Scholar | Pages/Posts | Groutability 2006 | ||
| “Global Warming” | 67500000 | 733828 | 996000 | 18420 | 32584 | 102000 | 91.98 | 80 |
| Ufo | 36700000 | 317795 | 3335000 | 163722 | 929 | 24000 | 115.48 | 80 |
| Knitting | 20600000 | 601088 | 668000 | 7035 | 1715 | 143000 | 34.27 | 50 |
| Archery | 11900000 | 95539 | 296000 | 3614 | 1453 | 12500 | 124.56 | 12 |
| Parkour | 4510000 | 35404 | 83100 | 39931 | 49 | 39 | 127.39 | 8 |
| Fread | 2600000 | 3224 | 8280 | 32 | 10 | 3580 | 806.45 | 1.6 |
| Grouting | 1600000 | 6873 | 17800 | 193 | 58 | 36600 | 232.79 | 1 |
| Bboy | 1210000 | 14443 | 25700 | 77250 | 10 | 49 | 83.78 | 3 |
| Chemtrail(s) | 791000 | 4828 | 9180 | 2123 | 5 | 38 | 163.84 | 1 |
| “fox hunting” | 707000 | 7923 | 15900 | 106 | 64 | 2380 | 89.23 | 1.2 |
| “Killer Bees” | 434000 | 7090 | 10400 | 195 | 197 | 568 | 61.21 | 0.8 |
| Morgellons | 236000 | 3756 | 2970 | 143 | 4 | 26 | 62.83 | 1 |
| Vexillology | 112000 | 1037 | 1610 | 0 | 4 | 34 | 108 | 0 |
| Reborning | 47000 | 397 | 1070 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 118.39 | 0 |
The columns are fairly self explanatory. They are the number of results returned by google for web, blogs, images, videos, news and scholar. The pages/posts column is the ratio of total web pages to blog posts. The “groutability” column is the ratio search volume for that word to the search volume of “grouting”. I chose grouting as it seemed like a thing people would be searching for at a fairly constant volume, but not too much.
I chose search terms that had a similar result to chemtrails. I also added some outliers, that were very popular, or very unpopular, mostly activities practiced only by a few (like reborning). I included “morgellons”, as it seems like the most similar thing I could find with a distinct name.
You can look at the numbers and draw your own conclusions. Chemtrails has more results than “killer bees”, but less than “bboy” ( a type of athletic break-dancing). It has vastly less than knitting and archery. But a lot more than “reborning” (making realistic baby dolls).
But how many people are interested in chemtrails? Well, there are about 30,000,000 knitters in the country, and 600,000 blog results. So given the 4828 blogs results for chemtrails, that would indicate 241,000 people have some interest in chemtrails. But, like I said, it’s not easy to accurately extrapolate. If you could extrapolate from blogs, you could say there are three times as many chemtrailers as there are vexillologists (flag enthusiasts).
Or you could say: a lot more people are interested in Parkour than are interested in chemtrails.
[Update] Chemtrails on Usenet (archived on Google Groups), were only mentioned in 1999. Here are the year-to-year search results for the word “chemtrails”. There are NO results prior to 1999
1999 – 1070
2000 – 2050
2001 – 2810
2002 – 2250
2003 – 2060
2004 – 2100
2005 – 1570
2006 – 2450
2007 – 2230
http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message1178760/pg1
I could only read so many comments there before I had too stop. Even in that forum people continue saying barium and aluminum have been sampled. Yes from the ground and both are in the environment regardless…. People who know better can repeat this until their blue in the face, but they’ll never learn. Even a sample 1000meters in the sky wouldn’t tell me what was in a Contrail at 10km to 50km high.. It is madness to think people don’t understand this fact. The weather modification is NOT hidden and one can watch them work. The rest have personal stories of intrigue they use as proof, like people claiming they were abducted by aliens. It is mind numbing to debate with people caught up in dogma, pseudoscience, and conspiracies. Most of them will never take this site seriously. Like random commenters are government agents.
If you argue with them long enough, you’ll notice repetition with very little progress in their stories. You’ll find new stories of samples, always from within reach and never of a contrail or supposed “chemtrail” to find its contents. I think it is obvious it is water moisture and the particular jet fuel’s bi-products of combustion (exhaust). In very humid conditions there are leading edge contrails that was recently filmed by pilots and used by chemtrailers. It is done similar how you can make a puff of “smoke” by holding your breath and with your mouth shut real tight, squeeze the air inside of you hard as you can then relax and slowly let the air out of your mouth. You’ll see a little puff of condensed air with moisture. The pressure and moisture around the leading edges condenses. I maybe missing some particular points that the pilots here would know. Most of the believers in chemtrails are in LA and the UK. Not surprisingly, they are two spots with the highest amounts of commercial traffic.
Ya and dont forget Canada, in the spring we had no rain and it was hot, no April showers bringing May flowers. Then one day all these lines were appeared and they spread out and gave us a nice white sky and then guess what happened it rained it pored for days flooding things out here in Alberta.
Interesting thread though if you get past the name calling. I was particularly interested byt this one comment:
Which led me to: http://eros.usgs.gov/#/Guides/nhap
1997 – about the time that the theory got started. 40,000 AGL is above most regular traffic, so could quite possibly have produced isolated persistent contrails. And maybe they flew in a grid pattern (7.5 minutes of is about 9 miles by 6.5 miles . That could be enough of a trigger for someone to start paying attention, and when you pay attention you start noticing things you did not notice before.
Seems kind of unlikely though, that’s a pretty wide grid – but if it were the only contrails in a clear blue sky, it might stand out.
ruffneck, contrail often precede rain because of the weather, in fact, along with other clouds, they have long been used to predict the weather.
http://weatherforecasting.suite101.com/article.cfm/how-to-forecast-rain-and-storms
That’s because the planes flying everyday, then a weather front moved in with different air conditions preceding the rain… That air responded with the normal flight traffic and produced visible trails. I don’t understand how people confuse weather modification, crop spraying, application spraying (corexit, agent orange, military chemical warfare) with contrails… All of the forementioned things are documented as is contrails and are seperate. They have been jumbled together to form a chemtrail theory which is utter nonsense.
I really had to laugh when I read this from Trax319, “Like many others I believe that there is organized activity going on in our skies, and I believe it is done with a purpose.”
The alternative is that all those planes up there are flying about in a disorganised fashion without purpose… Boy…!!! I’m glad we have ATC. I live almost directly underneath final approach to a busy international airport. Some of the local teenagers buzz about on their motorbikes and in stolen cars in a disorganised fashion without much purpose and that’s bad enough. It would be unbearable if pilots were joyriding in 737s !
Paul..
The RoadRunner..
It’s amazing to what length the establishment will go to protect their little dirty secret(s). An entire site filled with disinfo shills disproving “chemtrails” with “scientific” methods. Its unfortunate that the average individual has been conditioned to rely on “experts” to tell us the “scientific” explanation.
Let me an average Joe blow try to explain chemtrails
a) Almost all chemtrails are created by aircraft that fly above commercial airline altitude. In order to prove this all you need to do is watch for chemtrails and call air traffic control and give them your altitude and ask what planes are currently in the area. Naturally air traffic control will deny any activity even though you can see if with your own two eyes.
b) Grid pattern spraying is very common, the explanation on this site is that its “normal” traffic control. WRONG… all one has to do is find locate all air traffic destinations in the area and find out which directional routes they obey by. Once this is done it will be pretty clear that that 30k plus feet military plane drawing eights in the sky without any specific route or destination.
i’ll come back to add more later.
Hi Dan. You know you can use FlightAware to see the aircraft in your area, just pick a local airport, and it will show you nearby traffic in green.
http://flightaware.com/live/airport/KLAX
Hover over a plane, and the first number on the second line is the hight in 100s of feet (so, 370 is 37,000 feet). You’ll see quite a range of altitudes.
Dan there’s usually not much point figuring out the destinations in “the area” – contrails at high altitude are going to be formed by flights transiting the area to and from distant airports – not local lones.
This page of airline route maps – http://www.airlineroutemaps.com/ – will give you some idea of how busy the skies really are.
Hail the new wisdom from the CT camp, as told by Dan:
“Almost all chemtrails are created by aircraft that fly above commercial airline altitude… pretty clear that that 30k plus feet military plane drawing eights in the sky without any specific route or destination.”
Chemtrail photos from Finland
http://kemikaalivanat.vuodatus.net/
[img]https://contrailscience.com/wp-content/uploads/cc_IMG_5551.JPG[/img]
If that’s a “chemtrail”, then why don’t all chemtrails look like that?
The brighter lines there are denser parts of the contrail formed in the wake vortices. This formation varies with atmospheric conditions at the plane’s altitude. The odd shape is the result of the Crow Instability. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crow_Instability
I was forced to ‘google’ chemtrails by a nephew of mine after constant bleeting about govt attempts to poison us. I despair with so called ‘intelligent ‘ people who think that flooding in the UK was a cause of weather manipulation. I do , however, tend to disagree with people who seem to think that man is responsible for temp rises through CO2 emissions because of 50 years of weather records !! So many people simply reiterate what they have heard others say without any understanding. 99.9% of humans do not even know what causes weather or even how it is created. Ask them about obliquity, precession or ecentricity and they are stumped. Ask them about global warming and they know it all. There are so many things wrong with this world and what happens within it………..but if you keep voting for the same crap ..that’s what you get in return. The science of contrails is actually very simple and a schoolboy can understand it, well, 20 years ago maybe, but all this quoting youtube vids and pseudo science is turning your brains to mush my friends. I suggest you stop using under arm deodorants !!! Well done Uncinus, I salute your superior common sense !
And before anyone accuses me of being a govt scientist I am not. I spend all my time debunking govt weather ‘experts’ in particular the nobs at IPCC. I tutor in Astronomy and Meteorology to all sorts of people. I am independant and have no affiliations ! I am also aware of the vast research that UK/USA military have done with HAARP and magneto levitation engines etc etc. May I respectfully request that you research the murder of Dr David Kelly a UK weaons inspector pre IRAQ war for a more revealing insight to govt conspiracies !!
As for the Chemtrails Theory, looks like someone makes some money out of getting people paranoid,
http://chemtrailsproject.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=47&Itemid=56
Well, I’m glad the chemtrail conspiracy theory is a bridge too far Dr, but this isn’t the place to advertise the global warming conspiracy theory.
Marcel, that’s strong stuff on that side. They advertise a kit for testing soil for the “the levels of the main contaminants in Chem Trails, Barium and Aluminum”.
The domain is registered to one Paul Bourgeois who operates a small furniture company in Florida, according to a quick check.
Is this a known “chemtrailer”?
Don’t know JFDee, but what caught my eye was the soil testing kit at $50. There are also t shirts for sale elsewhere on the net, plus dvd’s, so it is in someone’s interest to keep the CT going to make some money
I would say you pay money and get nothing in return, but for the true believer willing to part with that $50, the barium and aluminium they will obviously find will only serve to convince them further.
There’s one born every minute. Maybe I’ll start a conspiracy involving Argon, corrupting all our DNA, or something less ridiculous. If my £50 kit turns up around 1% in your sample then you’ve just confirmed the truth, and helped stop the Government/Big Pharma/Global Banking/Illuminati/Nibiru/The Lizard Overlords/Faceless Evil, and SAVED THE WORLD!
Anyone want to help me write a business plan for my bank manager?
Sorry Unc,
I’m afraid the truth is out according to this lot.
http://atruthsoldier.wordpress.com/2011/03/25/the-chemtrail-puzzle-comes-together-thanks-to-drunk-guy-at-bar/
Marcel
(now where’s that “tongue firmly in cheek” icon?)
He ripped off Indian in the Machine, an alternative medicine salesman.
http://indianinthemachine.wordpress.com/2011/02/05/the-chemtrail-puzzle-comes-together-thanks-to-drunk-guy-at-bar-cia-company-evergreen-international-aviation-connection-in-planned-planetary-genocide/
If anyone hasn’t noticed yet, September is usually Chemtrail recruitment month. I fear this year’s 10th anniversary of the attacks on New York and Washington will only serve to push those who believe in this hoax deeper. For many with understandable anger, lacking any obvious emotional outlet, their search for answers will lead them astray, to 9/11 truther sites, the tired calls of an inside job, and down the rabbithole through the absurdity of chemtrails and worse.
I live in Norway; admittedly here we have only recently found ourselves face-to-face with terrorism. I hope the majority of Americans keep their heads, and see these conspiracy theories fir the evidence vacuums they are, and honour their loved ones with sensitivity and dignity, and maturity.
I also hope ContrailScience isn’t overrun with those people who keep asking questions while ignoring all the answers.
tryblinking: “I also hope ContrailScience isn’t overrun with those people who keep asking questions while ignoring all the answers.”
Too late.
You’re right Boff, the traffic here from chemtrail believers admittedly already outweighs that of reasonable posters.
I just hope, as I’m sure you do, that more of the believers who find these explanations will suspend their bias long enough to rely on the logoc of peer-reviewed scientific method, instead of their uneducated eyes.
Just saw this page, which sums up lots of light-hearted ideas about conspiracy theories in general, and figured this was the best place to offer it:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ConspiracyTheorist
If you have a couple of months spare, and you are interested in the wider rules governing all the stuff you like, the whole TvTropes site is fascinating.
Chemtrails didn’t make Politico’s top 10 ( http://www.politico.com/gallery/2012/10/10-government-conspiracy-theories/000473-006435.html), got beat out by the ravings of some washed up rock star.
“How many people believe in chemtrails? – just how popular is the theory? Not very.”
Not very popular? Surely, this is not the case as it was popular and big enough to catch your attention and create a website on it.
It’s all relative. People create web sites about their interest in the most trivial of things.
There do seem to be more people interested now though.
If one percent of the adult population of the U.S. believes in it, that is over 2 million people.
Well, looking at the pages and groups on Facebook, which has about a Billion users, there are around 100,000 chemtrail “enthusiasts” in the various groups. Given that chemtrails is an internet driven idea, I would not put the total number of believers at much over that, especially when the largest petition against chemtrails that I have found online, had less than 5000 signatures.