‘Chemtrails,’ Ron Paul, and the Cost of Conspiracy in Arizona
While putting the finishing touches on this article, I had a chance to talk to many people about the (alleged) chemtrail phenomenon. And one name came up again and again: perennial presidential candidate Ron Paul. (See the youtube video above.)
It makes sense, of course. Whether Congressman Paul believes in chemtrails or not (the matter seems to be disputed), his fringe belief system draws the types of people who obsess over matters that are at best silly, and at worst deadly. But he also ends up dragging a whole bunch of goofy conspiracies into our political process by means of his tech-savvy, oddball supporters. The result is what happened at the Sheldon Adelson evening caucus in Nevada (when Paul supporters seized the podium to push their pet issues) and this tale of misadventure from my home state: Time is wasted. Brainpower is misused and frittered away on marginal and mostly theoretical subject matter. And our communities are distracted from dealing with issues that are actually important.
***
If you’re like most folks, you probably look up at the sky occasionally. And when you do, you may or may not notice the long white crystalline etchings that zig-zag across the atmosphere, remnants of the thousands of jets that ply the ether in their daily travels.
(I myself do not notice them; it is hard enough texting and driving as it is, and I do not own a convertible.)
These evanescent beauties are known as contrails, which, according to Wikipedia, are
…artificial clouds that are the visible trails of condensed water vapour made by the exhaust of aircraft engines. As the hot exhaust gases cool in the surrounding air they may precipitate a cloud of microscopic water droplets or, if the air is cold enough, tiny ice crystals.[1]
Sounds reasonable to me.
But there is a vocal and vociferous minority that believes contrails are just one of the substances that can spill from the back of a plane — and that they are used as cover by the diabolical to mask what really happens at high altitudes: the spraying of noxious and poisonous substances known as chemtrails.
Who is in charge of this genocidal program? Evil climate-change scientists? The U.S. government? The Air Force? How about The New World Order or The Illuminati? Has anyone spoken to the artist formerly known as Prince? He seems to know a few things….
Regardless of who is directing it and carrying it out, and for what manner of nefarious purposes, the practice is evidently widespread, and easy to spot:
The effects range from nuisance caliber to worse. They include, but are not limited to, the following:
Neck pain Stiff neck Stomach cramps Headaches/Sinus problems Nausea Dizziness/ Light headed Can’t catch breath Weepy feeling of sadness/No energy Massive or light fatigue/Crying spells Loose bowels Feeling disconnected or “spaced out”/Can’t focus thoughts or speech/Confusion Deep coldness Depression Tight chest which gets worse when laying down/Anxiety Symptoms never seem to go away/Tests from doctors show nothing /Congestion in chest Body pain Dramatic mood swings/Anger, sadness Tightness in chest and or stomach/Ear aches Sore throat Tightness in shoulders both or one side going in to neck, head, and sinuses/Soreness all over Dry cough Metallic taste in mouth Stomach acid problems Hot flashes Unexplained rashes Short term memory loss, Etc…
Now ordinarily I’m not going to waste even a second worrying about any of this. After all, there are all kinds of maladies out there to choose from, so If I’m going to fixate, then I want the time to be well spent. Something with unrelenting blood or misshapen bumps or insect eggs under the skull is bound to be way more exciting than the pedestrian stuff listed above.
But then I found out that some of the toxic misting was taking place darn near in my own back yard. A guy would have to be a fool not to check that out…right?
Forgive me, dear reader, while I backtrack for just a moment. I am sure at this point you are asking yourself: Why would anyone dump Barium or Ty-D-Bol or whatnot on innocent people all over the planet? That’s a tough one to answer. Except for maybe the climate change aspect (seeding the skies might bring about more sanguine weather patterns, which might help agriculture flourish), and the more sinister population control piece (as one of the links above states, the goal is to “eradicate useless eaters” for the greater good of those left standing), most of the conspiracy theorists seem to just accept that the powerful do it because they can; it seems to be an unsaid truism that those who have the ability to hurt others will always do so — it’s just in their nature, after all. Not that that is a very good answer, but in all the literature I have read, it is mostly about how and who and not the motives behind it all. Of course there is money involved — but that is just a side aspect; the ruling cabals always make a lot of it somehow, and this is just another way….
And now back to the story!
Sedona, Arizona, is less than 100 miles up the road from my home in Phoenix. To say it is magical is to call Barney Frank misdirected. It is soooo much more. Famous for its red-hued rocky outcrops, vortexes, UFOs, and a slightly wacky-but-loveable concentration of activists of many stripes, it just makes sense that this Yavapai County city would be a prime target of the conscienceless goons who inflict mass mind-control techniques on the citizens of our world.
But Sedona-ites are not going to just take it. They are way too vigilant. And engaged. Even former politicians are involved in the fight, as detailed in this quote from Aircrap.org:
PHOENIX – She might be retired from political life, but former state senator Karen Johnson is not retired from being an activist. After serving in the House of Representatives for eight years and the senate for four, Johnson retired in 2008 to her home in Linden where she now has time to garden and become more active in issues that concern her.
One of these issues took her on a recent trip back to the state capital to try to bring the subject of chemtrails and geoengineering to her former colleagues, including Governor Jan Brewer and Senator Sylvia Allen who is from Snowflake.
Johnson is incensed by the wanton disregard of the evil-doers for the sanctity of life, and “…would like to see Arizona declare the state a ‘no fly zone’ for chemtrail spraying.”
“The data found…shows that one of the chemicals being sprayed is aluminum oxide which is toxic to all life,” said an angry Johnson. “Alzheimer’s has increased rapidly since they started spraying in the late 1990s.”
Johnson’s statement dovetails nicely with the prevailing theory that all this coordinated mischief started over a decade ago. To go back to Wikipedia:
In 1996, a chemtrail conspiracy theory began to circulate when the United States Air Force (USAF) was accused of “spraying the US population with mysterious substances” from aircraft “generating unusual contrail patterns.”[4] The Air Force says these accusations were a hoax fueled in part by citations to a strategy paper drafted within the Air Force’s Air University entitled Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025.[10][11] The paper was presented in response to a military directive to outline a future strategic weather modification system for the purpose of maintaining the United States’ military dominance in the year 2025, and identified as “fictional representations of future situations/scenarios.”[11] The Air Force further clarified that the paper “does not reflect current military policy, practice, or capability,” and that it is “not conducting any weather modification experiments or programs and has no plans to do so in the future.”[4][12] Additionally, the Air Force states that the “‘Chemtrail’ hoax has been investigated and refuted by many established and accredited universities, scientific organizations, and major media publications.”[4]
No matter — at least in Sedona. The zeal of individuals like Johnson led, throughout 2011, to a rather high volume of e-mails and walk-in visits to City Hall. Letters like the following circulated around town:
To whom it may concern:
I am being poisoned because of chemtrails. You are being poisoned by chemtrails. We are being spraying with dangerous chemicals every day. We are slowly being killed. Have you noticed how many people are getting cancer and how many of our children are developing ADHD and autism? It’s an alarming number and it’s all because of chemtrails.
Because of this and because I have several grandchildren myself, I am very involved in trying to expose this conspiracy. I am really upset at our government and what they are not doing to protect us. The government was created to protect us and they need to start doing their job.
About a year ago the black helicopters flew over my community and sprayed everything. They did this at night so no one would know. However, I heard the helicopter and it woke me up. I went outside and I realized what they were doing, but it was too late. I was exposed. I immediately got sick. I couldn’t breathe. I got a severe headache that lasted for days, at least five days. My dog also got sick and was vomiting everywhere. I lost several teeth within weeks of being sprayed. I have been sick ever since. I can’t sleep and eventually I lost my job because of this. I called the police department, but they refused to do anything to help me.
I watch my neighbors get sick too and I try to tell them and show them photographs, but they are not listening. Just this morning when I was out for my daily walk and looked at the sky, I saw at least five criss-cross chemtrail bands spreading across our beautiful desert sky, spraying their poison into the air we breathe. This is bad.
This is very serious and we need to unite together and do something to stop the poisoning before its too late. I don’t know who is behind this, but they are very nasty people. I want to form a group of concerned citizens to work with me to stop this cruel act from continuing. If you are interested in helping yourself, your friends, and family members, please contact me at:
There was also a raft of call-ins like this.
So last year, on October 25, a city council meeting was called to order (item 9a in this link).
Here was the council’s finding after hearing from guest speaker Trevor Baggiore, deputy director of the Air Quality Division of the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality:
There is no credible evidence that “chemtrails” actually create health, public safety, or other problems for the public. No further council or staff time should be allocated for this issue after the presentation this evening.
If you notice, the finding doesn’t say there are no such things as chemtrails; it just says that they don’t cause issues for the public. So who knows? Baggiore, for his part, indicated that interest in the phenomenon is cyclical:
I sent an e-mail to the city community development director, John O’Brien, who was kind enough to reply thusly:
Based on the presentation from the ADEQ representative to the Sedona City Council, there does not appear to be any scientific evidence of the existence of chemtrails. With that said, even if chemtrails really do exist, this would be an issue for the FAA to address, not the City of Sedona.
So is any of this stuff true? I really don’t care, to be honest, unless the Weed-B-Gon blows down the mountain to the Nampion Homestead. (Although, come to think of it, that might just help me in the ongoing battle with my HOA.) When you research the topic, even a little, you find the entire spectrum of belief, from curmudgeonly skeptics to, well, some very interesting Kool-Aid chuggers. In a final effort to bring clarity to the subject, I tried to cadge an interview with some of the senior leadership of The New World Order, but I only got this cryptic video in response:
Maybe one of you intrepid investigators out there will have a little more luck. Just be sure to don that Hazmat suit first — ya hear?
****
Although it is big fun to mock the Paulites and other nutters who believe in chemtrails and the like, here is something for you to chew over while hiding out in your neighborhood bunker: What if these same people — who ground Sedona city business to a halt, who consumed valuable minutes of AZ state employees’ time down in Phoenix, who suck up bandwidth on the internet (not to mention way too much of the Earth’s oxygen ) — were committed to a cause that might actually make our lives better?
Instead of trying to “prove” that our own military routinely drains pestiferous liquids onto our heads, maybe they could get together and discuss ways to deal with our actual enemies who really do want to kill us.
But that would be a waste of time, of course. Everyone knows that the only reason those Muslims are mad is because we’re over in their sacred lands — and we’re probably spraying the hell out of them, too. Right?
Or the windmill-tilters could take a page from their fearless leader’s handbook (after all, he’s not wrong all the time) and tie up the phone lines into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (202-456-1111, you are welcome) over the administration’s recent steamroller of an attack against religious freedom in this country. C’mon, Libertarians! Since when does government have the right to force any organization of faith to fund procedures that directly contradict one of the pillars of its belief system? Talk about tyranny!
My hopes are not high that any of this will happen. Those that live on the perimeters are usually there for a reason. But it might help to deal with reality every once in awhile….
Still doing battle with the HOA huh? I am sorry to hear that.
I was just thinking about you and your misadventures with them this past weekend. My wife and I were in the hot tub looking at the stars and listening to wolves howl when the subject of my father came up. He lives in Houston and his house belongs to a HOA. He had gotten a complaint because he doesnt wash his truck enough to suit his neighbor. My wife finds it incredible that such things take place.
John….buy a house in the country and tell the HOA to go sit on a sharp stick.
Sounds like a nice life to me, Suthenboy…but until the alimony ends, I am stuck in this HOA netherworld…I also do not wash my car – only for dates – and usually not even then…so maybe somebody can turn me in for that, LOL.
If one conspirator can take over the world (presumably through tricks and technology), then so can any other. It’s not a bad thing to stay ahead of the game and embrace these issues by antagonizing them. Hopefully whomever gets there first is benevolent.
Unfortunately, good nature is not a quality found in most power-seekers. Hence the concern/paranoia that many citizens hold with things like HAARP and chemtrails.
I wonder if any of these people have ever seen film footage of a B-17 or B-24 formation over Europe during World War Two.
Contrails so thick you could barely see anything else. Why? Hot exhaust from the stubs of big, honking piston engines condensing moisture in freaking cold air.
Fly a 747 and “Fifi”, the Commemorative Air Force’s B-29 side-by-side at about 30,000 feet on an average day. (Granted, the Superfortress will be at takeoff power and the 747 will be at 50% and flaps 5 to keep station on each other. And you’ll be at “Fifi’s” effective ceiling, BTW.)
You’ll be hard put to say which one is generating more contrail.
What does this prove? Mainly that “chemtrail” believers are scientific ignoramuses.
As for Ron Paul, he has more than enough weird beliefs (on Israel, etc.) that
(a) He doesn’t necessarily need to believe in chemtrails to look like a fool;
(b) He attracts a lunatic fringe on most subjects, not just chemtrails; and
(c) He is so fundamentally far removed from not just the Republican mainstream, but reality in general, I’m surprised he isn’t on the extreme left of the Democratic Party alongside Dennis “The Menace” Kucinich.
Of course, there’s still time for him to have an “epiphany” and go full-on left. After all, it worked for Lyndon LaRouche.
clear ether
eon
Put (b) together with LaRouche’s “epiphany”, and you have Ron Paul’s real job description. He is clearly acting.
Even if he believes 90% of his own statements, his hidden thoughts are key.
“I wonder if any of these people have ever seen film footage of a B-17 or B-24 formation over Europe during World War Two.”
As a very small boy in the years following WWII I remember asking my father what those lines were in the sky. He replied that they were “vapor trails” and then went on to explain how they were created and that they were nothing more than concentrated water condensation. But notice what they were referred to as back then….”vapor trails”. In other words water vapor. I have been a pilot for many decades both military and civilian. Until tonight I have never heard the term for this phenomenon referred to as “chemtrails”. I have seen vapor trails produced by wing tip vortices during a high speed turn. Under exactly the right circumstances a fired bullet will produce a vapor trail.”Chemtrails”? The looney pseudo-science and conspiracy theories that are offered up by the media for people to worry about seems to be an almost bottomless pit. “Chemtrails”. What next? Now that the AGW scam is pooping out Al Gore must be in this picture somewhere.
It’s stuff like this chemtrail nonsense that makes me believe that the 1960′s TV show Lost In Space was based factual events, that 7 people really were castaways on Gilligan’s Island and Major Nelson really had a Genie in a bottle named Jeannie.
However, it also reinforces my belief that it’s not that the world is full of stupid people but that lightning is not distributed properly. (Mark Twain)
Yooper, the chemtrail crowd will acknowledge that vapor trails exist, but insist that SOME of them are laced with chemicals.
What’s the evidence?
Well, sometimes chemtrails are seen to create criss-cross patterns. Like when military training exercise results in many planes flying over the same area in different directions. This explanation, though completely reasonable and true, doesn’t bother the Chemtrail True Believers.
Another line of “evidence” is what you see in the video above. At times, a plane will have a vapor trail, then it will quit, then start again. This is because the pilot is “spraying” or not spraying at different times. Apparently they are unaware that atmospheric conditions make vapor trails come and go without any action by the pilot.
An interesting factoid: Back in the very early 80s I learned that the 747SP (a shortened version of the 747) used water injection to boost takeoff. This works something like an afterburner, except that instead of injecting fuel into the jet exhaust, plain water is used. When it hits the exhaust stream, it instantly turns to steam, providing additional thrust. If’n I recollect the numbers keeerrectly, it gave an additional 10,000 pounds of thrust to a 40,000 pound engine. That’s a staggering 25% increase in thrust, virtually FREE! Once airborne, any excess water is simply dumped. (And it’s not blue, either!) Apparently, this practice is no longer commonly used, for reasons I don’t understand.
I’ve been waiting for some chemtrail enthusiast to come across this info and turn it into “proof” of chemtrail activity.
Planes don’t use water injection any more because engine technology has improved so much. Looking at the new 747-8 specs, the engines are rated at 66,500 pounds of thrust each (>50% improvement over those old engines) and have better fuel consumption specs. This allows the new -8 to carry over 400 people over 7,000 miles and explains why no one I know of flies the 747SP any more.
Just to give you an idea how much jet engine technology has improved, the GE engines used on the 777-300ER produce 115,540 pounds of thrust each. That’s why a plane that big only needs 2 engines instead of 4.
Vapor evaporates, chemtrails linger.
Why is the one woman calling Aluminum Oxide toxic to all life on earth? If so, we’d all be dead by now as it is ubiquitous. It’s in abrasives, face paints, white paint, white plastic (as in plastic spoons, forks and knifes for picnics), the metal aluminum (what they make airplanes and everything else out of), aluminum anodizing process (cookware, for example), compact florescent bulbs, hip replacement prosthetics, and, in it’s second most common use after aluminum manufacture, as the white ceramic in billions of spark plugs.
Silly woman, small wonder she’s a former politician. Most of them are idiots. She must be sniffing some other powder.
Please research Welsbach geoengineering technology, military flight path refraction and cloud seeding my friend.
I’ve been “looking up” (more people should try it)and photographing the skies in earnest for the past year. I know for a fact, without a doubt, it’s a rare event to have a clear blue sky anymore and I know I have a thousand photographs depicting planes spraying trails and patterns of something that doesn’t disappear. If one bothers to watch for several minutes the sprayed “non-contrails” spread out in to a haze and poof! suddenly a cloud develops out of nowhere and in a short time the observed formerly clear sky is shrouded in heavy overcast low clouds. Yes indeed, kind of like an abnormal manmade umbrella shielding the sun. I cannot answer the who, what, where, when and why of it……but I strongly believe that it is in fact, “man-manufactured” and the minority is not wrong in believing something is being done to the sky on a daily basis.
I’m sure there are plenty of nay sayers, ones that never look up, who are ready to pounce on a comment like this.
To the nay sayers come back and comment after you’ve spent some regular time watching and LOOKING UP.
Just kinda curious – does the shiny side go IN or OUT? I’ve always wondered…
Orion
Try going online and looking at the high altitude airways in your area. You’ll find that most airliners fly along the same routes because that’s where the airways are established between ground navigation stations. Water and carbon dioxide are byproducts of combustion, be it from a jet engine or from your car. Jets burn a fair amount of fuel per minute so they release a significant amount of water vapor into the atmosphere. When the temperature conditions are right, contrails form. This is nothing new as a previous poster noted. WWII bomber formations had huge contrail paths. It’s simply water vapor.
What the chemtail conspiracy mongers can’t grasp is how difficult it would be for airliners to be emitting some mysterious chemtrail without the word getting out. For one thing, the airliners would have to regularily be refilled with the chemicals across dozens (if not hundreds) of airports. Just in the US alone, there are thousands of flights every day. Too many people would have to be in on it just to refill the planes and there’s no way you can keep something that large secret for long. It simply makes no sense.
And also, by the time the mystery-chemical-of-doom reached the ground, it would be so diffuse as to be utterly ineffective. Unless they’re spraying tons and tons of like plutonium or something.
Orion
Fortunately, we live near Reagan National so there are followup sprayings by various military agencies that allow us to have many many sunny days despite all the planes constantly spraying chemicals.
You are absolutely right: our beautiful blue skies, when we have them, are filled with chemtrails to block out the sun and to poison us over time. Anyone who will not believe this or even entertain the thought is in deep denial.
Today there was heavy chemtrail activity – they pick a section of sky and send up about 20 planes which fly patterns resembling tic-tac-toe boards. For the past week triangles have been added to the repertois.
Does it really matter whether chemtrails exist in order to abide by the Constitution’s limits? As for America’s enemies, why not clearly identify them and declare war on them? Wherefore the PJ Media anti-Paul silliness?
Obama is living in his own parallel universe mentally, and trying to govern us from there.
We do not need another President who is incapable of telling the difference between reality and his own fantasies. Or worse yet, refuses to acknowledge any difference because he just likes his fantasies better.
clear ether
eon
There is no cause for alarm! Back in the late 1970′s COBRA built and tested the Weather Dominator, a nefarious system to radically alter the weather in order to bring western society to its knees and overthrow democracy so that COBRA could take over the WORLD! Thankfully, GI Joe destroyed the prototype and found a way to counter the horrific effects of the Weather Dominator. All patriotic Americans can sleep peacefully in the knowledge that GI Joe is on the job even today and that the horror being perpetrated on U.S. by those that are using chemtrails to destabilize the national health will be found and STOPPED!
GO JOE!
Nice obfuscation.
Every true SoCon knows that they are part of Satan’s plan to take over America. Just ask Santorum.
It is known that the US government has taken part in some very suspect experiments. While chemtrails may be far out there, the US government has a known history of engaging in suspect experimentation. MKULTRA is an example. It disturbs me to watch the near lockstep character assassination of a man like Ron Paul. This reads more like a hit piece to link Ron Paul to conspiracy theory. What are we discussing here? Shouldn’t we get back to important issues, like letting our big, superconstitutional government conduct programs like COINTELPRO?
Just as Spiderman got his powers from a spider bite and The Incredible Hulk got his powers from a burst of radiation, I get my superpowers from chemtrails. If the chemtrails are stopped, I will no longer be able to fight back the tide of evil.
Think about what it would mean to humanity if I was just a normal person.
I couldn’t handle it. I’d probably kill myself if the HAARP signals hadn’t made me immortal.
I love that New Agers are among us to share their wisdom. The plural of vortex is vortices as the plural of matrix is matrices: don’t you just love it?
People for all time, want to understand, and any intellectual construct will do: the less they suggest decision, responsibility and the potential for effective action the better. It is the same thing that made men and womon worship rocks, trees various natural phenomena.
Taking back bearing to why you might feel a certain way, might help. Note that Dr. Drew places part of the cause of addiction on people trying to control things they can’t: reach exceeding one’s grasp. The other part, which I learned in the military was to deal with only those things within bayonet range. UFOs are a good example.
Never for get that astrologers make far more money than astronomers. People are always quick to grant power to others when they fear to act.
This is what New Agers have replaced religion with.This type of conspiracy laden mind junk.I lost IQ points reading this stuff i tell ya!
Until the last ten or fifteen years, one thing you never saw in Anchorage, AK was jet contrails; any plane near ANC was either landing to refuel or taking off after having refueled. The 747SP and other very long range aircraft ended all that, but since ANC is on the Great Circle route from the US and is a major waypoint on the routes from Europe over the Pole to the Orient, there is a steady stream of passenger heavies at altitude over ANC. The cargo heavies all land here and refuel because they can haul either fuel or cargo and the cargo pays better. If they are putting something in the exhaust, the whole World must be in on it, because the contrails look and act the same no matter whether the plane is coming from or going to SEA, LAX, ORD or the East Coast or Singapore, Seoul, Tokyo, Peking, Shanghai, Germany, England, or any number of other places that the traffic routes over ANC.
Now Alaska has more than its fair share of the black helicopter and tin foil hat crowd, but Alaskans also pretty much all know a lot about airplanes since we practically live on them and have so many of them around us. If there was something like this going on, the paranoids in the State would be on it like white on rice.
And to the post above regarding the B-29, the WWII versions were capable of about 350 smph true and had a service ceiling of 33,000 ft. The B-29 derived K-97 was used extensively to refuel jet aircraft well into the 1970s and had a top speed of 400 smph. And, yes, a 747 would have to slow down to fly alongside a B-29 but not down to full flaps slow. I don’t know ’47 performance that well but they probably fly clean down to 250 mph or so. I do know they have flaps like barn doors and move one Helluva lot of air; I was taking pictures from the end of ANC’s north-south runway which is on a high bluff and a ’47 came in maybe 150′ over my head and the wash knocked me head over heels halfway down the bluff. Didn’t do that again.
You’re right, but keep in mind that Fifi is the last airworthy B-29 and they treat it very tenderly. There’s no way the CAF would willingly take it to high altitude and push it as hard as those wartime B-29s. Just last year, Fifi came out of a multiyear restoration project that cost a lot of money.
I’m torn about the notion of flying these rare old birds at all, and I’ve actually flown in a ’17 and a ’24. Airworthy WWII aircraft are so rare and precious that it is a major loss when one of them goes down; and they will go down. They were tough, mostly, but they were expendible war production and things went wrong with them even when they were new, and the youngest ones are now almost 70 years old.
We still have a few DC-6/C-118 here using the “corn-cob” engines the last of the ’29 derivitaves, the Connies, and the other piston-engine heavies used; nothing like the sound of one. I have a roll of pictures taken at the Illiamna, AK “airport,” a dirt strip actually, showing a couple of guys using a forklift to put a Toyota pickup in the side cargo door of a C-118. It was like the proverbial python eating a goat. Then I have shots of firing up each engine in clouds of oil smoke. There is, or at least was, a DVD available from Amazon of Northern Air Cargo’s last C-118 flight to Bush Alaska, good stuff. I’ve ridden in DC-3/C-47s, C-46s, there’s still quite a few of them around and working, C-118s, Convairs, Electras, C-130s (and even the civilian version) everything Cessna made since the ’50s, practically everything Piper made since the ’40s, DeHavilland Otters, Beavers, Twin Otters, and turbo Otters, a bazillion miles on L-1011s from SEA to ATL, a bazillion miles on DC-10s from ANC to ORD or SEA, a couple of cross-country trips on DC-8s even, and God knows how many miles on everything Boeing has made since the 707, have at least a quarter million miles just between JNU and ANC and between those two and SEA. Like I said above, in this part of the World, we live on airplanes.
While DC-3s seem destined to go on forever, that’s because they’re such good airplanes that companies (e.g. Bassler at Oshkosh) exist to keep rebuilding them. The old warbirds are very valuable so specialty shops exist that do nothing but rebuild old wrecks. It’s gotten to the point that if they can salvage the data plate, they can build an entirely new airplane. I seriously doubt that “Glacier Girl” was in very good shape after being under a couple hundred feet of ice for decades but it’s a thing of beauty today.
There’s a company near where I work that restores the old warbirds. Last year, they rolled out an absolutely beautiful Corsair restoration. It had crashed about 10 years before, killing the owner’s father. They used parts from 2-3 Corsair wrecks to do the restoration and fabricated a lot of parts from scratch. Word on the tarmac is that they’re restoring one or more P-38s recovered from a Pacific island. Reportedly, they have proof that Richard Bong (America’s all-time ace of aces with 40 kills) flew one of them (it isn’t “Marge”).
As long as people are willing to spend millions of dollars restoring the old warbirds, they’ll keep flying. Since they’re worth so much now, they’ll be flown more tenderly than when you could buy a P-51 Mustang for about $10,000 back in the 1960s. A good Mustang is worth at least $1.5 million today. I know an old retired pilot who was offered 10 complete P-51 Mustangs in shipping crates for $2000 each in 1961. He kicks himself today for not buying them.
Art, when I was a boy we lived in the general vicinity of Chino Airport, in southern California. There were a number of WWII vintage planes stationed there, and a day out there cruising around peeking into hangars and through fences was heady stuff for a plane-crazy high-school kid.
Later, I lived near March AFB, and air shows were occasionally held there. I was driving home one day when I was overflown by a B-17G, putt-putting along about 200 feet above the highway. Pretty cool stuff.
I’m with you about flying these old planes. It’s wonderful to see them in the air, but every flight brings the possibility of a crash, and the irreplaceable loss of some beautiful history.
I forgot to add, the KC-97 was more derived from the B-50 which was a reengined B-29 with other upgrades. The B-29 engines were 4 Wright R-3350-23 and 23A turbosupercharged radial engines, 2,200 hp each. Those engines had an unfortunate habit of catching fire due to overheating and with their magnesium case, they burned very well, usually taking the wing with it. The KC-97 was powered by 4 Pratt & Whitney R-4360-59 radial engines, 3,500 hp each. Some of them even had a couple jet engines to go faster when refueling B-47s and B-52s.
True, but I’d like to point out;
1. The B-29 was (seriously) underpowered with the Wright R-3350 engines. While on paper 33-35 grand was the ceiling (w/full load), the engines were a lot happier below 30. And it took half-an-hour to get up that high, which is why the follow-on B-50 (originally the XB-29D, and then the XB-44) replaced the Wrights with Pratt & Whitney R-4360 turbo-compounds, the same engines used in the B-36 (and the C-97, which is why the ’97 generally was good for 220 KTS at 20,000 with a full load).
2. KB-29s were equipped with extra J47 jet engines under the outer wings for increased airspeed during in-flight refueling. When jets such as the F-80, F-84 (straight-wing), and especially the sweptwing birds like the F-84F and F-86 were “on the boom”, the tanker was “headed downhill” at 80% on everything (“four turning and two burning” was the pilots’ definition) to keep TAS above 240 KTS, which was the slowest the fighters could go at altitude without overrunning the tanker. “Falling off the boom” was not considered good airmanship on anybody’s part.
3. 5% flaps on the 747 isn’t anywhere near “full”. It’s just the maximum allowable in clean config above 170KTS. At 30 thousand and 50% throttle, a 747-400 with flaps 5% should be doing about 265 KTS TAS, assuming normal air temps at that altitude (about -50 F).
cheers
eon
Flap extension above FL200 is prohibited per 747 POH.
Well, this sure turned into a d**k pounding session, didn’t it? Damn, you guys must have walls of airplane books in your houses!
Yep.
cheers
eon
Yep, hundreds of them. Still, I envy you your experiences up in Alaska. I’ve been studying aviation and space history for over 40 years. While I’m only a low time (600 hours) private pilot, aviation is a very expensive addiction.
I wrote you a long post last night about your concerns of flying the old warbirds. It hasn’t appearred yet (“awaiting moderation” or perhaps rejected). Your concerns are legitimate, as sadly proven by the loss of that B-17 last year. At least they landed safely and everyone got off before the plane was destroyed by fire. It appears that much of the plane’s parts may be salvagable so they’ll likely fly again on one or more of the surviving 10 (or so) flyable B-17s out there.
As those old warbirds have become more valuable, several specialty shops have sprang up to do restorations. I can see one of them from my office window (Westpac). I dare say there are more warbirds flying today than there were 20 years ago. The restoration shops have master craftsmen who turn out planes that are probably better than when they were newly off the mass production floor. Craftsmanship barely describes what they do, it’s more like metal artistry.
I remember reading Air Classics magazine back in the 1970s. They had a regular feature called “For the Wreckord” describing warbird accidents. It seemed there were a few every month. Back then, you could buy a Mustang for $100K or perhaps even less. Today, they’re worth at least $1.5 million. People tend to fly them and maintain them better today because they’re worth so much.
“…several specialty shops have sprang up to do restorations.”
The Obama administration (regime) will take care of that. Some “do-gooder nazi-fascist demokrat” will find a way to determine it’s ecologically evil to restore old warbirds or, at least force them to be renamed to “armed-conflict flying artifacts” or some such nonsense. Like the Confederate Air Force when they were forced to rename themselves because apparently, it offended some .000000000000137% of the population that didn’t even go to airshows.
So, they’re still flying the 74SP?
I would love to have seen that, Art. From safe distance, of course.
And I would have laughed uproariously. Not because I wish you any ill (I most certainly do not!), but simply because it would have been hilarious.
But don’t worry. I would not have been laughing with you. I’d have been laughing at you.
I’m a very bad person.
Bravo Gracie! We all know what contrails look like. For the sake of argument, let’s call what Gracie described as “abnormal contrails”. People that look up have been noticing abnormal contrails since the late 90’s. I have a commercial flight path near my house and have observed normal contrails as short as disappearing just behind the aircraft to as long as horizon to horizon on occasion. But as Gracie described, these never seem to spread out spine like and blend together to blot out the sun on an otherwise cloudless day. I have even observed the normal contrails get taken by the wind from my northern horizon to southern horizon but stay essentially intact. Not so for the abnormal ones-and if it’s just the weather conditions, how come I have seen some jets with no contrails while others (with no commercial paint/decals) laying huge abnormal contrails on the same day at the same time? Finally, when the planes were all grounded after 911, there were plenty of aircraft in northern NYS laying down abnormal contrails. Let’s start with the military. It’s not official until it’s officially denied.
No, not “bravo.” Boo. Contrails are caused by the same things that cause cirrus clouds: very cold temperatures, very dry air, and added moisture. The moisture in the case of the contrails comes from the jet engine’s exhaust. There’s always a little water vapor in it, and in cold, dry air condensation will form, just as your breath will form condensation in those conditions, and for the same reason. Jet exhaust also contains condensation nuclei, as meteorologists call them: microscopic particles around which water droplets will form, creating clouds. That’s why you will often see, from a single initial contrail, other cirrus clouds form where none were present before. Neither the contrails nor the cirrus clouds have anything to do with “chemtrails.” There’s nothing in the jet exhaust that isn’t put there through the burning of hydrocarbon fuel, and nothing in the cirrus clouds that isn’t also present in any other kind of cloud, at any altitude. From a given point on the earth it may look as though the contrails and resulting cirrus clouds cover the entire sky, but in fact you are seeing a very, very tiny slice of sky from your vantage point. From a global perspective, the percentage of the atmosphere covered by contrails and cirrus clouds at any one time is vanishingly small. It is absolutely “just” the weather conditions that make some jets produce contrails and others not: an altitude difference of just a couple of hundred feet can make the difference between a temperature that will produce contrails and one that won’t, or between the air being cold and dry enough to produce them, vs. too warm and moist. In fact, even a jet flying at the same altitude will sometimes produce a contrail for a few seconds, then stop, then resume, as it flies through air masses that meet the conditions and then into an air mass that doesn’t. Have you ever gone for a walk on a still summer evening and walked through cool spots, where later fog will form? It’s the same thing at every level of the atmosphere: the temperature and moisture of the air changes constantly and is not uniform. For the same reason, sometimes contrails linger for hours, and sometimes they disappear within seconds, or don’t form at all, just as your breath will sometimes condense in cold air, and sometimes not. Aircraft with “no commercial paint” aren’t sinister: airlines, especially cargo airlines, will often put an aircraft into revenue service before it has been to the factory for painting, especially, as is often the case with cargo jets, if they have been bought used from a passenger airline. They wait to paint them until the aircraft is already out of service for heavy maintenance: meanwhile, the thing makes money for its new owners, minus a few dashes of paint.
Paula,
Your simplistic explanation, however reasonable, doesn’t reconcile my observations. Everyone has seen contrails. Weather conditions don’t explain why chemtrail observations only started in the late 90’s by lots of people, all over the country.
They started in the 90s because that’s when some idiot came up with the notion of “chemtrails.” Some idiot came up with the idea of “flying saucers” in the late ’40s – that doesn’t mean that’s when the “invasion” started.
Are you really insisting that there were no “chemtrails” before the 1990′s? I remember lying in the yard as a child in the ’60s and ’70s looking at the white lines behind the planes. Sometimes they shifted and dissipated, sometimes not. What, was I just ahead of my time, or something. This is among the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard.
Please to explain, Bob, how you distinguish, from 35,000 feet or so, the difference between a contrail and what you think is a chemtrail. Don’t worry: that’s a rhetorical question. Your evaluation of my thorough, factual answer as “simplistic,” and your statement that regardless of how “reasonable” it is you will not change your mind, makes further discussion worthless. You are wedded to your story, and by your own admission, no rational explanation will dissuade you from what you think you have observed. No problem. I know better than to cast pearls before swine in the matter of persuasion. For the more active-minded contributors to these comments, however, I will correct your statement that contrails did not appear before the 1990s. I have been an airline pilot since 1991 and have studied aviation as an enthusiast as early as the 1970s, and as such I can tell you with near 100% certainty that the conditions which create condensation trails now (jet engine exhaust and weather) existed at least as far back as the 1970s.
Meant to say “Bill,” not Bob. Apologies.
Let’s not forget the “doughnuts on a rope” contrails produced by top secret Air Force spy planes.
Everybody’s a damn contrail expert…
I was surprised to see this subject being discussed at PJ, and despite the derisive nature of the commentary, it gives me hope. At least it is being talked about. I paid the issue no mind until about two years ago, when I happened to notice, on a clear, sunny, warm day, two commercial aircraft, both headed West toward L.A. at roughly the same altitude. Both were generating contrails, but one was evaporating in the normal way, and one was spreading out and actually seemed to be getting thicker. I watched that plane for a few seconds, whereupon it dawned on me that a plane with four wing-mounted engines was producing two contrails – from the tail boom. A quick trip into the house for my binoculars confirmed this. Two silvery tubes could be seen extending from the tail of the aircraft, and it was from these that the “contrail” was appearing. Eventually, joined by two other planes, it laid out the now familiar crossed X pattern, and before long the day was overcast.
There have been dozens of independent laboratory results indicating that there is something odd going on here, including several showing that the once pristine snow pack of Mt. Shasta here in California now has as much as 50,000 parts per billion of aluminum in it. This finding should have set off alarm bells at the EPA, but to my knowledge, the EPA has not reacted. One must ask why.
Considering the size and scope of the sewage tank that is Washington, I see no reason to look for evil NWO conspirators or aspiring Lex Luthors for any of this. Just follow the money. This is the same government that has tested weakened strains of diseases on the population without our knowledge, conducted mind control research (the hearings on these two programs are in the Congressional record, look it up), paid researchers through grant programs to unwittingly test the effects of radioactive materials on same (see the book “The Plutonium Files”), and arranged for the disposal of a toxic industrial waste product into public drinking water (fluoride) by telling us health fables supported through pseudoscience. Somebody made a killing recently, not once but twice, by creating a near panic over bird flu and swine flu, two pandemics that never materialized. They sure sold a lot of ineffective vaccine to the world’s taxpayers, though. As for the guy seeing Helicopters at night, that may be an easy one. Around here several years ago, we had the Mediterranean Fruit Fly scare. Apply a little logic, and you realize that the same predators that were eating other fruit flies probably wouldn’t be too picky about a new variety. Even so, panic was generated, and suddenly cities were paying out tons of tax money to have a nasty carcinogenic pesticide dumped on us from helicopters, which, incidentally, would also melt the paint on your car.There was an outcry, and most of the spraying was stopped. But some cities just moved their spraying to the wee hours, when there were fewer people to notice and complain. Why would they do that, when their residents had already made it clear that they didn’t want their kids, cars and gardens sprayed? Because somebody still had a lucrative contract to sell the city bug spray for non-existent pests, and somebody else was still getting kickbacks for protecting that contract. It’s that simple.
So, knowing all of the above, why is the idea that government bureaucrats would be dumping billions of tax dollars into some other pseudoscience rat hole, with no concern for your safety, instantly relegated to the tin foil hat category? Geo-engineering dovetails nicely with Global Warming, don’t you think? Mr. Nampion has the same problem as most other people; he indeed does not look up, or around, very much, and when he does he fails to notice details that do not fit his world view. However, I am very glade that he chose to discuss this subject. PJ readers tend to be thoughtful, intelligent people. When the laughter dies down, many of you may stop to think, look up, and notice a few things you didn’t see before.
As a pilot, I am agog to learn which part of an aircraft is the “tail boom.” It is impossible to tell from the ground, and often from the air, whether two aircraft that are more than 5 miles away from the observer are at or near the same altitude. However, as my first post explained, the atmosphere is not uniform in density, temperature, moisture, or any other value, and therefore the contrails that aircraft produce–or don’t produce–as a result of atmospheric conditions will vary widely. Aircraft have been observed to produce contrails at or near the ground, in the right conditions. Why are chemtrail believers dismissed as tin foil hat-wearing, credulous conspiracy theorists? Because while rational, scientific, factual explanations for contrails are readily available, chemtrail proponents produce nothing but conjecture, anecdote, and breathless panic-mongering. So, there’s aluminum in the snow of Mt. Shasta? I’m going to say that the reason the EPA hasn’t reacted in any way is because aluminum is a naturally occurring element whose presence in such minute concentrations can easily be explained by phenomena other than hushed-up government efforts to poison us (with what? To what end? How many people live on Mt. Shasta?) with aircraft emissions. The fact that California is downwind of China is far more likely to explain elevated levels (if in fact that represents an elevated level) of aluminum in the snow. Has the aluminum been found at those levels in snow anywhere besides Mt. Shasta? One would expect so, if the aluminum got there from chemtrails–unless we’re now going to be subjected to claims that aircraft have been seen making low passes at Shasta and dumping chemicals on it from their tail booms.
Paula, I believe people can believe whatever they want to believe but, to espouse their observations as empirical fact is disturbing. In other words, I agree with you. The people who actually believe the nonsense of “chemtrails” are also likely to believe in crop circles, that W steered Katrina to N’awlins to ruin people’s lives, etc etc.
What’s really funny though is that genuine, real, actual conspiracies are ignored by the same people in favor of believing that “the government would NEVER do that” (See: Fast and Furious).
What people choose to believe has a lot to do with critical thinking, self-critiquing and humility, with perhaps a small does of paranoia thrown in. But remember, just because they’re paranoid,doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get them. (snark)
It’s also kind of like racism. If one goes looking for it, they will find it. Picture some guy who isn’t quite right and he’s convinced that he’s right about “chemtrails” and decides to go out and do some sleuthing. He photographs dozens of airliners as they are getting serviced and then…in his triumph, figures he’s struck a huge victory by exposing the “blue water” truck and that it’s “obviously pumping SOMEthing into those airliners that isn’t fuel so therefore, it MUST be somehow related to ‘chemtrails’ “. When he’s told that that’s the lavatory service truck, he’ll refuse to believe that simply because it doesn’t fit with the conspiracy template in his head.
On a more personal note, I recall substitute teaching one day in a high school around Christmas. At lunch I was talking to one of the regular teachers who had said she had to call the police for one of her students passing counterfeit money. As the story unfolded, she mentioned “one dollar bills with a picture of Santa Claus” on them.
I asked to see one and she showed me. Then I asked her if she knew about “Santa Bucks” a federal program that allowed banks to give out dollar bills with a (removable) sticker in the presidential portrait area of Santa Claus. She looked at me like I had lobsters crawling out of my ears. I continued saying, “Yes, the person pays two dollars to get one and the other dollar they paid goes to charity, and they get a ‘Santa Buck’ with this (removable) sticker on it and I peeled the sticker away slightly and her face fell.
Her embarrassment was tangible. But it’s a perfect example of how a person can believe the worst when there’s really nothing “afoot” of a dastardly nature. The poor kid was sitting in the office awaiting the arrival of the police, not knowing what he had done wrong. The lack of inquisitiveness on the part of the teacher was also instructional in that she didn’t really look very closely at the bills, which were, of course, legal tender. And she never, in her own mind, assessed that counterfeiting one dollar bills is a fool’s errand since the technology and equipment needed to do that would far outweigh the “profit margin”. As a side note the twenty dollar bill used to be the most counterfeited bill but thanks to rising costs of everything, hundreds are now more frequently counterfeited.
All that said, people believe what they choose to believe. And, finally, guess who was made the “bad guy” for pointing out her ignorance. Yup, the non-conformist substitute teacher, me. *sigh*
They’re everywhere, and they vote.
P Jay: Yes, well, that’s the irony here, isn’t it? People chomp like bass on the most implausible, ridiculous, easily-disproved claims, while remaining stolidly, utterly indifferent to actual, demonstrable crimes being committed by the government. You mentioned Fast & Furious, the ultimate example, but allow me to present Exhibit B: Charlie Rangel is still in office.
You have to hope that the teacher you encountered went forward with a little more circumspection and skepticism in the future. As for suggestibility…I remember a lifeguard at the city pool once convinced a little boy that there was a shark pup in the filter tank. The tank was half-buried in a concrete vault sort of thing, and filled with tubing and filters that made it look a bit sinister or at least shadowy. The lifeguard insisted that there was a shark in there, and he kept pointing and saying, “There! That was it. Didn’t you see it?” Several little boys of the type who followed the guards around like an entourage finally agreed that they, too, could see the shark, until all of them were perfectly convinced of its presence. Their main concern became that it not be able to escape the confines of the filter system and menace them in the pool itself. I’ve always considered that a demonstration both of the madness of crowds and a cautionary tale for myself, to resist the consensus and rely instead on my own judgement, knowledge, and critical thinking, lest I end up like those little boys who lied to each other with such conviction about something none of them could see.
I just have to say that the naivety is not in the fact that it was a one dollar bill, but in the fact that it was a picture of Santa Claus, because a counterfeit is supposed to look as much like the original as possible. And, in fact, counterfeiting one dollar bills might actually be pretty smart from a criminals perspective.
Not being a pilot or expert regarding aircraft, I grabbed a descriptive term I thought would convey what I observed. Since you claim to be a pilot, rather than dismissing you as either a liar or a nut as you and others have done to those you disagree with here, I will at this point acknowledge you as possessing expertise in such matters. As an expert, please answer these questions for me:
1. Exactly how are contrails formed? Are they not composed of water vapor condensing from the engine exhaust? If this is the case, please explain how ANY other part of the aircraft can generate a contrail. This phenomenon has been observed and reported by people from all walks of life.
2. As I understand it, contrails usually dissipate, but can remain for long periods of time depending on atmospheric conditions. However, I have never seen or heard any expert on weather and atmospheric phenomena claim that they can spread out, expand, and generate cloud cover. Please explain this.
3. I cut my description short. I and other members of my family observed this plane and two others that joined it, for over an hour. It did not continue West, but made a 180 degree turn. All three planes did this a number of times. Each time, at the beginning of the turn, the contrail would end. At the end of the turn, it would resume, as if a switch had been thrown. Back and forth, back and forth, until a grid had been formed, at which all three aircraft flew North in a triangle formation. We have observed this same pattern a few times since that event, and thousands of people all over the U.S. and parts of Europe have also reported the similar events, including people who are considered trained observers, such as police officers. As a pilot, please tell me if this is a normal flight pattern performed by commercial or military aircraft. What is it’s purpose?
4. The snow pack at Mt. Shasta is replenished by winter storms yearly, and it is this surface snow that was tested. Therefore, anything in that snow had to be deposited from the air. The last time I checked, EPA had set a limit for environmental aluminum in water sources of 6,000 PPB. While it is reasonable (and probably correct) to assume that the aluminum arrived via dust storms from China, it does not explain the yawn from EPA over it. How do you account for the lack of action?
As for Mr. Pedilla, who replied to your reply, he turns the argument on it’s head. Fast and Furious is exactly the kind of operation I was talking about, in general. All of these things, from Fast and Furious to Global Warming, are the product of the culture of arrogant corruption that has permeated our government. It has become the habit of late to dump anything that the public would object to into the black. Congress signs off on about forty billion dollars for such projects every year, projects over which Congress has no oversight, and usually no knowledge of. What do you think the military/industrial complex does with that money? I’d guess, anything and everything John Q. Public would scream bloody murder about if he was allowed to know. Not only have we lost control of the Federal government, the Federal government has lost control of the Federal government.
By all means, keep laughing. Make jokes, poke fun. It’s OK. As long as you’re doing that, you are also paying attention. And sooner or later, you will be forced to ask some very unpleasant questions, and face some ugly answers. Have a nice day.
Just referring to your first question, contrails are produced by water vapor in the engine exhaust. Sometimes, such as when the humidity is high a lift is being produced, you get vapor condensation that can appear to be a contrail produced by other parts of the plane as shown in this photo of an F/A-18. I’ve seen it many times coming from a plane’s wingtips or flaps during landing.
I pointed out in an earlier post that the whole notion of a conspiracy requires secrecy. The more people involved, the harder it is to keep something secret, especially over the years. If airliners were routinely deploying chemtrails, it would mean there would have to be storage tanks and dispensors on the planes. That would mean all the aircraft mechanics who maintain the planes would have to be in on the secret otherwise they’d be questioning the hardware. Also, you’d need a considerable chemical refilling capability built into countless airports. You don’ think you could keep that secret, do you? You have a lot of people on the ground servicing the planes (baggage handlers, refreshment/food handlers, refuelers, toilet tank servicers and the like). Don’t you think they’d notice when someone comes up to the plane and starts pumping in chemicals? The whole idea just makes no sense at all.
Excellent point, Larry: The mechanics I know are not only pretty bright, but as a group fairly iconoclastic. Nothing would give them greater pleasure than blowing the lid off that kind of conspiracy. There’s no possible way to keep those guys that quiet for this long. Never happen.
I’m pretty sure I didn’t call anyone a liar or nut, but I can see why you’d be touchy about it. I already answered most of your first question in my previous posts, and a cursory search of the web will provide any number of other sources who will tell you the exact same thing about how contrails form. Other parts of an aircraft most certainly can produce something that appears to be a contrail. When an airfoil creates lift it does so by creating a low pressure area. The top of the wing is curved, the bottom is relatively flat, and the increased speed at which air flows over the top of the wing relative to the bottom of the wing creates this low pressure. Lift, to be pedantic about it, is really “push.” The positive pressure on the bottom of the wing seeks to equalize the negative pressure above the wing, and the airfoil is essentially pushed up. In any case, any time an airfoil creates lift it creates vortices, horizontal tornadoes, as it were, usually at the wing tip, but also at the tips of the horizontal stabilizer, which of course is also an airfoil. Sometimes, in conditions of high humidity, the vortices are visible as condensed water vapor. It is fairly common to see them as jets take off and land because humidity is higher at low altitudes, but under the right atmospheric conditions they could be seen any time an aircraft creates lift, i.e., is flying. Wingtip vortices are well-known, notorious aviation hazards because they are generally invisible and can linger in the atmosphere long after the generating aircraft has passed. Even jet engines can produce this effect: at high thrust the fan blades reach transonic speeds, and the blades being tiny airfoils, they create the same low pressure conditions in the engine intake that result in visible condensation in high humidity situations. The effect is seen as tongues of vapor flicking around the engine inlet, usually on takeoff.
As for question two, again, I already explained how contrails can linger for hours and how the condensation nuclei of the jet’s exhaust can essentially seed cloud formation.
I don’t know what you saw. If this was a court your anecdote would probably be considered hearsay or unreliable witness testimony. I don’t even know whether you were looking at the same aircraft the whole time. I have no idea why the military does anything, assuming that the aircraft you saw were military, and wouldn’t dream of speculating about it. But people have been known to form grid patterns to excavate archaeological sites, to find drowning victims, and for various other reasons, including mapping things, or even practicing doing so. Perhaps the military was mapping something. I have no way to know why they were acting as they were, but I also have no reason to leap to the conclusion that it was nefarious or involved chemicals. And really, from that altitude? You know they crop spray from less than 100′, right? Why on earth would anyone try to spray chemicals on people from five miles away?
The yawn from the EPA over the presence of a naturally-occurring element no doubt has to do with the fact that the EPA has no jurisdiction over China, and possibly with the fact that no one ever died from aluminum poisoning, unless you count the application of those aluminum baseball bats in that category.
Keep laughing? Yes, I most certainly will.
This has been an interesting experience. I now have a better grasp of Joseph Goebbels’ ideas, and a much clearer picture of what Lenin meant by the term “useful idiots.” At no point did I claim that there is some vast conspiracy, quite the opposite. I merely pointed out that natural phenomena explain some, but not all, of what people such as myself are seeing. If a theory does not explain ALL of the data, then there is something wrong with the theory. I’ve been called, if not directly, then by implication, a liar, lunatic, and stupid for my trouble.
Of course, that’s how secrecy works in the modern world. In a world with Twitter and a cell phone camera in every pocket, it is impossible to keep secrets. So, governments hide their dirty laundry in plain sight, with rumor, misinformation, and ridicule. I’ve seen here just how well it works. All you have to do is feed your meme to the public, re-enforce it occasionally, and you’re done. The public will police itself.
There is something odd going on, whether you like it or not, and no, it isn’t some master plan to kill off the population. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s yet another pseudoscience boondoggle associated with the Global Warming scam, that a few academics and corporate types are making a lot of money on. Nothing more. That’s all I said to begin with.
Larry, Paula, it is possible to hide things in plain sight, all you have to do is make it look like what people are expecting to see (I know it works, I’ve done it as a practical joke a few times). Nobody is likely to notice another fuel or water truck at an airport. But really, why would a black project try to hide at commercial airports, when they have access to literally thousands of acres of land on which the government claims, and will exercise, the authority to kill you outright for so much as putting a toe across an imaginary line? The answer is, they wouldn’t.
Anonymous, I spent two hours looking at a few hundred photos of aircraft wing vortices, just for chuckles. The phenomenon is well known, can even produce a characteristic contrail composed of donut shapes. I could not find even one photo of a vortex coming from a tail fin. Not one (I couldn’t even find a website that mentions such a thing). I certainly didn’t come across any photos of a vortex coming from the tail, but not the wings. This is simply because the turbulent flow off of the wings breaks them up before they can form. I couldn’t find any photos of tail fins with chrome pipes sticking out of the tips either, and before you say it, radio antennae would be too thin to be seen from the ground, these things had to be more substantial. Sorry, no cigar, it doesn’t explain what I and thousands of other people have seen. Oh, that’s right, you already discounted me and all those other people as uninformed dingbats, spouting hearsay and delusion. That’s how the modern secrecy meme works. If you can’t discredit the data, dismiss the witnesses. Presto! Problem solved.
I have more important things to do than waste my time on people who’s minds are locked in orbit around MSNBC (much to your relief, I imagine), so I’ll just leave you with this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jf0khstYDLA
This isn’t your usual ‘Bubba saw a UFO’ fair. Real journalists, and real scientists, telling you things you don’t want to hear. I doubt any of you will watch it, but one can hope. Have a nice life, and keep laughing!
This is actually a reply to the post immediately below, by quiet_forest. Not sure why there was no “reply” link on that post. In any case, since quiet_forest has descended into invective, the last resort of those who are out of facts and ideas, there’s not much point in directly addressing most of his statements, but I will correct one egregiously wrong comment, and that’s this one: “I certainly didn’t come across any photos of a vortex coming from the tail but not the wings. This is simply because the turbulent flow off of the wings breaks them up before they can form.” Well, that will come as a rude surprise to every aeronautical engineer on the planet. Vortices form when an airfoil–any airfoil–creates lift. It would be physically impossible for an airplane to fly if the flow off the wings caused the flow off the tail to be disrupted before vortices formed. There’s not an aircraft in the world whose airflow over its tail is interfered with by the flow over its wings in normal flight. Besides, the wingtip vortices, as implied by their name, form at the wing tips, not across the entire lift-producing surface of the wing, and the wing tips extend far beyond the width of the stabilizer. Repeating, now: all airfoils create vortices when they’re creating lift. Even the “wings” on race cars create lift, albeit in a downward direction, to help the tires adhere to the racing surface. They, too, can produce little visible vortices under the right conditions of speed, temperature, and humidity.
It would be funny if it was not so pathetic, that the same squawkers who denounce religious believers and those who defy junk science called climate change are the very same who cannot beleive scientists who have proved this chemtrail nonsense is just that- nonsense and wacko conspiracy group-thought. The ironic hypocrisies of these lefty, (and I do put Ron Paul supporters way left, not even near GOP or center) koolaid drinkers who think they are spiritually superior for believing in anything as long as it’s not a old relgion that has ONE GOD and thqt they are morally superior for accepting all cultures as equal as long as those cultures are not Christian or JEws or American patriots.
It would be fun to make fun of them except, except I see hitorically their typeof group-think can have and has had very danerous consequences for those who are not on board the mental illness train they ride.
Hey Nampion, nice use of your brainpower to mightily flush-out one truly ridiculous, bizarre and strange fixation people believe in. I am positive this is one of Ron Paul’s top ten supported conspiracy theories! Oh by the way, I have a tremendous headache and general pain in my neck, must be due to those zig-zag white lines I noticed earlier in the sky when I went out to mail in my NWO membership dues.
Wow. Such a stunning collection of rational intellect. I always wondered what the left half of the bell curve talked about when they got together. Now I know.
And by the way, Debt/GDP as of today is 1.01, up from 1.0 just 21 days ago. Oh, and China signed another direct currency exchange swap agreement yesterday, this time with Turkey. Of course, that’s all just crazy conspiracy talk. Nothing about that will ever affect you divinely chosen ones.
Not only am I starting to believe that HAARP is a mass mind-control device, but I think some Muslims are operating it. How else can we explain the governments of America and Europe telling everyone “Sure there is a huge influx of Muslims moving in on us, and sure they keep saying outright that they’re going to wipe us out, but this is not a problem!”?
The liberals have been trying to commit suicide for decades, and dragging us along for the ride, unfortunately. Pat B has written some good books on the subject. No mind control device is necessary.
I agree with the primary point. Some of Ron Paul’s people get off on very silly tangents and he sometimes get pulled along.
I do believe some chemtrails are real and not just contrails. I’ve watched two aircraft going back and forth over the Australian Capital clearly seeding the clouds as an experiment. Everyone accused the government or the universities of secretly doing the work but everyone ruled out private corporations doing there own tests. They may have been trying to influence the vote in parliament while the climate change legislation was being debated and Canberra that week did have cooler temperature than normal.
None of the chemicals are actually toxic that’s where the nutters come into play. Sulphur compounds can be a tiny bit acidic raising the pH of rain water by a difficult to measure margin. The aluminium oxide compounds complaint is a huge joke since most dust in some regions is aluminium oxide. Its also common in tooth paste.
It is reasonable to expect that some governments, NGO’s, and corporations would test the geoengineering hypothesis that chemtrails of these types could reflect enough light to help with climate change. No licence is needed for such testing. The coal industry in Australia was fighting the greenies by every other legal means, it had deep pockets and their own medium jets.
However most of these experiments seemed to have come to an abrupt halt at about the same time. Two things seem to be responsible for this.
One; Papers came out confirming the methods in peer review. Once someone published no-one else bothers and often a line of research stops.
Also the Climate Gate papers came out and began to discredit the IPCC, as its reputation and the price of CO2 dropped the inclination for researchers to continue to do any work declined. Those looking at Geoengineering were always that that were looking for a cheaper solution than high carbon dioxide taxes.
While some panic, in most cases all of the convincing videos, I’ve seen are from the same few months around the Copenhagen IPCC conference. I.E. just before and after the first climategate release.
Growing up these occurances of massive trails in the sky (10-20 at one time) was never an issue. I have witnessed todays events. You can’t tell me 10-20 all at one time is a “conspiracy”. I have my own photos which are very dramatic and shocking.
It’s a shame you tried to label a chemtrail believer with Ron Paul. Not all of us are on board with Paul. I don’t d drugs, I don’t drink. Never been on any mind-altering perscription drugs. I have a clear head, educated and like I said, the photos and am a visual witness. Something is going on!
The worst chemtrail that I have ever experienced is when I was walking behind a Ron Paul supporter…..
I will always have a sick feeling in my stomach about this nonsense. On the day AFTER 9/11, a Portland rag ran a cover story about this garbage and government conspiracy. You wanna know how much the left hates America? Just listen to the things they had to say.
Say what you want about Ron Paul, but consider this… he is the only candidate who has, for his entire career, constantly said “no no no” to spending. He hasn’t waivered, he hasn’t caved to special interests, and he’s continually said “government should be as small as possible”. That’s a stark difference from the other three who have voted contrary to the things they claim to believe in. Say what you want about his supporters too, he’s the only conservative running for election.
Yes and he cant win a state apparently.Which is to say that most believe hes a kook.A harmless kook but still a kook nonetheless.Id rather vote for Obama than ron paul, thanks.
Chemtrails have been acknowledged by Obama and his science advisor. It is called “Geo Engineering”. They claim they are dumping heavy reflective metals in the atmosphere to reduce the well known hoax of global warming. It’s a good scare tactic to make it believable. So say what you want about Paul, or his devoted supporters. I do support him and do not appreciate your condescending remarks. Truth be told anybody that votes for Obama deserves to loose his country. Furthermore Monsanto has come up with “aluminum resistant” seeds so if you grow a garden your GMO crops will survive. There have been many well documented cases of gardens either not growing or plants dying from the aluminum they put in the chemtrails. On days when it’s heavy put out fresh water in a bucket and have it tested a few days later. I’d like to hear your results. Or you can take the time and find this info on the net. If the dictator, his science advisor and Monsato all tell you this is happening in their typical round-about way. I wouldn’t be so concerned on what Paul or us that support him are up too. I’d be more concerned about your own ignorance. (by the way Monsanto is DuPont, I’m sure they make the chemicals in the chemtrails as well)