CHEM TRAILS CONSPIRACY

Are we being poisoned by secret government programs?

The term ‘Chem Trail’ was coined in the mid-1990s by people who believed that there was a government conspiracy to, (a) control the climate, (b) spray urban areas with birth control chemicals and (c) hundreds of other unproven theories.

Clouds, con trails, or chem trails?

So what are chem trails, as opposed to con trails, how long have they been around, and what causes them? Let’s examine con trails (condensation or vapor trails) first, if only because the term has been around much longer.

Con trails were practically unheard of prior to World War II because pre-war aircraft were few and far between and flew mostly at low altitude due to the absence of pressurization and powerful jet engines. Even the best airliners rarely went above 10,000 feet.

But the use of higher-performance military aircraft during WWII meant that for the first time pilots had a reason for flying right up in the cold thin air at 25,000 feet and more, because in combat, height gave an advantage. Height could be turned to speed and height could give another advantage; that of hiding in the line of the sun. Battle of Britain pilots coined the saying, ‘Beware of the Hun in the sun.’

A close up view of a Qantas B747 at 36,000 feet

For the first time, people on the ground could follow the dogfights by observing the condensation trails of the combatants. Spitfires were relatively small aircraft and almost invisible at 25,000 feet, but the con trails often filled the skies when conditions permitted. However, the con trails could be a pilot’s enemy too, because they made it easier for the real enemy to locate them.

Military aircraft of the 1940s produced con trails in a number of ways. The chief source was the wing-tips, but propellers, tail-planes, engine exhausts and other factors sometimes made a contribution too.

At the start of WWII less than 40 years had elapsed since the Wright Brothers first flew, and aviation was still very much in its infancy, particularly with regard to the design of wings. To understand how a wing generates con trails, one must understand how a wing produces lift. Because of its special shape the typical wing gains about 30% of its lift from the lower surface and about 70% from the upper surface. This is because the upper surface is curved and the airflow passing over the wing has further to go than the airflow beneath the wing. One of the laws of fluids (air behaves like a fluid) dictates that velocity, pressure and temperature are directly related in as much as a change to one will cause a change to the others. Therefore, as the velocity of the air over the wing accelerates, it triggers a decrease in atmospheric pressure and temperature. It is the decreased air pressure above the wing that provides most of the lift.

The apparent grid pattern is due to cross-winds and aircraft
flying at least five different routes

But then, because the two areas of different pressure will try to equalize, the higher pressure under the wing will flow outwards towards the wing-tip and some will curl up and around the tip to join the lower pressure above. These wing-tip rotations are known as a vortices (sometimes called a vortex) and they continue to rotate long after the aircraft has passed by. Inside the vortex the air pressure and temperature both decrease dramatically and any moisture will condense and form a condensation trail. In the right conditions, con trails can also form in the slipstream from the propeller, because the propeller blade is simply a miniature wing with all the same properties; lift, drag and unequal air pressure. The rudder, elevators, flaps and ailerons can also create these aerodynamic vortices, and condensation trails.

As wing designs have improved vortices (which are a form of drag) have become less of an issue. Many airliners now have winglets at the end of the wing to reduce drag and improve fuel consumption, but meanwhile large and powerful jet engines have moved the major part of the con trail from the wing to the engine.

The engine condensation trail comes from hot, water-laden exhaust gases suddenly meeting sub-freezing air. The water vapour condenses and freezes into ice particles similar in texture to high altitude Cirrus clouds, and often after a few minutes it is almost impossible to tell the difference.

So if that is how con trails are created, how are chem trails created? The short answer to that question is, they can be created by anyone with a half-plausible conspiracy theory.

One popular theory is that the airlines use dirty fuel that creates clouds which let less sunlight through and stop terrestrial radiation thereby contributing to global warming. But that theory runs contrary to the Nuclear Winter theory of the 1980s when Greenies claimed that too much cloud would cause temperatures to plunge.

Another theory doing the rounds of social media is the claim that high-flying aircraft are deliberately spraying chemical and/or biological agents on the population for undisclosed and sinister purposes. They argue that con trails disappear quickly but chem trails stay longer and must therefore contain other substances. But con trails are clouds and are capable are staying as long as clouds, depending on the conditions.

Other claims include solar radiation management, psychological warfare, and mass surveillance, none of which have been accompanied by any plausible documentation, let alone proof. But the theorists constantly claim that they have proof, or that people with proof have been silenced.

Yet others will tell you it’s the United States Air Force flying high altitude grid patterns with unmarked aircraft. I can understand some people being confused by what may look like a grid pattern. Airliners normally fly the same routes relative to the terrain, usually separated by altitude or time intervals. When they fly a few minutes apart on the same route, because of wind drift at altitude, the con trails drift with the wind and a trail could be several miles downwind by the time the next aircraft flies along the same route.

Another claim is that ‘skies are being seeded with electrically-conductive materials as part of a massive electromagnetic superweapons program based around the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP)’ This conspiracy theorist must have suffered an ultra-high-frequency brain-wave.

Other conspiracy theorists are simply people who spend all their waking hours thinking up reasons for being anti-government. They are surely direct descendants of the last members of the Flat Earth Society. They seem to want to scare their children and grandchildren into believing, because of government, that life in the future won’t be worth living. It’s time they got a life in the here and now and started giving their children the hope that they deserve.