The Realities of Contrails
September 23rd, 2008
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Most “chemtrail” conspiracy theorists admit that contrails are indeed a real and innocuous phenomena, but they also insist that chemtrails are different and that they can be distinguished from contrails. Many claim that contrails are wispy, thin and disperse quickly, while chemtrails are longer lasting and hang in the air in a manner that water vapor would not. They also claim that it can be demonstrated by the fact that multiple aircraft may be seen at the same time, with some leaving trails and others not doing so. This, they claim, proves that the trail is not being caused by atmospheric conditions, but rather by the aircraft emitting something.
The truth is that the nature of an aircraft’s contrail depends on a number of factors. These include the relative humidity of the air, the temperature, the altitude the aircraft is traveling at as well as the type of engines the aircraft has. Contrails can be formed by the rapid cooling of the exhaust from both piston and jet engines, which contains water vapor from combustion. Much like one’s breath shows up on a cold day, the engine exhaust condenses in the cold high altitude air. It forms microdroplets of water, and in many cases this will freeze into tiny particles of ice. Contrails can also be formed from moisture within the air which is condensed by the pressure from the aircraft and may form trails from wingtip vortices or around other areas of the aircraft that develop turbulence. The particulates in exhaust from aircraft can also serve to ’seed’ the consation of atmospheric moisture.
Lets take a look at some historical images, presumably before the alleged “chemtrail conspiracy” started:
Claim number 1: Chemtrails are more persistent than contrails. Contrails don’t maintain their definition. They disperse quickly like a wispy cloud of steam: If the trail is narrow and well defined, it must be a contrail.
1940: Battle Of Britain. Shortly after a dogfight.
1944: Battle of the Bulge:
1955: Nuclear Test
(The bomber that delivered the nuclear weapon left contrails. The weapon was parachute retarded and did not detonate until after the plane had passed. This image was taken at least 5 minutes after the aircraft has passed through.)
Claim Number 2: Basically the opposit of claim 1 (These guys are not consistant) Contrails are straight and well defined and they hang in the air in about the same shape. Chemtrails are made of heavy chemicals that are “sprayed” or “dusted” and therefore they don’t hang in the air and maintain their shape. Instead they fall quickly down to earth where they can contaminate humans. Therefore, they are seen in a more fan-like pattern that is short lasting.
1943: 100th Bomber Group over Germany
Circa 1955: B-36 Peacemarker
Claim 3: Chemtrails look like a mist or spray, If it appears to be a misty pattern that is wide yet low density, it is a chemtrail
Second World War: Flight of B-24 Liberators
Claim Number 4: If you see multiple aircraft and they look like they’re at about the same altitude and one is producing trails and another is not then it proves that they’re not condensation and that one of the aircraft has its sprayers on.
(note: altitude is extremely hard to judge)
1944: B-17 over Germany. Contrails seen in background
B-17 Formation, 1943:
Circa 1944: B-17 Flight
Claim number 5: If you see multiple aircraft their contrails should be identical. If some are whispy and others are narrow or if some appear immediately and others are delayued then this is proof that it is not contrail and is really a chemtrail.
Early 1960’s: US F-106 Intercepts And Follows Soviet Tu-95 Over International Waters
Early 1960’s: Canadian Air Force Exercises
Claim Number 6: Chemtrails are very thick and high in density. Contrails should be very low density If it’s thick and smokey looking, it must be a chemtrail!
1952: De havilland Comet
Circa 1943: B-17
Claim Number 7: Contrails only come from engines. If the trail is coming from the wingtips or tail, then it must be from a spray nozzle.
Early 1960’s: Convair 990
(note wingtip contrail)
Date Unknown: Prop tip Condensation
(Caused by the high pressure vorticies at the prop tips)
Claim Number 8: Chemtrails have weird shapes or look distorted
Early 1960s: Soviet Tu-95
(note: In this case the turbulence from the props is distorting the contrails into a spiral-like pattern, but this can also happen from wing vortacies or wake turbulence.)
1957: NB-36H Nuclear Aircraft Research Program
(The United States tested the operation of a nuclear aircraft in flight on a modified B-36. The reactor did not power the aircraft)
Claim Number 9: There should not be so many contrails. If you see them snaking all over the sky that’s very suspicious and it means they’re probably chemtrails.
1953: “Rails and Jet Trails” Photograph by Ansel Adams
This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008 at 6:40 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Conspiracy Theories, Culture, Good Science, History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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September 23rd, 2008 at 6:59 pm
That only proves how long the Government has been poisoning us with their chemtrails.
And, it is actually global, not just the US.
Can’t you see the facts!
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September 23rd, 2008 at 7:27 pm
That battle of the bulge pic is awesome! And so’s the Ansel Adams pic. Man I really like planes.
Damn crop dusters giving people ideas about planes dropping poison on them … I am amazed at how many people just pick up a cause and don’t carefully consider … anything. I need the charisma of the person who got all those people to protest with him. Then i could run for president!
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September 23rd, 2008 at 7:29 pm
Dang, you beat me to it
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September 23rd, 2008 at 7:52 pm
About 180,000 aircraft maintenance technicians are employed in the domestic industry in North America alone, should any apparatus be fixed to an airframe or engine capable of doing this, they would be aware. They and their families also breath the same air everyone else and many of them belong to the IAM, a trade union of highly trained (i.e. smart, educated) people that has little love for governments in general.
Don’t any of these chemtrail cretins think it strange that photos of the equipment, samples of the dispersants, and other hard evidence haven’t made it out into the public as yet?
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September 23rd, 2008 at 8:09 pm
Too bad they can’t see the junk coming out of coal-fired plant stacks.
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September 23rd, 2008 at 8:13 pm
DV82XL said:
Actually, there have been a lot of pictures circulated around which claim to be of chemtrail equipment. They’re universally mislabeled examples of other aricraft equipment. These include: Inflight refuling aircraft and equipment, air sampling equipment, meteorology aircraft, fire fighting aircraft, crop dusters, cloud seeders and that kind of thing.
You can find many of the photos debunked here: http://contrailscience.com/contrail-or-chemtrail/
The page contrailscience.com is a really good one for debunking all this crap. I should have mentioned it. It’s a good place to see the sane side of the issue.
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September 23rd, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Bonus points for the Convair 990 picture. What a gorgeous plane.
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September 23rd, 2008 at 9:00 pm
drbuzz0 said:
Of course, I should have guessed.
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September 23rd, 2008 at 10:12 pm
BakNBlack said:
The Convair 990? I wouldn’t really call that an abnormally good looking aircraft. It’s just another four engine small airliner from the early 60’s like the 707 only a bit smaller.
Also it looks really damn smokey in that picture. Did it have water injection or something or were those just smokey turbojets?
Nothing against your taste in airplanes, but I just don’t see it.
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September 23rd, 2008 at 11:02 pm
How do you account for the fact that there have been all kinds of chemicals found in these trails or how do you account for the fact that they’ve been seen being turned on and off at will? or how to you account for all the other reports that have come out here of the toxins or the things they do and the people who have seen other direct evidence? Do those just not matter? Because you can find old photos that look like some of the trails today that means you should just assume they must be the same. You really seem to think the government is very honest huh? I mean we should not even question because they love you and would never lie to you and do things to hurt people, right? Good old USA is always the good guy.
Wake up, you fools. No1 has all the ansers on this. I don’t know what all the reasons for this are or all the things that are being done or the extent of it. I just no that there’s **** going on and I can look up and see things are not right. But you don’t even want to have it investigated because you would not want your trust destroyed. Go put your head back in the sand.
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September 24th, 2008 at 12:23 am
Scary name, man. Why would the government want to kill off or otherwise damage their only source of income? Even if they are evil little bastards, which sometimes they are, I don’t see any motivation for wasting money on harming or experimenting on their own people. Or maybe that’s why the economy sucks! That’s it! stop chemtrails, stop money makers from dying, rebuild economy!
Go ahead and test those clouds for whatever you want, and while you’re at it, you should probably test your water–that at least seems a more efficient system to get chemicals to the people–or, it’s been pointed out, newspaper ink. People touch that stuff everyday. Also, you should probably check the vents in your house to make sure the government didn’t install bugs to keep tabs on you while you were out at the supermarket.
You show me some actual hard evidence that’s not just a few people jumping to conclusions because they maybe had a little too much pot the other day, and then I’ll maybe start to think about it. Otherwise it’s just a waste of my time. But obviously not a *big* waste of time. These things are friggin entertaining.
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September 24th, 2008 at 1:22 am
I do not have infinite trust in any government or elected leaders and I sure do not think the government loves me and only wants to do the right thing. I also don’t think the government as only one agenda or is monotonically ruled by one group. It’s made up of numerous departments which do not always know what the others are doing and the political leadership is constantly changing.
I just think the concept of the government spraying the world from every military and civil aircraft with biological agents for some evil purpose is very far-fetched. Also, there is absolutely zero evidence for it and every claim I have heard is 100% based on lack of understanding aviation or meteorology. Contrails look the same as they always have and there’s just zero evidence that there’s anything to this crap. It’s furthered exclusively by nutballs.
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September 24th, 2008 at 2:11 am
I am always amazed and a bit saddened to see that people are foolish enough to believe in any conspiracy theory that requires more the 3 – 10 people to be involved. Once the number of people involved starts climbing so does the opportunity for people to brag to friends and otherwise talk about it. Sorry you just can’t keep any really good conspiracy involving large numbers of people.
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September 24th, 2008 at 2:40 am
Q said:
The Convair 990A was indeed smoky – its engines were turbofan versions of the J79 used in the Phantom and the F-104.
Fastest airliner of its day though – capable of 0.97 Mach! I was involved in updating the Microsoft Flight Simulator add-ons for it at the Historic Jetliners Group website.
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September 24th, 2008 at 11:04 am
TomT said:
We as a race can barely keep a secret among three people.
As to the folks that really believe in evil conspiracies, well Truth or Death pretty well summed up all the proof they need.
Truth or Death said:
Well, that’s pretty damning evidence, if you ask me.
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September 24th, 2008 at 11:44 am
TomT said:
I don’t know. There have been secret projects with hundreds involved which they managed to keep under wraps pretty well. Some of the Soviet space program’s failures were well hidden until the end of the cold war. Also, things like the code-breaking project of the British in WWII was well kept secret and so was the deception of D-Day. Some aircraft were well hidden for at least a few years, like halveblue.
I think it’s possible to keep a clandestine program under wraps, but it takes a lot of effort and some extreme screening and punishments and also isolation of those involved. It also can only be kept seceret for a finite amount of time. It becomes harder when there are more people involved. I think this is the reason many secret projects have been at isolated locations and contained, like the Manhattan project where it only was going on in a few locations and they were all encapsulated. (even the Manhattan project though had a few leaks)
I do not think they could keep a project involving many airlines and hundreds of thousands of contractors, military personnel, aviation techs, pilots, officials and everything under wraps though. Especially, given that it involves multiple countries for sure, because the planes fly international routes sometimes and may be forign made and subject to forign inspections etc etc etc. Some nations might object anyway. You’d need a multi-national, multi-corporation operation with maybe a million operatives.
It’s not the possibility of it that makes me so sure it isn’t happening. It’s the fact that there is no scientific evidence and very good evidence that its only contrails. Also, the fact that it would be a stupid way to poison the world, even if you wanted to, which there’s no reason to think anyone would, since people = profit.
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September 24th, 2008 at 11:55 am
Q said:
All this is true, however the key element is that the folks working on the project believe in it and what they are doing and in the importance of keeping their mouths shut.
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September 24th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
“How do you account for the fact that there have been all kinds of chemicals found in these trails?
I think you misunderstand the meaning of the word “fact.” It does not mean “crap someone made up to sell a conspiracy book.” But if you have actual evidence of this “fact,” feel free to share.
“how do you account for the fact that they’ve been seen being turned on and off at will?”
The gasses that make up our sky are not all at uniform temperatures and densities. This creates stuff we call “weather.” You may have noticed that clouds, those white puffy things in the sky, are not always uniformly spread across the sky either. Guess what the difference between a contrail and a cloud is?
One is artificially created. Other than that, there isn’t any.
“how to you account for all the other reports that have come out here of the toxins or the things they do and the people who have seen other direct evidence?”
The same way I account for space aliens with anal probes. Unsupported claims are not evidence.
“Because you can find old photos that look like some of the trails today that means you should just assume they must be the same.”
Um… yes.
“You really seem to think the government is very honest huh?”
Nope.
“No1 has all the ansers on this.”
On this particular matter, I do have all the answers.
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September 24th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
Kendall said:
You’d probably be world president by now.
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September 24th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Another thing no one of the “chemtrail truthers” has thought of: the Soviet Union would have loved to unmask the evil capitalist USA as poisoning their own people and the other inhabitants of this planet. That would have been a propaganda ploy of about the same magnitude as unmasking fake moon landings would have been. So the “chemtrail truthers” must account not only for the silence of a massive group of people, who, being on the correct side of the Iron Curtain, could – in theory and with massive expenditure – be controlled, but also for the silence of ideological mortal enemies.
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September 24th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Blackclaw said:
Yeah, especially the scary dihydrogen oxide, di-nitrogen and di-oxygen? Yes, those are scary.
But what would be the point of spraying over the middle of the Atlantic or Pacific? No people there to poison, but plenty of “chemtrails”.
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September 24th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Vjatcheslav said:
I thought that the accusation of chemtrails was that it was relatively recent? Do they claim they are as old as aviation itself? I guess that would kill the historical photo argument. I figured they thought it was the last few years, like since 9/11 or since Bush was elected or something
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September 24th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Q said:
It started back in the ninties I think. Some scammer wanted to sell a bogus health care product and invented a problem for it to solve.
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September 24th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
Vjatcheslav said:
Actually I already am. There’s a secret world government that no one knows about. We’re actually the ones creating the chemtrails in the sky and poisoning Americans–not the US Government. But don’t worry guys, It’s not just you. We’re not discriminating. We’re dumping this stuff everywhere!
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September 25th, 2008 at 3:27 am
Kendall said:
Where can I sign up?
Blackclaw said:
Hell. There goes my argument. It only establishes that chemtrails weren’t used before their use was claimed (which, according to Wikipedia, was 1996, when some loonies accused the US Air Force of trying to control the weather because of the strategy article “Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025″, but even if the Air Force is conducting such experiments [which they deny], why would they use such poor laboratory rooms as civil aircraft?).
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September 25th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
A woman as president? That seems a bit too progressive and equal-opportunity for the old-guard, Bush-Family, Free Mason, Skull and Bones, Neoconservative, oppressive conspiracy-running kind. Unless…
Oh…
Well that would explain why Gregor got turned down. It would only have been legal in Massachusetts and a couple other states and others would not recognize it so that could have been a problem.
(Kidding, kidding)
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September 26th, 2008 at 12:32 am
1. Wow. I didn’t think anyone remembered that.
2. Please tell me how I got myself into a situation in which I am either a man or I have to resign from the world presidency and move in with ‘Chem Geek Gregor’ in Pennsylvania! My head is spinning
. No offense to Gregor (or, you know, the entire male gender) intended, but neither of those are a scenario I could see myself willingly jumping into …
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September 26th, 2008 at 1:37 am
I suppose the other alternative reason would be you just didn’t want to marry someone who you didn’t know and who proposed to you after exchanging a few lines of text.
But as for the woman president thing… well not that I have anything against women or their ability to be president, but I’m just saying it seems like the neo-conservative old guard that is supposedly behind this all wouldn’t be as much for that. But then again, one never knows, right? I mean Condy Rice is obviously at the top of the conspiracy and she’s a woman and a minority.
So maybe they’re being more accommodating now and catching up with the world, or at least, they’ve gotten to the 1970’s by now or something. Or maybe they’ve always been non gender biased and are just evil and oppressive about other things. Or maybe you were always in charge and the male-dominated old rich white guy thing was a ruse.. or maybe you have info to blackmail them or something.
BTW, I don’t think you have to move to PA to be with Greg. He seemed enthusiastic enough to uproot himself if you so wanted. I mean, I’m not sure, but he did seem to be enthusiastic enough to just cut to the chase, if that’s any indication.
Maybe he just felt that there was real chemistry between you two.
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September 26th, 2008 at 10:40 am
drbuzz0 said:
hahaha! perhaps, perhaps.
drbuzz0 said:
and booooooo!
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September 27th, 2008 at 3:17 am
Truth or Death said:
Seriously, you are just spouting off idiocy and the chem trail thing is especially idiotic. It’s idiotic for all the reasons named here and others that have not even been mentioned.
The contrails today look the same as they did as far back as I can remember to the early 1960’s. The only difference is there are more of them (more airplanes being the reason). Really, they only look strange or suspicious because someone planted that stupid idea in your head. They’re just vapor.
The damn government does enough crap to bitch about without having to make stuff up.
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September 27th, 2008 at 8:49 am
drbuzz0 said:
GAAAAA! IT BURNS!
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September 27th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
El Dorkorino said:
I know that feeling.
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February 9th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
I am all for conspiracy theory’s but seriously, chemtrails, I laughed out loud at that one, I am a huge obsessed airplane nut, and I know there are so many variations in the air that distances can not be judged accurately, and water vapor, and engine exhaust creates some interesting looking trails, I see them every day. The only real way to see if there’s a difference between contrails vs. chemtrails is if all planes were flying in a tight formation then they should all look the same, any differences in distance would throw off any similarities. And as for chemicals found in these, dihidrogen monoxide is probably the most scary, although you do have to realize this IS jet exhaust so there’s bound to be some chemicals in it. Otherwise I think Blackclaw sums it up perfectly in #18 Otherwise besides a good laugh, I’m bookmarking this page for the amazing photo’s, i’ve never seen anything like them!
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July 3rd, 2009 at 10:58 pm
i agree with comment 18 and 33 completely
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