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Who Spotted The First 'Chemtrail'?

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Anonymous

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So, given that the "chemtrail hypothesis" appears to be a very recent one, can we pin down its birth?

Who was the first person to start agitating about "chemtrails", and when did people first start seeing them? Why did this person believe they were anything other than contrails (or other "normal" aerial phenomena)? Is the seeing of "chemtrails" something that evolved out of any other conpiracy theory, or is it stand-alone?

I don't recall hearing anything about them at the beginning of the '90s so I'm assuming that they are more recent than that. :)
 
I've been trying to work this out too.

I don't recall hearing about them before the mid 90's and at first thought they were a spoof on conspiracy theories until I realised people took them seriously.

I also realise that that comment is probably like saying:
Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice.
 
Timble said:
I don't recall hearing about them before the mid 90's and at first thought they were a spoof on conspiracy theories until I realised people took them seriously.
Thought pretty much the same. I've found a number of sites that suggest 1997 as the year "it" started, but it would be nice to track down that magic "Eureka!" moment. I'm assuming that it must have been something a bit more impressive than just persistent con/chemtrails. Thinking about it, there's probably a book in this; a sociological study of the "chemtrail" phenomena.


I also realise that that comment is probably like saying:
Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice.

In many ways, I'd rather say "Candyman" five times, but this question has been bugging me for some time. ;)
 
Well, according to the much lauded (by certain members of these forums) site Chemtrail Central:
Reports of Chemtrails began slowly gaining momentum in 1999, and are increasing rapidly in 2000. There are reports and photographic evidence to suggest that some spraying was occuring as early as 1990.
The message board there is actually quite reminiscent of our own, with opinions from sceptic through open minded to woo-woo and zealot (note over-use of exclamation marks and excessive umbrage taking ;)).
 
"The message board there is actually quite reminiscent of our own, with opinions from sceptic through open minded to woo-woo and zealot (note over-use of exclamation marks and excessive umbrage taking "

Do they have people who use Capital Letters for Important Things too?:)

Without checking, my guess would be that in 1997 someone spilled the beans and revealed that this awful conspiracy was taking place. Given that it is so easy to verify (just look up - see!!) it's easy to see how it spreads.

Btw, I suspect the mainstream media are going to be picking up on this fairly soon.
 
O.K. I'm going to post the question on some of the chemtrail boards, and see if anyone can come up with an answer. :)
 
Well, I've asked the question over at Chemtrail Central.

Thought of posting at http://www.carnicom.com but as a skeptic it appears that the likes of me aren't welcome there.
 
I'm sure I first came across Chemtrails in Nexus magazine, which I bought occasionally around 1998/9. I had the impression they'd been around for a while before then though. So maybe mid 90s?

Before then they were known as common-or-garden contrails, which, of course, have been around since jet aircraft were introduced....
 
Okay this might be just me being dumb, but the pictures of chemtrails look exactly like normal contrails or clouds to me. Nothing unusual at all.

Is it me? :(
 
Elffriend said:
Okay this might be just me being dumb, but the pictures of chemtrails look exactly like normal contrails or clouds to me. Nothing unusual at all.

Is it me? :(

No, I agree with you. I assume some people never really look at the sky so they don't know what's odd and what's not

IMHO the only real mystery, is why the paranoia about them developed, which its why it would be interesting to know when and where the conspiracy theory kicked off.
 
Contrails spread out to form cirrus clouds all the time. And most people never notice.

Then you read an article about chemtrails and start watching the skies more carefully and - lo and behold - there they are! So it must be true!

Of course, the other possiblity is that chemtrails are real, and every meteorologist around the world (professional and amateur) is in on the conspiracy.......:eek!!!!:
 
Prospect said:
Of course, the other possiblity is that chemtrails are real, and every meteorologist around the world (professional and amateur) is in on the conspiracy.......:eek!!!!:
Shhhhh!!! Otherwise they will find out that my apparent hard-nosed skepticism is in fact a cunnimg ruse to put them off the scent. ;)
 
Timble said:
No, I agree with you. I assume some people never really look at the sky so they don't know what's odd and what's not
I suspect that that is almost certainly the case. Probably shares similarities with the "lights in the sky" phenomena as well.


IMHO the only real mystery, is why the paranoia about them developed, which its why it would be interesting to know when and where the conspiracy theory kicked off.

It's a perfect Fortean topic. You can believe or disbelieve in the reality of chemtrails, but either way, discovering the origin should provide a few insights along the way. :)
 
Hmmm. If chemtrail is a persistant contrail (i.e. there is a view among believers that if it's persistent then it 'aint a contrail) then I (or rather the author of this paper) have found satellite imagery of "chemtrails" dating back to 1977.
http://www.envsci.rutgers.edu/~veron/DeGrand_etal_2000.pdf

It never occured to me to look for DMSP imagery. I was focussing on NOAA AVHRR data instead. I'll soon put a stop to that. :)
 
While I don't think chemtrails are anything...

In the news recently there was a study on contrails done shortly after 9/11, and apparently the cirrus clouds generated by contrails raise earth's temperature by 2-5% via the greenhouse effect.

I know climate can be modeled, but I wonder if all the consequences of generating such an enormous amount of cloud can truly be known. Could it change weather patterns on a global scale, or be somewhat responsible for the variations we have seen?

Maybe conspiracy theorists are right to worry about contrails, just not for the reason they think.


(at least we now may have some way to forestall an iceage, if humans exist for that long)
 
The impact of contrails (and associated cirrus) on global climate is something that people have been looking at for a long time now. (There are a whole bunch of other effects, including things such as ship cloud wakes.) It is certainly a factor that needs to be included in long rage climatology models, though ironically some chemtrail believers hold the view that "chemtrails" are a covert attempt to stave off the effects of global warming. :)
 
To paraphrase Rumsfeld, there are some things we know we don't know, and there are other things we don't know we don't know. Surely the latter would be preferable to the former in this case.

Why not silence all the scientific findings on global warming, rather than skew them? Who would think that humans could affect the world so much in such a short time, except scientists?

I don't know, I think I'm defective. Most conspiracy theories seem to me, in essence, philosophical problems akin to Plato's cave. How can you ever be sure of anything? How can you ever be sure something isn't the case?

It would be delightfully, sardonically humorous if the Chemtrail thing turned out to be the opposite, and in fact caused global warming, causing the extinction of both "us" and "them".

I've got it... They're actually trying to speed up global warming. They'll live out the climactic catastrophe in their underground burrows, and emerge once the climate has stabilized. Then they'll inherit the Earth. You're part of it... Trying to say they're slowing down rather than speeding up global warming. Who? Oh, you know who


/runs downstairs to pull out all the fuses from his switch box
 
Oh well. It looks like I've been banned from chemtrail central. (I think that it may have been over a disagreement relating to some depleted uranium. :eek!!!!: ) At least here there are warnings and people are identified if they are banned. Over there I appear to have just become a non-poster.

C'est la vie. :)
 
You haven't been saying naughty things about JulianPenrod have you? :D
 
I can't find it at the moment, but I'm sure I spotted a post the other day showing a circular contrail from the Battle of Britain era, presented as evidence that chemtrails have been around since WWII.

Some of the conspiracies are so OTT, I'm sometimes not sure that some people aren't spoofing them.

(No I haven't signed up)
 
Timble said:
Some of the conspiracies are so OTT, I'm sometimes not sure that some people aren't spoofing them.
I'm pretty convinced that some people are spoofing them. (Some of the "I worked on a highly classified program for the government and so I am able to reveal the truth about chemtrails", types for a start. ;) )

In a way, that's what I like about chemtrails. It is a wonderful opportunity to see the emergence of a whole mythology. (By the way, in the interests of openess, I haven't been spoofing them, though the temptation to try it was very great. ;) )
 
Timble said:
I can't find it at the moment, but I'm sure I spotted a post the other day showing a circular contrail from the Battle of Britain era, presented as evidence that chemtrails have been around since WWII.

Let me guess - it was an image showing trails in the sky, during a time when the skies were full of aircraft...? ;)
 
Could the chemtrails theory be a misremembrance of the old crop dusters/sky writers? Didn't the pilots who did one also do the other?
 
Caroline said:
Could the chemtrails theory be a misremembrance of the old crop dusters/sky writers? Didn't the pilots who did one also do the other?
It's possible, though I think that there is also a lot of anti-gov paranoia in there as well. (Not that governments aren't capable of doing strange secretive things, however.) There seems to be a tendency to view everything through a distorting lens that has government conspiracies behind everything that happens. Even the most innocuous thing is seen as evidence of either the dark hand of the gov. or the end times.
 
I can remeber noticing "vapour trails" behind commercial aircraft back in the 1970s when I was a child. I have never thought of them as sinister. I'm more concerned thar aircraft stacking up for landing at Manchester Airport are circling at lower and lower altitudes. The hills around here rise to around 1500' and a lot of jets seem to be stacking at around 2500' above sea level, any way, they seem dangerously low when they pass over the village.

I had a look at a chemtrail debunking site today. I notice it is also suggesting global warming is a hoax and supporting the Iraq war. The politics of this thing get confusing.
 
Austen said:
I had a look at a chemtrail debunking site today. I notice it is also suggesting global warming is a hoax and supporting the Iraq war. The politics of this thing get confusing.
There do seem to be a range of agendas out there. I guess we just have to focus on the evidence. :)
 
This was posted in the SomethingAwful forums in a 9/11 thread. A nice story, but considering the source I wouldn't trust it much. ;)

For reasons you will understand as you read this I can not divulge my identity. I am an aircraft mechanic for a major airline. I work at one of our maintenance bases located at a large airport. I have discovered some information that I think you will find important.

First I should tell you something about the "pecking order" among mechanics. It is important to my story and to the cause to which you have dedicated yourself.

Mechanics want to work on three things. The avionics, the engines, or the flight controls. The mechanics that work on these systems are considered at the top of the "pecking order". Next come the mechanics that work on the hydraulics and air conditioning systems. Then come the ones who work on the galley and other non-essential systems. But at the very bottom of the list are the mechanics that work on the waste disposal systems. No mechanic wants to work on the pumps, tanks, and pipes that are used to store the waste from the lavatories. But at every airport where I have worked there are always 2 or 3 mechanics that volunteer to work on the lavatory systems.

The other mechanics are happy to let them do it. Because of this you will have only 2 or 3 mechanics that work on these systems at any one airport. No one pays much attention to these guys and no mechanic socializes with another mechanic who only works on the waste systems. In fact I had never thought much about this situation until last month.

Like most airlines we have reciprocal agreements with the other airlines that fly into this airport. If they have a problem with a plane one of our mechanics will take care of it. Likewise if one of our planes has a problem at an airport where the other airline has a maintenance base, they will fix our plane.

One day last month I was called out from our base to work on a plane for another airline. When I got the call the dispatcher did not know what the problem was. When I got to the plane I found out that the problem was in waste the disposal system. There was nothing for me to do but to crawl in and fix the problem. When I got into the bay I realized that something was not right. There were more tanks, pumps, and pipes then should have been there. At first I assumed that the system had been changed. It had been 10 years since I had worked on one. As I tried to find the problem I quickly realized the extra piping and tanks were not connected to the waste disposal system. I had just discovered this when another mechanic from my company showed up. It was one of the mechanics who usually works on these systems. I happily turned the job over to him. As I was leaving I asked him about the extra equipment. He told me to "worry about my end of the plane and let him worry about his!"

The next day I was on the company computer to look up a wiring schematic. While I was there I decided to look up the extra equipment I had found. To my amazement the manuals did not show any of the extra equipment I had seen with my own eyes the day before. I even tied in to the manufacturer files and still found nothing. Now I was really determined to find out what that equipment did.

The next week we had three of our planes in our main hanger for periodic inspection. There are mechanics crawling all over a plane during these inspections. I had just finished my shift and I decided to have a look at the waste system on one of our planes. With all the mechanics around I figured that no one would notice an extra one on the plane. Sure enough, the plane I choose had the extra equipment!

I began to trace the system of pipes, pumps, and tanks. I found what appeared to be the control unit for the system. It was a standard looking avionics control box but it had no markings of any kind. I could trace the control wires from the box to the pumps and valves but there were no control circuits coming into the unit. The only wires coming into the unit was a power connection to the aircraft's main power bus.

The system had 1 large and 2 smaller tanks. It was hard to tell in the cramped compartment but it looked like the large tank could hold 50 gallons. The tanks were connected to a fill and drain valve that passed through the fuselage just behind the drain valve for the waste system. When I had a chance to look for this connection under the plane I found it cunningly hidden behind a panel under the panel used to access the waste drain.

I began to trace the piping from the pumps. These pipes lead to a network of small pipes that ended in the trailing edges of the wings and horizontal stabilizers. If you look closely at the wings of a large airplane you will see a set of wires, about the size of your finger, extending from the trailing edge of the wing surfaces. These are the static discharge wicks. They are used to dissipate the static electric charge that builds up on a plane in flight. I discovered that the pipes from this mystery system lead to every 1 out of 3 of these static discharge wicks. These wicks had been "hollowed out" to allow whatever flows through these pipes to be discharged through these fake wicks.

It was while I was on the wing that one of the managers spotted me. He ordered me out of the hanger telling me that my shift was over and I had not been authorized any overtime.

The next couple of days were very busy and I had no time to continue my investigation. Late one afternoon, two days after my discovery, I was called to replace an engine temperature sensor on a plane due to take off in two hours. I finished the job and turned in the paperwork.

About 30 minutes later I was paged to see the General Manager. When I went in his office I found that our union rep and two others who I did not know were waiting on me. He told me that a serious problem had been discovered. He said that I was being written up and suspended for turning in false paperwork. He handed me a disciplinary form stating that I had turned in false paperwork on the engine temperature sensor I had installed a few hours before. I was floored and began to protest. I told them that this was ridiculous and that I had done this work. The union rep spoke up then and recommended that we take a look at the plane and see if we could straighten it all out. It was at this time that I asked who the other two men were. The GM told me that they were airline safety inspectors but would not give me their name.

We proceeded to the plane, which should have been in the air but was parked on our maintenance ramp. We opened the engine cowling and the union rep pulled the sensor. He checked the serial number and told everyone that it was the old instrument. We then went to the parts bay and went back into the racks. The union rep checked my report and pulled from the rack a sealed box. He opened the box and pulled out the engine temperature sensor with the serial number of the one I had installed. I was told that I was suspended for a week without pay and to leave immediately.

I sat at home the first day of my suspension wondering what the hell had happened to me. That evening I received a phone call. The voice told me "Now you know what happens to mechanics who poke around in things they shouldn't. The next time you start working on systems that are no concern of yours you will lose your job! As it is I'm feeling generous, I believe that you'll be able to go back to work soon" CLICK. Again I had to pick myself from off the floor. I made the connection that what had happened was directly connected to my tracing the mysterious piping. The next morning the General Manager called me. He said that due to my past excellent employment record that the suspension had been reduced to one day and that I should report back to work immediately. The only thing I could think of was what are they trying to hide and who are THEY!

That day at work went by as if nothing had happened. None of the other mechanics mentioned the suspension and my union rep told me not to talk about it. That night I logged onto the Internet to try to find some answers. I don't remember now how I got there but I came across a site dealing with chemtrails. That's when it all came together. But the next morning at work I found a note inside my locked locker. It said, "Curiosity killed the cat. Don't be looking at Internet sites that are no concern of yours."

Well that's it. THEY are watching me.

Well you already know what they are doing. I don't know what they are spraying but I can tell you how they are doing it. I figure they are using the "honey trucks". These are the trucks that empty the waste from the lavatory waste tanks. The airports usually contract out this job and nobody goes near these trucks. Who wants to stand next to a truck full of sh--. While these guys are emptying the waste tanks they are filling the tanks of the spray system. They know the planes flight path so they probably program the control unit to start spraying some amount of time after the plane reaches a certain altitude. The spray nozzles in the fake static wicks are so small that no one in the plane would see a thing.
 
I first noticed 'chemtrails' back when I was a kid in the early 70s. In those days, they were called 'contrails' and there was no conpiracy surrounding them - they were simply the exhaust trails from jet planes.

When or how this turned into a conspiracy, I don't know.

If some kind of poison has been deliberately dropped down onto us for decades all over the world, I should think we'd all be dead by now.
 
The Chemtrail Delusion

Here are a few things you should know.

Please look up the Wikipedia entry "Chemtrail Conspiracy Theory". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemtrail_ ... acy_theory)

1. Belief in chemtrails (the believers are often termed "chemtards" for short, i.e. chemtrail retards) is first and foremost an American phenomenon that has propagated to the rest of the world via the Internet. There are no books, research papers or even pieces of investigative journalism on the subject.

2. The Chemtrail delusion is mostly fuelled by Internet rumours, falsified or misinterpreted YouTube videos and (US) right-wing, Republican-financed radio shock jockeys.

3. There is a strong correlation between belief in chemtrails, illiteracy, antisemitism, racism and religious end-times Christian fundamentalism. Many of the believers are disappointed defeated white Southerners and uneducated Republicans who can't accept having a Black (liberal) man for president. This leads to belief in other conspiracy theories, such as the New World Order. The believers don't read books or have science education of any kind. They are "self-taught" and are wary of "book learning". They can't spell.

4. Chemtards are mostly young people who don't remember "olden days" when contrails were also universally present in the skies. They have mostly spent their childhood indoors playing video games and reading comicbooks. It can be safely said that chemtrail belief is the only reason they ever look up at the sky.

5. Chemtards automatically refer to any person opposing their views as "government shills" or "disinformation agents" or (gasp!) "atheists".

6. The "sanest" (or less idiotic) explanation advanced for this mythical spraying is that global warming is much worse than is generally believed and world governments are acting unilaterally and undemocratically to slow down its process by seeding clouds or loading the atmosphere with contrail clouds. This premise is made absurd by the fact there are a variety of immensely cheaper, less dangerous and reversible practical alternatives available right now just for that purpose, such as seawater-spraying ships, that no government so far has thought of implementing. (See: See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg7J8P-uXqM )
 
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