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Why Weather Control Conspiracy Theories Are Scientifically Ludicrous
barlevg writes "The Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang breaks down two popular conspiracy theories: that HAARP is responsible for severe weather and that contrails from commercial airliners are actually 'chemtrails' sprayed for nefarious purposes. The article shows why each is preposterous to anyone with even an elementary knowledge of meteorology or an iota of common sense. The author readily acknowledges that his analysis will do nothing to convince the tinfoil-hat-wearing, vinegar-spraying members of the populace."
This is ground-shaking stuff.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
...is being officially denied.
I have to state unequivocally that the author is correct - there is nothing to worry about.
Ewige Blumenkraft
The opposite of progress is congress
They may not be nefarious, but they do add particulates that had a demonstrative effect on atmospheric temps during the 9/11 airspace shutdown.
And Jesse Walker has a new book on the United States of Paranoia that traces the bipartisan conspiracies since our founding and before.
I'll check that out before some condescending post article
TO: WeatherGang
FROM: J. Bezos
SUBJECT: Weather Conspiracy Theories
Guys,
I know you're not that great at the whole internet thing and all, being a newspaper and such. But one of my other companies is actually pretty good at it. So take my advice. Don't feed the trolls.
Regards,
Jeff
The summary links to both a guy who writes on DailyKos and a guy who writes on Free Republic, and they agree with each other. Apparently vinegar-spraying chemtrail nuts are, in fact, the key to world peace. Or at least 1990s nostalgia.
Visit the
The 1960s? Are we going to start seeing new stories about the government seeding the clouds?
AVOID THE BROWN ACID, MAN!
#DeleteChrome
Just like those "Gummint is watching everything you do!" tinfoilers were wrong. I'M ONTO YOU!
I think that in light of recent events, you have to give the tinfoil-hat crowd the benefit of the doubt, no matter how insane they seem.
The sad thing about conspiracy theories and the internet age is that no matter how far out or whackjob the theory may be, you can find a dozen videos documenting "proof" of the theory and entire forums full of people who believe in the lunacy and who circle-jerk each other in a frenzy of panic.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
This article is a pretty weak debunking. If the government really wanted to spray chemicals from commercial jets, they wouldn't let a little thing like weight limits stop them. Make shorter flights that require less fuel. Leave a lot of empty seats to provide more slack weight. Spray in really small quantities. Whatever.
Seriously, Occam's Razor debunks better than this. Simply: what the hell makes you think that chemicals are being routinely sprayed out of commercial jets for nefarious purposes? On what basis is the ordinary scientific explanation about vapor condensation not a good enough explanation for the trails? And if the government can spray chemicals in the air on that scale, why can't they make them invisible too?
It's got nothing to do with weight limits and everything to do with unnecessary complexity.
As long as I'm at it, wouldn't you think that if chemtrails were a real thing, Manning and Snowden would have found out and blabbed?
The article shows why each is preposterous to anyone with even an elementary knowledge of meteorology or an iota of common sense
Actually, it doesn't. The closest I saw was this:
HAARP does not and cannot control the weather. While the frequencies are high powered, it doesn’t have nearly enough energy to do anything over the Lower 48, let alone specifically target communities for destruction like one would see in a science fiction movie. Both common sense and a basic understanding of meteorology debunk the conspiracy theory surrounding HAARP’s alleged ability to control the weather.
So the question is, how do we know how much energy is being pumped into the ionosphere? The whole article seems mostly of ridicule. "Well, of course it doesn't, you'd have to be crazy to believe otherwise, but we're not going to provide any evidence."
Don't get me wrong, I don't think HAARP is part of an evil shadowy conspiracy to create tornados and tsunamis or whatever. But I'm also not a meteorologist... so a breakdown of the physics required to perform such a feat compared to what we know would be pretty useful. I remember a Weekly World News article claiming hackers can turn your computer into a bomb... and as a computer professional, I know exactly why that's impossible and might even giggle at the thought. But I can't expect the general public to explicitly know that there's no real-life equivalent to the HCF instruction.
Kind of like What If at xkcd... putting things to scale such as a hair dryer that just happens to draw 11 petawatts of power can really hit the understanding home.
More Twoson than Cupertino
The Washington Post has no credibility, but I guess they are right this time.
You're confusing Washington Post with Washington Times, which is some kind of right wing scandal rag (suitable city to have one, though, never a shortage of scandals, just be kinda nice if they were to report equally on the idiocy of either side of the aisle, but I guess the WaPo is for reporting on the Right Side of the aisle).
Seriously though, Weather Control Conspiracy is the domain of Weekly World News if you're going to discuss print media.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I guess all that WWII wartime footage of allied bombers leaving contrails is evidence of them spraying chemicals on the Nazis, as well as dropping bombs.
Proverbs 21:19
Inventors: Eastlund; Bernard J. (Spring, TX)
Assignee: APTI, Inc. (Los Angeles, CA)
Family ID: 24772054
Appl. No.: 06/690,333
Filed: January 10, 1985
From his Wikipedia: "Bernard Eastlund authored three patents (US Patents #4,686,605, #4,712,155, and #5,038,664) that, it is claimed, led to the development of the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP).[1]"
A method and apparatus for altering at least one selected region which normally exists above the earth's surface. The region is excited by electron cyclotron resonance heating to thereby increase its charged particle density. In one embodiment, circularly polarized electromagnetic radiation is transmitted upward in a direction substantially parallel to and along a field line which extends through the region of plasma to be altered. The radiation is transmitted at a frequency which excites electron cyclotron resonance to heat and accelerate the charged particles. This increase in energy can cause ionization of neutral particles which are then absorbed as part of the region thereby increasing the charged particle density of the region.
...
This invention has a phenomenal variety of possible ramifications and potential future developments. As alluded to earlier, missile or aircraft destruction, deflection, or confusion could result, particularly when relativistic particles are employed. Also, large regions of the atmosphere could be lifted to an unexpectedly high altitude so that missiles encounter unexpected and unplanned drag forces with resultant destruction or deflection of same. Weather modification is possible by, for example, altering upper atmosphere wind patterns or altering solar absorption patterns by constructing one or more plumes of atmospheric particles which will act as a lens or focusing device. Also as alluded to earlier, molecular modifications of the atmosphere can take place so that positive environmental effects can be achieved. Besides actually changing the molecular composition of an atmospheric region, a particular molecule or molecules can be chosen for increased presence. For example, ozone, nitrogen, etc. concentrations in the atmosphere could be artificially increased. Similarly, environmental enhancement could be achieved by causing the breakup of various chemical entities such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrous oxides, and the like.
Whether HAARP worked or not is unknown (or rather, classified), but weather modification was certainly a goal of the research and military application.
There's a difference between being a troll and being funny. This is just another thing that Jeff Bezos understands that most Slashmods don't.
Anyone with half a brain should realize the mass of the atmosphere is quite huge. In order for these so-called chemtrails to be able to saturate the atmosphere to the point where everyone would get a good dose of mind control agents (or whatever), the amount needed would be staggering. Probably more than is feasible both economically and industrially. Then add to that the upper atmospheric air is warmer and thus will not fall to the surface bringing any poisons with it. Nevermind that there is different wind flows above the surface (jetstream, etc.). And I am not a weather expert or enthusiast.
I'm not even going to bother with HAARP because there is no theory to even ponder. HAARP simply can not manipulate the weather.
They don't actually address HAARP, just a straw man of what the author imagines the conspiracy to be, which is much easier to do by someone with a lay educational background than the real conspiracy.
The actual conspiracy is that HAARP doesn't use lots of energy, but instead, uses resonance to cause the ionosphere to dump energy (somehow, dunno what energy is expected to be there) into the lower layers of the atmosphere, thereby causing small effects to become magnified (rainstorms into hurricanes, etc).
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
The NSA should hire the SCTO (secret chem trail organization) to handle their security. No more leaks to worry about. Show the NSA how to control information right.
It is clear that the SCTO maintains a global fleet of thousands of specially modified tanker aircraft for 24/7 operations. There is a small army of technicians, mechanics and pilots. They skillfully manage extreme logistical challenges to safely manufacture, store, and distribute all the millions of tons of chemicals. All in secret. Not one whistle-blower. Not one crash or chemical spill. Not one photo or chemical sample has leaked.
This article reeks of poisoning the well. China has modified the weather publicly. Russia has modified the weather publicly. To claim that it's impossible is pretty damn idiotic! If you are not suspicious as to why the most allegedly advanced society in the world claims it can't do it you really should get off the medication.
The fact that the plans for chemtrails and weather modification are not given does not make science study disappear. We know things are happening and we can measure them. Aluminum and Barium in the atmosphere has been shown to be true by numerous scientific studies. Those metals are measurable in plants and soil which has also been measured. The underlying "why" is not seen because it's all "top-secret" but that does not make the metals disappear.
This idiot thinks that their "why" is better than someone else' "why". While everything is buried in "top-secret" files nobody knows. How about petitioning the Government to open up instead of claiming it's all for the greater good without any evidence? If we don't open things up, that speculation that it's all for the greater good has identical credibility to the guy who believes it's for nefarious purposes.
Then we get to the outright lies in this article. "HAARP does not and cannot control the weather. " Wait a minute there non-scientist! If the stated goals of exciting and heating particles and atoms in the ionosphere, and we know that they can do that, how does that not give someone the ability to control weather? What happens to air that is heated and cooled? Water that's heated and cooled? Come now, someone has to have had junior high level physics and chemistry and can see how outrageous that claim is. If their argument is based on a lie, the rest of the summaries are worth nothing.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
They'll have weather controlling satillites soon. Then the only worry will be when Q comes to town....
I take no responsibility for what I say. Even though I'm never wrong
So the conspiracy is even more stupid than the straw man version? That's quite an accomplishment.
I thought the Chemtrails were supposed to be a mystery additive to jet fuel that does whatever the government feels like that day. So you wouldn't have tanks and plumbing and stuff in the aircraft, it would be a shadowy something or the other at the refinery. Or maybe added in transport or something. Maybe I made that up because the real conspiracy makes no sense at all. Even then you're talking about something that has to survive being burnt up in a jet engine and quite a bit of time up in the stratosphere (in sunlight) before finally filtering down to the ground. People near airports would also receive a massively higher dose, so it couldn't be too obvious or people would notice. It's hard to make this conspiracy work even theoretically, and that's before you even start talking about the properties of the mysterious fluid and what it is supposed to do.
I read the internet for the articles.
I am more put off by people who mock and lampoon those with differing belief systems, than I am by those with whom I simply disagree.
My hat is off to OP, who managed to cite a conspiracy theory in his little diatribe about conspiracy theory.
News: while I agree that vinegar-sprayers may belong to the tinfoil hat clan, there are no more of them, in proportion to total number of people, in Ron Paul supporters than there are in any other group.
All this time, I've been spraying vinegar to clean the kitchen floor. Silly me. I'm not doing anything to stop the... um what was it again... oh yeah! chem trails. At least the floor is clean.
Vinegar is a nice and very cheap chemical product, specifically white vinegar which is kind of the pure form (dissolved in water). It cleans and disinfect stuff. I even cleaned red wine on a shirt with 25% vinegar, 25% alcohol and 50% cool water, it just all went away and I wore it without washing it further.
I've been wanting it in a spray but did not find empty spray bottles yet, I didn't look for it much either, in supermarkets they just sell them but full of some crap I don't need. Though, I stumbled upon a wine vinegar spray but don't want to pay 2 euros for it.
I want to spray some in an old pair of sneakers with a horrible smell to see if that kills the life that's in it.
What do you expect? They work daily in near proximity to concentrated mind-control agents, how could they whistle-blow? Same goes for anyone who would get close to a crash or spill site.
Is a second not spent curing cancer and inventing cool stuff.
And it's not like it'll do any good anyway. The creationist/altmed/antivax/birther/truther/moon-hoax crowd is invested into their beliefs in a fashion that does not permit rational refutation.
Obligatory Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3qFdbUEq5s
Are you trying to be clever or do you not know it's actually Jeff Bezos? "There are literally dozens of patents about weather modification" - there's patents for perpetual motion machines too, and yet I still have to pay the power bill. It's all a conspiracy by Big Utility.
And we just crossed the line from science to sex...
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
A number of patents have been issued for various methodologies for weather modification (which I suppose doesn't prove they work). But don't also forget that China openly brags about doing weather modification such as clearing smog for the Beijing Olympics or around other cities.
I wouldn't suspect they are the only ones.
this has already been thoroughly debunked. It is well known that man cannot affect the weather. Just look up "Global Warming" or "Climate Change", and you will see that they specifically state than "man has no influence on the weather". Anyone who states otherwise is decried as a "denier", and thoroughly mocked.
Why would the United States spend Billions on this research, with significant tax increases, if it was true?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
I live very close to Chicago (less than five miles and O'Hare (which is #1 or #2 of world's busiest airport depending on year). some days many contrails happen to look like grid pattern just because so many jets fly in different directions. But all made by different jets, not a single jet passing back and forth. Since a contrail is just a cloud, whether visible or whether it lingers depends whether a cloud at that same altitude would linger. that could be a short time, could be a long time.
In illinois there were indeed experiments done with cloud seeding with silver iodide, even into the 1980s. Not done from jets, but you can read about them online, they were small experiments and downstate not near chicago. *yawn*
in short, nothing suspicious regarding contrails seen in half a century by me and I am aviation buff. This year's airshow in Chicago to be a bit strange due to lack of military craft. see you there
There are times when I have looked up at the sky at what should be a clear blue sky, but the sky is covered with contrails, they've literally spread out and covered the whole sky.
You can't tell me with a straight face that filling the sky with so much pollution that that doesn't make a difference, of course it makes a difference.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
Crazy mind-control additives aside, what is the impact (if any) of so many regular condensation trails being woven around the globe? I'm necessarily saying I believe it has an impact of global weather systems, I just like poking hornets' nests.
...if you're the world's biggest douche.
How does knowing the truth about 9/11 help you live a better life, be a better person, and treat people better?
OK, here's a number. HAARP has slightly more than half the transmitted RF power of an AEGIS cruiser.
I never dismiss conspiracies out of hand yet I do tend to ignore most for lack of evidence and interest.
A recurring theme that has always bothered me skeptics are almost always on the winning side by default without having expended any effort to get there. I have observed some tend to invoke and get away with many of the same errors in judgement and thought as the pro-conspiracy crowd.
Writing a broad article means you don't have to address or defend specific claims, you can use the most crazy claims to drown out nuanced assertions and you can invent and beat down as many strawmen as your imagination allows.
While it is often not possible to prove negatives this is no excuse for making the unwarranted leap of asserting that you can. For example in TFA:
"The idea that aircraft that produce contrails are really spraying âoechemtrailsâ is preposterous on its face"
Translation: your crazy.
"Airlines mostly operate based on the weight of the aircraft. The weight of the passengers, cargo, and luggage onboard is crucial for both determining how much fuel is onboard, which ultimately determines how much they pay to fill the tanks, as well as the balance of the aircraft in flight. If the plane is too heavy or the weight is distributed incorrectly, it could crash."
Is this really why the claim is preposterious? Many have claimed chemtrails to be fuel additives. No attempt to quantify how much sulfur dioxide or whatever mystery sauce one could sneak aboard or consider aggregate effect of all commercial aircraft contributions over time or what quantity of x, y and z would be necessary to effect climate or people.. just vauge hand waving.
The people who want to believe the conspiracy will believe it no matter what you tell them. If you try to explain the science and prove the theory wrong, youâ(TM)re wrong, because âoethatâ(TM)s just what they want you to think.â
I think the central problem here is your need to "prove the theory wrong". Fundementally there is no proving most conspiracy theories wrong and to even try is a fools errand.
If you want to rescuse someone who has fallen into a conspiracy trap the best approach I know of is to lead by example and insist on detail and vigour in exploring available evidence.
In about 7 weeks, the real info will be released.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
So the conspiracy is even more stupid than the straw man version? That's quite an accomplishment.
These are not the truths you are looking for, move along.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
Oh, The Washington Times. How quickly the country forgets real controversies.
Vinegar, really? To their credit, the "conspiracy theorists" don't make such radical claims nor do they contribute it to commercial airliners. A contrail is not the same as a chemtrail. I'll give the conspiracy theorists credit because the trails that are left behind are by federally deployed jets at high altitude. In California, they're deployed every two hours.
It's not ludicrous and it *is* scientifically sound. The research was done in the 1940s to help mitigate global warming.
Dear Weather control people... Can you please do something about all the snow we get in the northern hemisphere, particularly in the upstate NY area, I would like to continue biking through the winter season... oh wait... you can't you say? Then you really can't control the weather can you...
http://www.weathermodification.com/
Let's ignore the product page where they sell jets that modfiy weather for agricultural purposes or the fact the DoD is in their client portfolio....
Easy enough for conspiracy theories to form, given that HAARP's scientific purpose is meaningless to most laypeople and that it is operated by air force, navy and DARPA.
After all, why would the military be funding an innocent research institution? Easy to believe it is some sort of super-weapon.
My vague understanding is that military is really interested because HAARP studies ionosphereic effects on radio propagation, which is a subject of importance in long-range and high-altitude radar systems.
You may LYAO but physics gets the last laugh.
Silvio? Is that you?
I can't help but associate nutjobs like these with folks like al-Shabab, who, in trying to "save" Somalia from the West, have managed to reintroduce polio there.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Here we go folks, we've got a winner in the lunacy stakes!
"One gallon of jet fuel weighs approximately 6.7 pounds. Take a Boeing 747-400, for example: a fully-loaded 747 flying from London to Hong Kong would require almost a full tank of gas – somewhere between 50,000 and 60,000 gallons of fuel. That’s upwards of 370,000 pounds of fuel in the tanks. Between the weight of the fuel, the passengers, the cargo, and the luggage onboard, there’s simply no room left for “chemtrail” chemicals even if they did want to spray us all with toxic gunk."
Who said chemtrails were made on London to Hongkong flights? This is your rebuttal of chemtrails??
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
- A Frog in a pond utters an azure cry. -
While I can sympathise with that viewpoint, how do you suggest dealing with the people who are completely immune to evidence and logic? You know, the kind of people who actually believe things like fake moon landing theories?
Conspiracy theories are becoming to be a bigger thing than I for one ever imagined.
I don' t think North Americans realize how much this talk goes across the world. What was once quiet internet chatter has been taken mainstream by RT et al.
In Argentina I noticed how Britain is mixed in with the USA which is also mixed in with general view-of-infidels Islamic paranoia and any other conspiracy theory going. Some of it is true but also people aren't checking facts at all and it all joins up. So when I get in a taxi in Argentina and I work in oil and gas I'm not simply a tourist, I'm 'one of them'. Now, the same thing is going on all over the world. Russian feel very much the same. The evil USA empire, HAARP, chemtrails, the lot. Same in the middle east and all of the Islamic world. Similar in nearly all of South America and so on. Pretty much this is all of the world.
Conspiracy theories are a point upon which people rally around. The confirmations such as the NSA spying are remembered but it takes some guts to admit when you're wrong and you've been an idiot.
I still think there's a lot of truth in conspiracy theories in general and many seem to just keep getting proved true all the time.
The OP article shows what thoughts should be happening in relation to HARRP "it doesn’t have nearly enough energy to do anything over the Lower 48" but this is the kind of minimal thought/research people need to be doing when you read an article. As a matter of national security the USA should be educating people around the world on how to assess a story and sources. But it's not. Why? Because it was all true after all! ;-)
For contrails wouldn't it be good to actually go up in a light aircraft with a convert and actually make some contrails?
This all seems like a modern phenomenon but isn't this just a continuation of what people have always done? Only before such things were blamed on the devil. In fact, let's join it all up and say the devil is behind all these things, farming humanity as the good shepherd, steering genetics of the breed according to the required spec.
A blog I run for the wealth
But the article does NOT debunk the theories.
The claim that HAARP does not have enough power to do what some people claim it does is an erroneous one, because HAARP is designed to channel power from the ionosphere.
The claim that you can't have planes spraying chemtrails is based on the idea that there's no room for the tanks on commercial flights. But this is a straw man, and anyone who would attack it is an asshole. They are forgetting military air traffic. There have actually been photographs of government planes filled with tanks whose purpose has gone unexplained. Since the government spends our money and then claims national security when we want to know specifically how it's been spent, it's completely possible to have funded a program like this. By distributing the work across multiple defense contractors who would have no idea what they were working on and who operate under legal secrecy, they could prevent anyone from actually knowing what is being built, or the total scope of the operation.
I'm still not saying these conspiracy theories are true; you need proof to make statements like that. However, there is nothing of value in this article whatsoever. It is simply more anti-conspiracist FUD which is being distributed at this time to deprecate the value of conspiracy theories. The problem is that conspiracies are the norm, and so are secret conspiracies. Citations abound; there are many articles on "conspiracy theories which turned out to be true". Most of those theories were mercilessly ridiculed until proven. THAT also doesn't lend any credence to these theories, mind you.
The article whines about how if you try to explain the science to people who don't understand it, they'll tell you that you're wrong. But this very article abuses science by engaging in logical fallacies of false conflation and attacking straw men.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You all need to watch the excellent documentaries that put forth scientific proof behind these things. - What in the World are They Spraying? at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybWku-lJe6I - Why in the World are They Spraying? at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEfJO0-cTis also available in Spanish, French, Russina, Dutch, Danish, Italian, Czech, Serbian, Romanian, Portuguese, Korean and Japanese subtitles.
Tomorrow's news yesterday -- the bleeding, visionary edge.
Back in 1999, I watched one being formed by a single aircraft. It was in the late afternoon, about an hour before sunset. When I first saw it, half of the construction had been completed and the aircraft was flying alternating N-S trails and E-W trails. The result looked like a loose rectangular rattan weave. I estimated the altitude somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 feet and the spacing between the trails somewhere between 3000 and 6000 feet. The south end was around McClellan AFB and the north end was close to Beale AFB. Watching this thing was about the same idea as checking on an orb spider doing her thing. The aircraft departed the scene shortly before sunset and the trails slowly merged into a thin overcast. My best guess as to "Why" would be to impair the effectiveness of reconnaissance satellites. It was too thin to change nocturnal IR emission from the ground and the "overcast" was gone by the next day. For some actual pictures of the things, see Art Bell and Coast2CoastAM sites or Google the term. Other than consuming a few thousand pounds of JP-8, I don't see any real impact.
It is indeed a really stupid article. All it actually says is that it is so, cause I say so. Denser journalism once again.
i never had it for conspirationists, i never had it for the atheists either, i never had it for the scientists, or the hardcore buddhists ...us
...
thats probably why the others are ians ims or
i have a short opinion on this which you can judge after reading it and knowing i didnt bother to rtfa
chemtrails are not disprovern to be harmless but im sure no one gives a shit about it
conspirationists should get out more so they can see the average person on a global scale does not give a shit about any of this and you will never make them care
3) i need a vacation and more money
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?