USA Today's View Of Chemtrails -
Attributed To 'Conspiracy Theorists' Source: USA Today March 7, 2001
A new conspiracy theory sweeping the Internet and radio
talk shows has set parts of the federal government on edge.
The theory: The white lines of condensed water vapor
that jets leave in the sky, called contrails, are actually a toxic
substance the government deliberately sprays on an unsuspecting
populace.
Federal bureaucracies have gotten thousands of phone
calls, e-mails and letters in recent years from people demanding to
know what is being sprayed and why. Some of the missives are
threatening.
It's impossible to tell how many supporters these ideas
have attracted, but the people who believe them say they're tired of
getting the brush-off from officials. And they're tired of health
problems they blame on ''spraying.''
''This is blatant. This is in your face,'' says Philip
Marie Sr., a retired nuclear quality engineer from Bartlett, N.H., who
says the sky above his quiet town is often crisscrossed with ''spray''
trails.
''No one will address it,'' he says. ''Everyone
stonewalls this thing.''
The situation Marie and others describe is straight out
of The X-Files. He and others report one day looking up at the sky and
realizing that they were seeing abnormal contrails: contrails that
lingered and spread into wispy clouds, multiple contrails arranged in
tick-tack-toe-like grids or parallel lines, contrails being laid down
by white planes without registration numbers.
Believers call these tracks ''chemtrails.'' They say
they don't know why the chemicals are being dropped, but that doesn't
stop them from speculating. Many guess that the federal government is
trying to slow global warming with compounds that reflect sunlight
into the sky. Some propose more ominous theories, such as a government
campaign to weed out the old and sick.
Exasperated by persistent questions, the Environmental
Protection Agency, NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration and the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration joined forces last
fall to publish a fact sheet explaining the science of contrail
formation. A few months earlier, the Air Force had put out its own
fact sheet, which tries to refute its opponents' arguments point by
point.
''If you try to pin these people down and refute things,
it's, 'Well, you're just part of the conspiracy,' '' says atmospheric
scientist Patrick Minnis of NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton,
Va. ''Logic is not exactly a real selling point for most of them.''
Nothing is ''out there'' except water vapor and ice
crystals, say irritated scientists who study contrails. Some, such as
Minnis, are outraged enough by the claims of chemtrail believers that
they have trolled Internet chat rooms to correct misinformation or
have gotten into arguments with callers.
''Conspiracy nonsense,'' snorts Kenneth Sassen, an
atmospheric scientist at the University of Utah. ''These things are at
30,000 to 40,000 feet in the atmosphere. They're tiny particles.
They're not going to affect anyone.''
The cloud-forming contrails that conspiracy theorists
find so ominous are ''perfectly natural,'' Minnis says. The odd grid
and parallel-line patterns are easily explained as contrails blown
together by the wind, scientists say.
by Traci Watson
http://usatoday.com/usatonline/20010307/3117139s.htm