Metabunk

This image is famous in 9/11 conspiracy culture:



The column in the center of the photo (by Sam Hollenshead) has been cut at an angle, presumably during the cleanup process. Yet Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (AE911) still insist it was cut before the building fell, and looks nothing like a normal cut, and hence is evidence of thermite. Here's an AE911 slide they used just a few weeks ago:



Here's Richard Gage, head of AE911, discussing this:

Source...

Description

In Escaping the Rabbit Hole, author Mick West shares over a decade's worth of knowledge and experience investigating and debunking false conspiracy theories through his forum, MetaBunk.org, and sets forth a practical guide to helping friends and loved ones recognize these theories for what they really are.

Perhaps counter-intuitively, the most successful approaches to helping individuals escape a rabbit hole aren't comprised of simply explaining why they are wrong; rather, West's tried-and-tested approach emphasizes clear communication based on mutual respect, honesty, openness, and patience.

West puts his debunking techniques and best practices to the test with four of the most popular false conspiracy theories today (Chemtrails, 9/11 Controlled...

A classic experiment to demonstrate the curvature of a body of water is to place markers (like flags) a fixed distance above the water in a straight line, and then view them along that line in a telescope. If the water surface is flat then the markers will appear also in a straight line. If the surface of the water is curved (as it is here on Earth) then the markers in the middle will appear higher than the markers at the ends. Here's a highly exaggerated diagram of the effect by Alfred Russel Wallace in 1870:



This is a difficult experiment to do as you need a few miles...

The above image appears to show three different metal rods. The left rod is short and straight. The middle rod seems longer and angles sharply to the right. The right rod appears slightly curved, and has a longer segment going off the edge of the photo.

Actually the rods look like this:


Despite the left rod looking like it's just a few inches, it's actually five feet long. And even though the right rod looks like it's bent very close to the end it's actually bent in the middle, as is the center rod.

I set this up to illustrate some of the problems in visualizing both contrails and the paths of planes that don't leave contrails, especially those that are far away, and so at a shallow angle to the viewer.

In particular, look at the...

Source: (MUFON case 84702)

A variety of images reported as "UFO"zm show what looks like a glowing disk with some dots on it. These basically look like lens flares, but the dot patterns are unusual, as they vary from irregular, regular, or or semiregular patterns. However they still look very two dimensional - they don't seem to curve around the "orb". Here's a collection of similar images all claimed as "UFOs"



What we are seeing here is a reflected image of the sun with the highlighted reflections of focus pixel. ...

MUFON is a long established organization that maintains a database of "UFO" sightings which sometimes contains things we discuss here on Skydentify. Unfortunately their database system is a little fiddly to access. Often people will find cases in the "Last 20 Reports" link from the home page
https://mufoncms.com/cgi-bin/report_handler.pl?req=latest_reports

This gives you the basic info of the case, but generally the interesting stuff is in the "Long Description". You can click on this and you will get a pop-up window with the description and a direct link to the long description. For example:
https://mufoncms.com/cgi-bin/report_handler.pl?req=view_long_desc&id=82310


So people often link to the case with this "long Description" link. Unfortunately this does...

In a paper publish in Environmental Research letters, August 2016, 77 scientists with expertise in atmospheric science and geochemistry were asked to give their expert opinions regarding the most common claims of evidence put forward by proponents of the "chemtrail" or "covert geoengineering" theory (referred to in the paper as a "secret large-scale atmospheric program (SLAP)". The evidence being photos of trails left by planes, and chemical analyses of air, soil, and water. The scientists overwhelming rejected the idea that the photos and tests were evidence of a secret spraying program. All of the atmospheric scientists and all but one of the geochemists saw nothing suspicious about the proffered evidence. The photos were all identified as contrails, and the...

A video is being widely shared on social media (and the "weird news" sections of more traditional media) claiming to show the image of an impossibly large city rising above the fog in the city of Foshan (佛山), Guangdong province, China



Here's a composite image of the Foshan video


Notice the scale of things here, there are what looks like two construction cranes on the "horizon" to the left, and the buildings seem to loom high into the sky above them.


Some have said this is...

A recent photo proports to show a UFO over Loch Ness in Scotland, however it's almost certainly just the reflection of a light inside the room, doubled up by dual pane window.

UPDATE July 10, 2015:

I contacted the owner of the cottage, who graciously agreed to take a few photos and a short video from the same location. These prove conclusively that the "UFO" is simply the reflection of a light in the window:






You can see the reflection of the curtain in the window, just like with the "UFO" photo, which demonstrates that the UFO photo was taken...

Public Law 105-85 (U.S. Code Title 50, Chapter 32, § 1520a) came into effect in 1997. It makes it illegal for the military to test biological and chemical weapons on people, and also makes it illegal to conduct peaceful experiments on people without their informed consent. It reads:

External Quote:

(a) Prohibited activities

The Secretary of Defense may not conduct (directly or by contract)—
(1) any test or experiment involving the use of a chemical agent or biological agent on a civilian population; or
(2) any other testing of a chemical agent or biological agent on human subjects.​

(b) Exceptions
Subject to subsections (c), (d), and (e) of this section, the prohibition in subsection (a) of this section does not apply to a test...

The above images are examples of a rolling shutter artifact. A "rolling shutter" means that the image is recorded one row (or column in portrait orientation) at a time, and not simultaneously. This means if the exposure and the flash are of very short duration, then the flash will only illuminate some pixel rows (or columns) of the image. Slowed down it looks a bit like this:

The green rectangle is the rolling shutter window - what the camera sees of the scene at any one time, and it builds up the actual photo by reading from this rectangle. The flash of lighting is very short, but still lights up all the pixels in the rolling shutter window, causing the "beam".

Here's what's going on...

A claim by the promoters of the the 9/11 controlled demolition theory is that the dust clouds that were pushed up and out by the collapse of the building were "pyroclastic-like", specifically:

http://www1.ae911truth.org/faqs/347...eel-at-wtc-site-challenge-official-story.html

External Quote:

Pyroclastic-like, rapidly expanding dust clouds after the destruction of the Towers can also be explained only by the expansion of hot gases.

The reference that AE911Truth uses to back this up is the site 9-11 Research, a web site that was created in 2003 by Jim Hoffman. Hoffman was a seminal figure in the 9/11 Truth movement, and his early writings were highly influential on the shape that the conspiracy theories took over the first decade after the attacks. Some of his early ideas were quite outlandish, such as...

A quote from a CFR talk:

External Quote:

there is a lot of money getting spent to make sure that a very substantial portion of the public stays totally confused about this.

Is often used to suggest that money has been spent to confuse the public abot geoengineering, however the quote is actually about climate change, and refers to how large energy companies spend money to confuse the public about climate change in ofder to limit regulation of carbon emissions. This only indirectly affects geoengineering discussions.

Step 1 - Original Source

M. Granger Morgan, Head, Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University. At a Council of Foreign Relations lecture.
March 10, 2010, Washington D.C.

Video, quote at 2:40

Direct link to 2:40


Transcript (with additional links to audio and video)...