Reasons to believe in Chemtrails

Mat

Member
Hi folks,

I think a casual perusal of this forum or the literature will give many reasons to believe that chemtrails are not real and that the contrail evidence is overwhelmingly contrails not chemtrails..

I remember, as a boy, watching TV about making it rain with cloud seeding, this has been done for decades. We know that they spray crops with chemicals. We know, as I understand it, that there is lots public documentation that refers to using planes to disperse chemicals. In other words, there is evidence for planes spraying chemicals, that is not really doubtful. This means that the idea of "chemtrails" is not absurd in the sense that I think many conspiracy theory premises might be considered to be. In fact, if you were a secret world overlord then using planes to disperse chemicals might be the best way to get many of your secret missions done; it can't all be using cloned Russian telepaths.

But what I am not clear on is what is the evidence that takes these conspiracy theorists from "they can spray chemicals from planes" to this global conspiracy of covert population modification: depopulation, mollification, etc.

So, can anyone nutshell those kind of reasons that drive this conspiracy theory?


Thanks

Mat
 
Like most conspiracy theories, I think it has to do with having a scapegoat for one's place in life that is entirely out of one's control. Contrails are just conveniently out-of-reach enough that they cannot be readily shown to be just that - contrails - without the believer having at least a basic understanding of science, critical thinking skills and the willingness to pay attention.
 
They can then blame the 'chem trails' for any health problems they have.

All during the BP oil spill, there has been one guy, with numerous FaceBook pages. Everything he posts is negative toward BP, he even goes back 50-60 years to find transgressions to slam them with. He doesn't live on the Gulf coast, but he does live near their Whiting, Indiana refinery. He has tried to blame some 'family' health issues on the refinery. Of course, he has never offered any evidence of this. Recently, one of my friends found a picture of him, smoking a big ole stogie. Blame BP, not his own habits.
 
While general conspiracy theories(CT's) regarding control of events usually feature nebulous, unseen actors working in secret ways "the meme", this CT allows the believer to view the purported action himself on a frequent basis. Put simply, "chemtrails" incorporates a (falsely) verifiable cue, the contrail, with a meme. This dual action makes it quite pernicious compared to the Flouride CT. Again and again the individual is stimulated with the cue, building anxiety about it.

Put together with all the individual human factors like bias, scapegoating, grudges, etc. which might push people towards CT's, you have a powerful combination

To stop the CT, you can either attack the weaknesses of the meme, or inform the CT'er about the cue.

On a deeper level I've speculated that there may even be something about an event overhead which plays into this. Could it be that the escape reflex called "ducking", which we've all experienced when danger comes near the head, predisposes us towards a primal fear of things flying about, a predator/threat response?
 
Added to the frequent visual confirmation of the cue/meme combination, there is the problem of estimation of distance and height of things in the sky, and the lowering of contrast with distance against blue sky.
Horizontal trails look steeply climbing or vertical when viewed from certain places. Remember the vertical helical spirals, the missiles.
Even under modest magnification, some planes are nearly invisible or featureless leading to the "windowless white planes" meme.
Lighting can play tricks - meteors and fireballs.

The problem mostly is that our eyes are too close together.
 
While general conspiracy theories(CT's) regarding control of events usually feature nebulous, unseen actors working in secret ways "the meme", this CT allows the believer to view the purported action himself on a frequent basis. Put simply, "chemtrails" incorporates a (falsely) verifiable cue, the contrail, with a meme. This dual action makes it quite pernicious compared to the Flouride CT. Again and again the individual is stimulated with the cue, building anxiety about it.

Put together with all the individual human factors like bias, scapegoating, grudges, etc. which might push people towards CT's, you have a powerful combination

To stop the CT, you can either attack the weaknesses of the meme, or inform the CT'er about the cue.

On a deeper level I've speculated that there may even be something about an event overhead which plays into this. Could it be that the escape reflex called "ducking", which we've all experienced when danger comes near the head, predisposes us towards a primal fear of things flying about, a predator/threat response?

That's an interesting assessment, Jay. I recall Brian Dunning mentioning something similar in a Skeptoid episode explaining why people believe in CTs– basically, from the standpoint of evolutionary psychology, beneficial adaptive traits like pattern recognition and attribution of agency to unknown threat stimuli served our evolutionary ancestors well, but have morphed into weird CT-prone behaviors in modern technological society. I think it has some merit.

Of course, I'm inclined to think that CT propensity has a multidimensional set of determinants, influenced by psychology, sociology, anthropology, and politics.

Another thing I think worth mentioning: a given CT meme is often easily shoehorned in to conform to other preexisting worldviews and narratives. Note how anti-NWO types view chemtrails as evidence of a government supported globalist plot, while some more "leftish" (I use the characterization reservedly) folks coming from an environmentalist/alterna-med angle attack chemtrails with an anti-corporate or anti-military variation on the theme. And new to me are the surprising number of fundamentalist/millennialists who associate chemtrails with "Endtimes Prophecy". Granted, these subsets share considerable overlap, but my point is that it seems like any given CT can be customized to suit any group's particular ideological hobbyhorse.
 
Added to the frequent visual confirmation of the cue/meme combination, there is the problem of estimation of distance and height of things in the sky, and the lowering of contrast with distance against blue sky. Horizontal trails look steeply climbing or vertical when viewed from certain places. Remember the vertical helical spirals, the missiles. Even under modest magnification, some planes are nearly invisible or featureless leading to the "windowless white planes" meme. Lighting can play tricks - meteors and fireballs.

The problem mostly is that our eyes are too close together.
It seems a shame we cannot make the immediate adjustment.

Screen Shot 2013-05-21 at 09.09.22.png

So much to learn - so little time.
 
On a deeper level I've speculated that there may even be something about an event overhead which plays into this. Could it be that the escape reflex called "ducking", which we've all experienced when danger comes near the head, predisposes us towards a primal fear of things flying about, a predator/threat response?
There is a beautiful word for it - visceral.

Falling, rapidly-approaching darkness, sudden silence, something changing behind you. Panic.

Too little time to think. Switch it off and let the management system take over. It's faster than you are . . . whizz . . .
 
Jazzy, your photo looks like photoshop, but I once was drinking/playing pool at a bar in Galveston, TX. In walks an amazing set of people. A black man, a white man who had profound
deformities of his arms and legs in a wheelchair, and a woman with strange looking skin. Soon, I recognized the black man seemed familiar, and realized what had happened. A carnival was in town and members of the 'freak' show had come in for a drink. It was the "rubber boy" on the wheelchair, the "snake skin woman", and "Popeye", all of whom I had seen in younger days at the State Fair of Texas.
Popeye Perry:

popeye perry.jpg

Popeye coud do that with both eyes, and claimed he could pop them right out and down on his cheek like your picture. He was a surprisigly good pool player, and was able to totally mess wity your head
as he leaned over the table to make a shot, by popping his eyeballs way out and INDEPENDENTLY control them with one eye looking at his shot, and the other looking straight at YOU!

Rubber boy graced us with his singing voice following the jukebox playing Freddy Fenders "The Last Teardrop Falls", with the snake skin woman, "She walks, she talks, she crawls on her belly like a reptile".

I'll never forget it.
 
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