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Scientist J. Marvin Herndon Recently published two papers that argued that there's a secret climate modification program being carried out worldwide involving loading ash from coal power stations into planes, and then spraying it into the upper atmosphere to block the sun.
Update: the second of these two papers has been retracted by the publisher
The evidence he presents is essentially taking a rough chemical profile for dirt or ash, and then testing dirt (dust or soil in air and water), and then noting that the profiles are similar within a huge range of possible values. This is fairly standard stuff in the "chemtrail theory".
But the really interesting thing is that Herndon's papers, which have been lauded by the chemtrail community as validation of their claims, actually disprove one of the most fundamental claims of evidence underpinning the theory - the claim that people have accurately observed changes in the sky.
The majority of chemtrail evidence claims are quite straightforward to address (even if the answers are generally ignored). Chemtrail believers generally start by claiming that "normal" contrails can't persist - and yet contrails, as noted in 70 years of books on clouds, are just clouds and like clouds they can persist for hours in the right conditions. The chemical tests are really just tests that match dirt in a variety of situations. The videos of "spraying" are usually just aerodynamic contrails. High bypass engines actually make more contrails, not less. The patents and documents about climate engineering are all talking about the future.
But after you've gone though this laundry list of claims, the hardest one to address is the claim that "the skies were not like this before I started seeing chemtrails". People tend to think that normal contrails should not persist and cover the sky because they personally don't remember them doing so. To question their memory is generally taken as a great personal insult. They are very observant, they watch the sky all the time, they have great observational skills, they have excellent recall. So you can't really debunk it. At least not for them personally.
Of course, there's lots of problems with this claim. For a start there's plenty of photographic and video evidence of contrail persisting and spreading, exactly as they do now, dating back many decades. There are people who do remember contrails spreading. And then there are people who only just noticed it - and curiously everyone seems to have noticed it at different times, sometimes as much as fifteen years apart, even when they live in the same city.
Enter J. Marvin Herndon. In his discussions, letters, books, and papers he makes very clear that he only noticed the trails in 2014
"Herndon's Earth and the Dark Side of Science" - December 2014
Evidence of Coal-Fly-Ash Toxic Chemical Geoengineering in the Troposphere: Consequences for Public Health - Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health, 11 August 2015External Quote:Let me add the words of a humble naturalist and scientist practiced in observation. I have lived in the same house since 1977 and viewed the same area of the sky nearly every day. After the morning marine layer burns off, the sky in San Diego, California, USA, is often cloudless; rain is infrequent here. Over the years, I have seen on the average less than a single contrail a year, and always at great distance. Recently, though, sometimes for several days in a row, the sky is filled with chemtrails. Figures 1.7 , 1.8 , and 1.9 , August 24, 2014 photographs of the area of sky I regularly observe, show chemtrails, not contrails
Letter from J. Marvin Herndon to San Diego City Council, Jan 16, 2015External Quote:
In the spring of 2014, the author began to notice tanker-jets quite often producing white trails across the cloudless blue sky over San Diego, California. The aerosol spraying that was happening with increasing frequency was a relatively new phenomenon there. The dry warm air above San Diego is not conducive to the formation of jet contrails, which are ice condensate. By November 2014 the tanker-jets were busy every day crisscrossing the sky spraying their aerial graffiti.
J. Marvin Herndon Interview, June 2015External Quote:
I am a scientist (PhD in nuclear chemistry, Post-Doctoral in Geochemistry and Cosmochemistry) and businessman, and have lived in Scripps Ranch for thirty seven years.
Over the past year the skies above San Diego have changed drastically in plain sight. We've been robbed of the beautiful blue skies we associate with our city. Almost every day jet airliners are spraying innumerable so-called "chemtrails" and they persist after release behind the jets to gradually form clouds.
Aluminum poisoning of humanity and Earth's biota by clandestine geoengineering activity: implications for India - CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 108, NO. 12, 25 JUNE 2015External Quote:In the Spring of 2014, I began to see particulate trails across the sky that were increasing in frequency and in intensity.
So here we have the most well credentialed scientist ever to back the chemtrail movement, someone with a Ph.D. and several published papers to his name, claiming that "chemtrails" in San Diego only started in 2014, and that before that you were luck to see one contrail a day, in the distance, maybe.External Quote:
I have lived in the same house since 1977 and viewed
the same area of the sky nearly every day. After the
morning marine layer burns off, the sky in San Diego,
California, USA, has been often cloudless; rain is infrequent
here. The air is warm and dry, not at all conducive
for the formation of ice crystals from high-altitude jet
aircraft exhaust. Since the spring of 2014, I observed that
the common occurrence of toxic geoengineering trails
in the lower atmosphere (troposphere), which mixes with
the air we breathe, was increasing in frequency.
The problem with this, and the reason it disproves the more general "the skies don't look like I remember" claim of evidence, is that he is demonstrably and inarguably mistaken. Many people, including many chemtrail activists have seen persistent trails in San Diego prior to 2014. And there's documented evidence, from chemtrail activists that far more than one trail has been observed over San Diego, on many days of the year, dating back decades.
For example, take the chemtrail site "SoCal Skywatch", based in San Diego, has many images of multiple spreading contrails, very like the ones that Herndon first noticed in 2014, dating back several years to when the site was set up in 2010.
https://www.google.com/search?es_sm=119&biw=1066&bih=803&tbs=cdr:1,cd_max:2013&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=san+diego+contrails+site:socalskywatch.wordpress.com&oq=san+diego+contrails+site:socalskywatch.wordpress.com
And many more - this is a search of the site, restricting images to before Dec 31, 2013.
In fact there have been enough people looking up at persistent trails in San Diego that there was a march on city hall in 2013, the year before Herndon noticed the trails.
https://socalskywatch.wordpress.com...-march-against-chemtrails-and-geoengineering/
And they had a table, showing photos of contrails over San Diego, at the San Diego Earth Fair, in 2012
In fact there are multiple anti-chemtrail groups in San Diego, there's a Meetup group formed in 2008, and at least two facebook groups: Blue Skies San Diego and San Diego Chemtrails, which both predate Herndon's 2014 observations.
So Herndon demonstrates that, no matter how great a scientist you are, and no matter what you think of your own observational skills and memory, you only notice and remember things when you are actually looking for them and when you are interested in them. Back when you were uninterested they were still there, you just were not paying attention.
Yet quite indisputably, other people noticed them. Other people who were interested in the chemtrail theory back then. Look at this video of the skies over San Diego from 2009:
It's almost exactly like what Herndon says was an entirely new thing in 2014, five years later.
In fact the observation of persistent trails in San Diego dates back to the early days of the chemtrail theory. Here's some from 2002. From "an avid sky watcher, day and night,"
http://www.rense.com/general32/san.htm
Notice the contrast here. We have Herndon, talking about the years before 2014External Quote:
From Fred Gunn 11-29-2002
My family and I recently moved from Hawaii where we saw only one chemtrail there in 5 years, and that was just last year. Now, in San Diego, we are unfortunately given one "hell" of a show on almost a daily basis.
Just east of here there are several military aerial bombardment ranges and many military bases surrounding us so military aircraft are seen constantly overhead, and noisy, too. But you know what? It's still like pulling teeth to get anyone here to "look up." And the planes doing the spraying are always white and unmarked. Even my 4 year old son can tell the difference between a chemtrail and a contrail now.
We've seen some pretty scary ones, too. I mean, parallel tracks that eventually merge and then start to "rain" down chemicals from the sky. Interestingly, the other real clouds scattered around started to lose their moisture at the same time. And then my friend Michael, who has recently opened his eyes and mind, asked me if they ever spray at night. I said "I've never seen any," and I'm an avid sky watcher, day and night, being a field investigator and former State Assistant Director for MUFON Hawaii, and now joined up with MUFON San Diego.
And Gunn, back in 2002External Quote:I have lived in the same house since 1977 and viewed the same area of the sky nearly every day. ... Over the years, I have seen on the average less than a single contrail a year,
Two people, living in the same city at the same time. Both with entirely different recollections about persistent spreading trails.External Quote:I'm an avid sky watcher, day and night ... Now, in San Diego, we are unfortunately given one "hell" of a show on almost a daily basis.... parallel tracks that eventually merge
This difference in recollections isn't even a new thing itself, take this story from 1971:
One person remembers seeing contrails spread out. But the other, who lived there all his life, says he never noticed it.
So Herdon's observations of a sudden change in the trails, an observation made in (apparently) peer-reviewed scientific papers, is demonstrably wrong. This does not in itself mean he's a bad scientist. It just mean that he's subject to the same cognitive biases as the rest of us. It means that you don't remember what you are not interested in. I means that if you suddenly notice something for the first time, you should check other sources before assuming you've never seen it before.
It means the next time someone tells you "contrails did not persist and spread before ...", you should show them the case of J. Marvin Herndon, PhD. Show them how he lived in the same place and looked at the same sky of 30 years, and how despite being a trained scientist he thought contrails did not persist and spread over that place before 2012, and yet he was wrong.
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