How to ask a conspiracy theorist to prove chem trails exist?

[SassysHuman]

Hello. California greetings here. I am happy to be here.

I have a chemtrail conspiracy theorist as a friend. Most of the time he's normal, but then he's not.

I need an assist in developing an argument debunking chemtrails.

Here goes.

Just say that the alleged chem trails appear to emit from the engines of planes. If so, a conspiracy theorist could prove this by going to an airport and watch chemicals being loaded onto the plane.

Is this a good way to go?

What else would be good?

 

[Mendel]

The metabunk way is to get the conspiracy theorists to provide evidence. If he doesn't have any, you can day that you don't feel comfortable trusting these sources when they don't have any.
If he does have evidence, you can probably look it up here on metabunk; make a new thread about the evidence if a search turns up nothing.

 

[AmberRobot]

One could do high resolution spectroscopy of the Sun seen through one of these trails. Then you could identify the chemicals by their absorption signature.

It may not be trivial to quickly get the right alignment but it doesn't seem impossible.

This kind of technique has been used by orbital instruments to measure chemical constituents of the Earth's atmosphere (as an undergraduate I did an internship working on one of them).

 

[AmberRobot]

Is every contrail a chemtrail? Is it physically impossible to contrails to exist? If not, then how does one distinguish between a chemtrail and an ordinary contrail?

My spectroscopy idea would be one direct method for detecting the signatures of chemicals in a contrail. But I have found that very few conspiracy theorists will put their money where their mouth is and invest in experiments that could support their ideas. I respect that one flat earther who built his own rocket though it didn't turn out well for him.

And some others who have tried experiments end up disproving their own conspiracies. Like the guys who bought a ring laser gyro and measured the drift rate of the earth's rotation.

 

[Ann K]

@AmberRobot
"Thanks, Bob."

 

[deirdre]

Just say that the alleged chem trails appear to emit from the engines of planes. If so, a conspiracy theorist could prove this by going to an airport and watch chemicals being loaded onto the plane.

i think your best bet would be to buy @Mick West 's book. I feel you likely need to know more about the chemtrail claims before you start debating your friend. (the book gives you the answers too..if you buy a hard copy the sources to the answers are here:
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/escaping-the-rabbit-hole-updated-endnotes-and-references.9934/ )

 

[Landru]

i think your best bet would be to buy @Mick West 's book. I feel you likely need to know more about the chemtrail claims before you start debating your friend. (the book gives you the answers too..if you buy a hard copy the sources to the answers are here:
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/escaping-the-rabbit-hole-updated-endnotes-and-references.9934/ )

Also, check out https://contrailscience.com/
This is Mick's page dedicated to chemtrail debunking that predates Metabunk.

 

[Todd Feinman]

I bought Mick's book for the public library and it is circulating well.