Patrick Roddie - San Francisco, California, Rainwater sample

TEEJ

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We could start with the fact that sundogs aren't really that rare. Most evening with clouds made of ice crystals in the right position (22 deg to eather side of the sun) they can be seen.

Or we could start with the difference between a sundog and a halo. Because every 'sundog' in his video is a halo. While sundogs and 22 deg halos are often seen together, they are not the same phenomena. Halos are common enough they are an easy way to tell between altostratus and cirrostratus clouds. On a day when the sun is partially obscured by a uniform cloud layer, if you can see a halo, it's cirrostratus. If you can't, it's altostratus.

I'm not particularly qualified to comment on the actual tests, but his knowledge of common meteorological optical phenomena sucks.
 
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It's a bit unusual that he found zero aluminum but 160 mcg/L barium. Although that barium content is of no concern (2000 mcg/L is allowed in drinking water).
 
I thing again they are assuming the tests show barium in metallic form, when they actually show barium compounds.

[edit] although Roddie does mention "salts"
 
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Probably. Both tests were conducted on Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometers using EPA Method 200.8, so it would probably be helpful for Mr. Roddie to understand what mass spectrometry actually is.

Sigh.
 
He said the rain fell "on my apartment building" and the gravel/crushed rock looks like the kind used on flat roofs and it seems that he just sat a couple of short containers on the roof. Given the volume of water collected in what was described as a brief rain it probably came down pretty hard. If that is the case we can't rule out contamination from roofing materials, or ordinary dust, splashed into the containers.

 
I used to work for this lab. We were never happy to see these people using our results.
Yet since 2007 Basic Labs of Redding have probably been paid for many hundreds if not thousands of these tests. If only 1000 analyses were made that would be upwards of $100,000 worth of business. So, they weren't tuning away this business, even if they weren't happy when their customers used the results to maintain a worldwide hoax. To my knowledge they have never made any public statement about the way their customers have misconstrued (putting it politely) the results.

When Dane Wigington brought out the Basic Labs results in public meetings 8 years ago or when the results were subsequently displayed in a for-profit movie, WITWATS, the lab lost a great opportunity to straighten things out. Basic Labs certainly knew what was going on, and also knew that if they had corrected Dane and his Northern California cohorts he wouldn't have continued steering business their way.

Many people have profited off the misery brought on by this hoax. Basic Labs is one who knew better yet seems to have done nothing, or worse.....
 
Basic Labs is one who knew better yet seems to have done nothing, or worse.....
hhmm.. I have mixed feelings about that. If labs were to come out and start 'debunking' interpretations of these lab tests then people would stop getting their air/rain/soil tested.

and its these very tests that tell US (meaning me and you) ie. PROVE.. that no secret spraying has started yet. Not that there is any way they would actually spray over the United States, but still it's nice to have "non-shill" proof they aren't. If you and i collected and tested samples to prove it, they would just scream "shill" and dismiss the results.
 
The labs are not in the business of interpreting the results, nor should they be. They are paid to perform certain tests and determine the result, not what the result means.

Jay, I think your criticism of Basic Labs is highly speculative.
 
We could start with the fact that sundogs aren't really that rare. Most evening with clouds made of ice crystals in the right position (22 deg to eather side of the sun) they can be seen.

Or we could start with the difference between a sundog and a halo. Because every 'sundog' in his video is a halo. While sundogs and 22 deg halos are often seen together, they are not the same phenomena. Halos are common enough they are an easy way to tell between altostratus and cirrostratus clouds. On a day when the sun is partially obscured by a uniform cloud layer, if you can see a halo, it's cirrostratus. If you can't, it's altostratus.

I'm not particularly qualified to comment on the actual tests, but his knowledge of common meteorological optical phenomena sucks.
I would like to add that the mechanism to produce halo's is well understood. For example:
http://www.atoptics.co.uk/halo/circ1.htm
I can't see how metallic particles could create the same effect at all. You need something hexagonal and transparent for that.
 
When Patrick Roddie posted his YT video "21 "incredibly rare sundogs" in a month over San Francisco", 4 weeks ago...
....he tried very hard to implicate sprayed aluminum as the reason for the halos....going as far as to suggest that the halos were some sort of clear crystalline synthetic sapphire, as the "type" of aluminum being sprayed.

patrick_roddie_1.png


Three weeks later, he seems fairly certain the halos are from barium.
 
He said the rain fell "on my apartment building" and the gravel/crushed rock looks like the kind used on flat roofs and it seems that he just sat a couple of short containers on the roof. Given the volume of water collected in what was described as a brief rain it probably came down pretty hard. If that is the case we can't rule out contamination from roofing materials, or ordinary dust, splashed into the containers.



Or given the volume of rain he collected, he simply scooped it up off the ground or from other containers.
 
The labs are not in the business of interpreting the results, nor should they be. They are paid to perform certain tests and determine the result, not what the result means.
However, if they accept orders from non-professionals, they could easily provide some concise information about the test method principle, including the disclaimer I mentioned previously.

That wouldn't be any kind of interpretation in itself but rather helping with it.
 
Why not add a disclaimer to every result sheet that this test method can not tell apart free and bound elements in the sample?
However, if they accept orders from non-professionals, they could easily provide some concise information about the test method principle, including the disclaimer I mentioned previously.

That wouldn't be any kind of interpretation in itself but rather helping with it.
I totally get your point here, JF, and I'm big on disclaimers that clarify...

My first thought, though, would be that the kind of customers we're talking about,
would likely ignore said info, and/or crop a disclaimer out of any results image that they posted on-line.
Let's be honest: a lot of these folks are more about advancing an agenda they're invested in, than getting at the truth.

(I do see Mick's point, too...a disclaimer would have to be carefully phrased to not imply that the lab expected that the customer was intending to misrepresent the results)
 
Yet since 2007 Basic Labs of Redding have probably been paid for many hundreds if not thousands of these tests. If only 1000 analyses were made that would be upwards of $100,000 worth of business. So, they weren't tuning away this business, even if they weren't happy when their customers used the results to maintain a worldwide hoax. To my knowledge they have never made any public statement about the way their customers have misconstrued (putting it politely) the results.

When Dane Wigington brought out the Basic Labs results in public meetings 8 years ago or when the results were subsequently displayed in a for-profit movie, WITWATS, the lab lost a great opportunity to straighten things out. Basic Labs certainly knew what was going on, and also knew that if they had corrected Dane and his Northern California cohorts he wouldn't have continued steering business their way.

Many people have profited off the misery brought on by this hoax. Basic Labs is one who knew better yet seems to have done nothing, or worse.....

I half agree with the criticism. Certainly us lab rats weren't happy about it, and I personally alerted the bosses to this at the beginning. They considered responding with a press release, but must have decided against it.

At any rate, consulting costs extra. ;)
 
FYI, Roddie isn't tolerant of dissent:

"The first rule of Freedom Club is: You do not (tolerate unflattering) talk about Freedom Club!"



p.s. I have this weird sense that this Roddie character made some posts here months ago, in which he tried to kind of represent himself as an open-minded guy who just wanted to generously share his objective professional photographer experience. Does that ring a bell for anyone, or am I even more senile than I feared?
 
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For what it's worth, I asked the receptionist at Basic Labs once whether this Al/Ba/Sr testing was a significant part of their business, and she said no, it was very small. On one occasion, when I turned in a sample, I saw the supervisor of our city sewage plant also bringing in samples.
 
I had a tin-hat themed house warming a few years ago. Simple, cheap, minimum effort for guests. I wrapped my letterbox in foil instead of the traditional balloons to symbolise where the party was at. A (new to me) neighbour asked what I was doing, I off-the-cuff replied that it was so 'they' couldn't see my mail, jesting of course. He took me seriously and wrapped his own letterbox.

At least until the party started and he must have figured out I was joking, but he has looked at me weirdly ever since.
 
Interesting. The facebook page in the OP's been removed/deleted. Is Roddie still on FB?

Edit: looks like his personal page has been taken down, though his business page is still active.
 
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