Sky over Amsterdam, The Netherlands - 30 June 2015

When I visited Amsterdam, I watched the sky fill with long streaks extending for hundreds of kilometers behind air traffic as they carried passengers to the furthers parts of the Earth. I had seen documentaries such as What in the World are they Spraying with interest and discernment. In my own research, I traveled the spectrum of belief and unbelief. I analyzed the arguments and came to my own conclusions. What bothered me most during this journey was the polarizing debates and ad-homonen arguments used to frame the people with beliefs on one side or the other, rather than addressing the facts. Terms like debunking serve no purpose except to discredit the intelligence of a person who makes an argument, simply because one believes he or she is wrong has a predisposition to one’s accepted view of what is true.

Regardless of what one personally believes, an argument should not bring about shun, especially for those who have no professional background in the topic. The reality is that well educated and rational people have been both right and wrong throughout history. Doubt is the foundation of real science. Even though I do not hold the belief that our skies are being coated in chemicals in a global terraforming attempt, neither do I feel that people who hold such beliefs to be irrational. History has shown that justification for such a belief are not out of the realm of reasonability. In fact, discrediting people by claiming their views are outlandish or offensive is a pillar of propaganda and misdirection used by those in authority to reinforce their dominance, encourage group think and discourage critical thinking.

A private company backed by Russ George, a U.S. business man, dumped over 100 tonnes of iron sulphate into the Pacific Ocean. In an experimental process known as ocean fertilization, George violated two United Nations moratoria. He hoped the experiment would cause plankton to absorb carbon dioxide; allowing further research to cash in on carbon credits. The experiment affected 10,000 square kilometers of ocean in a plankton boom.

During the 2008 Olympics games in Beijing, China seeded the clouds in order to prevent rain during critical events. Texas seeds clouds in over a third of their state, an area of 45 million acres, to control rainfall. Weather modification does happen. It’s technologies utilized by both governments and private industry. Chemtrails are believed to be a collective effort by scientists and world governments to modify weather on a global scale for a specific purpose. Theories on why they would do this varies, but the most common involve the prevention (or acceleration) of climate change.

Advocates say this is being done in plain sight. Documentaries such as Why in the World are they Spraying claim that what seem like clouds forming due to condensation from passenger airplane exhaust are really aerosol sprays containing heavy metals. They also claim the process has been introduced gradually over the past two decades, allowing people to become accustomed to such sprays as being normal.

Sky over Amsterdam, The Netherlands - 26 August 2015

I saw my first long, persistent trail of clouds suspended in the sky while traveling via train from Adelaide, South Australia to Alice Springs. These may have been present all my life, but this was the first time I really noticed and paid careful attention to it. Over the years I saw similar trails occasionally in cities in New Zealand, Singapore and eventually, the largest example, in Amsterdam.

If chemical spraying were happening at a global level, the scale of it would need to be phenomenal. However the scale of an endeavor being seemingly impossible shouldn’t immediately discredit it. Edward Snowden revealed that America and various other governments are actively spying on their own citizens on a scale so massive as it would have been discounted as a conspiracy theory if it were not for the context it was presented in.

Still, the evidence presented on some of these websites and in some documentaries would be convincing if it wasn’t for the scale. I’ve seen these trails while traveling through countries in the South Pacific, South East Asia, Western Europe and many other regions. Even though multi-nation secret projects of considerable scale have taken places, such as the Five Eyes and their international spying network, the scale for such a geo-engineering project would be substantially higher and involve corporation between either many industries and/or governments.

One of the arguments made in the mentioned documentaries is that standard airplane contrails quickly dissipate, where as chemical aerosols remain stagnant and gradually spread out over sky creating blankets of suspended heavy metals. The one piece of evidence I found as a compelling counter argument were photos from before the current Internet era, published in various magazines, that show the existence of such persistent clouds formed from jet engine exhaust.

George Silk photo of Ardennes, Belgium. 24 December, 1944

I’ll admit that even prior to tracking down the sources for photographs like these, I had become skeptical of chemtrails simply due to the amount of traveling I have done and the sheer scale of such a project. But with the same merit, I was also disheartened at all those who strongly attack people who hold such views. I really feel that terms such as debunking are geared more towards attacking individuals based on their beliefs rather than trying to critically think about a topic. To debunk means to already assume an existing bias or predisposition is correct, and then to either gather facts or preform an experiment to prove that thesis. It’s a mentality that often leads to the same type of cherry picking of facts and confirmation bias used by the people one is attempting to debunk.

During the Cold War era, the United States military carried out Operation Delirium, a project that involved subjecting soldiers to nerve gas and the hallucinogen LSD. They wanted to see if such agents could be turned into non-lethal weapons that could be sprayed over enemies. Over 5,000 soldiers participated in these dangerous experiments, without knowledge of the agents they had been given. Many of them have joined a class-action lawsuit against the US government.

People are not unintelligent simply for entertaining the hypothesis that chemical spraying programs to alter the environment may exist. The evidence presented so far shows that both governments and private organizations have openly engaged in weather modification. It also shows that a private investor has dumped chemicals into the ocean in a attempt at a business venture. We’ve even shown how the US government unethically experimented with soldiers to attempt to develop aerosol chemical weapon sprays. Finally, the Snowden leaks show that the scale of secretive global programs involving millions of dollars and multiple countries can and do exist.

In my own independent research and experiences, I do not believe at the current time that a world wide geo-engineering program exists. The majority of stagnant trails forming behind passenger airliners, that later disburse into their long stands across the sky are nothing more than clouds. They are simply formed by the vast difference in temperature between atmosphere and jet exhaust.

I will admit that for a while I questioned if that were true. After seeing the great trails of Amsterdam, I truly believed that some governments must be painting the skies in an attempt to curtail climate change. It was through diligent research and exploring, through both sides of the arguments, that I came to my conclusions. Independent thought and exploration should be encouraged.