The wild conspiracy theory surrounding "chemtrails"

Have you ever heard somebody talk about "chemtrails"? It is highly likely you have as it is one of the biggest weather conspiracy theories of the 21st century.

In big cities you can often see a multitude of clouds in the sky in the form of lines that cross the horizon. But what are these little white trails in the sky?

These clouds are used to support the "Chemtrails" conspiracy theory. They are said to be poison clouds that some very bad people are using to intoxicate us. But why?

In the face of climate change and lack of precipitation in many place worldwide, the "chemtrail" theory has been relaunched with a new argument....

Some conspiracy theorist say that it doesn't rain because airplanes prevent rain and cause drought, and that's evident in the sky full of contrails. Again the question arises: Why would anyone do such a thing?

In reality, the chemtrails theory, like all conspiracy theories, is constantly updated depending on the current situation.

(Image: Jan Antonin Kolar / Unsplash)

It all started in the 1990s with fears of mass obfuscations, morphed into anti-vaccination discourse (yes, some believed those clouds would be an attempt to vaccinate us from the air).

Now there are people who claim the traces left from airplanes in the skies are evidence that someone is manipulating the weather.

The explanation for the contrails we see in the sky is simple, and scientists keep repeating it: it's vapor emitted by commercial airliners (or other aircraft) that condenses and turns into ice crystals that hang in the sky hover. So it's not a mystery.

(Image: Bing Hui Yau / Unsplash)

Conspiracy theorists are convinced that these marks in the sky are being used to kill us or to control the world's population.

Starting from this premise, a wide range of beliefs opens up with different hypotheses between the mystical, the apocalyptic and the absurd.

But like all fears, the chemtrails theory has some reality in its origin. In fact, in the 20th century there were experiments in which the population was sprayed with potentially toxic elements.

(Image: Chris Barbalis / Unsplash)

According to 'The Independent', citing a government report, there were army tests between 1955 and 1963 in which zinc cadmium sulphide was dropped on the south and west coasts of Great Britain.

Another experiment conducted in San Francisco in 1950 is also widely cited. As reported in an article in Smithsonian Magazine, a Navy ship "airsprayed (the bacterium) Serratia marcescens for six days about two miles off the northern California coast." The spread of the bacterium was then analyzed to see what a biological attack would look like.

Experiments like this fuel conspiracy fantasies, but the reality is that if someone was doing something in our skies surely they would try not to draw so much attention to their actions, right?

(Image: Ryan Loughlin / Unsplash)

In reality, almost all conspiracy theories aim to challenge scientific discourse. Science, according to conspiracy theorists, is an artificial narrative full of lies constructed by the big corporations or secret societies that rule the world.

Belief in chemtrails has a lot to do with religion, as does the belief in a flat Earth and other theories. One can only arrive at these convictions by crossing the line of the established. Only the initiated understand the meaning of certain lines in the sky.

Debunking these conspiracy theories and misinformation is important: spreading them helps spread messages of hate and fear that are harmful to society.

(Image: Joel & Jasmin Førestbird / Unsplash)

Evidence of this is that an eccentric and seemingly "innocent" theory like the reptilian theory (which posits that an extraterrestrial race lives among us as humans) in some cases has been shown to conceal anti-Semitic utterances.

(Image: Stephen Leonardi / Unsplash)

And then there is the propensity of certain celebrities to be gullible and to propagate theories like chemtrails. Here's Kylie Jenner's conspiracy tweet from 2015.

But back to the trails left by airplanes that inspired the belief in chemtrails: are they harmful to our health?

(Image: Markus Spiske / Unsplash)

The answer is that these contrails are not a  toxic product, but according to the European Commission, air traffic is responsible for 13.9% of environmentally harmful CO2 emissions. Therefore, for the good of mankind, these trails that we see should disappear as much as possible.

(Image: Francesa Ciarlo / Unsplash)