Look! Up in the sky! It's ... 'chemtrails'?

By Russ Lemmon on January 24, 2011 12:00 PMShare:         

Sunday's column about the strange patterns in the sky was educational for me in that I had never heard of "chemtrails" -- let alone the more conventional "contrails" -- before meeting with Joe 

Joe  believes the government is engaging in "geo-engineering" -- that is, it's trying to control the climate.

"Do a Google search for 'Operation Popeye' and tell me what you think," he said.

Joe , who took the photo above, has started a blog on this topic. In Sunday's blog entry, he mentioned "Operation Popeye."

I'll tell you, some of what he says does make sense. I mean, it's not like the U.S. government has never intentionally misled us.

One reader, Walt, suggested I do a Google search for HAARP. Interesting stuff. 

However, some take the "chemtrails" and believe the government is involved in population control. That's too far out there for me ... but reader Mark left a voice-mail message this morning, saying he believes there are "very dark forces closing in on the American people."

Gulp.

Anyway, I'd have to side with Flight Safety International's Keith Gordon, who described the patterns this way: 

"I have just read your column about the jet trails. Like Eric Menger, I have never heard of these trails being called chemtrails. I think the word "contrails" (short for condensation trails) might have been coined during WWII when the English and Europeans saw them coming from high flying bombers heading to and from their raids.

"I have used the term "jet trails" for as long as I can remember. I have left them all over the world, so you would think that if this is a huge government conspiracy, someone like North Korea or Iran would break ranks and start a protest at jets flying over their countries.

"The formation of these trails is a chemical process caused by the combustion of hydrocarbons (oil that comes out of the ground), which has been refined into jet fuel and not much different to the gasoline used in cars. Hydro stands for water and, of course, carbons consist of many elements and gasses, including carbon-dioxide. When these are exhausted into the atmosphere at very low temperatures, the water becomes super-cooled but needs a nucleus before it will turn to ice crystals. Some of these by-products of combustion provide the nucleus for the ice crystals to form and become visible. In the last couple of months the jet-stream has been over Florida bringing very cold air down from the North (don't we know about it). That is why the jet trails have been visible. The reason for the criss-crossing is that the VOR navigation facility at Vero Beach is an important one; a great number of the airways (highways in the sky) cross over Vero Beach travelling in different directions. Why don't we see them in the summer or warmer months; the right conditions do not exist for them to be visible.

"Are they harmful? The jury is still out amongst the scientists. There was a good study made in the three days after 9/11 when all aircraft in the USA were grounded. Surface temperatures around the USA were studied and compared with the three days before and another three days after the grounding and an approximate 1 degree celsious rise was detected during the three-day grounding. This could suggest that jet trails are not contributing to global warming. Maybe more people had to drive their cars to get around in those three days and that was the cause of the rise."