I have been getting a lot of flak on social media about “chemtrails” from conspiracy theorists lately, as I’m sure many of you readers have also experienced. So, I decided to work up a reference post that uses bullet points factoids to make rebuttal points. You can also reference my rebuttal from 2016. Feel free to share and use anywhere – Anthony
The chemtrail conspiracy theory alleges that aircraft contrails are chemical agents deliberately sprayed for sinister purposes. This theory is unsupported by scientific evidence and contradicts well-established atmospheric science, logistical realities, and environmental data. Below is a concise rebuttal addressing key misconceptions, with additional references to strengthen the argument.
- Contrails are water vapor, not chemicals: Contrails form when water vapor from aircraft engine exhaust immediately condenses and freezes into ice crystals at high altitudes (above 25,000 feet), where temperatures are below -40°C. See the graphic below. These crystals create visible trails that persist based on humidity and temperature, as detailed in Shearer et al. (2016). Studies like Schumann (2005) further confirm contrails are primarily water-based, with trace emissions (e.g., soot, sulfur) insufficient to suggest deliberate chemical dispersal.
- Persistence is a natural phenomenon: Chemtrail proponents cite long-lasting trails as evidence of chemicals. However, contrails persist in cold, humid conditions because ice crystals sublimate slowly, as explained in Shearer et al. (2016). The IPCC (1999) report on aviation notes that contrail spreading is a meteorological effect, not a sign of spraying.
- No evidence of chemical spraying: Claims of “chemtrails” rely on anecdotal reports or misinterpretations of contrail behavior. No peer-reviewed studies support a large-scale spraying program. Shearer et al. (2016) found 98% of atmospheric scientists reject the chemtrail theory, aligning with assessments from NASA (2017) that confirm contrails are benign aviation byproducts.
- Logistical impossibility of secrecy: A global chemtrail conspiracy would require coordination among thousands of pilots, technicians, scientists, and officials across nations. Maintaining secrecy is implausible, as noted by Spencer (2025). The Manhattan Project, a far smaller operation, faced leaks; a visible, widespread program like chemtrails would be impossible to conceal, per Mick West’s analysis (2018).
- Water testing misinterpretations: Alleged evidence of metals like aluminum or barium in rainwater is often cited by chemtrail advocates. These elements occur naturally in seawater, soil, and dust, which contribute to rainwater composition through evaporation and precipitation. Spencer (2025) and the USGS (2004) confirm that trace metals in water are consistent with natural environmental processes, not aerial spraying.
- Historical context of the theory: The chemtrail theory arose in the 1990s from misinterpretations of weather modification research, like cloud seeding, and distrust in institutions. Spencer (2025) and West (2018) trace its spread to misinformation about routine aviation, with no credible evidence emerging despite decades of scrutiny.
How contrails form from jet engine exhaust:
Source: AirServicesAustralia.com
Bottom Line:
In conclusion, the chemtrail theory is refuted by extensive scientific evidence showing contrails as water vapor condensing into ice crystals at high altitudes. Their persistence is a natural atmospheric process, and alleged chemical evidence aligns with environmental norms. The impracticality of orchestrating a secret, global spraying program further discredits the theory.
References:
- Shearer, C., et al. (2016). Quantifying expert consensus against the existence of a secret, large-scale atmospheric spraying program. Environmental Research Letters, 11(8). https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2016ERL….11h4011S/abstract
- Spencer, R. (2025). Does the Air Force own the weather in 2025? Origins of the chemtrail theory. https://www.drroyspencer.com/2025/03/does-the-air-force-own-the-weather-in-2025-origins-of-the-chemtrail-theory/
- Schumann, U. (2005). Formation, properties and climatic effects of contrails. Comptes Rendus Physique, 6(4-5), 549-565. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crhy.2005.05.002
- IPCC. (1999). Aviation and the global atmosphere. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/aviation-and-the-global-atmosphere-2/
- NASA. (2017). Contrail watching for kids. https://www.nasa.gov/learning-resources/contrail-watching-for-kids/
- West, M. (2018). Debunked: The chemtrail conspiracy. Metabunk. https://www.metabunk.org/threads/debunked-the-chemtrail-conspiracy.893/
- USGS. (2004). Trace elements and radionuclides in U.S. groundwater. U.S. Geological Survey. https://www.usgs.gov/mission-areas/water-resources/science/trace-elements-and-radionuclides-groundwater
Like flat-earthers, chemtrails believers cannot be persuaded by logic or data. As the comedian Ron White said, “You can’t fix stupid”.
On very cold days with sufficient humidity, you can see “car trails” from tailpipe exhaust. You can see your own breath. But those turbofan engines can’t possibly do anything like that! /sarc
In 2025, US aerospace forces can “own the weather” by capitalizing on emerging technologies and focusing development of those technologies to war-fighting applications. Such a capability offers the war fighter tools to shape the battlespace in ways never before possible. It provides opportunities to impact operations across the full spectrum of conflict and is pertinent to all possible futures. The purpose of this paper is to outline a strategy for the use of a future weather-modification system to achieve military objectives rather than to provide a detailed technical road map. A high-risk, high-reward endeavor, weather-modification offers a dilemma not unlike the splitting of the atom. While some segments of society will always be reluctant to examine controversial issues such as weather-modification, the tremendous military capabilities that could result from this field are ignored at our own peril. From enhancing friendly operations or disrupting those of the enemy via small-scale tailoring of natural weather patterns to complete dominance of global communications and counterspace control, weather-modification offers the war fighter a wide-range of possible options to defeat or coerce an adversary.
https://ia601605.us.archive.org/35/items/WeatherAsAForceMultiplier/WeatherAsAForceMultiplier.pdf
Also:
One of the things that stroked delusions of godhood for well over a century, yes.
https://web.archive.org/web/20170310194059/en.kalitribune.com/indecent-atmosphere-the-eugenics-roots-of-metabunks-contrail-con/
And since there’s actual R&D working in this direction, there’s secrecy. Which nowadays includes smoke-and-mirror operations. An obviously silly and silly named “muh chemtrails” strawman was introduced by obvious clowns to be easily “debunked”. Much like the “jet flying gorilla” incident during P-59 tests at Muroc was crafted to sound as silly as possible.
I put up comment here yesterday describing come of the science behind contrail/chemtrails, and the moderators censored it. That was uncalled for and an insult to the idea of open discussion. My only regret was that I failed to complete my thoughts, that I do not understand what those aerosols might be or why they are there. Once source I read says it’s merely a means of disposing of toxic waste that is too expensive to undertake here on the ground. There does hang around the idea that we are being drugged, dumbed down, ingested with harmful foreign substances that affect our cognition. All I can say about that, and directly to the person who censored me, is that dumbing us down is a fait accompli and would be redundant.
So that’s what the great problem of today is. (sigh)
I can do a simpler and more sensible rebuttal: «the Chemtrail Conspiracy Theory» is rather obviously a forced meme from the Unofficially Official Press and shills. It’s not the first, not the last, and its objectives are the same as of any other such strawman:
Lump any opposition with a bunch of clowns.Distract from the real issues. Which always are around.(sometimes) Cover up some disturbing facts before more people are aware of them. Aggressively spammed nonsense makes it near-impossible to openly discuss, find via search engines or even remember the original subject.
An example of (1) is using Flat Earthers (fake, as them using the word “globe” shows) and suchlike to discredit climatology skeptics. Also, it’s the main job of “fellow kids” like Alex Jones and Andrew Anglin — beating even (2), because even things that cannot be covered up or buried completely can be discredited this way.
For (2), let’s just say, MSM is called “weapon of mass distraction” for a reason. Everything it does that is not a spin is a distraction. «Oh, look, the Kardashians made up (well, probably plagiarized again) something!»
For a clear example of (3), take another “hurr durr Clown Opposition” strawman: “we have never landed on the Moon”. I accidentally noticed in time a little notion, which was not at all surprising to myself, but became curious for swift (and far too wide to be accidental) spamming over with this. This attracts attention, but… Do you remember what it was? If not, can you guess what it was and why it was covered up? If you cannot, the given cover-up was a success.
For the curious: it was an observation about redundancy between certain Lunar missions, making little sense given their cost, but making sense if at least some of these missions had different and hidden (i.e. military) true objectives. Which of course anyone with good sense would assume both USA and USSR did as much as they could anyway, but hey, no-evidence theater must go on.
Yes, could be another strawman psyop, which seem to be common.
Gell-Mann Amnesia
https://themindcollection.com/gell-mann-amnesia-effect/
‘Look at yourselves you pass yourselves off as cynical people, yet you still have faith in the system.’
The Big Short
To the reader of this website, the system was/is rigged against you too…..you were labled ‘crack pots, deiners, anti-science etc.’
I understand if you burn fuel it makes water vapor, it also makes a host of other chemicals (we once thought lead in our gasoline was good), and yes we should test the air more.
The problem with Chris Meyer’s article over there is that the author mostly assumes mechanisms that simply don’t describe reality. Like spherical-cow-in-vacuum idea of “rationality”. That’s beating around the bush.
And that is where the problem lies, indeed. Essentially the observed phenomenon is not different from “Well, of course our preacher can be a bit of an ass now and then, but surely Pope is the Viceroy of God on Earth? So whatever he says is unquestionable truth, but obviously he just cannot police every church at all times…” and any variations thereof.
Which is why observations of Gell-Mann Amnesia effect, while obviously true, never achieved much: as good ol’ Jonathan Swift put it, «Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired».
There are 2 issues in the article and the comments.
The first is the idea that there is a massive effort to disperse chemicals via get engines and the contrails are laced with harmful molecules. A global, wide scale, program to do this falls under conspiracy theory and lots of evidence that it is not currently ongoing is presented and highly credible.
The second issue addresses the possibility, perhaps factual, there is a history of high altitude aerosol dispersion. There is little doubt that experiments were conducted. Cloud seeding has been tried. What is kept secret by the military is something we will never get info on. If one has a concept that could give a military advantage, of course the military would study it and, perhaps, conduct experiments.
At least. The problem here is mixing of everything remotely related together, yes.
And since even war is but the continuation of politics by other means… *motions to finish the thought*
I have worked on jet fuel formulations for 25+ years and jet fuel is one of the most regulated hydrocarbon products produced. All fuel must meet ASTM D1655 specifications that require that jet fuel be produced only from crude oil sources or in a few limited cases from biomass sources such as Fats/Oils/Greases (FOG) via hydroprocessing. And these “synthetic: jet fuel must meet additional requirements defined in ASTM D7566.
An interesting point is that synthetic jet fuels have more hydrogen than conventional jet fuels due to essentially zero aromatics in the synthetic fuels so they actually produce more water vapor when burned. However, with lower aromatics there is less soot produced which acts as a nucleation site for crystal formation. So, in reality, synthetic jet fuel produces lower amounts of contrails.
It all gets so complex!
“So, in reality, synthetic jet fuel produces lower amounts of contrails.”
Especially if it triples the price of airfare.
Sulfur particles or carbon particles?
Neither really.
How is a Chemtrail Conspiracy theorist — who builds a conclusion on zero evidence— any different than a Climate Denier?
Both use empirical evidence, quite the opposite of our lying friends like you Warren.
And to add to my sympathy for chemtrail believers, confounding realities exist, such as cloud seeding, crop dusting, various military processes, and now your idiotic friends are getting into geoengineering.
Patents: In addition to earlier points; as I see it a reason for raising a patent is in case at a later date you or someone else figure out how to make it work and make money from it; think of everything you can and patent it before your competitors do. And why wouldn’t people be trying to think of ways to end a drought or stop a destructive storm etc, whether it actually works, risks other problems, should be allowed being another issue.
Adding it to the fuel: My engineering was agricultural, industrial, automotive, not aviation, but similar and I would imagine understanding the fuel properties, composition, additives is most important for performance, reliability, emissions and everything is closely monitored all parts of the system, checked and validated so would be interesting to see more details of the claims of how this is supposedly done, the chemicals, amount needing to be added, etc, the evidence, how they come to that conclusion.
Jettrails are like concrete. Climate Science has no solution to their effect on climate. As a result anyone that mentions this is a conspiracy nut job.
The 911 sat photos are clear evidence that jet aircraft produce a lot of heat trapping clouds. Clouds being the least understood part of climate. Along with jettrail ozone depletion there is a lot we don’t know. People always get that part wrong and underestimate the unknown unknowns.
I wish we could purge that expression.
The definition of heat is thermal energy transfer across that temperature gradient (hot to cold).
If the energy is “trapped” it is not flowing. If it is not flowing, it is not heat.
Temperature is the measure of the average kinetic energy of molecules in proximity to the thermometer. If the heat is trapped, there is no change in kinetic energy and therefore no change in temperature.
The physics cannot be simplified to a simple statement of “heat trapping.”
I wonder how many of he chemtrail exponents would be happy to forego flying as the only way to stop aircraft leaving contrails.
A point often missed, where is the big queue of commercial and military airframe and power plant mechanics lined up telling all?
There aren’t any because those systems don’t exist. There would have to be OSHA and FAA regulations involved as we know those agencies could not resist having their say. OSHA would be there big time because of ‘hazardous’ material handling.
IOW, if you believe in chemtrails, you are being willfully ignorant.
There are some who conflate particulates from cloud seeding operations with normal contrails.
Its not just jets. WWII films show contrails too from piston engines .
Well of course contrails are chemicals sprayed deliberately.
H2O is a ‘chemical’ and jet engines produce it. And jet engines are used deliberately.
The only thing wrong is that they are not especially harmful nor is the purpose nefarious.
It is interesting to note that the so called man made rise in temperature fits far more closely to the rise in air traffic post WW2 than it does to any CO2 rise.
Svensmark might have something to say…
During the period from early to mid 1950’s to late 1970’s or so, global average surface temps were falling.
I feel I need another attempt at discussing it with those local to me; it doesn’t make sense to me – I don’t see how patents prove it, my back of envelope calcs imply to me you will get significant water and condensation from burning kerosene, I can’t see adding it to the fuel working, I’m not sure why images of tanks etc in planes are chemtrail not ballast testing, fire fighting, bug spraying etc, reading the actual words from gov and admitted weather modification don’t seem to stack up in my mind to the apparent claims or constant pointing at the white trails, photos or videos of unusual things supposedly chemtrail related but likely could have another explanation seem to lack context which would help clarify, etc.
Ideally I want to try and get actual meetings, not a debate, lecture or debunk but a meeting, or workshop, i.e. I wonder if a more structured, live and 2 way process would be more productive for all sides. The first step I’m thinking is to ask a series of questions with the view of clarifying and writing down the claims before moving on to discussing the evidence presented again. London isn’t too far, so maybe that would be a good location for a larger meeting or workshop.
Trust in science: I trust what I’ll call L1 (level 1 of) science, the basic or first principles and L2 where they are applied in more complex but well understood situations by the relevant experts with a relatively simple check by peers or a test. L3 is even more complex and/or potential issues with measurement etc (like my engineering, climate, pandemic); follow the science, applied science, against the clock, high consequence, serving us all and my concern is if we don’t have suitable processes here (e.g. objective, balanced project planning, validation and auditing) we risk disastrous mistakes. It seems to me many people who may be losing trust in L3 are effectively deciding L1&2 can’t be trusted either but I don’t think my kind of engineering (product development, complex original equipment, R&D, fault investigations, validation, mass production) would have been possible if L1&2 are wrong or I would have noticed they are wrong, so if they are rejected by too many I fear we are also in a potentially dangerous situation.
I think we need a series of structured meetings or workshops with people from both sides (and including those trusting L1-3, L1&2 only, none) on issues like chemtrails, flat earth, why trust science – for the latter I think the first step is defining what we require of follow the science, what is the current process, is it suitable for that task, compare with other areas like engineering.
Well, Chemtrails are certainly a crock, but I don’t put it past our government(s) to be seeding the clouds with Chemicals and other crap all in the name of Science.