Vapor dispersal.

"It's chemicals!"
"It's spider webs of chemicals!"
"It's microchips!"
"It's sun blocking special metallic smoke!"
"It's cancer seeds!"
My Mom, an expert on chemtrails
- "It's chemicals!"
  Technically correct, I guess.
  
  Well, and "it causes cancer" is as well. But not like... It's raining down cancer on you. More like jet fuel contains known carcinogens.
  It's more the direct effects. According to my mom, the chemtrails should have...I don't know, but done whatever it was supposed to be doing by now. A 30+ year timeline for something causing cancer? So less bad than smoking? That's the metric?
  
  H₂O
  The most scary of chemicals
  
  Dihydrogen Monoxide kills thousands of people every year. It should be banned! /s
  
  The best kind of correct.
- What kind of cancer will those seeds grow into?
  
  Yes
- The fourth one of those is unfortunately an almost plausible theory. Plenty of people are seriously advocating for studies into Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI) in order to mitigate climate change so that the almighty free market would have more time to fix the problem without any need for systemic change.
  But that wouldn't be visible to the naked eye :D
  Funnily enough, contrails like all other clouds composed of ice crystals actually warm the planet up by letting shortwave radiation from the sun through while reflecting longwave (infrared), effectively trapping heat. Thcker and lower clouds are more effective at reflecting shortwave radiation.
  
  Yes, but the conspiracy theory version is that it's a scam to further the scam that is climate change. It doesn't make any sense.
- Oh no, not the chemicals!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemtrail_conspiracy_theory
Patrick Minnis, an atmospheric scientist with NASA's Langley Research Center, has said that logic does not dissuade most chemtrail proponents: "If you try to pin these people down and refute things, it's, 'Well, you're just part of the conspiracy'".
- That or you're just "asleep" and need to "wake up".
  
  But these are the same people saying things are too "Woke"
  So which is it?
  🤣
- Dude on my Facebook posted a Pic of some repurposed 747 with a bunch of tubes in the cabin with a caption about the chemtrail stuff taking up space. Like, motherfucker, if it takes that much space, how is every passenger jet doing it??
  
  Those diagrams and pictures are a disinformation campaign. They show a system that obviously can't function, so you dismiss the theory out of hand.
  But the reality is that they mix the mind control chemicals directly into regular jet fuel. The pilots don't even know they are involved.
  /s
  
  Isn't the conspiracy that some planes are doing it. Not all planes?
- You can't ration people out of positions they did not rationalize themselves into.
- Understanding is cemented in one's original source of information about the world. Shaping a pre-existing understand requires not just accuracy but volume, because you're not competing against faulty logic. You're competing against accumulated memories.
  If someone is deep into the conspiracy theory rabbit hole, what is shaping their opinion is the consistent repetition of orthodoxy over time. Similarly, if someone is highly educated in a particular scientific field, their opinion is shaped by the persistent need to reaffirm fundamental truths in order to succeed and progress. We are not computers. We are not creatures of pure logic. We are the accumulation of our prior experiences and exposures.
  You should not be surprised if an individual - when confronted with a narrow band of contrary information - does not immediately jettison all their prior information. Because ask yourself - would you? I mean, if a single guy showed up with a stack of papers insisting he's proved without a shadow of a doubt that chemtrails are real and the entire professional weather reporting community is lying to you, is there anything they could show you that you wouldn't greet with skepticism proportional to your exposure to professional weather science?
  Because, if the answer is "No", then why would you expect someone immersed in hundreds of hours of conspiracy theory podcasts and think pieces and social media conversations to behave any differently?
  
  Because even if chemtrails were a thing they’re logistically impractical. There are multiple unlikely leaps of logic
  There are multiple steps of logic here
  can aircraft spray chemicals? Sure, we have ag planes and fire fighting planes. In Vietnamese War we sprayed defoliant
  is there a mind control chemical that can be sprayed?
  if there was, could someone benefit from widespread dispersion?
  can you spread it through jet engine exhaust within it destroying it?
  is it possible to include with regularly scheduled air service without passengers or crew noticing?
  how many people would have to be in on the conspiracy and what are the chances of keeping it secret so long?
  So the current examples of spraying from plane do so all at once through special equipment. You’d notice plus can’t really be widespread. It’s extremely unlikely a chemical could be mixed into jet fuel, survive the combustion process, and be spread with enough concentration to be useful. There’s no way such a large program would go unnoticed, could possibly be kept secret. Most importantly, for what purpose? If someone were trying to mind control the whole country what does it benefit to dose a random person in a field with no special skill or access and where there’s no one around to control them?
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-Spray
  From the page:
  Between 1949 and 1969, open-air tests of biological agents were conducted 239 times.
  239 open-air tests of biological agents in a 20 year period. Remind me again why people have no reason to be paranoid? This wasn't that long ago.
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentation_in_the_United_States
  These aren't conspiracy theories.
  Is there something real behind these people's paranoia and suspicion? Do our government, military, and our corporations inspire trust?
  
  Is there something real behind these people’s paranoia and suspicion? Do our government, military, and our corporations inspire trust?
  No, the US government, as with every government, does not deserve trust. They are not your friend. They will lie to you, directly or by omission.
  However, all governments are bad at coverups. Chem trails would need to have entire leagues and fields paid off and prohibited from investigating it. Not just in America, but world wide. If America was doing Chem trails, there's nothing really prohibiting China or Russia from calling it out. They have zero reasons to agree to deals to limit their scientists, as it would be a major shake up in geopolitics. America in that instance could not be trusted with any claims of its scientific achievements.
  I don't really buy into a moon landing hoax or a JFK cover up. By now, everything and everyone involved would have had to been paid off, including families, scientists, historians, and more.
  You don't need to be mad at a vague shadow government, you can be mad at the actual government for what they are actually doing. Be mad at Tuskegee and Gulf of Tonkin, not 9/11 with wire bombs and plane holograms.
  
  These aren't conspiracy theories.
  They once were, and then they were proven to be true.

I had my conspiracy theory ex brother in law explain that chem trails were things Biden added to jets to fight global warming.... My response was "shit, I wish that was true!"
Somehow that wasn't the answer he was expecting.
- wish that was true
  It is true

And in a country with dogshit standards for HS science. And math. And reading. And history.
- More like "High school science failed them" right?
- Which country is that?
  
  We’ll need to include geography too.

I got back in touch with a friend of mine who who graduated in the same class as me with a B.S. in Physics. When they learned that I'm an atmospheric scientist, their first question was "What's the deal with Chem trails?"
Point being, conspiracy theories also infect the educated sometimes.

On the other hand, we have seen exhaust being very efficient in distributing chemicals with adverse health effects across the planet. Leaded gasoline was a huge oopsie that still has adverse health effects today.
- Does it still cause harm? Or are people "just" still harmed by the exposure back then?
  
  I think it has gotten a lot better in the past 10 years, but there are still a lot of places where there is too much lead in the environment. It doesn't degrade at all, so unless it's dealt with it just stays there. Given we've only gotten rid of leaded gasoline less then 3 decades ago, the effects are still very much there.
  
  General aviation still uses leaded gas almost exclusively. It's really hard to qualify replacements though the FAA, and airports don't want to carry multiple fuel types.
  
  I've read that most of the lead from leaded gasoline is still in the environment, where it does cause harm. It it's in the soil, and that can get into people through a variety of means.

This reminds me of the time when I was a kid and me and several of my family members went racing out into the front yard to watch the plane that was doing all kinds of aerial acrobatics over our neighbors's field dropping whatever chemical or fertilizer was in their tanks that day so we were all basically coated in it by the time they were done and we went back inside. Except I wasn't a kid when it happened, I was a fully informed adult who should have known better and then a few days later we found out it was some kind of potentially dangerous fungicide. But on the plus side I now have 3 penises.
- This reminds me of my parents' stories of running out to play in the clouds of DDT when the spray trucks went through the neighborhood
  
  Mmm, tastes spicy!

Conspiracy theories are an outlet. People need a reason for why society is not as good as they feel it could be.
Most people blame the other political party. But that doesn't work for everybody. The mind keeps looking until it finds a reason, and then it fades out all arguments that oppose it.
We laugh about conspiracy theorists, but most have the same mindset, just with socially acceptable topics.
- Yeah real chemical companies dump their chemicals straight into a river.
- Nice thinking, you're correct and after trying to avoid that pattern you become extremely aware of your own flawed opinions and how others don't care as long as it means they aren't pinned as the fault or reason

When I read /r/teachers and all the trouble they're having teaching the next generation, this is the sort of thing I imagine is coming. A couple of years ago, GenZ was saying, in essence, "We just need to wait for all the 'boomers' to die off, then everything will be better." No. No, that will just make things worse. GenX leftists are the only ones holding the line, and Millennial teachers are about to give up and walk away, seriously. It's pretty fuckin' bad, and it's clear it's going to get worse, looking at how many kids are coming up through the school system who can barely read and write and have practically zero attention span or motivation.
- Hi there, gen Z person here. Things are bad but remember that, as always, you only see and hear about the vocal minority. No matter how poor American education standards are, it is irrefutable that Trumpism could not exist without idiots from all generations. The education paradigms we are emerging from cannot possibly be worse than those which produced tens of millions of conservatives and hundreds of millions of nonvoters. This is specifically because of those gen X leftists and millennial teachers you mentioned. We aren't competing as generations--failures of the past become the lessons of the present because older generations also have smart people. So how do you know gen Z won't do even better? Everything else aside, growing up under fascism creates widespread discontent. I'd say from personal knowledge that for every one gen Z kid that believes in the system are five who at least recognize it's broken.
  Now, I won't pretend to be particularly optimistic either; things are bad. However, I also want to believe that we can and will do better. And maybe I'll be wrong, but at least I haven't given up hope.
  
  A lot of us realized the futility of the current system and put our hopes on gen z to be better, to rebuild, to have the sense to build the future, not tear it down. For there to be a huge change when the boomers finally give it up.
  Unfortunately this election showed gen z to be just as flawed as the rest of us. It’s getting harder to hope but maybe my kids will help save the world

The only planes actually dropping chemicals are just doing farm work.
- Uhhhhhmmmm akshually there are increased cancer rates near airports because, it turns out, setting jet fuel on fire and shoving it out of an engine to go fast leads to some of those chemicals settling into the land around concentrated flight paths.
  This is the unfortunate kernel of truth that sets the dummies tilting at conspiracy theories instead advocating for environmental regulation.
  
  That, and they put the mind control chemicals directly into the jet fuel. The pilots don't even know they are complicit, just the government and the oil companies.
  /s

Meanwhile, the government: “That’s fucking stupid. We don’t poison you with the air, that would be inefficient. We have to breathe that, too. We just poison the water and the soil, and if you’re a target we will just pick you up off of the street like a stray cat, we’ve always been very up front about that.”

I literally put it together in highschool when someone mentioned it to me after learning about how clouds form from nuclei.

More like elementary school. We learned about water vapor in 3rd grade.

Meanwhile space x makes a flare and has falling debris , MAGA: gotta buy a cybertruck and drive it into ocean to show support

I have no idea how it works and I studied chemical engineering. I guess I would have to study physical engineering
- You don't know how it works because you didn't study tin foil hat engineering.
  
  You can actually get pretty good efficiency with tin foil hat engineering due to the reduced cranial volume.

They think this is bad but think the lead in plane fuel is fine

The really depressing thing about this, and many other "unexplained" aerial phenomena, is that it demonstrates how many people just never fucking look up at the sky.

This thing is real, they're spreading dihydrogen monoxide vapours everywhere. Moreover every single dead person has the same thing in their body. Coincidence? I think /s

So true. I have a classmate who is an anti-vaxxer, even though we did biology.
- D's get Degrees too
  
  They just never paid attention in school.

They're just researching ChemRail™s

To be fair, they do look ugly in the sky.

Here's a new clearer statement to express my thoughts on the matter.
Contrails are visible and normal and fine. I probably don't fully understand the science behind them, but I realize what we are seeing is water vapor.
Chemtrails are also real though. They are invisible to the naked eye and are directly contributing to global warming as well as some health concerns that are hard to quantify. They are not some conspiracy to control or disable the masses. The exhaust of cars and especially planes leave a trail of harmful chemicals behind them. The reason for this is because we care more about convenience and money than we do about the ecosystem we live in.
I personally believe pointing out that dichotomy is more useful than laughing at people who are misinformed.
- that's not a workable strategy because when you redefine terms like that you sound just like a conspiracy theorist. exhaust gases are not "chemtrails", they're exhaust gases. they're dangerous and everywhere, but they're not a secret government conspiracy.
  we don't need a "new way" to talk about things with people who refuse to understand.
  
  If you loosely define chemtrails as "a trail of chemicals" then almost everything has chemtrails. Fuckkin ants have chemtrails, it's how they communicate and navigate.
  Chemtrail conspiracists literally think that airplanes are full of 55 gallon drums of chemicals with the express purpose to harm or feminize the populace to prevent people from opposing the government.
- Chemtrails are broadly believed to be nefarious chemicals that alter everything from weather (to facilitate global warming, not to prevent it) to human/animal hormones. While exhaust is no doubt harmful, when conspiracy theorists speak of chemtrails, they are speaking of shady government operatives intentionally loading the planes with experimental chemicals that are meant to be rained down onto the masses.
  
  Can you blame them when the US government has directly experimented on the American populace in past?
  e.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-Spray
  From the page:
  Between 1949 and 1969, open-air tests of biological agents were conducted 239 times.
  239 open-air tests of biological agents in a 20 year period. Many, many people are still alive from that time period. It's not that long ago.
  Or more broadly, just look at this page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentation_in_the_United_States
  Do those pages inspire trust in the government and military? Would you know if you were being experimented on and gaslit?
  Corporations engage in similar unethical behavior, like putting ingredients that are known to be toxic or harmful to human health in products we consume or put on our bodies.
  Instead of blaming or name-calling people who are paranoid or suspicious, we need a society with a greater focus on human rights — with more regulation and oversight. A society that inspires trust, with the facts, ethics, and independent review to back it up.
- Contrails are assholes. They are too thin to reflect sunlight, but they soak up and trap heat. They form a blanket and contribute a ton to global warming.

- What if I'm competing with them from a company based (not entirely for tax reasons) on Mercury?

Nah, plane exhaust is real and killing the planet. Just because the contrails are science and not doing mind control doesn't mean they're not still bad.
- Well, it's not jet exhaust you're seeing, though. It's water vapor in air that's been compressed in a jet engine and then quickly decompressed out of the back, which causes the air to cool thus condensing the water vapor into droplets similar to those in a cloud.
  
  Oh so you think you can science your way out of this?
  
  I think it might be more about temperature differences than pressure differences. That is to say hot exhaust cools rapidly and any water vapor condenses. Some aircraft leave no contrails, depending on atmospheric conditions.
  Here is a chart to predict contrails on a high-bypass jet engine
  And here are aircraft leaving contrails without any jet engines
  And some more leaving no contrails at all
  
  And those clouds, being too thin to reflect sunlight but able to trap heat, form a kind of blanket around earth, greatly contributing to global warming.
  If I understand it correctly, you could magic away the exhaust and have perfectly clean contrails, and they would still warm the planet.
  
  Another effect is micro-particles from the jet exhaust that form a lot of nucleation sites, this allows the vapor in the air to condense into tiny droplets more easily.
  
  Just because the contrails are science
  I understand that part, doesn't stop them from containing the plane exhaust which is directly contributing to global warming
  
  Incorrect. The condensation you are seeing in the air is a product of combustion. If no water was added to the air, then compressing it and decompressing it would not create a cloud or vapor trail.
  Edit: Fine. It's mostly incorrect.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrail
  Yes, the lower pressure can create a very temporary contrail, and in rare situations where the engine exhaust also cools down below freezing before it reaches ambient pressure, ice crystals can form and create a longer more visible contrails. Realistically, what you are seeing in a contrail is water vapor from combustion. Seriously, H2O and water are the largest products of combustion, and it's like 99% of what you are seeing behind aircraft.