Vinegar FTW

The frustrating thing about woo-woo ideas is that they never really go away permanently.

Take, for example, the Ancient Aliens thing.  It really came into the public eye with Erich von Däniken's 1968 bestseller Chariots of the Gods.  Buoyed up by his book unexpectedly catapulting him into fame, he followed it up with a number of sequels, including: Gods from Outer Space; The Gold of the Gods; In Search of Ancient Gods; Miracles of the Gods; Signs of the Gods; Pathways to the Gods; and Enough About The Fucking Gods, Already, Let's Talk About Something Else For A Change.

Ha!  I made the last one up, of course, because von Däniken is currently ninety years old and still talks about The Gods all the time, raking in huge amounts of money from conferences and keynote speeches (as well as book royalties).  And that's the difficulty, isn't it?  When there's money to be made (or clicks to be clicked -- which in today's social media world, amounts to the same thing), you can never really be confident of saying goodbye to an idiotic idea.

Which, unfortunately, brings us to "chemtrails."

Chemtrails -- known to us Kool-Aid Drinkin' Sheeple as ordinary jet contrails -- got their start in 2007.  A reporter for KSLA News (Shreveport, Louisiana) was investigating a report of "an unusually persistent jet contrail," and found that a man in the area had "collected dew in bowls" after he saw the contrail.  The station had the water in the bowls analyzed, and reported that it contained 6.8 parts per million of the heavy metal barium -- dangerously high concentrations.  The problem is, the reporter got the concentration wrong by a factor of a hundred -- it was 68 parts per billion, which is right in the normal range for water from natural sources (especially water collected in a glazed ceramic bowl, because ceramic glazes often contain barium as a flux).  But the error was overlooked, or (worse) explained away post hoc as a government coverup.  The barium was at dangerous concentrations, people said.  And it came from the contrail.  Which might contain all sorts of other things that they're not telling you about.

And thus were "chemtrails" born.

Since then, the Evil Government has been accused of putting all sorts of things into jet fuel, with the intention of spraying it all over us and Causing Bad Stuff.  Mind-control chemicals, compounds that can alter our DNA, pathogens (anthrax seems especially popular), chemicals that induce sterility.  Notwithstanding the fact that if you want to get Something Nasty into a large fraction of the population, sneaking it into jet fuel and then hoping that the right people are going to be outside when the jet goes over, and then will inhale enough of it to work, has to be the all-time stupidest Evil Plot I've ever heard of.  I mean, this one makes Boris and Natasha's Goof Gas thing seem like unadulterated genius.

Oh, but don't worry; this time the Good Guys are way ahead.  Chemtrail your little hearts out, Evil Deep State Operatives, they're saying.  Because they have a secret weapon in their arsenal that will neutralize all chemtrails.  You ready?

Vinegar.

And not even special magical vinegar; ordinary white vinegar that you can buy from the supermarket.  You're supposed to "gently heat (not boil)" it, and the vapors rise and do battle with the poisonous chemtrails.  How this supposedly works adds a whole other level of facepalming to the discussion.  "White vinegar is acetate acid [sic]," said one YouTuber.  "It eats alkaline metals which is [sic] what they spray to create the geoengineered clouds."

The problem here -- well, amongst the myriad problems here -- is that dissolving a chemical element doesn't destroy it.  If there really were alkaline metals in jet contrails, vinegar might react chemically with them, but the metals would still be there (and presumably, still be just as toxic).  It's like the claim I've seen about pillbugs (isopods) being our friends because they "remove heavy metals from soils."  Now, isopods might well be tolerant to soils with heavy metal contamination -- I haven't verified that possibility -- but if they do consume plant material laden with heavy metals, where do you think those contaminants go after they're eaten?  They're now inside the isopod's body, and when they isopod dies, the heavy metals leach right back into the soil.  Barium, cadmium, lead, arsenic, and so on are elements, and if you are unclear on why that point is relevant, I refer you to the definition thereof.

Notwithstanding, the anti-chemtrail people claim that simmering vinegar in your back yard can "clear contaminated chemtrails in a ten-mile radius in a few hours."  Which would be a pretty good trick, if it weren't for the fact that jet contrails themselves always disappear completely on their own in fifteen minutes or so.

The whole issue hasn't been helped by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who in between sessions of Congress seems to spend her time doing sit-ups underneath parked cars, proposing a bill prohibiting "geoengineering and weather modification," which includes chemtrails.

But of course, the bill conveniently says nothing about the carbon dioxide released by burning jet fuel, which actually is modifying our climate.  Can't mention climate change and piss off the corporate donors, after all.

So once again, we're confronted by a conspiracy theory that keeps rising, zombie-like, from its shallow grave.  At least in this case it'll keep the woo-woos busy simmering (not boiling) vinegar in their back yards, which is fairly harmless.  And it'll give a boost to the vinegar manufacturers.  Me, though, I'm kind of pining for the Ancient Aliens to come back around again.  At least they keep people interested in stuff like history and mythology and archaeology, even if their conclusions aren't any more grounded in reality than the vinegar/chemtrail people.

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Literal antennas

That loony people have loony ideas is kind of a tautology.  But what amazes me is when other people listen, and continue listening, once the person has established himself as a raving wackmobile.

Today we're referring to Mark Taylor, the self-styled "firefighter prophet," who has already appeared twice here at Skeptophilia.  The first time was back in 2017, when Taylor appeared on the radio program Pass the Salt, and gave us a terrifying warning that the Freemasons and Illuminati are controlling our DNA by making orchestras tune to A = 440 hertz, with the result that we get sick and dislike Donald Trump.  Then last year, he announced that Hurricane Michael was sent to Florida by the Democrats because they were angry over the fact that Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice, despite the fact that Kavanaugh wasn't anywhere near Florida at the time.

So there's no reason we'd expect that anything Taylor is saying would be correct, or even make sense.  Despite that, he's still a frequent flier on programs geared to right-wing conspiracy nuts and evangelical Christians, who seem to eat this stuff up.  In fact, last year some people at Liberty University made a movie about Taylor called The Trump Prophecy wherein we find out that Taylor struggled with persistent nightmares caused by the fact that one of his ancestors had been a Freemason, so he had to "rid himself of the generational curse" before he could throw himself into helping to fulfill God's will that Donald Trump had to win the election.

Oh, and the border with Mexico is the site of a "demonic gate" that will only be sealed if Trump builds his border wall.

So a pinnacle of reason and logic this guy isn't.  But this time, he's outdone himself.

Because he appeared last weekend on the evangelical radio program Blessed to Teach with his latest warning, which goes something like the following:

Everything gives off frequencies.  So does God.  When you pray, you're tuning into God's frequency.  But now Satan is using chemtrails to "block God's frequency" so that humans turn into "giant antennas" tuned in to Satan's frequency instead.

How does he know this?  Because, he said, he was researching chemtrails, and he found that they are primarily composed of barium and aluminum.

"The chemtrails, all the spraying is to detract us from hearing God’s frequency," Taylor says.  "They are spraying aluminum and barium in the chemtrails and if you look on the periodic table—barium is BA, aluminum is AL; it spells BAAL.  That’s deep.  That’s no coincidence."

He's right that it's no coincidence.  The symbols for barium and aluminum are "Ba" and "Al" because that's the first two letters of each of their names.

For fuck's sake.

[Image is in the Public Domain]

But Taylor never lets anything like logic get in his way.  "We are literally walking antennas because we’ve been breathing the aluminum, we’ve been breathing the barium," he says.  "We are literally giant antennas, which was intended.  If you want to get really deep on this, these entities that the devil has put down here that these satanist worship or tap into for this knowledge, if you will, they have told them how to do this stuff.  They’ve showed them how to do this stuff for decades, for thousands of years, but they’ve tapped into this stuff about how to clog up man’s ears and eyes to be able to sense and feel God every time you’re walking around."

I hesitate even to lend him any credence by refuting his claim, but the origin of the whole chemtrails idiocy was a guy in Louisiana who collected some dew in a bowl, claimed it was from a jet contrail, and had it tested.  Then he notified a television station, and the reporter mistakenly stated that the amount of barium contained in the water was being measured in parts per million of barium instead of parts per billion, with the result that it appeared the water had a thousand times the amount of barium it actually did.  (The minuscule amount of barium it did contain almost certainly came from airborne dust.)

And that's how chemtrails started, which continueth lo unto this very day.

But the good news is you don't have to worry about "literally turning into a giant antenna."

Anyhow, that's the latest, but almost certainly not the last, from the "firefighter prophet."  Even writing about this is making me wonder if the contrails over my house might be contaminated with beryllium and erbium, because it leaves me feeling like I need a beer.

That's BeEr, you know.

And that's no coincidence.

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I grew up going once a summer with my dad to southern New Mexico and southern Arizona, with the goal of... finding rocks.  It's an odd hobby for a kid to have, but I'd been fascinated by rocks and minerals since I was very young, and it was helped along by the fact that my dad did beautiful lapidary work.  So while he was poking around looking for turquoise and agates and gem-quality jade, I was using my little rock hammer to hack out chunks of sandstone and feldspar and quartzite and wondering how, why, and when they'd gotten there.

Turns out that part of the country has some seriously complicated geology, and I didn't really appreciate just how complicated until I read John McPhee's four-part series called Annals of the Former World.  Composed of Basin and Range, In Suspect Terrain, Rising from the Plains, and Assembling California, it describes a cross-country trip McPhee took on Interstate 80, accompanied along the way with various geologists, with whom he stops at every roadcut and outcrop along the way.  As usual with McPhee's books they concentrate on the personalities of the people he's with as much as the science.  But you'll come away with a good appreciation for Deep Time -- and how drastically our continent has changed during the past billion years.

[Note:  If you order this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds will go to support Skeptophilia!]

Making the sky great again

It's been a while since we've heard from the contingent that believes the best way to dose a population with nasty chemicals is to put them into jet fuel, so that the residue coming from the engines would waft about and settle on our unsuspecting heads.  Which, and I must point out at this juncture that amongst other things I write murder mysteries, has always struck me as the worst way to deliver poisons I can think of.  Anyhow, it was with great anticipation that I checked out a link sent to me by a loyal reader of Skeptophilia in which a fellow named David Hodges takes Donald Trump to task for not clearing the skies of chemtrails.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Hodges starts out pretty positively:

Donald Trump has made good on a lot of promises.  He's stood up against the free trade agreements.  He's battling to secure our borders against the entry of unknown terrorists into our country.  He's battled the mainstream media with their incessant lies and propaganda.  He's all in all done a really good job.  He's also moving churches away from the 501(c) restrictions against political comment.  I love what he's done in many ways.

But then we hear that there's a big "if" in Hodges's mind:

But President Trump, sir, there is an issue that you're not dealing with, and it's an issue of paramount and critical and immediate importance: it's the issue of chemtrails.  I fully expected by now that the sky over America would be devoid of chemtrails.  You, sir, as the Commander in Chief, have the authority to make this happen.  Read the reports, President Trump.  Barium, chromium, magnesium, aluminum, causing early-onset dementia, Alzheimer's, causing autism in the young, lowering crop yields because it reduces sunlight by as much as 18 to 20 percent, messing with the weather patterns... I could go on, and on, and on.

As, in fact, he does:

This is a depopulation movement by the globalists.  Donald Trump has the ability to stop this, at least territorially.  And I cannot believe that he has not ordered the grounding of these transports that lay down these chemtrails.  This is a litmus test, sir, of your administration.  If you care about the American people as you claim, you cannot make this claim with 100% steadfast honesty unless you are willing to stop chemtrails and stop them now.

Oh, and I forgot to tell you the name of Hodges's YouTube channel:  It's called "The Common Sense Show."

I find it wryly amusing that here we have a Trump supporter who is ready to rescind his approval of the new president if he doesn't find a way to get rid of perfectly ordinary jet contrails.  Of course, this really shouldn't be surprising, as this sort of thing seems to be all too common in the folks who voted for Trump.  The whole administration has its support from people who evidently feel like if they click their heels together and wish hard enough, reality will suddenly conform to their wishes -- Jeff Sessions won't have lied under oath about his connection to the Russians, Betsy DeVos will be the best thing ever to reform public schools, Kellyanne Conway will suddenly become capable of telling the truth, and Trump himself will be a good family values Christian instead of a serial adulterer and probable sex offender whose most notable religious accomplishment is embodying all seven Deadly Sins in one individual.

So I thought the whole thing was pretty ridiculous until I started looking at the comments section, and yes, I know that no one should do that because it's simultaneously risking valuable brain cells and also whatever shreds of confidence remain that the human race is salvageable.  But I did it anyway, against my better judgment, and here's a sampling of what I found:

• Please stop overspraying us with chemicals like we are bugs!!!!
• It's one of my top concerns as well. Here in Central FL, they are greatly diminished since the inauguration, but not eliminated. Call in the Air National Guard.
• Here's my question.. Who is piloting these planes and what airports do they use? They are not passenger planes that are spraying. We must get to the bottom of this.
• Trump is in charge of the Navy and the Navy runs the Chemtrail program. When's he going to do what's right.
• It’s now apparent that the U.S. government has implemented Teller’s theory by spraying megatons of particulate heavy metals and chemicals like aluminum, titanium, barium, strontium and sulfur hexafluoride into the stratosphere.
• Trees and forests are DYING ALL OVER THE WORLD DUE TO CHEMTRAILS AND HAARP.
• I'm so sick of never seeing a sunrise or sunset. It's been literally a year since I remember seeing a clear sunset. They cover up all the stars, too.

No, you moron, those are called "clouds."

What has me worried is that someone will actually get President Trump alarmed about this, and he'll start trying to do something about it, which will mean he'll propose making some kind of damnfool changes to the rules surrounding airplanes, despite the fact that he clearly knows nothing about them.  Look what happened when he got wind of the whole vaccine/autism nonsense; he jumped right on the bandwagon and now is blathering on about creating a commission to make sure vaccines are safe (there's already such a commission, and in fact it's been around since 1987).  Worse still, in the last months he's met with noted anti-vaxxers Andrew Wakefield and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and seems to be turning a deaf ear to the thousands of doctors and medical researchers who have written to him explaining that there is no connection between vaccines and autism.

For fuck's sake.

So I'm perhaps to be pardoned for having very little confidence that Donald Trump will take the scientific stance on "chemtrails," namely, that they're water vapor.  Of course, I have to admit that it might be entertaining to see what he'd propose doing about them.  Maybe build a wall around every airport.  Or, in an analogous move to all of his other appointments to key government posts, just hire someone who knows absolutely nothing about airplane engines to Make Jets Great Again and call it done.

Fly the toxic skies

I remember when I was a kid, looking up at jet contrails, white against the deep blue sky.  Where were the planes going?  What would it be like to be up there in a jet, flying at hundreds of miles per hour?  The contrails would widen and fade, drift, and finally dissipate, only to be replaced by another, tracking a different direction.

Little did I realize that I should have been wearing a gas mask and protective eyewear.

One of the more bizarre conspiracy theories out there is the "chemtrail" idea, which nevertheless finds broad appeal amongst people whose sole hobby is picking at the straps of their straitjackets with their teeth.  The idea is that the government adds stuff to jet fuel, so that when the jet fuel passes through the engine the stuff is vaporized, to waft downwards and be inhaled by unsuspecting people.  The stuff can include:

• mind-altering drugs
• chemicals that can affect the weather
• chemicals that cause allergies, asthma, and other respiratory illnesses
• cancer-causing agents

People who buy this particular conspiracy theory cite the rise in allergies and asthma as "proof."  Evidence to the contrary is just part of the government's cunning plan for hoodwinking the people.  Take a look at this site, from AboveTopSecret.com, amusingly titled "How Jet Trails Block Out the Sunshine."  My favorite part is the paragraph informing readers, "This is a chemtrail thread for believers but other are welcomed. Please only post positive comment towards posters and do not discredit them. No need to be negative."

In other words:  You can disagree with our conspiracy theory, as long as you (1) keep your mouth shut, and (2) don't mind being a deluded, credulous sheep.

The thing I've never understood about the chemtrail idea is, do these people really think that putting LSD in jet fuel would work?  Besides the fact that a lot of the chemicals that they think are being spread around this way are complex organics that would break down during the combustion process, even if you assume that some of the chemicals made their way through the engine and out the exhaust, how could anyone actually inhale enough of the stuff to accomplish anything?  Between wind currents and just general dilution in the atmosphere, it's not like it's the most efficient chemical distribution method I can think of.

And then, of course, there's the rather painful lack of actual results.  No one I know seems to act any odder than usual when a jet flies over; the weather is still as messy and unpredictable as ever; I don't get the sniffles when I'm near an airport; and cancer rates aren't any higher than they ever have been.  But the conspiracy theorists, of course, have a quick response to those criticisms:

• the mind-altering chemicals act to make you submissive and unsuspicious;
• the weather-influencing chemicals are why the weather is messy and unpredictable;
• the government is suppressing information about rises in the incidence of allergies, asthma, and cancer;
• and Skeptophilia is clearly a tool of The Shadow Government's Disinformation Strategy.

Which, I must admit, is a pretty powerful argument.

Interestingly, the whole thing seems to have gotten off the ground (rimshot) because of a guy named Bill Nichols, from my home state of Louisiana, back in 2007.  Nichols, a Shreveport resident, suddenly noticed one day that there seemed to be an unusual number of contrails in the sky.  "It seemed like some mornings it was just criss-crossing the whole sky.  It was just like a giant checkerboard," he told reporters, adding that he had observed "unusual clouds" that began as ordinary jet contrails, but unlike normal contrails, "did not fade away."  He said that the vapor from the contrail "would drop to the ground in a haze" and collect on the ground and in water he had sitting in bowls.  Myself, I've never seen a contrail "drop to the ground" in sufficient quantities to "collect in a bowl" -- but even so, KSLA News of Shreveport took him seriously enough to sample the water at a lab and initially reported a high level of barium, 6.8 parts per million, more than three times the toxic level set by the EPA.

This caused an uproar, as you might imagine.  A couple of weeks later, it was revealed that the KSLA reporter had misread the reading, which was actually 68 parts per billion, well within expected ranges, and the station retracted the story.  But conspiracy theorists are never going to be dissuaded by numbers being off by a factor of a thousand, or, in fact, actual data in any form, and so the whole chemtrail idea was off and running.

Anyhow, I'd better wind this up.  For one thing, you can see where this is going: the usual "no data + no logic = my theory" pattern that is typical of conspiracy theorists.  Also, because we have a thunderstorm coming in, probably due to weather-altering chemicals, and I need to shut the computer down.