{"id":10513,"date":"2015-01-24T18:51:03","date_gmt":"2015-01-24T18:51:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=10513"},"modified":"2015-01-24T18:51:25","modified_gmt":"2015-01-24T18:51:25","slug":"washpo-publishes-a-chemtrails-article-full-of-blatant-falsehoods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=10513","title":{"rendered":"WashPo Publishes a Chemtrails Article<\/em> Full Of Blatant Falsehoods"},"content":{"rendered":"

How a group of conspiracy theorists could derail the debate over climate policy<\/strong><\/h2>\n

By Puneet Kollipara
\nThe Washington Post<\/p>\n

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\nTwo commercial airliners appear to fly close together as the pass over London on March 12, 2012 in London, England. (Photo by Dan Kitwood\/Getty Images)<\/em><\/div>\n

As governments\u2019 efforts to cut greenhouse-gas emissions continue to sputter, some researchers have discussed another possible tool for combating climate change:\u00a0\u201cgeoengineering\u201d the climate<\/a>. One particular form of it, \u201csolar geoengineering,\u201d would involve reflecting sunlight away from the Earth to reduce future warming, possibly by deploying an army\u00a0of mirrors or\u00a0spraying the air with reflective aerosols that would function like a chemical sunscreen.<\/p>\n

But as it turns out, some people believe that a global campaign is already underway to have aircraft spray the air with chemicals \u2014 whether to control climate change or for other, more sinister purposes.<\/p>\n

Meet the \u201cchemtrails\u201d crowd, who posit that governments, scientists and other institutions are using airplanes\u2019 \u201cchemtrails\u201d \u2014 basically contrails that are allegedly laced with chemicals \u2014 to alter the climate, create extreme weather, poison people, or even control our minds. The chemtrails movement has gained a small but passionate following on the Internet, with people across the ideological spectrum \u2014 from left-wingers worried about the environment to right-wingers concerned about abuses of government power. We don\u2019t know the size of the community, but followers\u00a0generally point to seeming irregularities in aircraft contrails<\/a>\u00a0as indisputable proof that illicit weather or climate modification is already happening, right now, and being used to control people and nations, especially poor ones.\u00a0Chemtrails activist Dane Wigington<\/a>, for instance,\u00a0points to videos\u00a0of\u00a0an airplane spewing out multiple exhaust trails of different lengths, or airplanes spewing trails of different colors.\u00a0\u201cThis amounts to weather warfare \u2014 period,\u201d he charges.<\/p>\n

As\u00a0farfetched\u00a0<\/a>(and\u00a0baseless<\/a>) as these claims may be, a recent scholarly analysis of the chemtrails movement suggests we can\u2019t write off its relevance entirely \u2014 not because its proponents are right, but because of the insights they may offer about a future debate over geoengineering.\u00a0It might be many years, after all, before any geoengineering proposal seriously\u00a0enters the policy realm. Still, writes science and technology policy researcher Rose Cairns of the University of Sussex in\u00a0The Geographical Journal<\/a>, \u201cIgnoring or dismissing these discourses out of hand as pathological or paranoid is to ignore potentially revealing insights about the emerging politics of geoengineering.\u201d<\/p>\n

Solar geoengineering \u2014 more formally known as solar radiation management (SRM) \u2014 is merely an idea right now, and\u00a0many scholars aren\u2019t convinced that it\u2019d actually be worth it<\/a>. But with the\u00a0National Research Council set to weigh in on various forms of geoengineering<\/a>\u00a0very soon, it \u2014 and the conspiracy theories involving it \u2014 stands to gain more of the public spotlight.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s\u00a0no evidence<\/a>\u00a0that the alleged chemtrails are any different than normal contrails, much less that thousands of scientists, companies and bureaucrats have engaged in a global conspiracy that they\u2019ve managed to keep secret this whole time. But the more general concerns that chemtrails believers have about technology\u2019s potential impacts on the climate and the environment, and about government and institutional power, shouldn\u2019t be dismissed so easily, Cairns suggests.<\/p>\n

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