A conspiracy theorist convinced a Las Vegas TV station to look into chemtrails for an investigative report, which aired during February sweeps month.
Malcolm Harris showed some photographs he took to KLAS-TV that showed what he believes are chemtrails – manmade formations that some suspect are created by the government to control the weather or population.
"You could see the very beginning and the end, and it was very clean and it stood by itself,” Harris said. “There wasn't anything else around it. I've seen clouds being made out here in the desert. All of a sudden you see a cloud being made, and that is not what was going on.”
He said the formation was clearly manmade and unnatural, and aviation writer Bill Sweetman doesn’t disagree.
However, after reviewing the photos, he isn’t convinced they’re chemtrails.
The aviation expert said he spoke to defense industry colleagues and suggested the formations were caused by advanced pyrotechnics – or flares used by fast jets to confuse enemy forces.
George Barnes, producer of the chemtrails film “Look Up,” said various groups are spraying the skies for a variety of reasons.
“The conclusion is, because it is unregulated, anybody could do it,” Barnes said. “So anybody that is interested in experimenting with climate engineering, weather modification, has the right and the authority to test it.”
He claims there is no evidence that grid patterns existed in the sky prior to 2006, but he’s not sure what has changed since then.
However, KLAS reported that the station’s photographers captured checkerboard patterns in the 1990s, and contrails – lingering trails of condensation – are visible in older photos and video footage.
“The reality is, there is 250 percent more air traffic today than 10 years ago and what happens is, a lot of people step outside and see these crisscross contrails in the sky,” said Mark Allin, co-founder of the conspiracy theory clearinghouse Abovetopsecret. “To the average person, that would look pretty suspicious. You go online and start reading about chemtrails and you see pictures of what you just looked at, and that could freak you out.”
Allin said the conspiracy theory is just too implausible.
“To think that there could be a global conspiracy, a conspiracy of aircraft technicians, military aircraft, that are all keeping quiet about spreading chemicals up in our atmosphere -- I'm sorry to say, but it's crazy,” he said. “Think about it. Tens of thousands of people would have to know about it.”
Mick West, who shoots down chemtrail conspiracy theories on his blog, said contrails aren’t always seen for the same reasons clouds don’t appear every day.
He admits planes take part in cloud seeding, and he agrees that contrails can sometimes drift until they form cloud cover that can interfere with solar plants, but West said that’s not same thing as chemtrails.
“They really just basically ignored 70 years of science on the subject,” West said. “People basically have this misconception that contrails don't persist, therefore they must be chemtrails.”
But Barnes, the film producer, insists that chemtrails are part of a government plot to control the weather using toxic levels of aluminum, barium and other substances he has found in his own hair.
“I tested my 6 year old daughter's hair,” Barnes said. “Same thing on her – same concentrations, three times over the toxic limits.”
West said aluminum need not come from an airplane to wind up in a person’s hair.
“It's one of those things where you can't prove a negative,” West said. “You can't prove there is nothing going on, but you can prove there is no evidence. For example, there has been no increase in the amount of global dimming, which you would expect if some kind of stuff was being sprayed into the air.”
Watch this video report posted online by KLAS-TV:
