posted 11-22-2002 02:08 PM            

Scientists dismiss 'chemtrail' theories

November 19, 2002

By Jennifer Kostka
Herald Staff Writer

Scientists and aviation officials say there is nothing dangerous about the white jet streams from aircraft that a New Mexico scientist and some Durango-area residents say are causing sickness and drought around the country.

The authorities dismiss suspicions about so-called "chemtrails," or chemical trails, as unfounded. In interviews Monday, some atmospheric scientists and aviation officials spoke with derision about proponents of chemtrail conspiracy theories.

"I have looked at those (chemtrail) Web sites a couple of times, and they’re right up there with the UFO folks," said Paul Newman, a physicist with the Atmospheric Chemistry and Dynamics Branch of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration near Washington, D.C. "There’s nothing odd in what you find in those plumes, besides what you would expect out of the tail of an aircraft."

Clifford Carnicom, a geophysicist and mathematician from Santa Fe, spoke at Storehouse Baptist Church south of Durango on Saturday night. Carnicom told about 50 residents that he believes a national or global organization is placing harmful particulates in jet emissions, which he calls "aerosol trails."

Carnicom said none of the statements refute his theory or address the evidence he presented Saturday night. Carnicom presented videos and photographs he said showed suspicious aerosol trails that stayed suspended in the sky longer than normal.

However, Charles Knight, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, said that under certain weather conditions contrails can stay suspended in the sky for days.

"These pictures of the spectacular linear clouds that these people are calling chemtrails, we simply call them contrails," Knight said.

The Federal Aviation Administration says that jet emissions are composed of carbon monoxide, nitrogen and hydrocarbon oxides and smoke.

In high levels of the atmosphere, including the skies over Durango, these jet emissions easily produce ice crystals, he said.

"When a jet comes along and produces a lot of ice, it not only stays there for a long time, but the crystals grow," Knight said.

NASA’s Newman said he has flown through contrails to measure their contents. He said Carnicom’s studies do not take into consideration all the research that was done on contrails in the 1940s and 1950s that proved they did not contain anything harmful.

The FAA measures and regulates jet emissions to ensure they comply with the Clean Air Act of 1970, which regulates the emissions of pollutants from aircraft to ensure they meet government safety standards. Brian Toon of the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics said jets fly too high above the ground to drop harmful particulates on a specific target, as many chemtrail theorists believe. He, too, called contrails harmless.