Sorting out the facts

On Persistent Jet Contrails ("chemtrails")

I received an email from a friend of mine today. He's the sort of guy that if it's a conspiracy theory it's alright - if it's not don't bother.

I 've seen this on the Web before but haven't bothered to delve into it. But I needed a distraction from my sombre mood so decided to give it 17 minutes of my time.

It came through beforeitsnews with the headline  - 

LeakerSpeaks Out At United Nations and You Wont Believe What She Said!!! Must See Video!  

and stated:

"By now everyone has witnessed streaks of white trailing across the sky, stretching from horizon to horizon, ultimately turning the skies into a murky haze. We can no longer ignore the fact that our skies are being heavily polluted with aluminum, barium, lead, arsenic, chromium, cadmium, selenium, and silver. All of which attribute to a host of health problems including: neurological effects, heart damage, eyesight issues, reproduction failures, immune system damage, gastrointestinal disorders, damaged kidney, damaged liver, hormonal problems, and more.

"The truth is the government is spraying deadly chemtrails in hopes of population reduction. Furthermore they have been known to use chemtrails as biological testing agents on the populace; all while claiming they are nothing more than mere vapor.

"We’ll now we have 100% undeniable evidence that chemtrails exist. ...."

Here is the video - 

I could see immediately that there was more to this the video and the "100% undeniable evidence"

It took me approximately 5 minutes to discover why.

The implication was that we have evidence from within the world government (after all it is a UN conference) that chemtrails are real and they are aimed at population reduction (proof - this is a UN conference)

First i asked myself who IS this Rosalind Peterson. Surely she must be talking from within the world government?

What was the nature of the gathering that she spoke to?

Rosalind Peterson, it turns out, is part of the Agriculture Defense Coalition, which "was formed in 2006, to protect agricultural from a wide variety of experimental weather and atmospheric testing programs"

In other words she is an activist, or at least, an advocate.

She does, however have good credentials:

In 1995, Rosalind, now retired, became a certified California United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Farm Service Agency Agriculture Crop Loss Adjustor.  She worked in more than ten counties throughout California. Many crop losses throughout the State can be attributed to weather related causes.  She worked for five years for the Mendocino County Department of Agriculture as an Agriculture Technologist before being hired by the USDA Farm Service Agency in California.

Rosalind has a BA degree from Sonoma State University in Environmental Studies & Planning (1991 ENSP), with emphasis on solar power, photosynthesis, agriculture, crop production, and the efficient use of energy in the future. Ms. Peterson has won several awards and recognition for her extensive efforts to protect drinking water supplies in Martinez, California, from toxic chemical contamination. She also writes articles for NewsWithViews.com on many subjects including protection of the environment from ongoing, unregulated, atmospheric geoengineering experiments and weather modification programs. 

And what is this UN meeting that she is addressing as a guest speaker?

One 's suspicions might be aroused when one discovers that there is no reference to this on the internet.  The evidence has been removed (sic)!  

Of course there could be a more benign reason for this.  The meeting took place 7 years ago and if you look it is evident that she is not talking to high-powered members of the NWG (just have a look at the audience).

I'm sure (especially if the meeting took place in New York) that there are many meetings that are UN- sponsored.

Finally what is she saying?

Put at its most basic she is saying that there are private and government-sponsored programs to modify the weather using chemicals that are polluting the land with mixtures of cadmium, aluminium and ... - also that these programs are not subject to public scrutiny.

Nothing that she says comes anywhere close to the huge claims of the conspiracy community and their claims of a massive program designed to change the global climate to either mitigate or create warming (depending on who you are talking to) as part of a devilish plot to reduce the world's population.

In fact in another video that I found (admittedly purporting to "debunk" the whole theory) where she qualifies her findings and admits she doesn't have "direct proof that the jets are releasing anything but jet fuel emissions", but that she does have evidence of emissions of aluminium, barium etc..

She is in fact asking for a greater level of proof before taking this to court.

What she is saying, in short is well-supported by evidence and is verified. She stops well-short of some of the more lunatic claims that are made by people who generally don't have well-trained minds or are too intellectually- lazy to seek verifiable proof for their claims.

An article of her's is available HERE

I have little trouble in believing what Rosalind Peterson is saying and accepting that there is, indeed a program of spraying that is polluting farmlands, contributing to the die-off of trees and making people ill.

As one former friend said to me "all you need to do is look up at the sky" to see that there is is a phenomenon of persistent jet contrails (or 'chemtrails', if you prefer).

But it is drawing an extremely long bow to say this proves claims of "population reduction" "Agenda-21" or that weather modifications is causing climate change, much less that climate change (which has far more solid scientific evidence behind it than 'chemtrails') is s 'hoax'

Generally what I have found with most conspiracy theories that an intellectually lazy and dishonest method is use where there is a jump from a premise which is provable or at least rational to some conclusion that has no rational (or any other) link with the initial premise.  This is usually linked to another claim that was "proven" in a similar manner.

This is both a rejection of science itself as well as with methods of scientific inquiry.

Having listened to the arguments, regarding chemtrails as well as claims about the UN, Agenda- 21, the 'climate change hoax' have I ever found even a skerrick of evidence that stands up to scrutiny.

And now, addressing some of my friends, that does not mean that we should automatically dismiss evidence for the existance of 'chemtrails'

There is no one cause for anything (such as tree die-off).

Pollution caused by chemicals sprayed from airplanes might just have to be added to the long list of factors that are, along with abrupt climate change that are leading to the probable near-term extinction of a species that has had its time  along with (regrettably) most of the rest of God's creation.