As politicians defend conspiracy theories, it raises questions about what else they are willing to look into at the request of constituents, one expert argues
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s recent comments on chemtrails have left the door open for the normalization of conspiracy theories on the same plane as sasquatch, lizard aliens and a flat earth, says University of Alberta professor Timothy Caulfield.
When confronted with concerns about chemtrail spraying in Alberta, Smith said: “The best I have been able to do is talk to the woman who is responsible for controlling the airspace, and she says no one is allowed to go up and spray anything in the air.”
The crowd responded to that statement by booing, to which Smith responded, “that’s what she told me.”
Nav Canada, the agency responsible for traffic in the country’s civilian airspace, said in a statement Wednesday its government relations team has not had any queries from the Alberta government on this topic.
Again referring to what she’s been told and not personal experience, Smith said: “The other person told me that if anyone is doing it, it’s the U.S. Department of Defense.”
“And you know, like, I have some limitations of what I can do in my job. I don’t know that I don’t have much power if that is the case, that the U.S. Department of Defense is spraying us.”
A spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defence Command, or Norad, has said it’s not conducting any flights in Canada that involve the spraying of chemicals.
The premier’s spokesperson, Savannah Johannsen, has since released a statement on her behalf, saying “the provincial government looked into the issue and found no evidence of chemtrails occurring in Alberta.”
Johannsen said Smith was sharing what she has heard from Albertans on this issue.
“She was not saying that she believed the U.S. government was using chemtrails in Alberta.”
Smith’s office was not immediately available for respond to Nav Canada’s statement or to confirm who Smith spoke to.
Caulfield called the comments disappointing.
“It was an opportunity for her to embrace a science-informed and evidence-informed approach,” he said in an interview, adding that her response still leaves room for conspiracy theories and disinformation.
In a June town hall in Speers, Sask., Moe was asked by a constituent if the provincial government had been testing soil and water for chemicals “being dumped” onto the province, stating specific concerns around “raw kerosine, raw gasoline and raw diesel.”
“There’s a lot of soil tests going on,” Moe responded. “I don’t know if they’re looking for all that or not.”
While saying he does not believe spraying chemicals into the province is “a co-ordinated approach as some folks think,” he did not discredit the theory altogether. Moe expressed concern over emissions coming from jets and shared concern for the future as he expects more aircraft over Saskatchewan in the near future.
“I am starting to hear about this through emails into our office the last number of months and, honestly, I have to do some more work looking into it,” he said.
Moe said he was unaware that the Speers town hall would be recorded.
When questioned about chemical spraying at a news conference after the town hall, Moe said, “I actually don’t believe in chemtrails.”
He said the townhall question related to chemtrails contained a number of elements and the format was “confusing.”
Why politicians get involved in chemtrails conspiracies
Caulfield, a professor at the U of A Faculty of Law and School of Public Health, spoke about politicians’ involvement in conspiracy theories as a whole, saying they have become ideological flags. Politicians endorse conspiracy theories to secure votes and by transforming these theories into ideological markers for their political base, the value of spreading misinformation amplifies, he argued.
While conspiracies and misinformation happen across the ideological spectrum, right now “we are definitely seeing it more on the right,” Caulfield said.
Smith’s weaving of U.S. involvement into her comments exposes how enmeshed in the conspiracy she is, he argued. By introducing the U.S. Department of Defense into the discussion, seemingly unprompted with only a “she said” defence, he said, it can be inferred that Smith has an understanding of the broader chemtrails narrative which claims the U.S. government is spraying chemicals.
“It was an important comment,” said Caulfield, suspecting that her comments were referencing the actual conspiracy theory.
As politicians defend conspiracy theories, including chemtrails, it raises questions about what else they are willing to look into at the request of constituents.
“Is she going to look into whether the earth is round or flat?” Caulfield hypothesized.
Chemtrails or contrails?
Chemtrails refers to the idea that governments or other groups of nefarious elites are secretly releasing chemicals into the atmosphere from airplanes, creating visible, cloud-like trails in the sky. The name for the trails left in the sky behind an aircraft is contrails.
Contrails, or condensation trails, are narrow cloud streamers that form behind an aircraft. These are formed by two processes, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association.
The first formation method depends on the combination of hot, humid airplane engine exhaust with low vapour pressure air at cooler temperatures. When the moisture and particles from the exhaust mix with the cold air, condensation takes place, creating the streamer seen following airplanes.
The second formation method happens when an airplane moves through clear air with nearly 100 per cent relative humidity. The pressure change created by airflow over the wing tip leads to a drop in temperature, resulting in the air becoming fully saturated. The turbulence from the wing tip finalizes this process, creating a contrail behind the wings. These contrails are less noticeable than those produced by engine exhaust and are relatively uncommon. They are sometimes referred to as aerodynamic trails.
Most trails seen following airplanes are made from small ice crystals formed by the condensation of water vapour from jet engine exhaust.
The NOAA has addressed chemtrail conspiracy theories, emphasizing that what people often refer to as chemtrails are actually contrails, stating there is no scientific evidence to support the existence of chemtrails.
Decades-old conspiracy theory debunked
Chemtrails conspiracy theorists claim the trails behind aircrafts are chemicals purposely sprayed by unknown entities for nefarious purposes.
The paper looks into the potential for weather modification technologies to enhance military operations and national security, exploring how controlling weather patterns could be used as a tactical tool in future conflicts.
Some chemtrails believers have argued that in addition to changing the weather, other purposes of the chemical spewing include population control or making people sick to benefit drug companies. There is no one answer to the intention of chemtrails.
The idea of chemtrails has been widely debunked by scientists and experts, who emphasize there is no credible evidence to support the claims associated with this theory.
University of Chicago physicist David Keith echoes the belief that there is no credible evidence of the existence of chemtrails.
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof,” he wrote in a research paper on the topic.
“The claim that there is a large-scale secret program to spray materials from aircraft is extraordinary. Yet all the evidence we have seen to date has been very weak. The most common claim is simply that aircraft contrails look ‘different’, without any comparative analysis.”
Keith writes that contrails may sometimes look different or behave strangely as flights pass through regions with different temperatures and humidity, and that this change in appearance does not mean anything sinister.
In 2011, while teaching at the University of Calgary, Keith met with chemtrails believers to discuss the conspiracy. He explained, on video, that aside from the science disproving it, logistics are also at play.
If there really was large-scale spraying of significant quantities of materials from civilian aircraft, it would require various levels of employees to construct.
Manufacturers would be required to build what would hold the materials, and others would be hired to load the planes. The project would require a large supply chain, with many people privy to the project’s secrets.
One could theorize that a group of people built all of the required materials without knowing what they were building, with a smaller group of people aware of the intended purpose of the materials. But with this idea, the unknowing group would have no reason not to share information, and would be publicly contracted.
Keith argues that it is difficult for modern governments to make large contracts without a paper trail. At the time of the interview, he was often working with civilian aircraft and said, from his experience, modifications involve a lot of people.
To those who believe chemtrails to be a large government conspiracy, Keith says it is challenging to keep a secret of this magnitude in modern democracy.
— With files from Postmedia and the Canadian Press