Moline became the focus of chemtrail warriors last week when they learned WQAD meteorologist Eric Sorenson was addressing the issue using science. Sorenson posted a video explaining that contrails were merely hot jet engine condensation. He also ruminated that the government would be reducing its funding pool were it to engage in a taxpayer genocide.

The meteorologist related what happened next: “My video was shared on a geo-engineering page with a call for people to “Go get him.” Within minutes, the comments turned hateful and angry. One poster wished that my family be poisoned and that a brick be thrown through my head. There are dozens of people who believe I am paid by the government, and a surprising number of people wish me some sort of harm.”

One of the attacking posters seethed, “Anyone denying geo-engineering is in fear of losing their job. When you and your family are so full of aluminum you can’t remember each other, you might realize there is a huge scale weather modification going on.” This is a good example of how a conspiratorial obsession warps a person’s thought process. For in the first sentence, the poster calls Sorenson a liar. In the second sentence, the poster calls Sorenson the one being lied to.

The Sorenson story flittered away after a few days, but the chemtrail saga will endure. Posters such as the one who fantasizes about weathermen offspring being pumped with toxins have raised many questions about contrails over the years. Contrailscience.com does phenomenal job of cataloging these inquires and also answers them, on the outside chance that the questioner is genuinely seeking a scientific explanation.

The website features extensive interaction between the contrails and chemtrails camps, and provides good insight into the mindset of each. As one example, a chemtrailer ties together three unrelated items: A Guardian article about Great Britain supposedly being exposed to bacteria spraying during World War II; geo-engineering weapons previously proposed; and the lingering white lines he sees overhead today. A reader calling himself Uncinus pointed out the items having nothing to do with each other, then added, “None of the geo-engineering proposals would produce a trail that looks like a chemtrail.”

That brought this response from the chemtrailer: “The truth is eminent (think he means imminent). It will be revealed soon. Uncinus will disappear as if he never existed and there will be no one for all of his foolish followers to hold accountable for it. Then it will suddenly become so obvious to you, and you will ask yourself over and over, how could I have been so stupid!” The chemtrail warrior posted this is 2010, so I’m unsure what his definition of soon is. But he does provide a nutshell of conspiracy think. He provides no science, just some name calling accompanied by a warning about something that is perpetually nigh, yet never arrives.

The general idea he and his kind promote is that contrails are filled with dangerous amounts of chemicals – usually aluminum or barium – and the U.S. government sprays them on its citizens, intending to either kill them or engage in mind control. Countering this theory are the fact that its proponents are alive and able to think in a way contrary to their overlords’ wishes.

Many of them claim that yesteryear’s contrails were visible for no longer than auto exhaust is today. Short of unearthing a heretofore unknown database of contrail duration, we can rely on contrailscience.com, which documents non-hysterical references to contrails dating to before World War I. The website has also assembled hundreds of photos taken from books, photo albums, and newspapers that all point to lingering contrails having been with us for decades.

This is because contrails sometimes persist and spread, depending on the weather at the moment of dispersal. Contrails are the consequence of surrounding air and ice crystals from exhaust. They vanish when the ice turns to water vapor. They disappear more quickly in dry, warm air and linger in cold, humid conditions. In frigid enough temperatures, even automobiles can produce contrails. Depending on one’s viewpoint, this is further evidence of contrail innocuousness, or a frightening realization that there are millions more chemtrail disbursing agents amongst us.

Many chemtrail sites include links to an Arkansas television station’s story that allegedly uncovered dangerous amounts of barium that were said to be caused by airplane exhaust. The reporter was mistaken, and when the errors were brought to his attention, he altered his position. Full details on this case are here. But the point I want to make is that, to the theorist, the original story is irrefutable evidence of chemtrail danger, while every other mainstream article and newscast on the subject is wrong or part of the coverup.

Similarly, believers claim the government confirmed the existence of deadly chemtrails in HR 2977. In actuality, this bill bans space weapons, and commercial airliners are neither spacecraft nor weapons (excepting 9/11). But, again, the larger point is that this government “admission” is touted as unassailable truth, yet anything else the government tells us about chemtrails is a lie.

Another common line is that some patterns prove they are not mere contrails. But X’s, grids, and similar shapes are the result of air traffic, wind, and the weather, not the CIA pumping aerosol weapons at us. If the agency is trying to poison us, it is stunning evidence of government incompetence. For starters, they are turning chemical weapons on themselves with hundreds of daily flights into and out of D.C. Further, if aerosol is being spewed from an airplane, it would fall one foot per second, meaning it would take eight hours to reach its intended victims from 30,000 feet. This also means it would be spread over thousands of miles and thus be far too diluted to do damage by the time it reached Eric Sorenson’s nostrils.