The Remarkable Cognitive Dissonance Of The Geoengineering Conspiracy Theorists

For weeks now, as poor weather, wet weather, cloudy weather, has plagued the UK and north America, driven by the persistent track of a powerful north Atlantic jet stream, the online chemtrail community have wailed loudly about how our blue skies have been ‘stolen’ by nefarious ongoing geoengineering operations. Some of the photos and videos they have posted have been absolutely horrendous, admittedly, showing the former clear blue sky being progressively obliterated by line after spreading line of ugly, criss-crossing, or parallel ‘chemtrails’.

There is no doubt at all that there is a problem and there is no doubt in my mind that the authorities, the civil aviation authorities and airline companies are aware there is a problem, but are doing very little about it. That problem, in my opinion, is a huge increase in the formation of persistent spreading contrails due to one or all of the following:

1. Increase in air traffic and expansion of new routes

2. Possible decadal scale increase in upper atmospheric humidity

3. Possible increased condensation caused by modern jet engines and/or fuel additives

What I don’t buy into is the mass, organised, ongoing, global geoengineering conspiracy theory. Because it does not stand up to scrutiny. Cloud seeding operations, though real, do not cut it. They are patently not responsible for those high level spreading cirrus-like ugly contrails which are posted ad nauseum on X.

When weather conditions change and all of a sudden, ‘chemtrails’ disappear, the geoengineering conspiracists are at a complete loss to explain why and they flounder, quite remarkably in many instances, in the full gaze of public scrutiny on social media. But they seem blissfully unaware that they are floundering. This is full blown cognitive dissonance.

The ‘chemtrails’ have disappeared from English skies because of a change in the pattern of the weather. We have a (still cold!) drier Arctic air mass pushing in from the north and north west and this drier upper air is inhibiting the formation of condensation trails from commercial aircraft. High pressure is also building from the west (at long last!) As you can see though, the geoengineering conspiracy enthusiasts, who have tweeted furiously, non stop these past months, about how our blue skies are being obliterated by ‘chemtrails’ and man-made rain clouds, are now utterly perplexed. On the one hand they suggest that the aircraft have disappeared, on the other that they are still there but have given up temporarily on spraying. This display of mass online cognitive dissonance will continue until moister air pushes in again and the conspiracy theory cycle starts over.

It’s time to move on from these ‘chemtrail’ groundhog days and start asking really hard questions about the (presumably) inadvertent vandalisation of our skies by the airline industry and civil aviation authorities and whether (or not) they are making serious efforts to avoid the adverse (predictable and possibly avoidable) consequences of routing their aircraft across our skies.

Update: 18th April 2024. Right on cue, as predicted: