Global warming offers pretext for Chemtrails

The problem with global warming isn’t atmospheric warming. The problem is the unpredictable effects of additional heat in the atmosphere.

Heat causes more drying, and worsens droughts. We’ve seen these impacts in Atlanta in recent years, and south Texas today the effect of prolonged drought.

It’s not that we didn’t have droughts in the past. We did have bad ones but not as frequent or as intense. The problem with Global Warming–or global climate change, to be more exact–is that wind patterns change in one area, and have an impact on precipitation downstream. We don’t know what effect slight heating has somewhere else. This is the real crux of changes in climate–they are unpredictable.

Our atmosphere in a closed loop, and hardly a place for tampering. Yet our government is operating dozens of weather modification experiments. Typically, these projects involve trying to seed clouds to produce rain, or controlling precipitation patterns or flows.

I’m sure everyone’s seen the odd streaks of white in the sky, a phenomena called chemtrails. These streaks are very similar to contrails, the streams of vapor left behind jet exhaust.

Chemtrails are the focus of numerous conspiracy theories, which should come as no surprise considering the phenomena became the center of intense interest as a direct result of 9/11.

In the days after the destruction of three World Trade Center buildings, all commercial airline traffic throughout the U.S. was banned. The result: average temperatures throughout the country rose one degree Fahrenheit, not a large difference for any one area, but a noticeable increase whose sole cause appears to be the absence of contrails.

Once commercial air traffic returned, so too did the contrails, and temperatures reverted to their averages.

This environmental impact made it clear that skies emptied of contrails would allow more heat to get through to ground level. Now if temperatures rose without contrails, we could say that temperatures could be kept lower with contrails.

If contrails could be duplicated and expanded in their thickness and coverage, so too could ground temperatures. Artificial cloud cover could have the same impact as contrails, so a rationale for seeding the atmosphere with contrail-like clouds exists.

Since the late 90’s there’s been a lot of coverage in the media about the abundance of contrail-like vapor trails in our skies. The Web community, known for its predilection towards conspiracy, labelled the contrails chemtrails, asserting that the contents of the contrails was in fact a mix of barium (a metal known for its reflective properties), small amounts of blood, and a biological substance know as mycoplasma. (see links below)

The Internet offers a broad range of explanations for why chemtrails exist, including everything from weather modification to impregnating people with disease or resistances to disease. Like all good conspiracy theories, each theory possesses just enough fact to sustain the idea that there’s a government agenda behind chemtrails.

We may not know what the chemtrails’ purpose is, but we know there’s something out there (to borrow the X Files supposition that aliens are here.) Just look for tell-tale wispy signs of chemtrails–they are there. And look at the way they disperse, in powdery lines, without any of the billowing fullness of clouds typically prevailing at the altitude they’re found. They aren’t cirrus, though they look like they want to seem like cirrus clouds, they aren’t as high as cirrus clouds.

See a picture–many are available on the Web here–and an explanation here.

I contacted my Senator on this issue several years back and was forwarded a categorical denial from the Air Force that chemtrails exists, and that chemtrails were uniformly contrails.

Of course the abject denial opens up all kinds of fodder for conspiracy theories, some of which paint some dark purposes and malignant methodologies behind the spraying. Perhaps the Air Force might be better off saying that they’re seeding the atmosphere with barium, to reflect the sun. Then if they were planning something nasty, they’d be able to deny it. Then again, maybe a cover story would force the Air Force to cover its lies, or darker purpose. So it’s a lose-lose: admit that they were doing something would only force more transparency, which would only increase the likelihood that more would be revealed about what was happening in the skies above us.

Germany did admit that their Armed Forces had participated in chemtrails operations as part of a military exercise. They’d apparently seeded a cloud bank to provide cover from radar. The US Air Force has an operation called HAARP which attempts to effect the magnetic fields in the upper atmosphere. I guess the idea is that by altering the polarity of the ionosphere planes can be disguised, weather patterns altered, and navigation systems disrupted–or something like that.

The worst of the theories is that the Air Force is spraying some biochemical down on the population, introducing this substance called mycoplasma to the bloodstream of all the people upon whom chemtrails end up falling. Virtually all North Americans do have mycoplasma in their blood, unlike most Chinese, a nation where no chemtrails are thought to be in use.

This mycoplasma has some of the characteristics of a fungus, and of a virus, but is really more of an intermediary substance, a biological mixing material that could facilitate the delivery of viruses, or antiviruses. Mycoplasma would make a great delivery system for virii, or vaccinations, so naturally the military is looking at both the implications of biodefense and biological weapons and their delivery methodologies.

Rather than rely on my explanations of this process, best to read one of the following (as I’m not a scientist, these links in no way suggest I approved their contents, or can interpret what they’re trying to say!):

“What are Mycoplama and How Do They Work“
“Mycoplasma, The Linking Pathogen in Neurosystemic Diseases“
“Molecular Terrorism–Mycoplasma“
and the particularly blunt Amy Worthington

One article from the Idaho Observer breaks down the composition of chemtrails that fell on an Iowa family:
“…6 bacteria, including anthrax and pneumonia, 9 chemicals including acetylcholine chloride, 26 heavy metals including arsenic, gold, lead,mercury, silver, uranium and zinc, 4 molds and fungi, 7 viruses, 2 cancers, 2 vaccines, 2 sedatives.”

Nasty mix, more of a biochemical stew than a delivery system. I’ve heard the idea that chemtrails are simply a method of disposing of medical waste, an alternative to incineration, which one would think would be a lot easier method of disposal. The presence of these clearly harmful elements does jar our most primitive fears of what our government might be doing to us, especially with rumors about Nazi flu and vast clandestine operations.

Yet for our own military to spray something down on us–including even the families of the pilots–just doesn’t hold up. Whatever medical benefit there might be–like inoculating the population from a biochemical attack–might not be harmful to the recipients (unlike squalene in H1N1 vaccines or ethylmercury in vaccinations.) Mycoplasma does meet the criteria for something that would be intrinsically harmless, yet quite malignant when mixed with other biological substances. But to poison our people doesn’t make sense. Or does it, in a sick, twisted way?

Rather than go into the details of each theory about what is in the chemtrail soup, I’d rather stick to the less malignant theory that temperature modification might be the purpose. I wouldn’t exclude the possibility that a secondary purpose exists to the spraying, but I guess we’ll only realize if there’s been a ongoing experiment once it ends.

Curiously, there exists an unnoticed clause in some of the post 9/11 legislation that allows the Secretary of Defense to allow biological testing on US citizens if he feels the research is vital to national security. You may remember how the US military conducted huge covert testing by dropping radioactive particles on various US cities in the Fifties and Sixties, resulting in an untold number of cancers and birth defects.

I guess this testing was deemed necessary to analyze fallout from the use of nuclear weapons. Still, the fact the tests were highly dangerous, and secret, does point at the ruthlessness of military testing–hardly a force for good.

I guess the dropping radioactive particles on unsuspecting Americans fits the general mold of not caring what comes after, a typical behavior for a military that is the largest single consumer of fossil fuels and uses Depleted Uranium in its armaments, a radioactive weapon that cause lingering aftereffects, disrupting the gene pool not so coincidentally in regions with populations considered unfriendly to the US or its ally Israel.

So at least the precedent for harmful testing by our government on our citizens has been established in our near past. Whether or not chemtrails constitute a biological weapons testing program is hard to prove, but then again the government’s claim to not know is really tantamount to knowing something’s bad, then doing nothing to stop its release. Agent Orange is an excellent example of that. Poured out over the rice paddies and tropical forests of Viet Nam, Agent Orange cause major damage to DNA, resulting in grotesquely malformed Vietnamese children being born today (see the highly disturbing photos from Pulitzer-winning photographer David Guttenfelder.)

Then of course there are the veterans like Don Anderson of Lebanon, Portland, whom I met in 2007 at an antiwar rally in D.C. as he suffered from Agent Orange poisoning. If you have different standards for what we do to foreign peoples in their countries, think again when it’s our boys who absorb the same aftereffects. Their suffering is compounded by the persistent absence of any admission that Agent Orange caused their health issues, an issue that veterans like Don Anderson fight for every day, despite their physical handicaps. (Don handed me this article from his hometown paper.)

The presence of squalene in vaccinations for Gulf War I soldiers is another enigma. The military won’t admit that squalene-laced shots caused the elusive Gulf War syndrome that has over 1/2 of Gulf War I veterans on full medical disability. Scarily, the H1N1 vaccinations, scheduled for mass inoculations, possibly forced, contain squalene.

Our government could come clean, and admit to past injustices, but that is not its style. Only time and good forensic testing will be able to prove that chemtrails are the cause of particular ailment, and then the way mycoplasma works might make a direct causal link hard to establish. In the same way handing out blankets to Native Americans was not a crime. Surely if the government knew that blankets contained cholera, the act of giving them out would be a crime. The again ignorance is a convenient defense, one available to no citizens in their defense but commonly used by our government, including for 9/11.

I can’t definitively say what our government knows and what they won’t tell us, but it’s a safe bet that something’s up. And if what they were up to resulted in collateral damage, we’d likely be told after it’s too late to stop it.

I think maintaining a good immune system is vital in fighting off biological contaminants, whatever their source. Rather than blaming government for present day health epidemics, we need to assume full personal responsibility for our health and our diet. That said, many people are sick and can’t avoid negative health effects like those caused by genetic damage or the ravages of disease.

Still, for those who remain healthy enough, much can be done to protect the body and immune system. These include regular exercise, adequate sleep, diets high in organic or homegrown vegetables and low in growth hormones/pesticides/GMOs, copious hydration, and minimizing the use of pharmaceutical products, substituting homeopathic and all natural products instead. Do that and many of the risks–but not all–associated with health problems like flu can be prevented.

Fight for Hemp, Against Coal

Apologize for the long delay in writing. I’ve been dealing with a number of political issues, and haven’t been able to divide my time devoted to working on my blogs.

In my absence, much has happened in getting America back on course. The environmental legacy of the preceding administration has been discredited, rightly.

In matters pertaining to our bodies and the health of the planet, our new President has delivered on his campaign promises. These include the abolition of restrictions on stem cells.

Much remains to be done by the new President to change the direction of our government towards sustainability. In the field of energy, we need a great deal more emphasis put on conservation. Americans were fooled into believing we could drill our way out of our energy glutton.

While many of the attitudes in place before Obama’s historic election may not have changed, leadership at the top has. We can now count on American progress in the field of stem cell research, now that medieval-era sanctions on the use of cells harvested from non-viable embryos.

Obama has also ordered a reduction in federal interventions in medical marijuana clinics. These depositories had been raided off and on during the previous two administrations, despite the passage by over a dozen states of laws making possession of marijuana by duly qualified patients completely legal.

I don’t know how deeply I can express support for the value of medical marijuana. The list of symptoms it can reduce or offset is simply miraculous. In the past I may have brought up links concerning  first person examples of medical marijuana and its benefits.

It goes without saying that if thirteen and counting states have reviewed the evidence, that the case for medical marijuana can be made in any forum where truth and justice are welcome. Too many Americans have been punished for using a drug that isn’t backed by pharmaceutical companies, one that can be had for a fraction of the price of costlier drugs.

God-given, marijuana is also accepted in numerous mystical organizations, and other peace-loving groups like fans of the Grateful Dead. Its use is commonplace in American society. At some point, states strapped for tax revenue WILL legalize, regulate, and tax the sale of marijuana for non-medical purposes as well.

I detest any reference to the drug war, which has been a complete policy failure. Not only has drug use NOT slowed down, the ongoing prohibition has created a vibrant prison industrial complex that now houses as many as 1 in 31 Americans, a new study reported. Over 800,000 Americans are arrested for marijuana possession, a number that hasn’t declined, nor will any time soon.

States like California show high levels of tolerance for the legalization of marijuana, and not just for medical marijuana. As reality and policy goals get closer to matching, it will at some point become essential that we admit we are getting nowhere on stopping the flow of illegal drugs into this country. Perhaps we also need to look at the effectiveness of drug interdiction versus treatment of addiction, a method which has been proven to be far more cost-effective that para-militarization of an ongoing failure.

I guess trying to be hard in one of these quasi-wars, “war on _____”, means failing. We can’t make interdiction the sole operating principle. If these policies are to be judged at some point, we can only conclude they aren’t working, or at least as they are being fought.

This being said, I’m coming out in full support of medical marijuana, decriminalization of marijuana, and support for a federal mandate allowing nationwide production of industrial hemp.

The Industrial Hemp Farming Act, House Bill 1009, would allow hemp farming and I hope you’ll contact your Congressperson on its behalf. Here is a Message Composer service with pre-written letter advocating sponsorship of the bill. The link was supplied through VoteHemp.com.

I customized the letter as follows:

We need hemp now! The United States desperately needs to produce more marketable agricultural products. Hemp is wonderfully easy to grow and doesn’t require herbicides or pesticides!

For its health benefits, we’ve heard much about the benefits of medical marijuana, a plant which contains the psychoactive ingredient THC, not found in industrial hemp. What we don’t hear much about is how strong hemp fiber is, and how safe it is as a cotton substitute. Cotton is typically treated with chorine, which raises issues about how much contact we want on something we wear, as chlorine our bodies enters through our skin.

Hemp-growing is so much easier on soil. Cotton growing uses more pesticides than any other crop, which can contribute to higher body burdens of carcinogenic chemicals whose long-term effects are unknown. So if we want lower longer-term health care costs, we should grow and wear hemp. If we want cleaner water, we should grow hemp.

George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew hemp. Also, during World War 2, hemp oil was used in aircraft engines as a substitute for petroleum based oils which were in short supply. Hemp is also great for rope-making, and makes a wonderful replacement for polyurethane foam, which contains  the polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE), or polyester fill, which contains dioxane, a known carcinogen.

Knowing more will allow Congress to make better decisions. In this case, an existing harm needs redress, and a wrong should be undone. Repealing prohibitions on hemp at the federal level would reject the misinformed hysteria that ignores scientific facts and has no place as the basis of law.

Please let farmers decide what to grow free of government controls. In hemp’s case, it’s clear that “he who governs best, governs least.”

For more, see http://www.industrialhemp.net/

Pet-owners might like http://www.doggyarchy.com/organicdogbeds

End letter.

Unfortunately some hemp farmers have faced persecution from agencies of the federal government because no distinction is made between industrial hemp and consumer-grade marijuana, which contain THC, the psychoactive substance in marijuana. The DEA has no place raiding farms that grow hemp for industrial purposes. That role exceeds the any anti-drug mandate, because industrial hemp is simply not a drug as well as violating common sense.

Protect our mountains, air, and water

In the past I’ve come out with support of specific environmental causes and included links to resources through which you can take action. Note that I do this only quite seriously, only when the cause is an important one AND a timely one. Nowhere was the urgency needed more to stop mountaintop coal mining. Since I published last, a massive coal slurry dam broke near Harlan, Tennessee, resulting in one of the worst coal-based disasters ever. We need to abandon coal as the primary source of fuel, and we need to do it NOW. These coal slurry dam breaks are just a canary in the coal mine as it pertains to the use of coal–the fossil fuel presents all kinds of problems.

All the way through coal’s production and use cycle, it causes environmental problems. In mining, mountaintops in Appalachia are literally getting blasted to bits, in a betrayal of our more fundamental principles of preserving our natural heritage for our children. Burnt, coal generates massive amounts of lead and mercury. These heavy metals are extremely dangerous to pregnant women and children, impairing brain function and fetal development.

Dust and ash from coal processing is stored in massive dams, which fill with water and need to be constantly maintained lest they break. The slurry combination which comes out hardens and must be jackhammered once it dries. The costs of the state of Tennessee for the Harlan dam break will be massive, hopefully they’ll do a better job of monitoring other coal slurry dams in the state as a preemptive cost-cutting measure. And with the new administration, now maybe the Bureau of Land Management will get off its ass and actually start to regulate and enforce laws protecting the environment. 

Under the preceding administration, the BLM (Bureau of Land Management), alongside the MMS  (Minerals Management Service) served up a bonanza of giveaways. Enforcement was lax. Many regulators were intimately connected to the companies they were overseeing. (I bet many have returned to their former employers, if they ever really left!) Unfortunately for government people like those at Interior Department, they will find free booze, drugs, and prostitutes harder to acquire, at least for free–see the NYTimes article.

The Clean Water Protection Act is pending before Congress. It would basically force the government to obey the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, which were passed long ago but forgotten under Bush. Here is the action item from the anti-MTR people. By the way, their effort to convert a mountaintop into a renewable clean wind power resource gained the attention and interest of West Virginia Gov.  Mancini, who appears sympathetic to ending mountaintop removal.

Cited in an e-mail from ilovemountains.og, here is what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had to say about the Clean Water Protection Act:

“The Clean Water Protection Act is the first broad Congressional initiative aimed at reversing the Bush Administration’s eight-year effort to savage our national waterways and the popular laws that protect them.”

The letter goes on to link to a blogpost at environmental site Grist:

“..the [CWPA] was introduced originally to challenge the outrageous executive rule change by the Bush administration to redefine “fill material” in the Clean Water Act, which has allowed coal companies to blast hundreds of mountains to bits, dump millions of tons of “excess spoil” into nearby valleys, and bury hundreds of miles of streams. An estimated 1,200 miles of waterways have been destroyed by this extreme mining process.

The end result: Toxic black waters and poisoned aquifers that have denied American citizens in the coalfields the basic right of a glass of clean water.

The timing of the bill couldn’t be more urgent: On the heels of a 4th U.S. Circuit Court decision that overturned greater environmental review of mountaintop-removal actions by coal companies, scores of mining permits are flooding through the gates of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers this month.”

Please stay informed on issues like these. And more importantly, take action. Getting involved in some small measure can be the difference between getting positive results of letting the status quo win. While your individual contribution to the cause may only require a few minutes, if enough people participate, the impact can be immense. Participation preserves the efficient functioning of our government, by holding it accountable for its policies and discouraging ongoing failure and waste.