‘Chemtrails’: the hoax of the aerial fumigation of Spain that an ‘indepe’ took to Europe

A few days ago, alarming news went viral on social networks: a national radio station reportedly revealed that “four workers from the Institute of Meteorology have confessed under a report to the European Union what The whole of Spain is being sprayed with lead dioxide“.

The use of this substance, poured from airplanes, would have the purpose of “drive away the rains and be able to raise the temperatures to create a summer weather environment for him tourism and in turn help farmers“. But it would also have serious side effects in the form of terrible droughts and catastrophic cold drop phenomenain addition to poison to the population.

But of course there is nothing proven In all this. “Hoaxes are like viruses”, wrote the sociologist Joost Van Loon. Experts have highlighted the similarity between the memes viral in Internet and the real viruses, those that infect our body. One of these similarities is that online lies, such as the flutend to sprout from time to time, always adapting to the current moment as if they were news “this morning”.

In the case of the false toxic bombardment of the Spanish fields, the hoax dates back to at least 2014, if not before. Then an anonymous blog published the following headline: “Spanish meteorologists denounce to the EU that Spain is being fumigated by planes to change the climate.”

The text noted that the alleged news had been “circulating on the net” and its origin was attributed to an interview in the Being Chain of October 4 of that year, in which the complaint of the four meteorologists had apparently been revealed. But curiously, even the author himself clarified that he had not been able to find such an interviewwhich did not prevent him from opening the false information with the alarmist headline.

The hoax about the ‘spraying’ of Spain, denied by ‘Maldito Hoax’.

mystery and grotesque

The hoax about meteorologists reached such a magnitude that it reached motivate a question to the European Commission signed on May 19, 2015 by the MEP Ramón Tremosafrom Democratic Convergence of Cataloniaa character known for his misrepresentations who nevertheless continues to sit in the European Parliament. In his letter, Tremosa asked for confirmation of the meteorologists’ complaint and requested the EC’s position on the matter, citing as a source the blog that spread the alleged news.

In its response, published on July 16, the EC assured that it had not received any report from Spanish meteorologists, adding: “the Commission has investigated the matter with the Spanish authorities and has found no evidence for the allegations of a military geoengineering scheme to change the climate in Spain”.

At the same time and in successive months, the meteorologists’ ball bounced around the pinball from Internet. And as in the broken phone game, color was added: in some cases literal statements from the meteorologists were quoted in the non-existent interview, and in others a link was even provided to the sound file on the website of the Ser network.

However, the linked audio actually corresponded to the October 6, 2012 edition of the mystery and pseudoscience program Millennium 3 of the journalist Iker Jimenez. That broadcast addressed the issue of the chemtrailsa conspiracy theory that associates the contrails of airplanes in the sky to the dispersion of chemical products with purposes that vary according to the version, from manipulating the weather or causing diseases to the extermination of a part of humanity.

The myth of chemtrails originated in the late 1990s, probably inspired by a report published in 1996 by the US Air Force on weather modification. Internet forums and late-night radio shows in the US began to shape the hoax, the popularity of which may also have been contributed to by the practice of cloud seeding via silver iodidea procedure legally and publicly employed in many countries, including Spainto increase rainfall and mitigate hailstorms.

Another possible ingredient in the fabrication of the hoax was the declassification in 1977 of several secret projects of the US government that in the 1950s and 1960s spread bacteria and harmful compounds over various populated regions of that country as simulacra of bacteriological and nuclear warfare.

pseudoscientists and jokes

Despite his youth, the hoax of the chemtrails It has achieved great popularity which, as often happens in other similar cases, is fueled by pseudoscientists and pseudo-proofs. Among the first is J.Marvin Herndona physicist author of several bizarre theories who in 2015 published a study in which he intended to demonstrate the presence of remains of chemtrails in the environment. The work was later withdrawn due to manipulation of data and conclusions.

Among the latter is the video that the British Chris Bovey recorded in 2014 from his seat on an airliner and showed the expulsion of a substance from the wing of the device. Bovey’s document was raised by the conspiracists as the definitive proof, until the author himself confessed in a live radio program that it was a joke.

His plane was going to make an emergency landing, he explained, and following the usual protocol, the fuel was removed from the tanks. After his statement, Bovey said that they accused him of allowing himself to be bought, and that some conspiracy theorist Furious, he had come to want him to “fuck him in the ass in prison.”

Meanwhile, in the US various agencies including the Federal Aviation Administration, the POTthe Environmental Protection Agency wave Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration have repeatedly denied the existence of chemtrailsalthough it seems obvious that these official statements are hardly going to convince the followers.

For their part, scientists try to banish the myth by explaining that there are no such chemtrails or chemtrails, but onlycontrails or condensation trails that occur under certain atmospheric conditions when water vapor forms droplets or ice crystals due to the action of aircraft engines, creating persistent artificial clouds similar to cirrus clouds.

Even conservation entities like Ecologists in Action have distanced themselves from conspiracy offering rigorous science as an antidote to myth. What, how could it be otherwise, has earned this organization the accusation of selling out to government subsidies.

As the atmospheric scientist said in 2016 Ken Caldeiraco-author of a large study that dismantled the hoax of the chemtrails, all of this “is not going to convince die-hard believers that their beloved secret dispersal program is just a paranoid fantasy.” or as she said Mark Twain, “never let the truth spoil a good story”. Of course Twain apparently never said such a thing; it’s just one more hoax.