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In a recent episode, Tucker Carlson claimed as fact that chemtrails are real. But are they? Heck, what even are they? We break down the issue and interview Harvard professor Dustin Tingley to get answers.
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By Max Towey
When a jet flies high in the sky, giant streams of vapor trail behind it. From the ground, perhaps you’ve wondered: What are they?
The traditional answer is boring: Those giant streams are condensation trails, or contrails. Contrails are most visible when the air is humid; if the air is dry, they evaporate quickly. The reason they exist is that the water vapor from aircraft engines freezes into ice crystals that don't evaporate (the average temperature at high altitudes is -50 degrees F). They can last for hours, spread out, and even evolve into persistent cirrus clouds.
This is the answer you’ll get from scientists, the government, Wikipedia, and every mainstream news outlet. But it’s not the answer you’ll get from Tucker Carlson and an increasingly large faction of the alternative media. They believe these trails are far more nefarious: They’re chemtrails, and the government is spraying them to poison the public, control the weather, and slow birth rates.
Tucker Carlson dedicated a recent episode of his podcast – the biggest show on X and third most popular podcast on Spotify – to chemtrails. It began with a vintage, AI-worthy Tucker opening:
It’s always the obvious questions that are the most vigorously discouraged, and one of the questions that’s been most discouraged over the last 30 years is: What are those lines in the sky you see trailing jets? What is that?... It’s clearly not water vapor, so what are they?
The episode – titled “US Government Admits Chemtrails Are Real (It's Worse Than You Think). Dane Wigington Reveals All” – has received over 1M views on YouTube in its first 10 days online.
Tucker’s guest for the episode is Dane Wigington, the founder of the obscure website Geoengineering Watch. Wigington explains the trails in the sky by claiming government planes are spraying a toxic mix of aluminum, barium, strontium, manganese, surfactants, polymer fibers, and graphene into the atmosphere for its own nefarious purposes. Tucker responded to Wigington’s list of chemicals with a simple: “Horrifying.”
In today’s deep-dive, we look at the chemtrail conspiracy, then interview Harvard’s Dr. Dustin Tingley for an alternative perspective.
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Editor’s Note
So, what do you all think: Are chemtrails real, or just a conspiracy theory? Let us know by replying here.
And if you haven’t caught up on our latest, check out our three-part series on how the Citizens United decision led to the rise of Super PACs and “dark money,” along with our other recent stories below.
Some replies to our series on Citizens United and dark money:
Dustin wrote:
Re: the dark money. I would wonder if people who’s businesses rely on marketing (or other advertising streams) significantly suffer from this influx of money every 4 years. Say you sold a widget on Amazon/Meta ads for a living; I bet every 4 years their sales dramatically decline because their dollar spend wouldn’t compete with these SuperPAC funds… That’s really tough on your standard small business owner…
Seems that argument alone (and helping the greater good succeed) would suggest capping the amount of funds these organizations can spend. But then someone would likely game the system and create 100 small funds instead of 1 large fund? Just thoughts…
Nathan said:
Sure, American billionaires favoring their side can be problematic, but we NEED to eliminate any and all opportunities for foreigners to influence our elections.
And MJ from Florida wrote:
I'm not a political genius and perhaps look at the world rosier than others, but I'm stumped as to why someone would want to donate money to a politician and not support them by revealing who the donor is. If you really believe in your choice, tell the world and tell them why. It sounds like people want their candidate in so they can extort them for a favor or two without the world knowing what their intent is. I applaud the people who reveal their choices, even when I don't support their candidate. At least I know why they do what they do. I also think that if people knew that outsiders (other countries) who are not US based were supporting a candidate, then they definitely were looking for something that might not be in our best interest.
Thanks for reading and writing in. Enjoy your Saturdays.
—Max and Max
