Over the past several years I’ve been asked to comment on the notion that there is on-going an active, presumably by the US Government, classified program to use emissions from airborne aircraft to cut down on sunlight arriving at the Earth’s surface for nefarious purposes. The group promulgating this topic is GeoEngineering Watch. They call the supposedly nefarious emissions “Chemtrails.”
On 20 March 2021, I presented “Human-Caused Climate Change? Possible Lessons from Weather Modification Operations During the Vietnam War;” graphics are posted on the web site at this link.
The presentation delved into these subject areas: a personal timeline, geography of Southeast Asia, A History, from of the loss of French Indochina to the disclosure and declassification of US weather modification efforts, climatology and the monsoons, cloud physics and cloud seeding, cloud seeding history—mostly from newspapers, sensational stories and wild speculation, and serious research especially that led by the late Dr. Joanne Simpson.
[Whenever the author mentions SECRET and/or TOP SECRET missions, activities, or code words, he is referring to the classification at that time. Everything in this post has since been declassified. Ed]
I spoke on weather modification efforts by the military in Southeast Asia: Operation Popeye, 1966, Operation Compatriot/Intermediary, 1967-72, my 1969 in-flight observations over the Ho Chi Minh Trail, disclosure of the project, US Senate hearings, and declassification of this formerly TOP SECRET effort.
In doing my research, several unresolved items resulted in puzzlement for me including the now declassified early 1967 State Department memo which recommended pursuing cloud seeding, internet-available literature which is all over the place on details, and a popular, but seriously in error, post in Gizmodo.
