BY JEREMY LYBARGER “If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.” — Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow PART I: If you ask him the million-dollar question — Why are they spraying WARRIORS FOR THE DEEP chemtrails? — his stock answer is: “Be- BLUE SKY cause they’re assholes.” “They” could refer to several nefar- Patrick Roddie films the sky every ious actors: the U.S. government, the day. Two years ago, he rigged a camera military-industrial complex, renegade on the roof of his apartment building scientists, old-money foundations, the in Lower Pacific Heights to record U.N., or, most sinister and enigmatic of timelapses of the sun’s dawn-to-dusk all, the New World Order. “It’s a huge arc, along with the sky’s usual bland program,” Roddie says, adding that “it” traffic of birds, airplanes, and clouds. probably encompasses every airline in Many of Roddie’s timelapses — the world. which he uploads to YouTube — cap- A thumbnail sketch of the science ture something else, too: hazy, white behind chemtrails is difficult because threads that thicken in the wake of there are competing theories about airplanes and sometimes tattoo the what that science entails. But most sky in grids. To the uninitiated, these activists, including Roddie, agree that are contrails, the harmless water vapor curbing global warming seems to be that commercial planes spume as they the purpose. In layman’s terms, chem- track across the sky at 30,000 feet. To trails are believed to be an aerosol that Roddie and his followers, however, contains aluminum (which deflects these are chemtrails, the toxic signa- sunlight), as well as a cocktail of other ture of a covert government program toxic elements such as barium and to slow global warming and control strontium. According to Roddie, this the weather. aerosol has insidious side effects, in- Roddie knows this sounds like boil- cluding Alzheimer’s, autism, asthma, erplate conspiracy theory. “Don’t trust respiratory failure, pulmonary failure, me,” he says. “Assume I’m full of crap. and stroke. I’m just some Irish guy.” Another major side effect: Califor- Roddie, who was born in Belfast, nia’s historic drought. has the beard of a Confederate general “It’s like putting a Brawny towel and the doggedness of a street preach- over the sky,” Roddie says. “Any time er. His day job is photographing por- there’s a storm approaching the Cal- traits, mostly of weddings and children ifornia coast and you look on NASA’s (he also has a Burning Man portfolio EOSDIS Worldview satellite, you can dating back to 1998), but his passion see a checkerboard of lines ahead of is cataloging and protesting “the global and on top of any storm coming in.” chemtrails program.” Mainstream scientists reject the Roddie runs a website, Stop “chemtrails conspiracy” — if they en- Mainstream America considers chemtrails Spraying Us - SF, helps admin a Face- tertain it at all. Ken Caldeira, a climate book group called California - Bay scientist at the Carnegie Institute for another crazy conspiracy theory, but activists in Area Residents Against Chemtrails/ Science at Stanford University who Geoengineering that has more than studies climate change, is barraged the Bay Area say the effects are real — and deadly. 2,000 members, manages a YouTube with chemtrails inquiries so often account that’s 200 videos strong (with that he created a pro forma response. most view counts in the low hun- “Please do not be one of these people dreds), leads small monthly rallies at with no scientific literacy and who City Hall and the Ferry Building, and believe stupid stuff they read on the travels widely to speak out against Internet,” reads a sample line. chemtrails. Roddie estimates that “I feel sorry for these people be- over the course of his three-year cause they have no real way of finding chemtrails activism career he’s burned out the truth for themselves. They and distributed more than 30,000 in- trust people who believe false things,” formational DVDs. Caldeira says. Last month, he raised $5,000 on R. John Hansman, Professor of GoFundMe to fly to Paris, where he Aeronautics & Astronautics at MIT, presented a paper to climate scientists offers a no-nonsense definition of about the health effects of geoengi- those lines in the sky: “[They] are neering. And this month, he addressed primarily water and are due to con- a public Environmental Protection densation of the jet exhaust when the Agency hearing in Washington about relative humidity is high in the upper the dangers of aircraft pollution. atmosphere.” >> p14 12 | AUGUST 20-26,2015 | LETTERS NEWS COVER STORY THE CALENDAR ARTS & CULTURE EAT MUSIC SFWEEKLY.COM Fear From Above from p12 She also mentions Morgellons, a nology. To me, those are the scariest young, only 25, so it’s hard to face this Tribune. On October 21, 2005, barely controversial condition — classified words I’ve ever heard in my life.” is your world.” two months after his story appeared, And the U.S. Air Force has also pub- by most physicians as a delusional Marsha Dawson, a North Bay Dawson first learned of chemtrails Dalton was fired, and the notice in the licly denied the existence of a chem- parasitosis — in which people devel- activist who works with Roddie and in February 2014. She had recently Tribune announcing his termination trails program. In the early aughts, the op sores they believe to be caused by Hall, agrees that chemtrails exact a retired as an administrative assistant, indicated that his wife, who sometimes agency’s website featured a notice de- parasites, insects, or invasive synthetic disastrous human toll. She says she and with spare time on her hands, contributed business articles to the pa- claring, “The Air Force is not conduct- fibers. In 2008, the Centers for Disease experiences “memory problems” and began sitting on her deck in Marin per, had also “been asked not to write ing any weather modification experi- Control and Prevention investigated lung pain because of her exposure. County. One day she noticed contrails anymore.” All mention of Dalton and ments or programs and has no plans Morgellons among patients in North- Dawson drinks Fiji and Volvic water runnelling across the sky. As Hall did his articles has since been scrubbed to do so in the future. The ‘chemtrail’ ern California, a hotbed of self-report- constantly because both contain silica three years before, Dawson turned to from the Tribune’s website. hoax has been investigated and refuted ed Morgellons diagnoses, and conclud- that, she claims, loosens the aluminum the Internet for answers. High Strangeness, a blog about by many established and accredited ed there was “no infectious cause and particles in her body. She also finds “That opened a door that I wish mysterious phenomena, posted an universities, scientific organizations, no evidence of an environmental link.” relief in black cherry bark syrup from many times I could close,” Dawson says. email purportedly sent by Dalton on and major media publications.” Hall is unconvinced. “All of us have Whole Foods. She joined Roddie’s Facebook November 18, 2005, in which he con- Nonetheless, Roddie has attracted a fibers in us because they spray them “I’ll call my daughter to warn her, group. And later that month, during a firmed his dismissal was unrelated to following of devout chemtrails believ- in the sky, and they’re all over the ‘It’s a heavy spray day, please don’t trip to the San Joaquin Valley, she says the chemtrails story. “I moved away ers in the Bay Area. Fifty-three-year ground, and they’re in the soil, and go outside,’” Dawson says. “And she she awoke in a little town to see planes from Las Vegas,” he wrote. But that old Val Hall is one of them. A landscape they’re in the water,” she says. “These doesn’t argue. She doesn’t want to spraying and chemtrails swelling like hasn’t dissuaded chemtrails believ- gardener from Richmond, Hall first fibers are self-replicating nanotech- talk about it, but she’ll say okay. She’s varicose veins across an ashen sky. ers from anointing him a martyr to learned of chemtrails from a young their cause. (As of press time, Dalton man who’d joined her work crew at a couldn’t be located, and neither his ex- job in Point Richmond in May 2006. wife nor the Las Vegas Tribune returned “While we were working, a jet put requests for comment.) a persistent contrail all the way across Roddie believes that whatever dark the sky, and the kid showed me,” Hall bureaucracy is behind the spraying says. “I’d never seen a jet put a line like program conditioned the public to that all the way across the sky in my accept chemtrails by foreshadowing life. Some of my crewmembers looked them in pop culture. He calls this “the at him and thought, ‘This guy’s crazy,’ revelation of the method,” a term pop- but I didn’t think he was crazy.” ularized by the revisionist historian The kid gave Hall a name for what (and Holocaust denier) Michael A. she’d witnessed — chemtrails — and Hoffmann. Roddie considers the body explained the various poisons strafing scanners in Total Recall an example people in the Bay Area. Hall never saw of how the government introduces the kid again after that day, but she provocative technology under the began watching the sky closely, and in guise of commercial entertainment. 2011 she went online to do her own re- “We’re living in a script,” Roddie search.