Doctored TV programme revives widely-debunked 'chemtrails' conspiracy
"Spraying people with poison from the sky called #Chemtrail or #Geo-Engineering being discussed on Australian Television," says a Facebook post published on March 5, 2025.
It includes a video that begins with a presenter saying: "Bombarded with a cocktail of chemicals from on high. Those white vapour trails in the sky left by aircraft are government weather modification cover-up and in the process we're all slowly being poisoned. Chemtrails are happening and that they are climate engineering."
It goes on to show a proponent of chemtrails outlying "evidence" for the phenomenon.
"Chemtrails/geo-engineering being discussed on Australian television. Please share this video with a friend who doesn't look up," reads the video's text overlay.
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Screenshot of the Facebook post with the altered video, taken on March 7, 2025
Meteorologists have refuted the existence of chemtrails, but posts about the purported phenomenon continue to circulate online.
Chemtrails are "probably one of the most common" conspiracies faced by the meteorology community online, US National Weather Service meteorologist, Da'Vel Reed Johnson, previously told AFP.
Several US agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA, have explained the facts about contrails or "condensation trails" to debunk the falsehoods shared on social media (archived link).
Contrails are triggered by planes when they fly through a moist upper atmosphere and release additional water vapour from engine combustion as well as soot and metal particles into the air (archived here and here).
Altered news
Australian news organisation AAP has earlier fact-checked the manipulated news report that also surfaced in other Facebook posts as well as on Instagram (archived link).
A reverse image search of the clip's keyframes found the original longer version published on the verified YouTube channel of Australian broadcaster Network 10 on May 23, 2019 titled, "Chemtrails: Conspiracy Or Fact?" (archived link).
Image
Screenshot comparison of the video in the false posts (L) and the Network 10 report
The show features a proponent of chemtrails and Ken McLeod, a retired air traffic controller who challenges the former's assertions and clips of purported evidence.
The original video shows presenter Angela Bishop describing chemtrails as a "theory" before moving on to the part shown in the altered video.
It also shows rebuttals from McLeod saying the phenomenon is actually caused by condensation trails from engine exhaust.
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