Mike Saul’s letter (“Look up; look out!” April 1) is a perfect example of how people who have no knowledge of a subject can, through their ignorance, twist something innocent into something sinister. That sounds like the health care debate, doesn’t it? But I digress. His “convincing evidence” that it is “physically impossible” for a jet’s contrail (condensation trail) to start and stop is a perfect example of this.

 I have been an airline pilot for many, many years and this phenomenon is simply caused by the jet climbing or descending into warmer or cooler air. These climbs or descents cannot be observed from the ground. San Luis Obispo lies directly under the path of the hundreds of jets that travel between Los Angeles and San Francisco every day. These jets typically top their climb just south of us and start decending just north of us. This is the simple explanation for Saul’s paranoia. Fear of the unknown can be used to control people; a fact that governments well know. They don’t need to spray us with anything to exploit this. 

 Sometimes I wish the airline industry actually would get paid by the government to spray the masses, so the airlines would not continue losing hundreds of millions of dollars per year.