Why Tennessee lawmakers are pushing a bill to keep government from spraying the sky

Republican state lawmakers are going after a new threat they say could cause harm to the environment — and playing into a baseless claim at the same time.

In a Tennessee bill passed by the state Senate last week, lawmakers targeted geoengineering, an experimental — and controversial — practice not yet in use that could help cool the planet amid climate change.

But the text of the bill can also be seen as referring to “chemtrails,” plumes of toxic chemicals that believers of the unfounded claim say governments and corporations are spewing into the sky.

Now, the confusion between solar geoengineering and chemtrails threatens to muddy the waters around nascent geoengineering research, chilling potential studies, scientists say. It’s the latest example of how spreaders of disinformation can latch on to reality to pursue their agenda, confounding public opinion on the issue.

Also last week, Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R) — who has posted on social media about the chemtrails accusation — announced in a memo his intention to propose legislation to mirror the Tennessee bill.

“In my view, the basic idea has morphed,” said Holly Jean Buck, a professor of environment and sustainability at the University at Buffalo.

What are ‘chemtrails?’

The theory of “chemtrails” has been around for several decades; online essays connecting commercial aircraft to chemical spraying and weather modification appeared in the late ’90s. According to chemtrails believers, the government or another shadowy force is using commercial aircraft to release chemicals into the atmosphere — for anything from weather modification to mass mind control.

Believers of this baseless claim often point to the white lines in the sky from commercial planes as evidence for “chemtrails,” arguing that the clouds look different or are behaving strangely.

Those lines are, in fact, airline contrails — or condensation trails created by the warm air from the aircraft engine interacting with the cold air in the atmosphere.

According to a study published in 2017, 10 percent of Americans believed the chemtrails theory to be “completely” true, while an additional 20 to 30 percent found it to be “somewhat” true.

In the last few years, however, experts say the claim has changed. Some now say that chemtrails are being used to carry out solar geoengineering — and that researchers and government employees investigating solar geoengineering are part of the larger scheme.

“In recent years, it’s shifted quite a bit toward the idea that climate geoengineering or solar radiation management is actually happening and involving various chemicals,” Buck said.

What do ‘chemtrails’ have to do with geoengineering?

Solar geoengineering is an emerging field of research on how to cool the planet in the face of climate change. Scientists have suggested that spraying sulfur particles into the atmosphere could help reflect sunlight, cooling the planet, though the technology remains controversial and untested, as researchers worry about potential unintended consequences.

Last year, the White House released a federally mandated report on the state of the science of solar geoengineering; some start-ups have also begun experimenting with the science.

Experts say broader discussion of geoengineering has made believers of chemtrails feel validated in their concerns.

Buck recalls attending a town hall in California last year where organizers passed out fliers with chemtrails content on one side and material about the Solar Geoengineering Non-Use Agreement — an academic initiative — on the other. “They were drawing inspiration from the language and feeling validated by the academic community,” Buck said.

No academic or scientific group is doing significant outdoor research into geoengineering. But some believe such geoengineering experiments are already happening and widespread.

The Tennessee bill, sponsored by state Sen. Steve Southerland (R) and state Rep. Monty Fritts (R), says that “it is documented” that the federal government or other entities “may conduct geoengineering experiments by intentionally dispersing chemicals into the atmosphere.” The bill prohibits the release of chemicals “with the express purpose of affecting temperature, weather, or the intensity of sunlight.” The bill has not passed the Tennessee House.

Mastriano, the Pennsylvania state senator, published a memo last week saying he would introduce a similar bill. “My legislation will … ban the injection, release, or dispersion of chemicals, chemical compounds, or substances within the borders of Pennsylvania into the atmosphere for purposes of affecting temperature, weather, or intensity of sunlight,” he wrote.

Southerland, Mastriano and Fritts did not respond to requests for comment.

In a Facebook post last year, Mastriano posted a picture of airplane contrails with the caption: “I have legislation to stop this.” The post continued, “Normal contrails dissolve / evaporate within 30-90 seconds.”

(Contrails freeze and turn to ice, which is why they last longer than 30 seconds to 90 seconds.)

Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at the Columbia Business School, said his research has shown that most of the geoengineering discussion on social media involves disinformation. “Between half and two-thirds of discourse online [on geoengineering] is conspiratorial,” Wagner said. “That is unfortunate, because there are real pollution problems out there.”

The risk, experts say, is that discussion of such unfounded claims may get in the way of real public discussion about solar geoengineering research. At the moment, chemtrails accusations interact and meld with concerns over legitimate academic research, creating more confusion and blocking further scientific research. “It could have some unintended consequences,” Wagner said.

Buck says chemtrail groups have begun to organize themselves like a social movement, filing lawsuits and getting legislation proposed. “They’re using the same tactics that other social movements use,” she explained. “All that is to say that this is not a fringe movement, but a real political force.”