‘Others would call it conspiracy theories’: Florida anti-chemtrail bill advances. What that means

A bill to ban “weather modification activities” in Florida passed its first legislative hurdle Tuesday. The Senate Environmental and Natural Resources Committee voted 6-3 along party lines to advance it after hearing comments from its sponsor and President Donald Trump’s second wife.

The bill would ban attempts to cause or disperse rain, snow, fog or other atmospheric conditions, sometimes called cloud seeding. SB 56‘s sponsor, Miami state Sen. Ileana Garcia, said it was in response to numerous calls from residents about inexplicable weather phenomena and health concerns.

“Some would call it concerns. Others would call it conspiracy theories. But I thought that perhaps this bill would allow us to start somewhere where we can start to separate fact from fiction,” she said, according to Florida Politics.

If SB 56 passes, it would repeal nearly a dozen provisions in Florida statutes that allow state-licensed weather modification such as cloud-seeding to cause rain, block any future innovations, and prohibit the injection, release or dispersion of any substance or apparatus into the atmosphere within Florida’s borders “for the express purpose of affecting the temperature, the weather, or the intensity of sunlight.”

The bill also adds a fine of up to $100,000 for violations, an amount dramatically increased from the $10,000 in the original version. Normally, second-degree misdemeanors such as the violation in the bill would result in a $500 penalty.

In the committee hearing, Garcia brought up the term that the bill itself carefully avoids: chemtrails.

“Yet many will complain — a lot of our constituents have — that there’s activity going on, aircrafts flying by, some type of condensation. And let’s call a spade a spade: chemtrails,” she said. “That’s the term that the conspiracy theorists are coined with. But think about what the concerns are: health risks … including respiratory issues. I get a lot of those complaints. Also allergies, environmental impact, concerns regarding possible soil and water contamination, harming wildlife, disrupting ecosystems, government transparency as a whole, government efficiency.

“It’s in question. It’s in play all the time,” she said.

“Chemtrails” refer to the fear of a long-running conspiracy theory that nefarious people or government agencies are spreading toxic chemicals on an unsuspecting populace through the white trails of condensed water vapor left in the sky by airplanes.

Several speakers from the Global Wellness Forum, including founder Marla Maples, Trump’s second wife and mother of their daughter Tiffany, spoke in favor of the bill, talked about the metals supposedly getting injected into the air, an increase of Alzheimer’s disease patients, and sightings of “unusual trails and streaks in the sky” left by airplanes before hurricanes struck the state.

But chemtrails have been debunked for years.

What are chemtrails?

“Chemtrails,” as described by a Harvard University report, is a conspiracy theory buzzword that refers to types of contrails, the line-shaped clouds or “condensation trails” visible behind aircraft engines under certain atmospheric conditions.

Contrails are composed when hot, humid air from the engines condenses into ice crystals in the cold air, the National Weather Service says. While they often fade quickly, especially in dry weather, their appearance and durability can change depending on the conditions the plane flew through, including altitude, temperature, humidity, sunlight, wind speed, etc.

Sometimes, in saturated, high-humidity conditions, some contrails may persist for hours and spread out into cirrus clouds, or last long enough for multiple airplane paths to create a crisscross effect. This normal event has been singled out by conspiracy theorists as evidence that the government, the military, or climate scientists are deliberately pumping chemicals into the atmosphere for various intended effects such as human population control, weapons testing, mind control and more.

The theory spread far enough into conspiracy circles that in 2000, the EPA teamed up with the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to issue a report debunking the chemtrails theory. Other agencies, such as the U.S. Air Force, issued their own fact sheets explaining what contrails were.

“EPA is not aware of any deliberate actions to release chemical or biological agents into the atmosphere,” the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said.

Conspiracy theorists have pointed to such reports as evidence of collusion in the scheme.

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Where did the chemtrails conspiracy theory come from?

In 1996, the U.S. Air Force published a report about proposed weather modification in the future. The report itself said it contained “fictional representations of future situations/scenarios,” but it triggered concerns about shadowy evil plans. The USAF later clarified that the paper was created in response to a military directive asking for future scenarios and did not reflect any plans, present or future, to modify the weather.

Since then, any reports of proposed geoengineering projects, rocket engine tests, widespread sickness, or just suspicious cloud formations bring out more accusations of chemtrails and governmental conspiracy. In recent months, concerns over dense fog in Florida have also triggered rumors of chemical testing or attacks against the populace.

Chemtrails have also been blamed for hurricanes. Most recently when Hurricane Miltion became the second major hurricane to make landfall in two weeks, conspiracy theorists claimed the Biden administration was controlling the weather to affect the election. The spread of misinformation became so prevalent that both NOAA and FEMA were forced to create fact-checking webpages.

Georgia GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene helped spread the rumor in an X post that was seen more than 44 million times.

“Yes they can control the weather,” she said. “It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.” She posted a follow-up asking if Americans agreed to their weather being modified.

Greene was widely ridiculed, with former President Joe Biden calling the claim “stupid” and U.S. Rep. Carlos Giménez, a Miami Republican, saying “Humans can’t create or control hurricanes. Anyone who thinks they can, needs to have their head examined.”

But the claim gained traction anyway. Rolling Stone reported that meteorologists were getting death threats.

What would SB 36 do?

SB 36, Weather Modification Activities, does the following:

• Repeals 11 Florida statutes defining and regulating weather modification in the state
• Prohibits “the injection, release, or dispersion, by any means, of a chemical, a chemical compound, a substance, or an apparatus into the atmosphere within the borders of this state for the express purpose of affecting the temperature, the weather, or the intensity of sunlight”
• Changes the second-degree misdemeanor for anyone attempting weather modification without a state license to anyone attempting it at all, and adds a fine of up to $100,000 per violation
• Bans all study, research or experimentation in the field of weather modification

Tennessee passed a similar law last year, with several legislators referring to the chemtrails conspiracy. Kentucky and Arizona have also introduced legislation to ban weather modification and geoengineering.

Can we manipulate the weather?

On a small scale, yes.

The idea of cloud seeding, where substances such as silver iodide or dry ice are released into the atmosphere to increase rain or snow, mitigate hail or disperse fog, has been around since 1891 and was first put into practice in 1946. But nothing on a large scale has been found to work.

“No technology exists that can create, destroy, modify, strengthen or steer hurricanes in any way, shape or form,” NOAA said.

There was an attempt, starting in the 1960s, by the U.S. military to modify hurricanes in the Atlantic basin, called Project STORMFURY. The project was unsuccessful and was discontinued, NOAA said.

In February, researchers proposed dehydrating the atmosphere by seeding the upper atmosphere with small particles known as ice nuclei to slow climate change. But other scientists have been skeptical, and one of the researchers admitted, “we don’t have a plan or the technology to do this.”