Utah senators tackle solar geoengineering. What is it?

You can see them in the sky, the airplanes carrying customers or cargo. But maybe these planes are doing something else: spraying chemicals to bounce the heat of the sun back into the atmosphere in the name of climate change.

While they are doing this, however, the fallout happens. Those chemicals drift in the atmosphere and come back to settle in communities, land, water and on people.

It is called solar geoengineering and states are moving to take action to stop it.

Sen. Ron Winterton, R- Duchesne, told the House Committee on Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment Thursday that legislatures in 25 states are looking to penalize the practice and eight states already have laws on the books.

His SB126, Airborne Chemical Amendments, has nothing to do with cloud seeding or contrails, but rather the application of chemical spraying to bounce solar radiation back to the sun.

“When you start looking at the difference between chemtrails and contrails, they’re different, OK, because the contrails are what the jets are (releasing) right now, how their engines are designed. And when it comes out as vapor and it crystallizes, and you’ll see it as it melts and dissipates, it’s really quick,” Winterton said.

“But when you start talking, and I don’t want to call it chemtrails, because it’s geoengineering, but those linger, and you can see them spraying, or there’ll be patterns in that, and when you start looking what, what kind of chemicals that they spray, it’s scary, and it when it comes down it affects our our water and our land and our plants and that. And so as a state, we need to take, take the lead on this.”

Harvard’s Solar Geoengineering Research Program claims SAI (stratospheric aerosol injection) could lower sea surface temperatures, which would decrease the risks of coral bleaching, slow the movement of species towards cooler areas and reduce sea ice loss and glacier melt. Results would be quick and buy humans more time to cut carbon emissions and transition to renewable energy.

But unlike CO2 removal, a multifaceted geoengineering strategy that has more acceptance, solar geoengineering does not reduce CO2 in the atmosphere. It would do nothing to address ocean acidification, which harms marine ecosystems, because the ocean absorbs 25% of the CO2 humans emit, altering its chemistry, according to the program.

The bill has the support of Maryann Christensen, executive director of Utah Legislative Watch.

“I’m very pleased to be here in support of this bill. It absolutely is happening in Utah. We have chemicals and microparticles of aluminum and all kinds of things raining down on us, into our soil, into our water, and we’re breathing it into our lungs. And it’s a great thing that the legislature is considering it.”

Multiple residents from diverse areas that include Mountain Green in Morgan County, Cedar City and St. George also said they support the bill, worrying about the fallout from the chemicals sprayed in the sky.

Winterton’s bill was watered down to make the solar geoengineering an infraction, but in committee, Rep. Bridger Bolinder, R-Salt Lake City, moved to return the bill to its original form — and instead of making it an infraction, such spraying would be a misdemeanor referred to the Utah Attorney General’s Office.

That created some momentary confusion as to procedure, but the committee got the OK and passed the bill in its original form. Although it passed in the Senate, in its substitute version, it will now have to go back for another vote. The committee endorsed the original bill in an 8-1 vote.