Anti-‘chemtrails’ bill gets early support in Iowa House

A bill that would prohibit the intentional alteration of the weather or climate by releasing unspecified contaminants into the air above Iowa was advanced Tuesday by Republicans of an Iowa House subcommittee.

“There is no doubt the potential for polluting atmospheric activity … the potential for cloud seeding, for weather engineering, exists,” said Rep. Jeff Shipley, a Birmingham Republican, who is one of 23 co-sponsors of the bill, House File 191. “Therefore it is incumbent on the state of Iowa to exercise sovereignty in this area.”

Shipley was joined by numerous sky-watching residents who say the state is being poisoned by aluminum, barium and nanoparticles as part of government initiatives to control the weather.

Such geoengineering efforts have aimed to reflect sunlight away from the Earth or increase precipitation in localized areas. A research institute in Nevada claims its “cloud seeding” can increase snowfall by more than 10 percent.

But the residents who spoke in favor of the House bill said the geoengineering that is allegedly happening in Iowa has had much more substantial effect.

“When I moved to Iowa in 2018, I was in West Des Moines, I couldn’t go out the door without the door blowing off the hinges,” said one woman, who attributed the gusty conditions to the geoengineering.

She said she began to track weather patterns and found that when “they would spray” it blocked out the sun.

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“It’s genocide,” she said.

She and others referred to so-called “chemtrails” that some believe are toxic aerosol releases from airplanes that alter the weather and climate.

It is an alternative theory to the verified existence of “contrails,” the white streaks of water vapor that high-flying jets leave in their wakes.

Another woman who spoke in favor of the bill said she has documented the skies above Des Moines for years by taking “thousands upon thousands” of photos of the trails. She brought a few to the Capitol to share with lawmakers.

“It’s insane,” she said, showing photos she took on Sunday. “Outside of my home. All times of the day.”

One boy claimed that the chemtrails make him dizzy when he goes outside and ill for days.

A Linn County woman said she can “feel” the geoengineering, while other “people don’t have that ability.”

A young Bondurant mother, with an infant cradled to her chest, cried as she said her unvaccinated children have been sick for months with a respiratory illness that will not relent.

“I’ve been watching the skies for four years now, and I’m not crazy,” she said. “They’re spraying things in our skies.”

Rep. Ken Croken, a Davenport Democrat, was moderately skeptical of the geoengineering claims and declined to support the bill, which elicited consternation from the crowd.

“I don’t know what to do with suggestions that someone is seeding the sky in some way,” he said. “I don’t know how to respond to that.”

But his Republican colleagues that joined him on the Environmental Protection subcommittee — Reps. Sam Wengryn, of Pleasanton, and Craig Johnson, of Independence — recommended the bill for further consideration, in part because of the emphatic support of the crowd.

“I think there’s something behind this that might at least garner some further investigation in it,” Johnson said.

The bill would require the state’s Environmental Protection Commission to adopt rules to enforce the geoengineering prohibition.

Another bill in the Senate — Senate File 142 — would make it a felony offense and specifically mentions there is no exception for the “federal government and armed forces.”

Comments: (319) 368-8541; jared.strong@thegazette.com