Marjorie Taylor Greene Is Going After ‘Chemtrails' With New Bill to Ban Weather Modification

Gizmodo

08-07-2025

House Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is the latest lawmaker to seemingly go after the fictional threat of chemtrails. Over the weekend, Greene stated she will soon introduce a federal bill aimed at banning substances from being injected into the atmosphere.
Greene announced the proposed bill in an X post published Saturday. The legislation would reportedly bar chemicals from being released into the air for the 'express purpose of altering weather, temperature, climate, or sunlight intensity.' While the bill is apparently a response to the completely not real dangers of chemtrails, it would target actual, potentially important technologies like cloud seeding and other forms of geoengineering.
'We must end the dangerous and deadly practice of weather modification and geoengineering,' Greene said in her X post.
I am introducing a bill that prohibits the injection, release, or dispersion of chemicals or substances into the atmosphere for the express purpose of altering weather, temperature, climate, or sunlight intensity. It will be a felony offense.
I have been researching weather…
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) July 5, 2025For the conspiracy-minded, chemtrails are purportedly the streaky visible remnants of chemicals being poured into the atmosphere by high-flying planes. These chemicals are claimed to be biological weapons developed by the military to sicken people or the toxic byproducts of nefarious scientific experiments, depending on which conspiracy nut you ask. While weather modification is a common theme of chemtrails, concepts like population control are also a regular part of the conspiracy.
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Greene doesn't explicitly mention chemtrails in her post about the new legislation. But it's modeled after a similar state bill in Florida (SB-56) that Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law last month (the law bans the airborne release of chemicals intended for geoengineering or weather modification, with a potential third-degree felony charge and fines up to $100,000 for violators). That said, proponents of the Florida law and similar bills in other states have directly referenced chemtrails as a target of their legislative efforts.
In reality, what's referred to as chemtrails are actually contrails: the product of condensation that happens when jet fuel exhaust (mostly water vapor and small amounts of soot) mixes with cold, humid air. The only real difference between contrails and naturally formed clouds is that the former are typically made from water crystals, whereas contrails are made from ice crystals.
While contrails are falsely labeled chemtrails, geoengineering technologies like cloud seeding are also common bogeymen for the conspiracy-minded. Contrary to what conspiracy theories falsely suggest, these deliberate, large-scale interventions in Earth's climate system aim to mitigate the effects of global warming or to simply alter a region's existing climate.
Cloud seeding is just one example. This 80-year-old weather modification technique adds particles—usually silver iodide crystals—to clouds to trigger rain or snow. As rising global temperatures increase the frequency and severity of drought, this technology has emerged as a potential way to replenish dried-up water resources. While it's still in the research-and-development stage, small-scale deployments have shown promise in western U.S. states like Utah, where cloud seeding has managed to boost snowpack by 6% to 12% per year. The practice has increased streamflow by roughly 180,000 to 200,000 acre-feet during the spring melt season, which is more water than the state's entire Deer Creek reservoir can hold.
In addition to this, cloud seeding has other practical uses. In Canada, it's often used to reduce hail damage. Some U.S. ski resorts, such as Vail, Breckenridge, Keystone, and Beaver Creek in Colorado, have used cloud seeding to enhance their snow cover.
The early successes of these programs have garnered attention from U.S. scientists, but this isn't the only atmospheric geoengineering technology gaining interest. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), for example, is researching stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) and marine cloud brightening (MCB). Both technologies aim to lower global temperatures by increasing the amount of sunlight reflected back into space. SAI involves dispersing microscopic, light-reflecting particles into the stratosphere, while MCB seeds low-level marine clouds with sea salt particles to increase their reflectivity. Unlike cloud seeding, neither of these techniques has actually been deployed at scale.
Still, burgeoning geoengineering research has some lawmakers spooked. A growing number of states are considering bills to ban geoengineering altogether, citing concerns over unknown risks to the environment and human health. While some of these concerns are scientifically legitimate, others are largely based in conspiracy theories. In 2025 alone, at least 22 states have proposed bills that would ban solar geoengineering technologies, including SAI and MCB, according to the organization SRM360.
Greene has long dabbled in conspiracies, having previously endorsed QAnon-fueled theories doubting the 2018 Parkland school shooting and the 9/11 attacks (soon after first taking office in 2021, Greene denounced her past QAnon support). So it's not all too surprising that she's now moved onto weather modification. In October 2024, former President Joe Biden personally rebuked Greene after she implied the federal government created the hurricanes that had recently hit Florida at the time.
It's unknown whether Greene will have enough support from her fellow congressmen to advance the proposed legislation. But she's hardly the only GOP or Trump official to have jumped aboard the chemtrails train lately.
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In addition to the newly enshrined Florida law, bills targeting geoengineering have been introduced or passed in at least a dozen other states lately, including Louisiana, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania. And in April, during a town hall interview hosted by Dr. Phil (full name Phil McGraw), Health and Human Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reiterated his earlier promise to stop chemtrails at any cost.
Chemtrails aren't real, but these sorts of laws advanced by the conspiracy wing of the GOP could certainly cause plenty of actual damage to the development of research and innovations that could help us manage climate change—or even to simply add some snow to ski hills.