TALLAHASSEE—Floridians planning to modify the weather could be slapped with a $100,000 fine, according to a new bill targeting geoengineering and alleged “chemtrails” advancing through the state Senate.
Though no Floridian has applied for a weather modification license in the past decade, bill sponsor Sen. Ileana Garcia (R-Miami) hopes to repeal 13 Florida statutes allowing the Department of Environmental Protection or private citizens to try to alter weather patterns. The bill came months after two major hurricanes rocked the Southeast in quick succession, leading some conservative personalities to blame purposeful weather control.
But Garcia says her bill is designed to clarify weather questions for concerned Floridians, not tackle alleged hurricane manipulation.
“Whether fact or fiction, what we want to be able to do is log, track, investigate, and mitigate,” Garcia said in Tuesday’s Senate Appropriations Committee on Agriculture, Environment, and General Government.
It ultimately passed its hearing in a 10-2 vote, with Democrat Senators Lori Berman and Kristen Arrington being the sole “no” votes. If it passes its final committee hearing and then the floor, Florida would become the second state to ban weather modification after Tennessee.
Other red states like Kentucky and Arizona are debating similar legislation.
‘I Felt Like I Was Being Assaulted’
While SB 56 would ban DEP from conducting weather modification studies, the environmental agency must set up an email address and online form for confused or worried Floridians to report or question potentially altered weather.
This, Garcia said, could include solar radiation management—reflecting solar rays into the atmosphere to decrease the earth’s temperature—or “chemtrails,” the condensation vapor trailing airplanes that some believe to be dangerous chemicals. Violators would be branded with a fine up to $100,000.
“We can’t shut down the conversation or legitimate concerns that many have had regarding aerial activity that we have seen, whether it’s been by airplanes, whether it’s drones, whether it’s been balloons,” Garcia said. “Healthy skepticism is important.”
These concerns were echoed by former Jeb Bush staffer and ex-federal judge Bradford Thomas, who told the Appropriations Committee that he has seen “with his own eyes” chemicals being sprayed from airplanes above Florida’s coasts.
“I was walking on that beach and I looked up into the sky…I felt like I was being assaulted by the flights,” Thomas said, urging Garcia to up her bill’s penalties to a felony punishable by five years in prison. “These are not jet aircraft flying commercial flights. These are airplanes flying and injecting aerosols into the sky in an attempt to…dim the sun.”
He referred to “chemtrails,” considered to be a conspiracy theory alleging that either the federal government or other powerful parties are adding toxic chemicals to the atmosphere via aircraft, creating “chemtrails” seen following airplanes. Believers connect this to sterilization, autism, weather control, or life expectancy.
Garcia’s bill, which bans any injection, dispersion, or use of substances or technologies modifying weather, was filed two months after Hurricane Helene, and Hurricane Milton 13 days later, rocked the Florida Gulf coast.
Helene specifically, which traveled into and destroyed parts of rural North Carolina, became the focal point for online conspiracy theories surrounding weather control. While rebuked by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, they were largely amplified by Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.
There has been no evidence that either hurricane resulted from weather modification technologies.
SB 56’s final stop before the floor is the Rules Committee.
