Tennessee has passed a bill banning the release of chemicals into the atmosphere, in a move thought by critics to be motivated by debunked “chemtrail” conspiracy theories.
The
While the Republican bill refers to attempts to geoengineer the planet’s climate, witnesses at the debate around the bill cited conspiracy theories and spoke of secret government programs, according to the conservation director of the Tennessee branch of environmental organization the Sierra Club.
“As a serious environmental organization, if what was in the bill was actually going on we would be calling for a stop to it,” Scott Banbury told the
The
In boring reality, plane engines get hot. Much hotter than the atmosphere outside the plane, in fact. So when the exhaust leaves the plane, the water vapor freezes mid-air, causing a trail of ice behind the plane known as
While the bill talks of geoengineering attempts, those are not taking place in the state either. If they were, “it would look like what happened after a big volcanic eruption – the sky would be a little bit less blue”, Alan Robock, a professor of climate science at Rutgers University, told
The idea of geoengineering our climate and cooling the Earth – usually by reflecting more sunlight back at space – is a real one, but is
This was the first outdoor US test of an idea to brighten clouds, and other ideas are also in similarly early stages. They are also highly controversial, with climate scientists warning attempts to geoengineer our climate could
The bill will now go to be signed by Tennessee’s governor, Republican Bill Lee, before coming into force. Though it’s not clear what it is stopping, nor how it would be policed.
“It’s not going to make any difference one way or the other – how could they even enforce it?” Robock added. “What if somebody did a chemtrail in Kentucky and it drifted over Tennessee? What would they do?”