EPA Releases ‘Everything We Know’ on Contrails and Geoengineering
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said many Americans have “urgent and important questions” about weather and climate modification measures and deserve “honesty and transparency.”
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is releasing “everything we know” on weather modification and geoengineering, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced Thursday in a video posted on X.
Zeldin said:
“Concerned Americans have urgent and important questions about geoengineering and contrails. The American public deserves and expects honesty and transparency from their government when seeking answers. But for years, people who asked questions in good faith were dismissed, even vilified by the media and their own government. That era is over.”
Officials in President Donald Trump’s camp initially celebrated the decision.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. praised the announcement on X, suggesting the EPA would reveal suppressed information about weather and climate experimentation by the U.S government and its negative effects on the environment.
Kennedy wrote:
“I’m so proud of my friend Lee Zeldin and President Donald Trump for their commitment to finally shatter the Deep State Omerta regarding the diabolical mass poisoning of our people, our communities, our waterways and farms, and our purple mountains, majesty.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who is introducing a bill to stop weather modification and geoengineering, tweeted the video of Zeldin’s announcement and wrote, “Thank you Secretary Zeldin!”
However, Zeldin’s post actually referred to the EPA’s launch of several webpages debunking popular concerns about contrails and geoengineering.
Mainstream media accused Zeldin of validating “conspiracy theories,” while Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) criticized Zeldin for addressing such concerns at all. “Some people have ‘questions’ about whether birds are real — will that be your next project?” he posted on X.
The contrails page notes that “chemtrails” is a term “some people use to inaccurately claim that contrails resulting from routine air traffic are actually an intentional release of dangerous chemicals or biological agents at high altitudes for a variety of nefarious purposes, including population control, mind control, or attempts to geoengineer Earth or modify the weather.”
It says chemicals are “sometimes intentionally sprayed from aircraft for non-nefarious purposes like firefighting or farming.” However, the federal government “is not aware of there ever being a contrail intentionally formed over the United States for the purpose of geoengineering or weather modification,” according to the webpage.
The geoengineering Frequent Questions states, “The U.S. government is not engaged in any form of outdoor solar geoengineering testing,” or “large-scale deployment” of such technology.
The EPA says it is aware of only one private sector company, Make Sunsets, that has deployed solar geoengineering technologies in the U.S.
Dane Wigington of GeoengineeringWatch criticized Zeldin, writing on his website, “EPA head, Lee Zeldin, is engaged in a pitiful attempt at damage control due to the rapidly growing awareness of the weather warfare raging in our skies.”
Wigington said:
“Zeldin is reading his carefully crafted script claiming he is going to provide ‘total transparency’ in regard to our government’s knowledge of geoengineering. Really, Mr. Zeldin? Should we consider the Epstein files as an example of your definition of ‘total transparency’?”
On Thursday, Nicole Shanahan, Kennedy’s running mate during his 2024 presidential bid, posted “The Dark Maha Report on Geoengineering” on X.
The report includes documentation allegedly confirming that millions of dollars in federal grants were given to universities to fund geoengineering research and solar radiation research, and that the U.S. government has been involved in weather modification programs since the 1960s.
Shanahan said the report is an overview of information shared with her by a whistleblower who has consulted for the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Department of Energy, NOAA, and the U.S. Intelligence Community on climate geoengineering.
The information she shared is publicly available. Shanahan called for an executive order banning geoengineering, a congressional inquiry into ongoing research and a constitutional amendment “guaranteeing the right to unaltered weather in America.”
Weather and climate modification programs abound
Climate geoengineering is a major field of study and investment, but it remains controversial.
Some climate scientists argue that research on the topic must move forward because there are no other viable options for addressing climate change. Others argue that the technologies are too dangerous and unpredictable. Still others say research should move forward on geoengineering, but implementation should be prohibited.
David Keith, Ph.D., formerly at Harvard and now at the University of Chicago, advocates for climate geoengineering. He launched a company, backed by billionaire investors like Bill Gates, and is trying to implement it.
In 2022, the Biden administration set up a five-year research plan to study ways to modify the amount of sunlight that reaches the Earth. Proposed methods include stratospheric aerosol injection, marine cloud brightening and cirrus cloud thinning, CNBC reported.
In 2023, the European Union called for an analysis of the risks of geoengineering and said countries should discuss how to develop a regulatory structure for the eventual deployment of the technology.
Last year, officials in Alameda, California, halted a secret experiment to spray sea particles into the air to test global warming mitigation, following news reports about the experiment.
Other geoengineering practices — aimed at local weather modification rather than at climate change — have existed for decades. For example, it has been widely reported that Chinese weather authorities have successfully controlled weather for important events, such as the Olympics, since at least 2008, and that they continue to expand those programs.
The Guardian reported in 2021 that a method called cloud seeding was underway or planned in many drought-stricken U.S. states. Cloud seeding occurs when small particles of the chemical silver iodide are added to clouds to cause weather droplets to cluster around them and increase the chances of precipitation.
States that have programs for weather modification through cloud seeding include California, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, North Dakota, Utah and Idaho.
Friends of the Earth said the side effects of weather modification are “unknown and untested,” and attempts to use the technology to influence climate would need to be massive and global. The nonprofit said:
“These ‘experiments’ would not only take action in the absence of scientific consensus, hence violating the precautionary principle, but could also easily have unintended consequences due to mechanical failure, human error, inadequate understanding of ecosystems, biodiversity and the Earth’s climate, unforeseen natural phenomena, irreversibility or funding interruptions.”
Keith’s attempt to implement a geoengineering experiment at Harvard was canceled after years of pushback from scientists and indigenous environmental activists. Keith later stated he would be less “open” about his future experiments.
Geoengineering critics span the political spectrum
The Florida Legislature in April passed a bill to ban and criminalize geoengineering and weather modification.
The bill makes it a third-degree felony to release any chemical, substance or apparatus into Florida’s atmosphere to affect the weather or climate.
The legislation imposes a penalty of up to $100,000 for any person or corporation and up to $5,000 and five years in prison for an aircraft controller or pilot involved in such releases.
It also requires Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection to develop protocols to investigate reports of geoengineering and directs the department to send the reports to other state agencies, including the health department, when appropriate.
Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the bill into law in June.
Last year, a similar bill passed in Tennessee. Kentucky, Arizona, and Iowa have introduced legislation proposing similar bans, and an Alabama legislative committee discussed a similar bill in March. GreenMedInfo’s Sayer Ji reported that 24 states have proposed action to stop geoengineering.
Kennedy has said the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services would “do its part” to fight geoengineering.
Mainstream media coverage of the proposed laws has consistently portrayed the legislation as driven by right-wing conspiracy theories, claiming that geoengineering is “largely theoretical.”
However, those same outlets have reported that geoengineering experiments to remove carbon dioxide from the air and to brighten clouds to deflect the sun are already underway.
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This is an excellent, level-headed review of the current available information. Thank you.
At least Governor DeSantis of Florida realizes that Florida, as the tail end of the southeast part of the USE would be a clear piece of land mass to face extinction under further and future geoengineering.