"Belief in a supposed US government plot linked to aircraft condensation trails has been boosted by confusion over proposals to geoengineer a response to the climate crisis"
"A conspiracy theory that airplanes are leaving nefarious “chemtrails” in their wake due to a sinister government plot has been given fresh impetus in the US amid a swirl of concerns and confusion about proposals to geoengineer a response to the climate crisis.
State legislation to ban what some lawmakers call chemtrails has been pushed forward in Tennessee and, most recently, Florida. Meanwhile, Robert F Kennedy, who has expressed interest in the conspiracy theory on social media and his podcast, is set to be at the heart of Donald Trump’s new administration following his nomination as health secretary.
“We are going to stop this crime,” Kennedy, who is known for his contrarian stances on vaccines and offshore wind farms, wrote about chemtrails on X in August. The former Democrat turned Trump ally said on his podcast last year that it was “kind of frightening to think that somebody may be putting large amounts of bioavailable aluminum into the environment, spraying it in microscopic particulates from airplanes”.
Believers of the chemtrails conspiracy theory contend that the white lines traced in the sky behind aircraft contain toxic chemicals that are released to achieve a devious end, such as mass sterilization or mind control.
This theory, which has no evidence to support it, has been put forward at various times since the 1990s despite being repeatedly debunked. Now, scientists are faced with a resurgent focus on chemtrails amid a related, more substantive, debate over whether actual modifications to the Earth’s atmosphere should be made in a desperate attempt to slow global heating."
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