‘Chemtrails’ bill gets approved by Senate committee

A Senate bill designed to halt “geoengineering and weather modification” in Florida advanced in another step toward full consideration of what many conspiracy theorists call “chemtrails” in the skies.

The Senate Appropriations Committee on Agriculture, Environment and General Government reviewed the bill (SB 56) before approving it in a 10-2 vote. The measure now advances to the Senate Rules Committee.

Miami Republican Sen. Ileana Garcia originally filed the bill and said she wants to end man-made weather changes in the state. Florida currently allows state-licensed cloud seeding and other “artificial weather interference.”

Garcia spoke before the Senate committee Tuesday and acknowledged that the chemtrail conspiracies are often considered a “rabbit hole.” But she said she has heard “a lot of skepticism involved with this.”

Her concern about the issue stems at least in part from the chemtrails conspiracy theory. It’s a decades-old, debunked belief that contrails, the white lines of condensed water vapor that jets leave behind in the sky, are actually toxic chemicals that the government and other entities are using to do everything from altering the weather to sterilizing and mind-controlling the populace.

The proposed bill stipulates repealing several regulations permitting cloud seeding and would issue stiff civil fines for any pilots who violate the measure if it is approved.

Sen. Lori Berman, a Stuart Democrat and Vice Chair of the committee, raised several questions about the concerns issued by Garcia. She asked if there had been any documented cases of illegal cloud seeding or formal requests for investigation into chemtrail manipulation officially reported in Florida.

“There has not been any requests in the last 10 years,” Garcia said. “There is some type of activity going on. … They don’t know what it is. Whether fact or fiction we want to investigate.”

Bradford Thomas, a recently retired Judge for the Florida First District Court of Appeals and former prosecutor, spoke at the committee hearing Tuesday and said he’s a firm believer that something nefarious is happening above the skies in the Sunshine State.

“People know something is not right,” said Thomas, who added he’s noticed aircraft and what he calls strange trails from behind those airplanes in the skies above Crescent Beach, where he walks along the shoreline in St. Johns County.

Thomas said the proposed legislation should be changed from civil fines to felony charges and five years in prison for any pilot who takes part in chemtrails.

“It is clandestine,” Thomas said. “These weren’t clouds. These weren’t jet contrails. This is about the injection of aerosols” into the atmosphere. “It cannot be good. This is an attempt to alter the atmosphere.”

Senate Democratic Leader Jason Pizzo, a Hollywood Democrat from who sits on the committee, acknowledged he had his doubts about the chemtrail conspiracy and asked Thomas if he knew who was paying for and ordering the chemtrail flights, if in fact they existed.

Thomas said “federal taxpayers” are footing the bill, though he did not elaborate on who was ordering the activity.

Thomas’s perspective was reflected by Renay Cummings, who represents the Florida Sky Watchers a group of Floridians who believe there are so-called chemtrails being sprayed into the atmosphere by clandestine agents. Florida Sky Watchers has 89,000 followers on their Facebook social media site.

While Pizzo acknowledged he thought he would be joking about the whole matter when he went into Tuesday’s committee hearing, he ended up voting in favor of moving the bill forward in the Senate.

That bill is matched by a similar measure in the House of Representatives. Rep. Kevin Steele, a Republican from Hudson, introduced the measure (HB 477), which still needs to be reviewed by the House in several committees before going to the full floor.