Amid hurricanes, the chemtrail conspiracy theory has its moment in the sun

Decades-old and long-debunked myths about so-called chemtrails have become a central part of a wild conspiracy theory that falsely asserts the US government used non-existent weather manipulation technology to create the devastation caused by Hurricanes Helene and Milton.

The conspiracy theory is being promoted by right-wing influencers online, some with millions of followers, who have a long track record of echoing false claims about the last presidential election. The hurricanes, some of these influencers baselessly claim, were deliberately steered toward Trump-supporting communities – part of a plot to “steal” next month’s election from former President Donald Trump.

As myths about Milton and Helene spread, interest in chemtrails increased too on Google search and social media. Chemtrail conspiracy theorists falsely believe condensation trails (known as contrails) left behind by aircraft in the sky are full of toxic chemicals spread by the government to control the weather or control people’s minds.

In reality, scientists say contrails appear when water vapor condenses and freezes around the exhaust from an aircraft.

Despite the lack of evidence to support it, the so-called chemtrail conspiracy theory has endured for decades. Climate and weather scientists are all too familiar with the myth, and because of it are sometimes targeted and accused of being part of a nefarious government plot – much like the theories about Milton and Helene.

One weather lab at Harvard University received so many messages, some “abusive and threatening,” about chemtrails through the years it published a fact sheet on its website debunking the conspiracy theory.

“We have not seen any credible evidence that chemtrails exist. If we did see any evidence that governments were endangering their own citizens in the manner alleged in the chemtrails conspiracy, we would be eager to expose and stop any such activities,” the post on the lab’s website reads.

The conspiracy theory’s staying power is due in part to a small but committed group of pseudoscientists who have made it their life’s work to promote and try to prove the myth true. While their influence is usually confined to fringe blogs and other online sources, the myth occasionally rears its head and penetrates the mainstream.

“We are going to stop this crime,” Trump surrogate and former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tweeted in response to a video promoting the myth in August.

In April, Tennessee lawmakers passed a bill banning the release of airborne chemicals that critics described as “nonsense” and inspired by the myth.

But the virality the conspiracy theory has achieved online in the last couple of weeks has never been seen before and is a cause for concern, climate and weather experts tell CNN.

“This has been around for a long time in different forms,” Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California Los Angeles said.  “But what I think is different is the intensity and the breadth of it. This used to be something that would be rather fringe, something that would pop up on niche forums of the internet or in the comments section somewhere.”

“It didn’t have an audience of tens to hundreds of millions, if not more than that, as it has in recent weeks,” he said, adding, “I think that really speaks to the ease with which misinformation and these conspiracy theories now spread on different social media platforms.”

Embraced by election deniers

Self-described “experts” who have long spread baseless claims about weather manipulation have found a home on right-wing podcasts and online shows in recent days.

“Treason Alert: The Biden-Harris Admin Have Been In Control of Hurricanes Helene and Milton Using Pentagon Weather Weapons,” read a Thursday morning headline on InfoWars, the website run by disgraced conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

“I am seeing explosive awakening to this the in the last few years and it is really at a crescendo now everywhere. People on the street, family, dominating social media, videos with hundreds of millions of views just all over the place talking about this,” Jones said on his online  show Wednesday, celebrating the conspiracy theory’s current virality.

Some of the promotion of the conspiracy theory has taken on a distinctively antisemitic tone. Stew Peters, who has almost 700,000 followers on X, falsely asserted on his online show Tuesday that Jewish people were responsible for non-existent technology they falsely assert is steering hurricanes.

“They’re possessing the technology to destroy the United States in so many ways to extend the octopus tentacles into every fabric of our society,” Peters said in a video that showed Jewish members of government and an illustration of a blue octopus expanding its tentacles – the image has its roots in Nazi-era antisemitic propaganda.

Peters previously promoted the unhinged conspiracy theory that ballots were flown from Asia as part of a plot to steal the 2020 election from President Trump. It formed part of a myth that metastasized and resulted in a group named the “Cyber Ninjas” looking for traces of bamboo in ballot paper during their infamous sham audit of the 2020 election in Arizona.

Republican and 2020 election denier Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has been widely mocked for spreading the conspiracy theory that deadly wildfires in California in 2018 were ignited by space lasers, possibly controlled by the Rothschild investment bank. The Rothschilds are frequent targets of antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Greene has posted repeatedly over the last week claims the government is controlling the weather – even leaning into her previous absurd claims about lasers – sharing a 2013 news report in which a physicist discussed lab experiments studying how lasers could be used to try to change the weather.

Importantly, the physicist explained the many limitations of the experiment and how science had a long way to go.

The limitations, says weather and climate experts who spoke to CNN, are what the conspiracy theorists are ignoring. Cloud seeding, for instance, is a technology that spreads tiny particles in the atmosphere with the aim to create clouds and generate more rain in areas that are very dry. But it has many limitations and can be inconsistent, Katja Friedrich, professor of atmospheric and oceanic at the University of Colorado Boulder, told CNN.

Friedrich suggested the conspiracy theories blaming weather manipulation for the devastation caused by Hurricanes Helene and Milton is a way to distract from the real effects of climate change.

Joshua Horton, a solar geoengineering policy researcher at Harvard University, said while these kinds of conspiracy theories have been around for a long time, the “MAGAification”of them, as he described it, is what is driving their virality just weeks before a historic presidential election.

“I kind of hate to use this term but it is kind of like a perfect storm,” he said, “it’s political conditions, conspiracy theorizing, real world events, it seems to all the culminating in this moment.”