The chemtrail conspiracy theory holds that aircraft are deliberately spraying toxic substances into the atmosphere nefariously. With no basis in fact, ideologically speaking, this theory keeps making inroads with conservative policy makers. Recently, officials from the Trump administration, such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have made statements that reheat the dialogue around this baseless theory. Experts are increasingly warning about the pernicious and dangerous effects of this kind of misinformation.
Timothy Tangherlini, a professor of folklore, brought up US conspiracies that were very real and involved secret, sometimes lethal, spraying of chemicals. He noted that the chemtrail theory has no evidence to back it up. He insisted that people just gravitate toward these theories looking for easy answers to complicated tragedies. Sijia Xiao, a postdoctoral researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, agrees with this approach. In 2021, she interviewed 20 current and former believers in the chemtrail conspiracy.
In her research, Xiao discovered that, for many participants, chemtrails represented a fear of personal health ailments or ecological issues such as pollution. She stated, “Several participants in my interviews related chemtrails to their personal health problems or environmental concerns like pollution.” She observed, “In this example of the Texas flood, I think people are trying to attribute a clear cause to a real-life issue.”
Recent catastrophic flooding events in Texas have fueled rumors about weather-altering technologies linked to contrails—the white vapor trails left by aircraft. To help address this, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) created a new, one-stop resource. This new site details the contrail science behind these ridiculous conspiracy theories. The EPA detailed how contrails are created. When hot exhaust gases from an airplane engine meet the cold air at 30,000 feet, they produce those long white trails.
Furthermore, the EPA’s second webpage focused on geoengineering accurately notes that various schemes aimed at “cooling the Earth by intentionally modifying the amount of sunlight” are being studied but do not imply any current implementation.
EPA also has substantial scientific evidence rebutting the chemtrail conspiracy theory. Yet, according to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—acting as Trump’s health and human services secretary—there could be something to that after all. He expressed his commitment to combatting what he termed a “diabolical mass poisoning of our people, our communities, our waterways and farms,” further complicating public understanding of environmental issues.
Climate critics have hammered the Trump administration for rolling back vital safeguards from harmful pollutants and climate change. Aaron Regunberg, climate accountability project director at Public Citizen, asserted that the administration’s actions allow corporations to “truly conspire against the American people.” Climate research funding has been increasingly cut, climate change discussions are being systematically erased from federal websites.
For years, President Trump has downplayed the threats of climate change as a “hoax,” poisoning the well of truth and trust, allowing misinformation to take root. The last administration earned bipartisan condemnation for its draconian crackdown on accountability efforts in climate. This meant holding oil companies accountable for spreading disinformation about climate science.
Environmental Race Forward’s Director of Digital, Sijia Xiao, who explained the phenomenon that’s making chemtrails a diversion from larger environmental concerns. She remarked, “That’s why MAGA wants us talking about this chemtrails garbage—because there’s a real conspiracy implicating their big oil cronies that they don’t want the American people to think about.”
This cynicism and widespread distrust of institutions, experts say, attracts people to conspiracy theories. Tangherlini stated, “It’s all contributing to this environment, this idea that you should have low trust in institutions.” He brought up the fact that overall trust in sources of information is eroding. This means that we’re more susceptible to compelling stories that shoot for our confirmation bias.
Xiao further elaborated on this phenomenon, indicating that conspiracy theories often create a “self-fulfilling feedback loop where everything can be turned into evidence supporting their beliefs.”
Sheldon Whitehouse, the Democratic senator from Rhode Island, slammed the EPA for pursuing discredited conspiracy theories. He stated, “Rather than addressing climate change—which makes floods like those in Texas, North Carolina, New Mexico, and Illinois more intense, more deadly, and more frequent—Trump’s EPA is wasting taxpayer money chasing baseless conspiracy theories that scientists debunked years ago.”