PA State Senator Piles Into The Chemtrail Ban Clown Car, Announces Dumbass Bill Of His Own
from the all-hail-the-new-wave-of-legislative-snakehandlers dept
Earlier this week, we covered a truly insane and insane bill being pushed by the Tennessee State Senate that vowed to ban something that actually isn’t happening and, indeed, has never happened.
Stapled to rote effort to ensure the state’s Air Pollution Control Board didn’t remain understaffed for more than 30 days was some batshit crazy performative horseshit. The rider attached to this bill was an amendment to the state code to basically ban any form of altering the atmosphere over Tennessee via chemicals emitted by airplanes.
SECTION 1. Tennessee Code Annotated, Title 68, Chapter 201, Part 1, is amended by adding the following as a new section:
The intentional injection, release, or dispersion, by any means, of chemicals, chemical compounds, substances, or apparatus within the borders of this state into the atmosphere with the express purpose of affecting temperature, weather, or the intensity of the sunlight is prohibited.
This is the result of two things: people seeing contrails and being convinced these are part of a nationwide conspiracy to engage in mind control or mass sterilization or whatever, and 25 Tennessee senators deciding it would be best to get out in front of any efforts to combat climate change via atmospheric, um, interference by airplanes.
To date, there have been no attempts, much less successful efforts, to counteract the negative effects of greenhouse gases by introducing other substances to the atmosphere. There has also never been any attempt to negatively affect people on the ground by deliberately introducing other chemicals to the atmosphere. “Chemtrails” have never existed. Condensation naturally formed by the movement of hot engines through cold air has been a fact of life since the introduction of aircraft capable of flying high enough to create this phenomenon.
But it’s not as though this was a serious effort to do anything more than allow certain politicians to beclown themselves for the short-lived adulation of the most ignorant members of their voting bases.
And so it is in Pennsylvania, where state senator Doug Mastriano has decided the government should be in the business of performatively blocking something that isn’t happening and, in fact, does not exist. (h/t Techdirt reader mvario)
His statement pretends it’s mostly interested in protecting residents from unintended side effects of cloud seeding efforts.
Soon, I will introduce legislation amending the PA Cloud Seeding Licensure Law to ensure the skies over Pennsylvania are protected well into the future.
Enshrined in Article 1, Section 27 of the Constitution of Pennsylvania is the people’s “right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment.”
In 1967, the General Assembly passed the PA Cloud Seeding Licensing Law to regulate weather modification experiments and create a Weather Modification Board within the Department of Agriculture. The law was inspired by unauthorized weather modification by the Blue Ridge Weather Modification Association in 1963 which used planes and ground generators to emit silver iodide into the air to suppress hail in Fulton and Franklin counties.
Recent developments and new technology have brought forward the need to modernize the 1967 law. According to the U.S Patent and Trade Office, over 100 new weather modification patents now exist that are owned by combination of Federal Government Agencies, Non-Governmental Organizations, and large multinational corporations.
Seems sensible until you actually start looking at what he’s saying and who Doug Mastriano actually is.
That’s what Peter Hall at the Pennsylvania Capital-Star did. Mastriano doesn’t care one way or another about cloud seeding efforts. He does, however, entertain chemtrail conspiracy theories and likely wishes to appear opposed to efforts designed to combat climate change because that plays well to the climate change deniers in his voter base.
The legislation would ban the release of substances within the borders of Pennsylvania to affect the temperature, weather or intensity of sunlight. It would mirror legislation that passed in the Tennessee Senate on Wednesday.
Mastriano, an election denier who lost his 2022 gubernatorial bid to Gov. Josh Shapiro, has made repeated references to the chemtrail conspiracy theory on social media.
In a November Facebook post with a photo of condensation trails in the sky above Chambersburg, Mastriano wrote, “I have legislation to stop this … Normal contrails dissolve / evaporate within 30-90 seconds.”
Shortly after his loss to Shapiro in 2022 Mastriano posted on Twitter — now called “X” — four photos of condensation trails above his district. In a reply to his own tweet, he linked to an article detailing a proposal to distribute reflective material in the atmosphere to reflect more of the sun’s energy back into space, implying the two are linked.
As for the supposed latent threat posed by unregulated use of… stuff… in the atmosphere for cloud seeding efforts, there’s nothing there to work with. Mastriano claims he wants to head off potentially dangerous “weather modification” efforts, something already overseen by the state’s Weather Modification Board and regulated by existing statutes. So far, this regulatory board has yet to regulate anything.
The department’s Weather Modification Board has never received a license application and has never investigated unauthorized cloud seeding, Deputy Press Secretary Jay Losiewicz said in an email.
And that makes Mastriano’s closing proclamation even more meaningless than it would be in the context of chemtrail conspiracy theorizing.
My legislation will amend the Cloud Seeding Licensure law to ban the injection, release, or dispersion of chemicals, chemical compounds, or substances within the borders of Pennsylvania into the atmosphere for purposes of affecting temperature, weather, or intensity of sunlight.
OK, election denier. Let’s make sure something that isn’t happening continues to not happen. And while Mastriano quotes (but does not link to) a Wall Street Journal article about “Solar Radiation Mitigation” efforts being conducted in two other countries (Israel and Australia), his refusal to quote the article directly (much less give readers of his statement a chance to read it for themselves) conveniently leaves out the fact that the substances used were not “chemicals or chemical compounds” (although, really pretty much everything is a “chemical compound”), but rather smoke and sea water.
Of course, none of this matters to Senator Mastriano and it certainly won’t matter to many of the people who elected him. It’s a voter bloc well-stocked with conspiracy theorists and people who’d rather see the entire world burn than share the road with bicyclists or hybrid owners without dragging their Truck Nutz and/or rolling their coal.
Filed Under: chemtrails, conspiracy theories, doug mastriano, pennsylvania
Comments on “PA State Senator Piles Into The Chemtrail Ban Clown Car, Announces Dumbass Bill Of His Own”
What’s next?
A bill proclaiming the Earth is flat?
Re:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_pi_bill
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The modern GOP would have passed this bill anyway.
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I thought it was banana shaped.
Nobody’s going to address global warming on the GOP’s watch. They want displaced, downtrodden, exploitable masses.
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Ironic that they choose this tack in a country that issues guns to everyone at birth. Personally, I cannot wait until the shooting starts, but that’s me and I’m fucking bitter.
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I try not to live there, but I’m not too far off from it myself. If nothing else, the rightoids will make some funny faces when they find out they’re not the only ones with guns.
I submit that it is WELL past time to stop calling these people “conservatives” when there is absolutely nothing conservative about them. And then there are the “Democrats”…
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we would call the right nazis right?
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Disagree. What these people seek to conserve at any cost is a status quo that guts the middle class and kills the lower class for the benefit of the upper class. This is what conservatism has always been about conserving.
What the actual fuck is going on with these ridiculous bills at the moment?
Do these politicians just think that doing anything is better than doing nothing, in case people start wondering why they voted for them in the first place?
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We must do something.
This is something.
Therefore we must do it.
I think I went to college with Dumbass Bill.
Perhaps these legislators think that chemtrails involve “Metadioxin”.
https://sphericalbullshit.wordpress.com/2017/05/13/the-chemistry-of-yes-minister
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Maybe someone’s been talking to them about the dangers of Dihydrogen Monoxide again. The ban efforts didn’t pan out when they tried a few years back. It’s a significant component of chemtrails though, and can be lethal under certain conditions. SOMETHING MUST BE DONE!
You’d think stupid legislation in Pennsylvania would be attempting to ban vampires.
Is it me?
Literally every state I’ve ever lived in has show up on TechDirt this week because of insane state senators. Is it me? Am I doing this?
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Y'all Need To Do Research
Obviously nobody commenting here has done even 5 minutes of research.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vBhEDbIy7g&ab_channel=CharleShawn
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And you need to not be a dumbass.
Geoengineering is something that many actual scientists are discussing, debating the pros and cons.
This bill is about “chemtrails” which are made up nonsense for idiots.
Like you.
i wonder how they feel about the environmental regulations for shipping that made the North Atlantic warmer. On one hand, they are heavy-handed environmental regulations interfering with what sort of fuel ships can burn. On the other hand, it stopped ships from lofting sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere which increased cloud cover and affected temperature, although not on purpose. (Ship tracks don’t sound as sexy as chemtrails, tho’.)
Bit of a poser, innit?
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It seems humans leave a trail of pollution where ever they go.
“…or apparatus…”
like hats, umbrellas? air conditioners? heaters?
“There has also never been any attempt to negatively affect people on the ground by deliberately introducing other chemicals to the atmosphere.”
-Napalm has entered the chat.
SECTION 1. Tennessee Code Annotated, Title 68, Chapter 201, Part 1, Section 2:
Airlines will be required by law to turn off their engines as they fly over Tennessee or face heavy fines and possible jail time for disobeying the rules.
Wait a sec...
Cloud seeding is actually a thing… let’s not pretend it isn’t.
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Is cloud seeding when jesus touches himself in a way that would make baby him cry?
The Tennessee State Senate refuses to ban corruption and taking open bribes from private companies. Because thats something thats actually real.
Silver oxide etc drone spray
You sir are simply a dung beetle may you choke to death on your own vehement. P s move to Denver. O by the way what’s a tic-tac-toe cloud why is it when people look up and literally see these 15 to 20 ft drones made to look like planes flying way up in the sky shooting these lines across while wheelchairs fly over the head leaving nothing please you tech nerd you piece of them explain this don’t make jokes just technically explain to us you moron