Florida Airports Investigate Absurd “Weather Modification” Conspiracy

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier—the “brains” behind the so-called “Alligator Alcatraz” immigrant detention camp—threatened to strip state funding from Florida airports that fail to submit monthly reports on the “geoengineering and weather modification activities” at their facilities.

Uthmeier sent a crankish letter to Florida public airport operators on Monday, in which he vowed to enforce a piece of legislation signed into law by Governor Ron DeSantis earlier this month that prohibits (and requires airports to report) the introduction of substances into the Florida atmosphere “for the express purpose of affecting the temperature, weather, climate, or intensity of sunlight.”

“Because airports are most likely to catch those who seek to weaponize science in order to push their agenda, your compliance with these reporting obligations is essential to keeping our state safe from these harmful chemicals and experiments,” Uthmeier wrote. “In Florida, we don’t jeopardize the public health so that we can bend the knee to the climate cult.”

Under the new law, public-use airports will be required to file monthly reports with Florida’s Department of Transportation starting in October.

Asked about the new mandate by the Orlando Sentinel, a spokeswoman for the operator of the Orlando International Airport and Orlando Executive Airport replied, somewhat shruggingly, that the airports would comply. However, she noted, “Neither airport performs any geoengineering or weather modification activities, nor are we … aware of any activity on airport properties that must be reported at this time.”

Uthmeier’s letter also supported baseless conspiracy theories attributing the deadly flooding in Texas over the July 4 weekend to weather modification—a claim that the director of Texas A&M’s Center for Extreme Weather has called “complete nonsense” and which even Republican Senator Ted Cruz dismissed as bunkum.

“I can’t help but notice the possibility that weather modification could have played a role in” the disasters in Texas, Uthmeier wrote, adding that “Florida’s new law seeks to prevent something like that from ever happening.”

Conspiracy theories about weather modification have become increasingly common on the right, with prominent figures like Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia elevating them amid extreme weather events.