Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin in Washington on May 20.Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images file
Some of the new online resources debunk the more outlandish claims of government weather control.
By Pilar Melendez and Evan Bush
July 10, 2025, 12:37 PM PDT / Updated July 10, 2025, 2:09 PM PDT
The head of the Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday appeared to nod to conspiracy theories that have swirled around recent extreme weather events, directing people to the agency’s website for science-based information on geoengineering and contrails.
In a post on X, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said that people “have legitimate questions about contrails and geoengineering, and they deserve straight answers.”
“We’re publishing everything EPA knows about these topics on these websites,” he wrote in a news release Thursday that promised “total transparency with the American public.”
“EPA shares the significant reservations many Americans have when it comes to geoengineering activities," he said.
The new websites offer a variety of information that appears to stick closely to generally accepted definitions and science around geoengineering and the government’s ongoing research on contrails. Some sections even debunk the more outlandish claims of government weather control.
“Has large-scale solar geoengineering deployment already happened?” the EPA’s new “Frequent Questions” section asks, answering: “No. The U.S. government is not engaged in any form of outdoor solar geoengineering testing (e.g., small-scale experiments designed to study injection technologies) or large-scale deployment (e.g., intentional use of SRM to cool the Earth).” SRM refers to solar radiation modification.
Severe weather events have hammered parts of the United States in recent days. In Texas, at least 120 people have died and 173 are still missing after a devastating flood wiped out at least six communities July 4. Four days later, in New Mexico, at least three people died after a flood in Ruidoso, a resort town already susceptible to mudslides and runoff after two catastrophic fires last year.
Scientifically baseless claims of weather control have become an increasingly common reaction to extreme weather, moving from the fringe and into some mainstream discourse. Many of these claims center on fears of government control of the weather, with some pointing to technologies like cloud seeding, a technique used to increase rain and snowfall. Others offer a vague assertion that whatever is happening to the weather is not natural.
“Fake weather. Fake hurricanes. Fake flooding. Fake. Fake. Fake,” Kandiss Taylor, a Republican congressional candidate in Georgia, said in a July 5 post on X about the Texas flood, now pinned on her page.
The inclusion of contrails, a natural phenomenon from aircraft or rockets, also seemed to point to long-running conspiracy theories about “chemtrails,” which have included repeatedly debunked claims of shadowy programs meant to poison Americans.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has repeated chemtrail misinformation, welcomed Zeldin’s move.
“Im so proud of my friend Lee Zeldin and President Donald Trump for their commitment to finally shatter the Deep State Omerta regarding the diabolical mass poisoning of our people, our communities, our waterways and farms, and our purple mountains, majesty,” he wrote in a post on X in reply to Zeldin.