The DOGE Subcommittee Hearing on Weather Modification Was a Nest of Conspiracy Theorizing

“Instead of dismissing these questions and concerns arsenic ‘baseless conspiracies,’ we’re gathering them head-on,” head Lee Zeldin said successful a video announcement connected the resource.

Many of the conspiracy theories that circulated aft the floods successful July centered astir a institution called Rainmaker, a cloud-seeding startup with buzzy Silicon Valley backers, that was doing cloud-seeding operations successful Texas days earlier the storms, much than 100 miles southbound of wherever the dense rains hit. Following the floods, Greene tweeted a screenshot of an interrogation with Augustus Doricko, the CEO of Rainmaker. “I’m introducing authorities to halt upwind modification and geoengineering,” she wrote. “People person had capable of chemicals manipulating our weather. And the governments and the industries that nett from controlling it.” (Doricko tells WIRED that the institution was not invited to Tuesday’s hearing: “Outright refusing to person america makes it look similar it’s conscionable a grandstanding for a click warfare connected Twitter, arsenic per usual,” helium says.)

While unreality seeding is mostly regulated astatine the authorities level, immoderate national laws necessitate that operators study their activities to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Existing probe shows that injecting metallic iodide into clouds has nary harmful effects; however, according to a December 2024 report from the Government Accountability Office, that probe is “limited to a fistful of caller studies.” It has historically been hard to measure the efficacy of unreality seeding: the GAO study cites betwixt 0 and 20 percent accrued rainfall from cloud-seeding projects based connected probe it reviewed. Still, Dessler emphasizes that this method can’t origin monolithic upwind modification—as online conspiracy theorists person claimed successful the aftermath of the Texas floods.

“People reason that humans are controlling the weather—that’s nonsense,” helium says.

Solar geoengineering, meanwhile, has ne'er been deployed astatine scale—and historically has been a contentious taxable wrong the clime subject and argumentation community. If it’s deployed implicit a ample geographic area, star geoengineering could make a wide scope of risks, from biodiversity nonaccomplishment to a weakened ozone furniture to utmost weather. There’s besides nary mode to trial large-scale deployment of these techniques successful advance, and the satellite has ne'er tried to govern a script successful which 1 state deploys exertion that causes droughts and hurricanes successful different portion of the globe. Critics besides accidental that focusing connected geoengineering detracts from the existent solution to clime change: drafting down emissions.

But proponents accidental that looking into star geoengineering exertion whitethorn beryllium indispensable arsenic clime alteration keeps getting worse. “You tin ideate a script wherever it’s 2040 and clime alteration is retired of control, and it’s the past instrumentality successful the toolbox,” Dessler says. “Most superior radical presumption star geoengineering arsenic similar the airbags successful your car. They are for emergencies only. No 1 wants to usage their airbags connected a regular basis, but you tin ideate a concern wherever you’re gladsome you person it.”

Anti-weather-modification bills of each antithetic types person proliferated astatine the authorities level implicit the past fewer years. According to SRM360, a website that tracks information connected star geoengineering argumentation and science, three states person banned star radiation modification since 2024, portion much than 2 twelve states person had bills introduced into authorities legislatures. At slightest 2 states—Tennessee and Florida—have explicitly banned unreality seeding successful that clip period. The December 2024 GAO study cited 1 authoritative from Kansas, who told the bureau that the authorities nary longer has a cloud-seeding programme “because of antagonistic nationalist cognition and unit connected section officials.”