Climate science in the eye of the storm: New weather-modification tactics fuel conspiracy frenzy

Amid baseless conspiracy theories about the cause of last month’s floods in Florida, Republicans are trying to ban efforts to develop weather-modification technology that aims to combat the effects of climate change.

In mid-July, the outspoken, far-right GOP congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene introduced the “Clear Skies Act”, which she described in a social-media video as “legislation to ban weather modification and geoengineering of all kinds”.

Greene bill includes six-figure fines and significant jail time

“Finally, we can really take the fight in Washington to protect our skies, protect our water, protect our atmosphere and, most of all, protect our families,” Greene said.

She added that the bill seeks to prohibit “the injection, release, or dispersion of chemicals or substances into the atmosphere for the express purpose of altering weather, temperature, climate, or sunlight intensity”. The proposed legislation includes fines reaching $100,000 and prison sentences of up to five years.

Greene’s introduction of federal legislation follows numerous similar GOP initiatives at state level. Bills have already been signed into law in the Tennessee and Florida legislatures.

The Clear Skies Act targets experimental technology such as ‘solar geoengineering’, which includes plans to combat global warming by producing and strengthening clouds that can dim the sun’s rays.

It also sets its sights on what’s known as ‘cloud seeding’ - a weather-modification technique that has, without scientific basis, been linked to the Texas floods.

Why is cloud seeding being linked to the Texas floods?

On July 4 and 5, more than 130 people were killed in central Texas, after flash floods hit the region when months’ worth of rain fell in a matter of hours. Kerr County was particularly severely affected.

As is explained in a report in the Washington Post this month, on July 2 the cloud-seeding startup Rainmaker carried out a 20-minute experiment over Runge, Texas, some 100 miles from Kerr County.

This, notes the WaPo’s Will Oremus and Nicolás Rivero, led Rainmaker to “become a focal point of posts spiraling across social media that suggest the floods in Kerr County were a human-made disaster”.

But Bob Rauber, an atmospheric sciences professor who has studied cloud seeding, explains to Oremus and Rivero that the fledgling technology is incapable of producing the quantities of rain witnessed in Texas.

“The amount of energy involved in making storms like that is astronomical compared to anything you can do with cloud seeding,” said Rauber, of the University of Illinois. “We’re talking about a very small increase on a natural process at best.”

What is cloud seeding?

According to a report by the U.S.’s Government Accountability Office (GAO), cloud-seeding programs were in place in nine states nationwide as of 2024. “The most common uses of cloud seeding are to increase precipitation or suppress hail, usually by adding tiny particles of silver iodide [to clouds],” the GAO says.

The GAO’s report adds: “Demand for water is increasing and the frequency and intensity of drought are projected to worsen in the western U.S. The ability to increase precipitation through cloud seeding could help mitigate some of the water management challenges caused by drought.”

Use of fossil fuels leads to “more violent weather”

As conspiracy theorists seek to blame weather-modification technology for disasters like the Texas floods, scientists are at pains to debunk these claims by explaining how human-caused climate change can be far more convincingly pinpointed as the catalyst for such catastrophes.

“That’s likely what happened in Texas,” Jennifer Marlon, a senior research scientist at the Yale School of the Environment, told an interview with ABC. “Scientists have known that burning fossil fuels heats the planet for over 100 years.

“Using gas-powered cars and making electricity by burning methane adds massive amounts of heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the air. That heat fuels more violent weather because warmer air holds more water.”

Marlon concluded: “More intense rainfall means more flooding.”

Speaking to NBC News, the meteorologist Matthew Cappucci bemoaned the GOP’s insistence on targeting projects that have so far had scant discernible impact on the Earth’s climate, at the same time as the party impedes efforts to combat the significant consequences of climate change.

GOP turning “blind eye to actual weather modification”

“One political party in this country seems especially concerned about the idea of theoretical changes in the weather,” Cappucci said. “Whereas that same political party will largely turn a blind eye to actual weather modification that is happening in slow motion, i.e., human-induced climate change.”

Since President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January, his Republican administration has taken numerous steps to roll back the U.S.’s efforts to tackle climate change.

Politico’s climate-policy specialist Scott Waldman notes: “[Trump’s] administration has fired or let go hundreds of climate and weather scientists - and cut ties to hundreds more who work in academia or the private sector.

“His team has eliminated major climate programs, frozen or cut grants for climate research and moved to shutter EPA’s [U.S. Environmental Protection Agency] greenhouse gas reporting program.

“The Trump administration has slow-walked climate-related contracts - including one for the upkeep of two polar weather satellites. And it’s begun to wall off the United States from international climate cooperation.”

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