Rumors are spreading that the devastating damage caused by Hurricane Helene was deliberately created by the Biden administration to incapacitate red areas of the country, interfering with early voting. What is the difference between a conspiracy theory and facts? About six months, the saying goes.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene posted on X, “Yes, they can control the weather.” She included a video clip of President Barack Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan discussing it.
Brennan said “geoengineering” could “alter weather patterns” and “potentially help reverse the global warming effects of climate change.” He said “stratospheric atmospheric injection” (SAI) puts particles into the atmosphere that “can help reflect the sun’s heat.” He compared it to how volcanic eruptions change the weather. Volcanic eruptions can cause sunspots, which may increase temperatures on the Earth. Brennan said this technique could be used to lower the earth’s temperature.
X users are attempting to add Community Notes to her post.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) website explains how these modifications change the weather. It states, “Solar Radiation Modification (SRM) refers to deliberate, large-scale actions intended to decrease global average surface temperatures by increasing the reflection of sunlight away from the Earth. …. Some regions could experience cooler or wetter conditions, and others warmer or drier conditions, compared to a climate without SRM.”
The note linked to an article on the NOAA’s website, “70th Anniversary of the First Hurricane Seeding Experiment.” It described how “an Air Force B-17 aircraft penetrated a hurricane 415 miles (667 km) east of Jacksonville and dumped several pounds of crushed dry ice into the storm, just to see what would happen.”
The article said the precursor was “Project Cirrus” the year before when GE Labs carried out “experiments where Air Force aircraft would ‘seed’ clouds and fog with dry ice to see what changes occurred.”
When the experiments moved to hurricanes, the scientists were apparently able to divert a hurricane dubbed “King” that arose off the coast of the southeast U.S. However, the hurricane went the wrong way, causing a stir as one person died. “The public was outraged that the scientists had caused the storm to swerve into Georgia and threats of lawsuits were thrown about,” the article said.
GE’s “head of its Laboratories, Dr. Irving Langmuir, issued a statement that he was ‘99% sure’ the storm had changed course due to the seeding.” The chief of the U.S. Weather Bureau downplayed the connection, but the article said the public’s enthusiasm for “weather modification” had waned. Experiments didn’t resume until Project STORMFURY in 1962, a collaboration between the U.S. Weather Bureau and Department of Defense to weaken tropical cyclones by flying aircraft into them and seeding them with silver iodide.
NOAA states on its website that Project STORMFURY attempted to modify four hurricanes on eight different days. “On four of these days, the winds decreased by 10 and 30%,” NOAA said. “The lack of response on the other days was interpreted to be the result of faulty execution of the seeding or of poorly selected subjects.” The project ended in 1983, and NOAA observed that “the positive results inferred from the seeding experiments in the 1960s stemmed from an inability to discriminate between the expected results of human intervention and the natural behavior of hurricanes.”
The media frequently touts one aspect of the project that some of the scientists reported: cloud seeding has little prospect of success because hurricanes contain too much natural ice and too little supercooled water.
Despite the skepticism, NOAA published a FAQ in 2018 that discusses some of the ways tropical cyclones might be controlled. While mostly dismissive, it lays out how various methods could be successful.
The NOAA has a page on its website about weather modification projects. It states that it does not conduct any, but goes over the procedures for others to, which are required to be documented by federal law. It noted, “Cloud seeding is considered a weather modification activity.”
A third Community Note stated a long list of patents for modifying the weather. The topics include producing or suppressing rain, fog, wind, and snow; producing smoke clouds from moving aircraft; controlling tropical cyclones; modifying sunlight scattering; disrupting tornadoes; reducing atmospheric gasses; channeling large air masses for climate modification, producing “high potential electrical discharges,” suppressing contrails and producing cumulus clouds. One is named “Method to Influence the Direction of Travel of Hurricanes.”
The list is updated through 2023. Two of the last items listed in 2023 are “System and Method for Proactive and Reversible Mitigation of Storm/Hurricane/Typhoon/Cyclone” and “Electromagnetic System to Modify Weather.”
The North American Weather Modification Council promotes weather modification. A few months ago, it issued videos of cloud seeding in conjunction with multiple state government agencies. They discuss weather modification activities across the U.S., including in one of the videos successfully suppressing hail and turning fog into precipitation.
There is a Journal of Weather Modification. The most recent issue covers modifying clouds, fog and rain. The State of Texas has an FAQ proudly touting the success of weather modification efforts, especially in terms of affecting rain and hail. The State of Wyoming’s website lists where cloud seeding is happening worldwide.
While the government generally claims it hasn’t had much success affecting hurricanes, why not let people decide for themselves based on the facts instead of issuing far-left “fact checks” that cherry-pick sources of information to arrive at a predetermined outcome in advance?