Two days earlier than the waters of the Guadalupe River swelled right into a lethal and devastating Fourth of July flood in Kerr County, Texas, engineers with a California-based firm referred to as Rainmaker took off in an airplane about 100 miles away and dispersed 70 grams of silver iodide right into a cloud.
Their aim? To make it rain over Texas — a part of a climate modification observe generally known as cloud seeding, which makes use of chemical compounds to reinforce water droplets inside clouds, making the drops massive sufficient and heavy sufficient to fall to the bottom.
However within the hours after the flood swept by means of the higher Kerrville space and killed a minimum of 135 individuals, together with three dozen youngsters, conspiracy theories started swirling amongst a small however vocal group of fringe figures.
“I NEED SOMEONE TO LOOK INTO WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS … WHEN WAS THE LAST CLOUD SEEDING?” wrote Pete Chambers, a former U.S. particular forces commander and outstanding far-right activist, on the social media platform X.
The put up obtained 3.1 million views, but was solely one in every of a number of accusations that sprang up round Rainmaker’s actions and its alleged connection to the flood.
“Anybody who calls this out as a conspiracy principle can go F themselves,” wrote Michael Flynn, former nationwide safety advisor below the primary Trump administration, atop a repost of Chambers’ tweet.
The flurry of allegations was rapidly debunked, with a variety of unbiased scientists saying that the corporate’s actions couldn’t have produced anyplace near the quantity of rain that triggered the flood.
“It’s very clear that they don’t have anything to do with it,” stated Daniel Swain, a local weather scientist with the College of California Agriculture and Pure Assets, in a YouTube briefing following the flood.
Rainmaker additionally denied the claims. The storm dropped as a lot as 4 inches of rain per hour over Texas Hill Nation, and the river in some locations rose by 26 toes in lower than 45 minutes.
However in some methods, the harm was carried out. Conspiracy theorists who’ve lengthy alleged that Deep State Democrats are controlling the climate now had an actual incident to level to. And researchers, corporations and consultants working to check and carry out climate modification and geoengineering practices — which some say shall be wanted as local weather change worsens — now have a fair greater hurdle to beat.
Inside hours of the lethal flood, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene stated she was introducing a invoice to make all types of climate modification — similar to cloud seeding — a felony.
“This isn’t regular,” the Georgia consultant stated in a put up on X. “No individual, firm, entity, or authorities ought to ever be allowed to switch our climate by any means doable!!”
That very same week, the U.S. Environmental Safety Company launched two new web sites to “deal with public questions and considerations “ about climate modification, geoengineering, and contrails, or the skinny clouds that type behind plane at excessive altitudes.
“To anybody who’s ever seemed as much as the streaks within the sky and requested,’ what the heck is happening?,’ or seen headlines about personal actors and even governments trying to blot out the solar within the identify of stopping world warming — we’ve endeavored to reply your whole questions,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin stated in a video accompanying the web sites’ launch. “In reality, EPA shares most of the identical considerations with regards to potential threats to human well being and the setting.”
The EPA web site notes that there’s a distinction between geoengineering, which entails a broad vary of actions designed to switch world temperatures, and climate modification methods similar to cloud seeding, that are typically short-lived and localized.
In reality, the method of cloud seeding was invented in america and has existed for practically 80 years. Normal Electrical scientists Vincent Schaefer, Irving Langmuir and Bernard Vonnegut — older brother of the late novelist Kurt Vonnegut — started experimenting with it as early as 1946.
On July 2, Rainmaker’s workforce was working in Runge, Texas, about 125 miles southeast of the place the Guadalupe River would quickly flood, in line with Augustus Doricko, founder and chief government of the corporate, which is headquartered in El Segundo.
The workforce flew its aircraft to an elevation of 1,600 toes and dispersed about 70 grams of silver iodide into the clouds — an quantity smaller than a handful of Skittles, Doricko stated. The brilliant yellow compound is thought to latch onto water droplets which are already current in clouds, changing them into ice crystals that may fall as rain or snow, relying on the temperature beneath.
Quickly after the flight, Rainmaker’s meteorologists recognized an influx of moisture to the area and suggested the workforce to droop operations, which they did, Doricko stated. Round 1 a.m. the subsequent day, the Nationwide Climate Service issued its first flash flood look ahead to the Kerr County area.
Doricko stated there’s no likelihood Rainmaker’s actions — which have been contracted by the nonprofit South Texas Climate Modification Assn. and on file with the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — contributed to the flood.
“The largest and finest cloud seeding operations we’ve seen thus far have produced tens of hundreds of thousands — and maximally like 100 million — gallons of precipitation,” he stated. “We noticed in extra of a trillion gallons of precipitation from that flood. Not solely might cloud seeding not have brought on this, however the aerosols that we dispersed days prior couldn’t have continued within the environment lengthy sufficient to have had any consequence on the storm.”
A number of unbiased consultants agreed.
Throughout his briefing, Swain famous that cloud seeding doesn’t create new clouds — it should be carried out on preexisting clouds that have already got water vapor or small liquid drops inside them, basically enhancing what already had the potential to fall. What’s extra, its results final “minutes to perhaps an hour,” Swain stated.
“Finest-case-scenario estimates — absolute best-case — are that these cloud-seeding operations are capable of increase the quantity of precipitation by at most 10% to fifteen% over very restricted areas,” Swain stated. “On common, it’s loads decrease than that. In reality, in some circumstances, it’s troublesome to show that cloud seeding does something in any respect.”
Certainly, Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M College, has gone as far as to name cloud seeding a rip-off — partly as a result of it may well prey on farmers and different people who find themselves determined for rain, and since it sometimes delivers solely modest outcomes, he stated.
“There’s no bodily method that cloud seeding might have made the Texas storm,” Dessler stated, noting that the storm was fueled by extraordinarily excessive ranges of atmospheric water that stemmed from a tropical disturbance within the Gulf of Mexico. “It is a nonsense argument. There’s no debate right here about whether or not cloud seeding performed a job on this catastrophe.”
Dessler stated the entire dust-up surrounding Rainmaker and the Texas flood is a distraction from the very actual points and challenges posed by world warming. The quantity of fabric injected into the environment throughout cloud seeding and geoengineering operations pales compared to the trillions of tons of carbon dioxide people have already spewed into the environment, he stated.
“The true irony right here is that in some sense, the argument they’re making is appropriate — there’s a conspiracy to alter the local weather,” Dessler stated. “It’s by means of the emission of carbon dioxide, and it’s by fossil gasoline pursuits and the ecosystem that goes with that. That’s the conspiracy.”
Such limitations haven’t stopped governments and municipalities from investing in cloud-seeding know-how.
Considered one of Rainmaker’s first purchasers was the Utah Division of Pure Assets, which was curious about cloud seeding as a response to the drying of the Nice Salt Lake, Doricko stated. His firm has additionally contracted with the Colorado Division of Pure Assets, the Oregon Division of Agriculture and a number of municipalities in California, together with the Public Works Departments of Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.
David Spiegel, supervising engineer with San Luis Obispo County’s Public Works Division, stated the county first started exploring cloud-seeding know-how within the early 2000s in response to extreme drought circumstances and dwindling provides on the Lopez Lake reservoir, which feeds 5 metropolis companies close by. It took years to get this system off the bottom, and it didn’t finally run till 2019 by means of 2024 — when the state was coping with one more drought — to considerably middling outcomes.
Particularly, San Luis Obispo’s cloud-seeding program added about 1,200 acre-feet of water per yr to the practically 50,000 acre-foot reservoir, he stated. (An acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons.) In its finest yr, it added about 2,500 acre-feet.
A part of the problem was that there weren’t many clouds within the space to work with, Spiegel stated. “We didn’t have sufficient storms to seed as a result of we have been nonetheless on this drought interval, so it was form of unlucky.”
Nonetheless, he nonetheless noticed this system as successful as a result of the small water provide positive aspects that got here from the cloud seeding priced out to about $300 per acre-foot — far lower than the price of importing provides from different sources such because the State Water Mission, which might run nearer to $1,500 an acre-foot. He stated he would nonetheless think about cloud seeding sooner or later ought to the reservoir run low once more.
“We undoubtedly see it as a viable choice,” Spiegel stated.
To date, the state isn’t investing in its personal cloud-seeding applications, although it does hold a detailed eye on them, in line with Jason Ince, a spokesman with the California Division of Water Assets. He stated any teams conducting cloud seeding work are required to inform the company by submitting a discover of intent.
An October report revealed by the division signifies there have been a minimum of 16 cloud-seeding tasks throughout a number of counties and watersheds in California lately.
Such efforts might grow to be helpful as local weather circumstances hold shifting within the flawed path: Warming temperatures and overuse are sapping groundwater provides in California, whereas state and federal officers are nonetheless mired in negotiations over use of the Colorado River — a quickly shrinking water lifeline that provides 40 million individuals throughout the American West.
In the meantime, world common temperatures proceed to soar pushed largely by fossil gasoline emissions and human exercise. Many consultants say there’s a great likelihood that some type of intervention — climate modification, geoengineering or some altogether new know-how — shall be wanted within the years forward.
“Climate modification tasks are very important sources to reinforce contemporary water provide for communities inside their watersheds,” the Division of Water Assets report says. It recommends that the state proceed to help current cloud-seeding tasks within the state and assist facilitate new ones.
Speigel, of San Luis Obispo County, stated legal guidelines banning cloud seeding and different climate modification measures — such because the one posed by Rep. Greene — could be a detriment to the area.
“It might be a setback for us, as a result of we’re consistently in search of different alternatives for water,” he stated. “It might restrict our potential to hunt out technique of extra water in these lengthy drought durations. … I undoubtedly assume it will stifle our potential to assist our prospects.”
Much more controversial than cloud seeding are geoengineering methods to dam the quantity of photo voltaic vitality reaching the Earth. Some contain injecting sulfur into the stratosphere. A 2021 report on geoengineering revealed by the Nationwide Academies of Sciences affirmed that “assembly the problem of local weather change requires a portfolio of choices,” however suggested warning round such strategies.
“[Solar geoengineering] might probably supply a further technique for responding to local weather change however just isn’t an alternative choice to lowering [greenhouse gas] emissions,” the report says.
Dessler, who can also be the director of the Texas Middle for Excessive Climate at Texas A&M, likened geoengineering to airbags on a automobile — one thing nobody ever hopes to make use of however that may be good to have in a local weather emergency.
He stated the main focus ought to proceed to be on lowering the usage of fossil fuels, and that the speak of banning geoengineering, cloud seeding and different types of climate modification by members of the Trump administration and a few lawmakers is extra political than scientific.
“It is mindless — it exhibits you that this isn’t an argument about info. It’s an argument about worldview,” he stated.
The president has taken many steps to undo efforts to handle local weather change in current months, together with withdrawing from the Paris local weather accord, an settlement amongst some 200 nations to restrict world warming to below 2 levels Celsius (3.6 levels Fahrenheit).
The EPA has additionally eliminated a number of boundaries and laws that govern oil and fuel drilling within the U.S., and has stated it needs to repeal the endangerment discovering — a long-held authorized and scientific willpower that CO2 emissions hurt human well being and welfare, amongst different vital adjustments.
Doricko, Rainmaker’s CEO, stated he was dissatisfied to see cloud seeding politicized within the wake of the Texas flood. He was bowled over when he noticed that Rep. Greene had posted an image of his face on X — “insinuating considerably that cloud seeding, or I, was chargeable for the pure catastrophe in Texas, when any meteorologist or atmospheric scientist might let you know in any other case,” he stated.
“Human civilization is unintentionally modifying the climate and the local weather on a regular basis,” Doricko stated, together with by means of fossil gasoline emissions and concrete warmth islands that heat surrounding areas. “What Rainmaker is making an attempt to do is deliver some intentionality to that, in order that we will modify the climate for our profit and intentionally.”
Doricko stated he’s additionally an advocate of extra clear reporting, extra stringent laws, and no matter else is required to construct belief with the general public about “a extremely consequential know-how.”
He stated he’ll proceed to have interaction with skeptics of the know-how in good religion.
“Cloud seeding is a water provide instrument, and whether or not you’re a farmer in a crimson state or an environmentalist in a blue state, water is as nonpartisan because it will get,” he stated. “All people wants water.”
