Once confined to the realm of science fiction, the idea that scientists – and by extension the government – have the ability to control the weather has been gaining popularity in online circles and even among some conservative lawmakers in recent years. But do claims about “weather modification” hold water?
Weather modification most recently made headlines in late November when Republican Florida State Senator Ileana Garcia introduced the Weather Modification Activities bill. That legislation would ban “the injection, release, or dispersion, by any means, of a chemical… for the express purpose of affecting the temperature, the weather, or the intensity of sunlight.”
Garcia is hardly alone in her concern about weather modification. Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has been one of the most outspoken voices at the federal level warning about the dangers of the government controlling the weather. “Yes they can control the weather. It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done,” Greene posted on X in October.
Aside from elected officials, a scan of social media quickly reveals that plenty of Americans also believe that the government not only has the ability to control the weather, but also that it has been actively doing so for years. This past April, in a post that has garnered some 13 million views, conservative influencer Robby Starbuck blamed weather modification for mass flooding in Dubai. Another post with more than a million views shared by the account “Wall Street Apes” appears to show a jet with the words “weather modification international” emblazoned on it.
The federal government has denied that any weather control programs exist, while the corporate media and scientific “expert” class have been quick to dismiss claims about weather modification as nothing but baseless conspiracy theories. And indeed, the idea of shadowy government forces intentionally creating superstorms using secret technology seems a bit far-fetched on the surface. But as usual, there may be some middle ground in this debate that is at least worth considering.
While the U.S. government claims that it does not have the ability to control the weather, it is not for lack of trying. In fact, the government has spent more than 50 years trying to develop such technology.
One of the first high-profile public attempts at weather control was Project Cirrus, a joint venture between General Electric and the U.S. military. On October 13, 1947, an Air Force B-17 dropped nearly 200 pounds of crushed dry ice into a hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean as part of a crude attempt at “cloud seeding,” or dispersing substances into the atmosphere to alter weather patterns.
Following the dry ice dispersal, instead of continuing out into the Atlantic, the hurricane suddenly turned and slammed into the Georgia coast, causing more than $2 million in damage. Outraged Georgians threatened to sue, causing General Electric to pull its support for the project.
Subsequent investigations showed that the hurricane in question was already turning westward before the cloud seeding operation, and that the amount of dry ice dropped by the B-17 was laughable compared to the size and power of a hurricane. Nonetheless, the public remained wary about the unintended consequences of attempts to control the weather.
Despite Project Cirrus’s failure, government dreams of controlling the weather persisted. In 1962, the U.S. Weather Bureau and Department of Defense reached a formal agreement to carry out Project STORMFURY and attempted to seed hurricanes again to reduce wind speeds. This time, scientists dropped silver iodide into the rainbands of storms. While those experiments initially seemed to show positive results, subsequent analysis in the 1980s suggested that the silver iodide seeding likely had no impact on hurricane wind speeds.
Nonetheless, officials concluded that Project STORMFURY’s working hypothesis was “accurate.” They theorized that more planes flying consistently would have succeeded in dissipating a hurricane entirely.
Project Cirrus and STORMFURY were far from the federal government’s only attempts to alter the weather in the 20th century. In 1967, with the Vietnam War raging, the Air Force initiated Operation Popeye, a highly classified effort to use cloud seeding to extend the monsoon season over specific areas of the Ho Chi Minh Trail to disrupt North Vietnamese military supply routes.
Then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger allegedly signed off on the operation without authorization from Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, who had denied to Congress that a program existed. The existence of Operation Popeye was only revealed in 1972 through the publication of the Pentagon Papers, a classified U.S. Department of Defense study detailing the country’s political and military involvement in Vietnam.
Following significant public backlash, the United Nations banned military “environmental modification techniques” in 1977.
Today, however, cloud seeding using silver iodide is a shockingly common practice. The global cloud seeding market is experiencing growth, with projections indicating an increase from $406.4 million in 2024 to $684.2 million in investment by 2032. As of this year, cloud seeding programs are active in at least nine U.S. states, including California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming. The technology is also becoming particularly popular in arid Middle Eastern nations like Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates to enhance precipitation.
Despite the increasing popularity of the practice, some studies have shown that a build-up of silver iodide from cloud seeding could be harmful to aquatic life and microorganisms in the soil over areas where cloud seeding takes place. There have yet to be any long-term studies on the impact of heavy silver iodide exposure in humans.
Moreover, manipulating global weather patterns could already be having unintended consequences for the world’s ecological balance. The Amazon rainforest, for instance, relies on about 22,000 tons of sand blown across the Atlantic each year for vital nutrients. As more desert nations in Africa and the Middle East expand their cloud seeding operations, less of that sand will make it to the Amazon.
As much as the media and the “expert” class want to poke fun at figures like Ileana Garcia and Marjorie Taylor Greene, the reality is that virtually every developed nation in the world is now actively trying to modify the weather – and the continuing investment suggests there’s at least some reason to believe they are succeeding.
In light of this, it does not seem so “crazy” to at the very least seek more transparency about these efforts to manipulate our climate and environment. As the public learned from COVID-19, sometimes scientific experiments, even in the pursuit of a noble goal, can have disastrous unintended consequences.
Andrew Shirley is a veteran speechwriter and AMAC Newsline columnist. His commentary can be found on X at @AA_Shirley.
Terraforming has been yet another one of the pet goals of many in the man-made climate change religious cult crowd. Just as they think by crushing national economies by mandating the exclusive use of only solar and wind power to run modern societies will yield a Utopia, many are also big proponents of finding various ways to permanently alter earth’s ecosphere to micro-manage global weather patterns. The problem is that these same people, who have already proven they understand nothing in terms of the basic sciences now what to apply that same ignorance and sheer stupidity to trying to destabilize the current balance of earth’s ecosystem in the hopes of addressing their climate change mania. That of course should NOT be tolerated under any circumstances. At some point this insanity on the Left has to be stopped once and for all before they do something that can’t be reversed.
You don’t f!@#k with mother nature…………….For every push, there is a push back !!!! Hopefully this B.S. will end soon…….
To garner transparency is vital to National Security. After volunteering in WNC with Sam. Purse, it was evident that this hurricane was most likely “promoted”. The timing was uncanny and with the election and campaign of VP Harris consumed by MSM, it was very odd not to get the STORY of the damage, lost lives and decades to rebuild. It was also odd that Google only brought hurricane Milton up in a search. There was no Helene.
With a valuable uranium mine in the area and the need for this for AI and future fuels, one wonders if this horrible storm was an act of God or man.
I urge everyone to check out Dane Wigington’s “The Dimming” and his Geoengineering website for great information in this subject. Also, his interviews with RFK, Jr. and Del Bigtree are worthy of your time.
When is comes to weather and climate changes of the earth, the main driver is well defined by “Milankovitch cycles.” Look it up, it concerns earths eccentricity, axial tilt, and precession in relation to solar energy striking earth. Lets be honest, humans have little to nothing to do with earths climate. Not to mention one volcano eruption trumps all of mans contribution of green house gases to the atmosphere (meaning since existence of man). Ice core samples support every bit of this, but the left wing propaganda machine works hard to suppress and obscure these facts. They modify opinionated “data” to support their political agenda. Even organizations like NASA obfuscate and create their own exaggerated data to make this a talking point toward the Left-Wings agenda, means more funding for them. But facts are facts and science (real science) is indisputable. Man has NO long term effect on earths weather nor climate. Maybe we can make it rain today by cloud seeding, but these efforts are short termed, and short lived.
Unintended consequences. Our leaders are so full of hubris. They nearly killed Yellowstone Park— you’d think they’d have learned. But no—we’re destined to fiddle with nature til it kills us.
all you have to remember is our government would never lie to us Right?
Paging Derek Flint who resolved a similar problem in the mid-1960s.
There’s no way to alter the weather unless you set off Enough nuclear bombs around the world to blot out the Sun.
The idea is absurd.
You didn’t mention Oklahoma Andrew. We have had Jet contrails that hang in the air for anywhere from 12 hours to 24 hours. The Jets crisscross our sky dumping whatever in the atmosphere and one day we will find that it is just like all the other STUPID attempts to play GOD, When we find out what it is doing to “we the people”. And the brilliant idiots with no common sense in DC wonder why so many of “we the people” don’t trust them. From An American Citizen for a SOVEREIGN USA with ZERO DEBT!!!
Man’s ego makes them think they can harness natural forces. We can not change the fact that the sun will eventally burn out. We can not change the earths location in the solar system which is a luck hapenstance that allows for life to exist. We should make the use of oil products as clan as possible and use solar power as much as logically reasonable. Politicians use our fears and ignorance to give them power. We all need to read and study the issues more and influence the politicians to do the right things.
Observation of weather patterns is and always has been a very important and useful activity. Respect for nature , respect for the laws of nature should be priorities under circumstances that present the idea of modifying the weather as some way to do something that nature does not have planned. The ideas for the Weather Modification Activities bill that Republican State Senator Ileana Garcia introduced in November 2024 and the opinions expressed by Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene are sensible approaches to the issue — the history pertaining to adverse effects of things like cloud seeding with chemicals that do not belong in the weather system are enough to point the way toward respect for nature and the laws of nature . Important and informative article Andrew – Well Done ! Much thought should be given to the issue and it should be something that should be presented to the public through detailed explanations making it a very open , very clearly understood matter.
The last sentence was the most important. Governments (and scientists) should be very careful when trying to alter climate. The results may be a disaster that cannot be undone. Learning from mistakes may be useful, but not always.
Was sci fic in the 70s to date, not really used in movies or TV then
Georngineering.com it has been documenting this for years . They have plenty of evidence.
Our government, who can’t even acknowledge that the sun’s cycles could in fact be a huge cause for the “climate change” hysteria, is trying to interfere with natural processes. MTG shoots herself int he foot most of the time, but on this, I suspect she is correct. The “government” will lie to us every step of the way. Betting they are now trying to “hide” a whole lot of expensive and ridiculous programs that they don’t want DOGE to discover!
Eventually scientists will determine “cloud seeding” the result of significant uptick of disastrous weather around the globe, possibly responsible for the icecap melting? ???? Our Government should be transparent in their actions to taxpayers. We should be able to hold them accountable for irresponsible actions like this in the nearest future if our species is to survive.
The new delivery system to replace jab?
In 1999 Al Gore a “Carnival Barker” started preaching “Climate Warming” will destroy the earth by the end of the decade. The world must adopt the “Green Agenda” and stop using fossil fuels & atomic energy, We must switch to alternate energy sources like costly Solar/Windmills & Electric Vehicles.
At the end of the decade, the planet was actually getting colder and the world had not come to an end. Gore changed the theme to “Climate Change” to avoid reality. Many countries across the world did switch to “Green Energy” to stop Green House gases. This was nothing more than a gimmick, asceticism in his beliefs of a fictitious “Global-Warming” theme.
Cows are NOW the problem, they produce too much flatulence. Stop eating meat. Farm machinery is also causing too much CO2. The farmers have to stop farming. Sound familiar?
People in Europe and America, are NOW having to burn wood in their homes to stay warm. The countries that had adopted the Green Agenda, closed all their fossil fueled and Nuclear Power Plants are running out of energy.
On the other hand India and China have been adding a dirty “Coal Fired Power Plant” every month for the last 25 years. Reality: The planet shows NO significant evidence in climate change over the last 3 decades. Germany & other European countries are reactivating their old power plants, due to a shortage of energy.
Gore’s Racket made him 300 million. When will the world wake up. Electric Cars do not work without many new power plants and we are about 50 years behind in building enough to support the nation’s needs.
Then there’s Bill Gates investing in weather modification. He, and other billionnaires, want to control everything. But I bet they wouldn’t allow such over their domiciles.
Isn’t it funny how the Media so strongly supports the notion of Climate Change, man made weather modification as an unintended side effect of industry and yet it with equally strong fervor denies that scientists for various governments including our own could possibly do it intentionally? The Weather Channel in particular worships at this altar! I always thought it was funny that they call themselves “The Most Trusted Network” given that they goof up weather reports like everyone else and that they have a program named in honor of a cop killing organization of years past called The Weather Underground!