Let's start with the facts.
Cloud seeding is an 80-year-old practice of spraying tiny particles into a rain cloud in the hope of pushing it to rain or snow just a little more. It's used in nine states, mostly to fight droughts that can hurt farmers, community water supplies and even some factories. No one knows whether it actually works.
It's important to lay this information out up front because one of the unfortunate aspects of writing about conspiracy theories is that people tend to remember the claims but not the facts that they're false. It helps to start with the truth.
You're going to hear a lot about cloud seeding in the next few days. Much of it won’t be factual.
That's because a loose group of online conspiracy theorists have latched onto cloud seeding as an explanation for the devastating Texas floods. As a longtime reporter, I might say something like "there is no evidence for this claim" or cite some higher authority to say it's not true. But this is an opinion column, so I'm going to just come out and say it: This is bonkers.
I'm going to just come out and say it: This is bonkers.
As I said at the beginning, no one knows whether cloud seeding even works. A report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office in December found that studies of how much additional rain it produces "ranged from 0 to 20 percent." That's because clouds aren't like hamsters that you can set loose in a maze; they are incredibly complex natural phenomena. You can't just seed one cloud and not another cloud and measure how much rain came out because of seeding.
Even if the outliers are correct and cloud seeding can increase precipitation by as much as one-fifth, that would still not be enough to account for the 15 inches of rain that fell in Texas on July 3, more than double what had been forecast a day earlier. The cloud seeding that online theorists have seized on involved 70 grams of silver iodide sprayed into a cloud more than 100 miles away two days earlier, according to The Washington Post. They might as well blame a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil.
Nevertheless, the theory gained ground after it was cited by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., GOP House candidate Kandiss Taylor and former Trump adviser Michael Flynn. Greene even proposed a national cloud seeding ban.
In what appears to have been an effort to combat the misinformation, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin posted online resources explaining the science behind cloud seeding, geoengineering and even the condensation trails left by planes flying at high altitudes. This is commendable.
But unfortunately, the administration's rhetoric isn't well-suited for this kind of debunking.
"Americans have questions about geoengineering and contrails," Zeldin wrote on X. "They expect honesty and transparency from their government when seeking answers. For years, people who asked questions in good faith were dismissed, even vilified by the media and their own government. This ends today."
That is the kind of tweet that you would write before claiming there's an invisible map to secret treasure on the back of the Declaration of Independence. It's not what you write to promote a sober fact-check.
Remember when I started with the facts at the top of this column? That was because people who study conspiracy theories have found that it helps to use a "truth sandwich" that begins and ends with the facts, rather than highlight the conspiracy theories first and then rebut them. Unfortunately, the webpage that Zeldin promoted doesn’t take that approach.
Noting that there have been "myths and misconceptions" about contrails for decades, the EPA site says it "addresses head-on various claims that these occurrences are actually an intentional release of dangerous chemicals or biological agents at high altitudes for a variety of nefarious purposes, including population control, mind control, or attempts to geoengineer Earth or modify the weather."
It would have been better if the EPA started off by citing some facts, then noted that there have been conspiracy theories about it (without repeating the spurious claims) and then went back through the facts again. But saying that you're going to address the claims without actually addressing them right then and there is an invitation to misreading.
The underlying problem is that Trump likes to toy with conspiracy theories for political benefit.
The underlying problem here is that Zeldin's boss, President Donald Trump, likes to toy with conspiracy theories for political benefit. Over the years, he has made spurious claims about Barack Obama's birthplace, liberal donor George Soros, climate change and vaccines and cozied up to those who argue that there's a secret cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who control the government.
Trump's words have helped foster an environment in which conspiracy theories flourish and even a government agency trying to debunk obvious misinformation hems and haws. Instead of just stating the truth, the leader of that government agency lionizes the conspiracy theorists as virtuous Americans who were targeted by an unnamed enemy, and he repeats their wildest claims.
I don't know what to say about that, except to complete the truth sandwich by repeating the facts that I began with: Cloud seeding is an 80-year-old practice, used in nine states, to encourage precipitation. It may or may not even work, and it was definitely not the reason it flooded in Texas.