Playing God with the Weather — Geoengineering and Weather Modification

On September 16, the U.S. House Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency, chaired by Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, held a hearing titled “Playing God with the Weather—a Disastrous Forecast.” The hearing focused on geoengineering and weather modification.

I was invited to participate but declined. My excuse was that House and Senate hearings have become Kabuki theater with legislators tossing softball questions to friendly experts while attempting to destroy the credibility of experts from the other side. Last time I testified, I witnessed Kevin Dayaratna, a Ph.D. statistician of eminent scholarship with the Heritage Foundation, being lied about for several minutes by an animated legislator, only to be silenced by the chairman when he tried to respond.

Last time I was invited, eighty-five members of the House, or about one-fifth of the esteemed body of legislators, demanded a hearing to determine just why President Trump had hired me. Their letter indicated that I have “a long history of casting doubt on climate science with [my] questionable publications and significant funding from the fossil fuel industry. [I had] rejected the scientific consensus that human activity is contributing to global warming, devoted [my] career to discrediting the work of climate researchers, and applauded President Trump’s decision to break from the Paris climate accord.”

Some of those allegations are true, and I’m proud of them. But, no, I did not testify then, either.

But the September hearing on geoengineering and weather modification was not about me. The three experts did very well at representing either the facts or the consensus view, and nothing earth-shattering was disclosed at the hearing.

Is the Government Monkeying with the Weather?

The goal of the hearing, as stated by Subcommittee Chairwoman Greene, was to shed light on the federal government’s involvement in weather control and geoengineering and to provide transparency on how taxpayer dollars are being spent on these activities. She noted that

The reality is that the federal government has a long history of experimenting with weather modification. That includes a 1947 attempt by the military and General Electric to intercept a hurricane off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida. It includes an event in the 50s and 60s where the U.S. Army admitted to spraying a mysterious chemical fog over a neighborhood in St. Louis, Missouri, which residents now claim is giving them cancer. It includes Project Stormfury, a series of efforts in the 60s and 70s to weaken hurricanes by seeding clouds with silver iodide. And, it includes Operation Popeye, an effort to create monsoons to aid our military efforts during the Vietnam War.

She concluded with:

“The same professional scientific community that closed ranks around the need to close schools and businesses due to Covid is of a single mind when it comes to global warming. They are convinced that global warming is such an immediate risk to mankind that it justifies the catastrophic risk of blocking out the sun. ‘It’s for the greater good’ they say.”

(I would have concluded with “It’s for the collective,” but then, I like calling Marxists by their real name whenever I can.)

Surprisingly, no one mentioned the two issues that have been in the press recently.

Putting Diamonds in the Sky

The first was a 2024 article that compared the effectiveness of different synthetic aerosols to save us from global warming and determined that the best choice would be to inject nearly ten tons of diamonds into the stratosphere—every minute. At roughly $500,000 per ton, the diamond dust would cost us only $5 million a minute, or about $170 trillion between 2035 and 2100. I would have liked to see Representative Greene’s face when she heard that figure. The House Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency should have had a field day with that one!

But the latest attempt was not a modeling study of what could be tried. Rather, it almost occurred. The goal was to dim sunlight in part of California. Those who tried intentionally chose to keep the project hidden from the citizens and officials in California. (After all, why would they need to know about it?)

In a tale that blends back-room climate science with secrecy, controversy, and billionaire funding, a research team from the University of Washington quietly attempted to test technologies to brighten marine clouds and reflect sunlight away from Earth. While the original experiment, called the Marine Cloud Brightening Program, collapsed due to a lack of public trust and ethical oversight, the sequel was already being planned—a multimillion-dollar trial over an ocean area larger than Puerto Rico.

The goal of the original experiment was to enlist the help of two advocacy groups and a decommissioned World War II-era aircraft carrier—now a naval museum—to spray saltwater aerosols into the air. The mist would seed and hence brighten marine clouds to reflect incoming solar radiation. This was only a preliminary test, in preparation for the bigger event, but after just twenty minutes, officials from the city of Alameda put a halt to the escapade.

The problem for the Democratic mayor was not that the group intended to save the planet, but that she learned of the plans from the New York Times. Having not been properly notified, the mayor closed the effort down, accusing the team of violating the USS Hornet’s lease, as it was to be used only as a museum.

Secret Schemes That Affect Us All

This underscores the problem with geoengineering research, which often proceeds in secrecy. Geoengineering encompasses unproven technologies in a misguided attempt to counteract global warming, and it remains largely unregulated at the federal level. Advocates argue that since emissions cuts fall behind their arbitrarily set goals, a “Plan B” must be implemented. But scientists have called for a global ban on geoengineering since unforeseen consequences could have disastrous effects. Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis recently signed a law that bans atmospheric chemical releases for weather or climate modification.

Other cancellations, such as the Swedish SCoPEx project engineered by Harvard in 2021, also failed due to a lack of proper notification of local indigenous groups.

Released documents identify the lack of transparency and the intended scope of the USS Hornet project. The sequel was to be a 3,900 square mile cloud-brightening effort that would cost an estimated $10 to $20 million dollars and enlist United States government ships, planes, and, of course, money, financed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Department of Energy. Scaling beyond this, the plan was to enlist help from philanthropist Rachel Pritzker and ex-Sierra Club director Michael Brune.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

In one released text message, program lead Sarah Doherty lamented that after Trump’s reelection, this “isn’t going to happen any time soon.” Nevertheless, University of Washington officials maneuvered to minimize the project’s risks by insisting that there was no intent to alter the weather. Doherty backtracked by stating, “The program does not recommend, support or develop plans for the use of marine cloud brightening to alter weather or climate”—despite the experiment’s being titled the “Marine Cloud Brightening Program.” Cornell’s Daniele Visioni argued that since 30 percent of the Earth is already covered by clouds, these tests are unlikely to have any impact anyway. One might be forgiven, then, for asking, “Why are we planning to waste taxpayer’s money?”

Geoengineering, of course, always promises to solve the problem at hand; but then, its unforeseen consequences may come back to wreak havoc. In the 1970s, we were concerned about global cooling, so it was proposed to put black soot over large areas of the Arctic to enhance warming. Imagine where we would be now if that project had been undertaken.

So, the recent hearing was timely, even if nothing new was disclosed. As the geoengineers propose dimming the light that fuels our planet, the goal of the hearing was to shed more light on the process. We need more light, not less.

David R. Legates, Ph.D. (Climatology), retired Professor of Climatology at the University of Delaware and co-editor of Climate and Energy: The Case for Realism (Regnery, 2024), is Director of Research and Education for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation.