The DOGE Subcommittee Hearing on Weather Modification Was a Nest of Conspiracy Theorizing

“What this whole debate comes down to is who controls the skies,” Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia told the audience at a House Oversight Committee hearing on Tuesday. “Do we believe in God and that he has dominion over his perfect creation of planet Earth? Do we believe that he has given us everything we need to survive as a civilization since the beginning of time? Or do you believe in man’s claim of authority over the weather, based on scientists that have only been alive for decades and weren’t here to witness the climate changes since the beginning of time?”

As American culture becomes saturated with conspiracy theories, the idea that the government is controlling the weather—an old chestnut—seems to be getting new legs. This theory has led to a raft of proposed legislation in more than two dozen states. Tuesday’s hearing showcased the messiness of what happens when conspiracy theories collide with a federal government that has proven especially willing to entertain them.

The hearing, titled “Playing God with the Weather—a Disastrous Forecast” and convened by Greene, comes alongside legislation she introduced this summer to “prohibit weather modification within the United States.” The definition of “weather modification” in Greene’s legislation is extremely broad, encompassing several unrelated techniques and phenomena; subsequently, the hearing covered many disparate ideas.

“They kinda threw [different ideas] under this umbrella of weather modification” at the hearing, says Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric science at Texas A&M University.

Condensation trails, or contrails, for instance, are natural clouds that can form behind jets as a result of their exhaust. The word “chemtrails” is a term used for contrails by people who think that these are signs of jets spraying chemicals into the air as part of a plot to control the weather. (The two terms are often conflated.) Cloud seeding—the practice of introducing materials like dry ice or silver iodide into clouds to create more rain—is a common technique that has been used for decades by states and counties across the country; nine states currently have active cloud-seeding programs. Finally, solar radiation modification refers to practices that could deflect or dim the rays of the sun in order to halt global warming. Solar radiation modification, also referred to as solar geoengineering, has never been deployed on a large scale.

Greene has a long history of spreading conspiracy theories about the weather, perhaps most famously claiming before she entered Congress that California’s destructive wildfire season in 2018 was caused by lasers in outer space controlled by a powerful Jewish family. Over the summer she introduced the legislation that accompanied this week’s hearing, after conspiracy theories began circulating online that the floods in Texas in July were man-made. Following the floods, the EPA released an online resource on geoengineering and weather modification, in the name, the agency said, of “total transparency.” (The resource features an explainer on different types of weather modification and US government involvement, including an FAQ.)

“Instead of dismissing these questions and concerns as ‘baseless conspiracies,’ we’re meeting them head-on,” administrator Lee Zeldin said in a video announcement on the resource.

Many of the conspiracy theories that circulated after the floods in July centered around a company called Rainmaker, a cloud-seeding startup with buzzy Silicon Valley backers, that was doing cloud-seeding operations in Texas days before the storms, more than 100 miles south of where the heavy rains hit. Following the floods, Greene tweeted a screenshot of an interview with Augustus Doricko, the CEO of Rainmaker. “I’m introducing legislation to stop weather modification and geoengineering,” she wrote. “People have had enough of chemicals manipulating our weather. And the governments and the industries that profit from controlling it.” (Doricko tells WIRED that the company was not invited to Tuesday’s hearing: “Outright refusing to have us makes it seem like it’s just a grandstanding for a click war on Twitter, as per usual,” he says.)

While cloud seeding is mostly regulated at the state level, some federal laws require that operators report their activities to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Existing research shows that injecting silver iodide into clouds has no harmful effects; however, according to a December 2024 report from the Government Accountability Office, that research is “limited to a handful of recent studies.” It has historically been difficult to evaluate the efficacy of cloud seeding: the GAO report cites between 0 and 20 percent increased rainfall from cloud-seeding projects based on research it reviewed. Still, Dessler emphasizes that this technique can’t cause massive weather modification—as online conspiracy theorists have claimed in the wake of the Texas floods.

“People argue that humans are controlling the weather—that’s nonsense,” he says.

Solar geoengineering, meanwhile, has never been deployed at scale—and historically has been a contentious topic within the climate science and policy community. If it’s deployed over a large geographic area, solar geoengineering could create a wide range of risks, from biodiversity loss to a weakened ozone layer to extreme weather. There’s also no way to test large-scale deployment of these techniques in advance, and the world has never tried to govern a scenario in which one country deploys technology that causes droughts and hurricanes in another part of the globe. Critics also say that focusing on geoengineering detracts from the real solution to climate change: drawing down emissions.

But proponents say that looking into solar geoengineering technology may be necessary as climate change keeps getting worse. “You can imagine a scenario where it’s 2040 and climate change is out of control, and it’s the last tool in the toolbox,” Dessler says. “Most serious people view solar geoengineering as like the airbags in your car. They are for emergencies only. No one wants to use their airbags on a daily basis, but you can imagine a situation where you’re glad you have it.”

Anti-weather-modification bills of all different types have proliferated at the state level over the past few years. According to SRM360, a website that tracks data on solar geoengineering policy and science, three states have banned solar radiation modification since 2024, while more than two dozen states have had bills introduced into state legislatures. At least two states—Tennessee and Florida—have explicitly banned cloud seeding in that time period. The December 2024 GAO report cited one official from Kansas, who told the office that the state no longer has a cloud-seeding program “because of negative public perception and pressure on local officials.”

The popularity of these conspiracies may also be on the rise in right-wing spaces. Some MAHA figureheads, including Nicole Shanahan, have shared geoengineering content promoting conspiracy theories, while Marla Maples, Donald Trump’s ex-wife, told Fox News in July that she helped Florida’s anti-weather modification bill pass. (Bill Gates’ track record of funding solar geoengineering research has undoubtedly helped fan some of these flames.)

Doricko, the Rainmaker CEO, has spent much of the past year testifying in state legislatures that were considering vague anti-geoengineering bills that would have also banned cloud seeding. In May, he told WIRED that he and his team had spoken in front of 31 state legislatures. Education, he says, is key to getting people on board with the technology.

“I think there’s some cohort of people that believe that, you know, Joe Biden is actually a lizard person,” he says. “I think that a lot of people aren’t quite that far along, but are very concerned about chemtrails, probably. Showing them farms that are greener than they otherwise would have been with testimonies from those farmers—that’s probably the way that we’re gonna win hearts and minds.” (Doricko told WIRED last week that in recent months, his company has had “interest, curiosity, and excitement” from various state governments, both Democratic and Republican, in using cloud seeding to enhance water supply. “The education that we had the opportunity to do ultimately I think assuaged a lot of reasonable people’s concerns.”)

There is one additional type of human-caused shift in the world’s weather that played an outsize role in the hearing: climate change. Greene and other Republican lawmakers repeated many climate denial talking points and bad framing around climate science, including the idea that carbon dioxide is good for the planet because it is plant food. There were multiple mentions of beach houses owned by Barack Obama and Al Gore as a way of illustrating supposed hypocrisy about sea level rise. One of the witnesses called by the House majority works at an organization with a long history of questioning established climate science; he claimed in his testimony that there is “uncertainty as to exactly how much influence humans have exerted” over the global rise in temperature—a take that is out of line with mainstream science.

“My view is that this is mainly a way of saying there are secret forces at work that are making your life miserable, and everything bad is due to these secret forces,” says Dessler. “When in reality, it’s not secret forces, it’s climate change and it’s these other things that are hurting people.”

But even a whole hearing dedicated to a conspiracy theory grab bag may not be enough for some. On X, a popular anti-geoengineering community was alight with posts about the hearing—including many critical of the experts and their findings. “This was a scripted show to protect the government’s weather control agenda,” one moderator’s post reads. “Why no independent voices?”