The enstupidization continues

Augustus Doricko knew when he founded a cloud-seeding start-up in 2023 that he’d have to contend with misunderstandings and conspiracy theories surrounding the technology. Still, he wasn’t quite prepared for the sheer volume of online fury he has faced in the wake of the catastrophic Texas floods that have killed more than 100 people and nearly twice that many missing.

“It has been nonstop pandemonium,” Doricko said in a phone interview Wednesday.

Doricko and his company, Rainmaker, have become a focal point of posts spiraling across social media that suggest the floods in Kerr County were a human-made disaster. An array of influencers, media personalities, elected officials and other prominent figures — including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) and former Trump adviser Michael Flynn — have publicly raised the possibility that cloud-seeding operations like Rainmaker’s might have caused or at least exacerbated the historic deluge.

That’s impossible, atmospheric scientists say. Cloud seeding, in which planes scatter dust particles through clouds to trigger rain and snow, remains a fledgling technology, the effects of which are too limited and localized to produce anything remotely like the 15 inches of rain that drowned swaths of South Central Texas over the Fourth of July weekend.

“The amount of energy involved in making storms like that is astronomical compared to anything you can do with cloud seeding,” said Bob Rauber, a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign atmospheric science emeritus professor who has studied the technology. “We’re talking about a very small increase on a natural process at best.”

That hasn’t stoppedconspiracy theoristsfrom latching onto cloud seeding as an incendiary explanation for natural disasters. The search for a scapegoat has turned a spotlight on a controversial technology that has drawn interest from drought-stricken Western states and dozens of countries looking to replenish water reservoirs, despite limited evidence that it works and broader social and environmental concerns about altering the weather. And it underscores how conspiracy theories can flourish in the aftermath of natural disasters as people seek information — and the clout that can come from providing sensational answers.

So naturally:

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin is elevating concerns over potential weather modifying technology as questions have swirled around the cause of catastrophic flooding in Texas.

The agency is sharing new information about contrails, the center of conspiracies on climate-related experiments, military operations and what some have claimed could be behind the disaster that has killed more than 100 people. Some have blamed human meddling with the weather, saying cloud seeding was responsible for the tragedy.

On Thursday, Zeldin said he asked his staff to compile everything EPA knows about contrails and geoengineering and release it to the public, resulting in new agency webpages.

Marjorie Taylor Space Lasers is sure that the Texas floods were caused by rogue libs in the traitorous agencies, so now we’re going to have lots of people Doing Their Own Research as they comb through government documents, or at least look at the pictures as they turn the pages.

This country has always been chock full of credulous paranoid morons, but there used to be some sort of effort to keep them handling snakes as opposed to congressional committees and federal agencies.