Thanks, Marge! Now 'Weather Control' Is A Campaign Issue, At Least For Crazy People
Like for instance, 'Donald Trump.'
You probably didn’t have “weather control conspiracy theory” on your list of potential issues that might come up in the 2024 presidential election, because you are probably a sane person who thinks the economy or abortion or democracy or something similarly real is what matter to voters.
But thanks to Donald Trump and his dangerous lies about the federal response to hurricane Helene, the small but extremely vocal subculture of internet weirdos who are absolutely certain the government controls the weather are certain they finally have friends in high places, and not just on the satellites that make hurricanes happen. Last week, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-QAnon), the Georgia conspiracy freak who turned her raging paranoia into a seat in Congress and in the rightwing media spotlight, returned to her wackaloon roots and proclaimed on Twitter that “Yes, they can control the weather. […] Anyone who says they don’t, or makes fun of this, is lying to you.” You know, (((THEY))).
As “proof,” Greene cited the fact that some people advocate “geoengineering” — injecting tons of sulfur dioxide particles into the stratosphere to mimic the temporary sunlight-blocking effects of a huge volcanic eruption — as a possible way of temporarily reducing global warming. There’s the slight catch that nobody has actually done it, because the potential unanticipated effects could create awful results. And even its advocates don’t claim it would be so precise as to change particular storms’ behavior, just that it would, hypothetically, temporarily slow global warming while we transition away from fossil fuels. (It was a plot point [spoiler warning!] in Kim Stanley Robinson's 2020 climate novel The Ministry for the Future, which you may recall we book clubbed last year. There were unintended consequences in the novel, too!)
No, conspiracy theorists don’t fret too much over the details. They do, however, thrive in a crisis.
Since then Greene has continued to explain that weather control IS TOO a very serious threat, and the crazies on Twitter have joined in, because it just makes too much sense that Democrats would steer hurricanes into areas where they’ll kill hundreds, including fellow Democrats, in hopes that it might affect the election.
And because cranks are magnetically drawn to each other, the rightwing weirdos at Gateway Pundit, that notorious source of disinformation, ran a story yesterday proclaiming that “Marjorie Taylor Greene was right. Yes, scientists do control the weather.” (Our link goes to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, so you won’t give the liars at Gateway Pundit any traffic.) The article claims to be a “heavily researched” deep dive into the “history of weather manipulation,” and that it will in fact “BLOW YOUR MIND.”
Greene triumphantly tweeted that she had been vindicated by the conspiracy site, of course.
Gentle readers, I have read (OK, skimmed) the article and can assure you my mind remains unblown. It’s a collection of nonsense claiming that cloud-seeding is PROOF of weather manipulation. The reality is that various attempts to coax rain out of cumulus clouds, usually by dropping silver iodine into ‘em, can work. And indeed, during Vietnam, the US military experimented with trying to erase the Ho Chi Minh Trail with thunderstorms, but as you may recall, North Vietnam still managed to get plenty of arms to the Viet Cong rebels in the south.
Also, the article mentions failed government efforts to break up hurricanes using cloud seeding, because even though the experiments failed, that proves the government wants to control hurricanes. Maybe it really worked!
The article focuses almost entirely on cloud seeding, with a brief nod to the concept of geoengineering to cool the planet, but it never offers the slightest bit of evidence to show that the government or even the global Jewish cabal can create hurricanes or steer them to hit a particular place. That’s because there’s fuck-all evidence of such fine-tuned weather control, so yeah, “THEY control the weather” remains bullshit and Greene is a crazy asshole, a lying liar, or, probably, both.
Still, props to the Gateway Pundit for mentioning that one of the top cloud-seeding researchers in the 1960s was Bernard Vonnegut, the older brother of Kurt Vonnegut, and that Kurt spun Bernard’s research into the idea of “ice-nine” in Cat’s Cradle. You can learn more about the two in Ginger Strand’s fascinating 2015 biography The Brothers Vonnegut. (Wonkette commission links.)
The Gateway Pundit does not, however, mention the saddest line Kurt Vonnegut ever wrote, which appears in his final novel, Timequake, published the year after Bernard’s death in 1997: “I was the baby of the family. Now I don’t have anybody to show off for anymore.” So it goes.
[Gateway Pundit at Internet Archive / Image: “khaleesicat” on YouTube]
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I shouldn't be so much smarter and more sane than half of Congress. It's just not right.
At least ten tornado cells located by radar, stretching across the state. None in my county yet.
Okay: Tornado Warning for the southwest of my county until 1:30.