Human beings love a good conspiracy theory. It's been no exception in the aftermath of two massive hurricanes, Helene and Milton, that hit the U.S. Southeast in rapid succession and caused tragic devastation and loss of life. It becomes tempting to think that such devastating extreme weather can't just be random.
Some people, in many cases understandably upset with the destruction, are quick to believe it must be an inside job by the government to impact the upcoming election, or some other sinister motive. Add in a catchy term like cloud seeding for how "they" created the hurricanes, as Marjorie Taylor Greene said without evidence, and we're off and running.
What is the conspiracy around the government and hurricanes?
Like many conspiracy theories and forms of misinformation, there is a small kernel of truth at its core that gets blown out of proportion. In this case, that idea is cloud seeding. So, what is it and how is it being grossly misrepresented?
@the_cool_down Let's get into it: CAN the government create hurricanes using cloud seeding?? #extremeweather #hurricanemilton #hurricanehelene #cloudseeding #weather
♬ Suspense, horror, piano and music box - takaya
As Ph.D. student Roshan Salgado D'Arcy explains in a new video for The Cool Down, cloud seeding is a real process used to combat drought conditions that can increase rainfall by 10% or more. By spraying a chemical called silver iodide in the air, it brings water droplets together so that they can form clouds, and eventually create rain.
As D'Arcy says, though, the process can't just make water appear out of thin air — even with an ocean nearby or underneath.
And even if it could, D'Arcy explains that hurricanes are far from just rain. They're created by huge quantities of energy moving through the atmosphere over warm ocean water in a natural process that has nothing to do with cloud seeding. Hurricanes require warm oceans and a remarkable amount of heat energy to evaporate enough water in an enormous spiraling formation to create massive storm clouds.
The conspiracy theory ignores that cloud seeding couldn't provide that energy, nor could any technology that exists. So with all that information, what to make of the notion that the government generated the two hurricanes?
"It just doesn't make sense," as D'Arcy puts it.
An even stranger conspiracy making the rounds points to the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, a program the government did initially start in order to study radio communication in the upper atmosphere. But as FactCheck.org puts it, "HAARP is a basic science research program aimed at understanding the highest parts of the atmosphere using radio waves … it has nothing to do with weather modification and could not alter hurricanes."
As with cloud seeding, conspiracy theorists have hunted for a real program or process they can point to that can sound like something a comic book villain might use to do harm somehow. But when put under real scrutiny with the real — and often boring, by their own admission — scientists who work on such things, theories such as beaming radio waves from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico (without being detected by any group or foreign nation, no less) to create hurricanes quickly fall apart.
After all, the Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico, and Caribbean already see about six hurricanes per year and four more tropical storms. No one who wants to see a hurricane needs to do anything to cause one. The only change in recent years is hotter temperatures that can increase a storm's strength; for that same reason, hurricanes only happen during months when ocean temperatures are higher.Â
Why are weather conspiracies so dangerous?
Weather conspiracies detract from the actual truth behind the surge in the severity of storms. While human activity like burning fossil fuels likely didn't cause Hurricanes Helene or Milton to happen, and certainly no human action did so in any direct or purposeful way, our actions almost certainly made them worse.
The heating of the planet obviously causes heat waves, but it's also what can provide the energy to intensify hurricanes. Humans are continually contributing to it through dirty energy that is burned into the air at mind-bogglingly high rates. A 2021 report from the International Air Transport Association estimated the aviation industry alone burns around 100 billion gallons of fossil fuels into the air and atmosphere per year, and it's extra easy to imagine much of those airplane emissions rising and remaining in the mixture of the air up there. The same happens with smokestacks and tailpipes, though.
According to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, about 50% of the heat-trapping carbon dioxide from fossil fuels stays in the atmosphere for "a few hundred years," while another 20% "stays in the atmosphere for thousands of years." All of it combines with many other gases in the atmosphere — even water vapor — to act like an invisible greenhouse roof or blanket hovering up above and holding in heat from escaping into outer space. We may not be able to see these gases with the naked eye, but they are there.
A lot of climate change and the greenhouse gases that contribute to it are naturally occurring, except with carbon dioxide and methane in particular, human activity is producing far more than would ever naturally be burned into the atmosphere at one time.
Consider that fossil fuels are called that because they are made from fossilized organic waste that has been buried underground for millions of years, naturally out of the atmosphere, and now trillions of gallons of it are suddenly being burned right up into the air over recent decades.
The pollution from burning that much physical matter has to go somewhere, and it has to have some effect on the world.
That effect, unfortunately, is the global heating we've seen that has caused the planet's combined average measured temperatures to rise to record-setting levels for 15 months in a row — until this September broke the streak by "only" being the second-hottest September on record.
A look at any chart of annual temperature data takes just moments to see where things are headed.
On top of all this, the ocean ends up absorbing about 90% of the heat trapped from the gases that humans release. In turn, as D'Arcy covers, warmer oceans create more powerful hurricanes.
A weather conspiracy theory allows a believer to ignore the collective role we play by redirecting blame to boogeymen like the government and cloud seeding.
How educating yourself and others can help
Videos featuring information and facts from experts like D'Arcy — who runs a TikTok account under the name Rosh and a YouTube account called All About Climate while pursuing a climate-focused Ph.D. at University College London — are a valuable way to debunk buzzy conspiracy theories. When people throw around terms like cloud seeding that sound nefarious and have a little bit of truth behind them, it's easy for people to latch on to a convenient scapegoat.
In order for us to actually confront the dire consequences of a rapidly warming planet, there has to be real accountability and collective action. Conveniently blaming a person or group is just another way for many people to bury their heads in the sand, instead of looking for solutions and building upon progress already being made.
One of the best things you can do, then, is to use your voice and talk to your family and friends about topics like these calmly and patiently to cut through the emotions and try to get more people back on the same page. We're all in the same situation trying to deal with increased temperatures that are unfortunately now leading to worse cases of extreme weather like heat waves and hurricanes, and it's not getting any better without more people working to stop it.
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