Cloud seeding may not have caused the deadly flash floods in Texas, but could it have contributed to them? This week, we talk to the CEO of a cloud-seeding company that actually did the work, and he tells us why he doesn t think it's man-made.
00:03:31.720The only question I have for the politics is, why are they insuring homes in Miami Beach and offering 30-year mortgages on them if they think the water is going to rise and wipe them out?
00:03:41.360So clearly, the insurance companies and the banks don't believe in climate change.
00:03:44.380Or at the very least, they don't care?
00:04:30.320I'm the founder and CEO of Rainmaker, which is a next-generation cloud seeding company that flies drones into clouds and disperses material that makes clouds rain or snow more for the sake of saving farms, ecosystems, cities, and industries that are at risk of drought.
00:04:46.000So I think it was NBC that reported, so correct me and them if it's not true.
00:04:51.360They said your company cloud seeded in Texas two days before the floods happened.
00:04:56.840So that is true, and I should also say immediately thereafter that that cloud seeding operation and all of Rainmaker's operations had nothing to do with the floods that ensued.
00:05:07.620And so just to give you context on what cloud seeding is a little bit more first and then the timeline of events as it relates to the flood.
00:05:14.280Cloud seeding relies on finding clouds that exist, right?
00:05:19.240If you see a long streak in the sky, that has nothing to do with cloud seeding.
00:05:22.180It's not dimming the sun either, which is another real technology called solar radiation modification.
00:05:27.500Cloud seeding is a water supply tool invented in the United States in the 1940s that farmers have been using, that governments have been using for decades to enhance their water supplies.
00:05:38.480In Texas, there are municipalities and farmers that contract with us to produce more water for their crops themselves, for rain on their crops, to replenish their reservoirs, to recharge their aquifers.
00:05:49.940Because if you look at Texas, obviously it does not need more water right now, but the Ogallala Aquifer is radically depleted.
00:05:56.400As of just June 24th, there was severe drought throughout a lot of the state.
00:06:01.060And so these entities, these farms and municipal governments, they contract with us to make more rain when there is drought.
00:06:07.560We were flying a cloud seeding operation for about 20 minutes on July 2nd at about 1 p.m. central time.
00:06:13.700That cloud seeding flight seeded two clouds, where we dispersed about 70 grams worth of silver iodide, that's the material we use, and that's like 10 skittles worth of material.
00:06:23.500We seeded those clouds, and then they then precipitated and dissipated over the course of two hours after.
00:06:31.700The aerosols that we dispersed precipitated out and dispersed away.
00:06:35.340They didn't remain in the atmosphere long after.
00:06:37.440We then saw the National Weather Service issue their flash flood warning at about 1 in the morning on the 3rd.
00:06:46.400We, as cloud seeders, are regulated by the state of Texas with something called suspension criteria, which means if there already is risk of flooding, if there already is too much moisture on the ground and any more rain could cause flooding, if the reservoirs are too full and could spill over and cause flooding, then we're legally required by the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation to
00:07:09.500And not only did we act in accordance with Texas state law and stop before those operations happen, our meteorologists were capable enough to identify that there was going to be risk of flooding before we were required to suspend operations.
00:07:23.660And then had no effect whatsoever on the remnants of tropical storm berry that did blow in and induce the floods that occurred.
00:07:32.500And just for context on scale, too, real quick, the best cloud seeding operations that we've seen to date, either from our operations or from the best-in-class research at universities across the western U.S.,
00:07:45.660those cloud seeding operations produced tens of millions of gallons of precipitation over the course of about an hour or two, distributed over hundreds of square miles.
00:07:57.300The flooding that occurred, that system dumped like three to four trillion gallons of precipitation.
00:08:03.220So, one, we weren't operating during that storm.
00:08:05.700Two, the aerosols that were dispersed in the prior day could not have persisted long enough to affect that.
00:08:12.720And then three, even if we had been seeding during that system and we weren't, there's no way that cloud seeding could have produced as much water as we saw from that flood.
00:08:23.960The area that you guys did cloud seed, is that close to the areas that experienced flooding?
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00:08:58.780So, we were flying about 150 miles southeast of the areas that experienced the worst flooding.
00:09:05.440So, I got to ask, there's flooding in New Mexico right now.
00:09:10.800I'm up here in the D.C. area in West Virginia, and we've had a month or two months of unprecedented rainfall where the locals are telling us it's really, really bad.
00:09:21.660But, to me, it sounds like what you guys were doing on the surface is completely unrelated, as is what you were saying.
00:09:31.400And when, you know, I saw the story yesterday, people were saying it's cloud seeding.
00:09:35.780They were cloud seeding right before this flood.
00:10:19.460We'll fly, like, up to three drones at a time.
00:10:22.020Or, in the case of Texas, we do still use airplanes.
00:10:25.680Most of our operations were using drones because they're far more efficient, but we inherited some planes in Texas and operate with those there.
00:10:32.420And you said that you released about 10 Skittles worth of material?
00:10:39.660And it's also worth saying, too, just for context and, like, references, that flight was conducted at about 1,600 feet above ground level.
00:10:49.360So 1,600 feet above ground level was about its max altitude.
00:10:53.640And so, again, for the folks that are concerned about the long streaks that they see in the sky, right, they are sometimes called contrails or sometimes called chemtrails.
00:11:03.140I have not yet seen any evidence to suggest there is malevolent government conspiracy to produce chemtrails that are giving us neurotoxins or mind-control viruses or chips or anything like that.
00:11:14.280I'm totally open to evidence of it, though.
00:11:16.040And so a lot of people have seen me, you know, pictures of the sky.
00:11:19.640But those streaks that you see are occurring around 20,000, 30,000 feet.
00:11:24.540And so our operations, our flights, be they with drones or airplanes, are, you know, 10,000 feet lower than that, if not 20.
00:11:31.160So when you released a small amount of material there, it seems like less than a drop of water in the ocean compared to what this flooding and these storms actually were.
00:11:47.180Is it possible for any—is it possible for a cloud-seating entity to create rainfall that would result in floods of this magnitude?
00:11:54.820So the reason why we have suspension criteria is because cloud-seating produces precipitation, right?
00:12:01.880And if there are already coincident risks, like a huge system that is going to cause flooding naturally, cloud-seating it would be imprudent, right?
00:12:11.440There's no way physically to produce 4 trillion gallons worth of precipitation with cloud-seating technology that exists or with anything that's even been theorized about now.
00:12:21.540That being said, there's something that I think a lot of people will bring up in the comments that I want to address transparently, right?
00:12:27.600Like, I think there's a lot of mistrust around weather modification.
00:12:30.680It's obviously a very consequential technology, and we should—I should—I have to be as transparent as possible to earn the trust of these people that have understandable concerns.
00:12:40.920There have been in the past operations that were deliberately intended to cause flooding.
00:12:46.740So if you look at Operation Popeye in the Vietnam War, the U.S. Air Force was conducting cloud-seating flights to try to flood out the ocean trail.
00:12:55.060Now, the fundamental difference between cloud-seating now and in the past isn't just that we use drones.
00:12:59.960It's that with radar, and specifically new kinds of radar, we can measure what our effect is on the cloud.
00:13:05.880Whereas before, you know, you would fly up into a cloud, sprinkle some magic beans, and then maybe it would rain, maybe it wouldn't.
00:13:19.060But it's worth acknowledging that very publicly because it has been done by the U.S. government before, and to my knowledge, hasn't been done since.
00:13:28.780But again, if there is any evidence of that, happy to engage with people online about it.
00:13:33.000I bet that governments definitely use weather modifications, be it Operation Popeye or otherwise, for strategic purposes.
00:13:43.080And I bet they're still doing it to this day.
00:13:46.580But I do think it's funny that your company, which let me just say this, your company is getting blamed for this massive torrential downpour because of the concerns about government use of weather modification in the past.
00:14:03.060So just to clarify, you said you launched three drones?
00:14:07.800In a typical operation, we do, but we flew a plane in Texas.
00:14:24.080So in Texas, our customers are associations of counties and private farming interests that need more water either for their crops or for their reservoirs or for their aquifers, like I said.
00:14:34.320So the flight on the 2nd that people have referenced repeatedly and saying was causal for the flooding, that was for the South Texas Weather Modification Association.
00:14:45.580I'll also say, you know, I can absolutely handle it.
00:14:49.600I feel no responsibility for the flood, obviously, but can handle people accusing me or sending me death threats about that.
00:14:56.920To the poor farmers in Texas that are just trying to pay for more rain because their crops will die without it.
00:15:03.760Like they are totally undeserving of the virulent, virulent death threats that they've gotten.
00:15:08.460And that being said, though, I am still sympathetic to the people that have lost so much and that have emotions running high.
00:15:14.900And I think that people want to find a scapegoat.
00:15:17.780They want to find a culprit they can hold responsible for the flooding because in a world where there was someone responsible, and if you could help hold them to account, you could potentially stop this in the future.
00:15:27.740Unfortunately, there are still natural disasters.
00:15:30.400There is nobody responsible for this here.
00:15:36.120However, cloud seeding right now, right, it's used for precipitation enhancement.
00:15:41.060It's used to make more water for people that are suffering from drought.
00:15:43.460And there's huge droughts that are causing, you know, the city of Phoenix to cut off water to residencies right now.
00:15:47.740And so we need some sort of weather modification right now with serious regulatory oversight from the state and federal governments.
00:15:53.980And, like, most business owners aren't asking for more regulation.
00:15:57.420I am because I want people to feel like this is a trustworthy and beneficial technology.
00:16:01.220But all of that to say, yeah, it's used for mitigating drought right now.
00:16:05.480It has been attempted to be used for severe weather suppression in the past.
00:16:10.960So if you look at Project Storm Fury, this is where the American government, the U.S. Weather Bureau and Air Force collaborated to seed hurricanes in a totally different manner, but to seed hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean before they reached the Pacific to reduce the amount of rain that would precipitate out of them when they hit the eastern seaboard and then also to reduce their wind velocities to mitigate their damage.
00:16:32.940Now, we didn't have the radar or the satellite imagery at the time to attribute what our effect was, but if we were to ban this technology now, not only would we prevent farmers across America from having access to water, not only would we put at risk all of the ecosystems and cities in the American West that are deprived of water, not only would we be at greater risk of wildfire, but also we would shut the door on the potential research into the future to mitigate severe weather as well
00:17:01.480and continue to be beholden to these tragic natural disasters.
00:17:06.420How does it work? How does spraying silver iodide make clouds or make rain?
00:17:12.520Totally. So we don't make clouds. We can't make clouds.
00:17:15.900We take existing big fluffy clouds that have water in them.
00:17:20.480We'll fly our plane or drone into those clouds and then disperse an aerosol, like a small particulate, not nanoparticles, but a particulate into the clouds.
00:17:31.480And silver iodide, it has a crystal structure that's very similar to ice.
00:17:35.820And so water that's in small droplet form, not big enough to precipitate, will freeze onto the silver iodide crystal, grow into a big enough snowflake, break apart, create more snowflakes,
00:17:46.180that all then become big enough to precipitate and sometimes melt back into rain.
00:17:50.000In Utah and Colorado, where we also operate, filling up reservoirs and enhancing snowpack, we mostly do snowpack enhancement.
00:19:03.640So there's generally like three questions that come up or concerns around cloud seeding.
00:19:07.580And one is, are you polluting with what you're dispersing into those clouds?
00:19:12.100And so silver iodide itself, like should you eat it hand over fist?
00:19:15.700No, but when we look at the data from decades of programs in the past that are emitting about 50 to 100 grams of silver iodide per operation,
00:19:25.300dispersed over hundreds of square miles,
00:19:27.660there's already two parts per million of silver in most American soil.
00:19:32.980After decades of cloud seeding from these old operations in Utah and California and Colorado,
00:19:38.900we've only seen an increase in eight parts per trillion above the background amount.
00:19:43.500That's like almost an immeasurably small increase.
00:19:47.280It's not even necessarily statistically significant,
00:19:49.700and it's a million times less than what's already naturally in the soil.
00:19:53.460So have we seen any adverse ecological, agricultural, or human health impacts from silver iodide from cloud seeding?
00:20:00.760No, categorically and like absolutely not.
00:20:04.060And that isn't to say that like the notion of a more organic, biodegradable material in the future
00:20:11.820is something I'm not interested in, right?
00:20:14.180Like just for the PR, if anything, that seems to make sense.
00:20:17.500And to preempt any potential ecological issues, that would be possible.
00:20:20.940Are there any other chemicals used in cloud seeding aside from silver iodide?