The Culture War - Tim Pool - Cloud SEEDING BLAMED For Texas Floods, Deaths, Company CEO SPEAKS Out ft. Augustus Doricko

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00:00:30.740 We have this story from the AP.

00:00:33.420 Fact, focus.

00:00:34.860 No.

00:00:35.800 Weather modifications did not cause the deadly flash floods in Texas.

00:00:40.160 A question that many are asking.

00:00:42.540 Two days before the flash floods in Texas that killed over 100,

00:00:47.140 and the number is going up, as well as many little girls.

00:00:49.280 It's a sad story.

00:00:50.840 There was a company that engaged in cloud seeding operations.

00:00:54.480 Many on the right have said it is these actions that has resulted in this flash flood.

00:01:00.860 Now, the AP says no.

00:01:03.140 But you know what?

00:01:04.480 We are so sick and tired of being lied to that we don't trust these institutions.

00:01:08.580 So when the corporate press comes out saying it's not possible,

00:01:11.860 don't be surprised when no one believes it.

00:01:14.740 We saw something similar in Dubai.

00:01:18.060 Let me, I think I have the Dubai story here.

00:01:19.960 The weather experiment that really flooded Dubai.

00:01:22.540 Well, the story here was that there was cloud seeding done in Dubai,

00:01:26.880 and then of all places, it flooded.

00:01:28.920 So many people speculated that cloud seeding had caused the problem.

00:01:33.420 What's the argument that it wouldn't?

00:01:36.100 Well, the CEO of a cloud seeding company that actually did cloud seed in Texas days before the flood

00:01:41.140 says they could not produce nearly enough rainfall to contribute to what caused this flooding.

00:01:46.820 And I will say this, New Mexico also is dealing with flooding.

00:01:53.200 And as far as I can tell, there's no cloud seeding in New Mexico.

00:01:56.100 I will also additionally add, yo, we flooded for real.

00:01:59.340 Yeah, we flooded here in West Virginia.

00:02:01.920 It's not as bad, nearly.

00:02:03.600 But we have had such an intense amount of rain.

00:02:06.340 I kid you not.

00:02:06.980 We had to get a pump for our basement, and we were pumping water out of it.

00:02:11.260 And we were, it was actually crazy.

00:02:13.360 It cost us short.

00:02:14.300 And we were talking with the contractors and companies we work with.

00:02:17.660 We were like, what's going on?

00:02:19.220 And they were like, the groundwater level is rising dramatically because of how much rain we've got.

00:02:23.220 It's unprecedented.

00:02:24.180 The amount of rain in West Virginia has been absolutely insane.

00:02:27.640 It may just be that we got a period of extremely heavy rain.

00:02:31.480 Now, here's what I don't like in all of this.

00:02:33.580 We'll talk to this cloud seeding CEO in just a moment.

00:02:36.240 He's coming in.

00:02:36.820 He's going to tell us about what's really going on from his perspective.

00:02:40.060 But the issue is, on the right, they're saying it's cloud seeding.

00:02:42.180 And the left is saying it's climate change.

00:02:43.640 And I'm like, dude, sometimes it rains.

00:02:47.340 There are periods of great storms and hurricanes.

00:02:51.000 They happen.

00:02:51.980 And one particular incident is not indicative of any deep state conspiracy or this mass global upheaval of weather.

00:03:02.320 You've got both.

00:03:03.400 And they've decided to make it whatever it is that fits their political agenda.

00:03:10.180 I don't think it's global climate change.

00:03:12.120 And I don't think it's cloud seeding, to be completely honest.

00:03:14.620 However, I do think there are – well, to be honest, the cloud seeding is more reasonable in argument than the climate change one.

00:03:21.140 I think climate change changes.

00:03:22.720 I think it's happening.

00:03:23.460 The question is, if it is man-made, can we even do anything about it?

00:03:27.320 I'm not going to purport to know the answers of whether it is or is not man-made.

00:03:30.280 I won't assert that.

00:03:31.720 The 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?

00:03:41.360 So clearly, the insurance companies and the banks don't believe in climate change.

00:03:44.380 Or at the very least, they don't care?

00:03:47.260 I guess.

00:03:47.980 Well, let's do this.

00:03:51.280 To get into the issue of cloud seeding, we're going to pull in the CEO of this cloud seeding company.

00:03:59.100 This is Augustus Dorico.

00:04:00.500 I'm probably pronouncing it wrong, but hopefully not.

00:04:02.660 Who actually, they say, was engaged in cloud seeding.

00:04:06.100 So we're loading up the interview now.

00:04:08.320 I've got to click a few links, which gets it all booted up.

00:04:11.800 And then it loads.

00:04:13.360 It's loading.

00:04:15.100 And here we go.

00:04:16.700 Augustus, can you hear me?

00:04:17.980 I can.

00:04:18.820 How's it going, Tim?

00:04:19.800 Thanks for joining me.

00:04:22.160 Thanks for having me.

00:04:23.460 Would you like to, for those that don't know who you are, introduce yourself and what your company does?

00:04:28.340 Yeah, sure.

00:04:29.000 My name is Augustus Dorico.

00:04:30.320 I'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.

00:04:46.000 So I think it was NBC that reported, so correct me and them if it's not true.

00:04:51.360 They said your company cloud seeded in Texas two days before the floods happened.

00:04:56.420 Is that true?

00:04:56.840 So 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.

00:05:07.620 And 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.

00:05:14.280 Cloud seeding relies on finding clouds that exist, right?

00:05:17.600 It's not chemtrails, right?

00:05:19.240 If you see a long streak in the sky, that has nothing to do with cloud seeding.

00:05:22.180 It's not dimming the sun either, which is another real technology called solar radiation modification.

00:05:27.500 Cloud 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.

00:05:38.480 In 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.

00:05:49.940 Because if you look at Texas, obviously it does not need more water right now, but the Ogallala Aquifer is radically depleted.

00:05:56.400 As of just June 24th, there was severe drought throughout a lot of the state.

00:06:01.060 And so these entities, these farms and municipal governments, they contract with us to make more rain when there is drought.

00:06:07.560 We were flying a cloud seeding operation for about 20 minutes on July 2nd at about 1 p.m. central time.

00:06:13.700 That 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.

00:06:23.500 We seeded those clouds, and then they then precipitated and dissipated over the course of two hours after.

00:06:29.820 So those clouds themselves were gone.

00:06:31.700 The aerosols that we dispersed precipitated out and dispersed away.

00:06:35.340 They didn't remain in the atmosphere long after.

00:06:37.440 We then saw the National Weather Service issue their flash flood warning at about 1 in the morning on the 3rd.

00:06:46.400 We, 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

00:07:07.420 to suspend operations to do no harm.

00:07:09.500 And 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.

00:07:23.660 And then had no effect whatsoever on the remnants of tropical storm berry that did blow in and induce the floods that occurred.

00:07:32.500 And 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.,

00:07:45.660 those 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.

00:07:57.300 The flooding that occurred, that system dumped like three to four trillion gallons of precipitation.

00:08:03.220 So, one, we weren't operating during that storm.

00:08:05.700 Two, the aerosols that were dispersed in the prior day could not have persisted long enough to affect that.

00:08:12.720 And 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.

00:08:22.660 Well, let me ask you real quick.

00:08:23.960 The area that you guys did cloud seed, is that close to the areas that experienced flooding?

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00:08:58.780 So, we were flying about 150 miles southeast of the areas that experienced the worst flooding.

00:09:05.440 So, I got to ask, there's flooding in New Mexico right now.

00:09:10.800 I'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.

00:09:21.660 But, to me, it sounds like what you guys were doing on the surface is completely unrelated, as is what you were saying.

00:09:31.400 And when, you know, I saw the story yesterday, people were saying it's cloud seeding.

00:09:35.780 They were cloud seeding right before this flood.

00:09:37.660 This is what caused it.

00:09:38.440 It seems like a big leap where you have to actually break down what it is you guys were doing.

00:09:45.120 Then you've got to answer a few other questions.

00:09:46.480 Why is there flooding in New Mexico?

00:09:49.080 And why is there heavy rainfall in Appalachia?

00:09:53.420 I don't want to say unprecedented, but it's a – I mean, no joke.

00:09:57.300 The amount of rain we've gotten has been really insane.

00:10:00.600 So we're in an elevated position, and we were – the groundwater level was ridiculously high, and I had to get a pump from my basement.

00:10:08.780 But so let me ask you this then.

00:10:10.480 Let's talk about scale.

00:10:12.020 The operation you did, when you do this stuff, you send out a drone, a couple drones.

00:10:17.500 How many drones is it?

00:10:19.460 We'll fly, like, up to three drones at a time.

00:10:22.020 Or, in the case of Texas, we do still use airplanes.

00:10:25.680 Most of our operations were using drones because they're far more efficient, but we inherited some planes in Texas and operate with those there.

00:10:32.420 And you said that you released about 10 Skittles worth of material?

00:10:36.580 Correct.

00:10:37.320 10 Skittles worth of silver iodide.

00:10:39.660 And it's also worth saying, too, just for context and, like, references, that flight was conducted at about 1,600 feet above ground level.

00:10:49.360 So 1,600 feet above ground level was about its max altitude.

00:10:53.640 And 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.

00:11:03.140 I 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.

00:11:14.280 I'm totally open to evidence of it, though.

00:11:16.040 And so a lot of people have seen me, you know, pictures of the sky.

00:11:19.640 But those streaks that you see are occurring around 20,000, 30,000 feet.

00:11:24.540 And so our operations, our flights, be they with drones or airplanes, are, you know, 10,000 feet lower than that, if not 20.

00:11:31.160 So 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.

00:11:45.400 But you kind of mentioned it.

00:11:47.180 Is it possible for any—is it possible for a cloud-seating entity to create rainfall that would result in floods of this magnitude?

00:11:54.820 So the reason why we have suspension criteria is because cloud-seating produces precipitation, right?

00:12:01.880 And if there are already coincident risks, like a huge system that is going to cause flooding naturally, cloud-seating it would be imprudent, right?

00:12:11.440 There'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.

00:12:21.540 That 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?

00:12:27.600 Like, I think there's a lot of mistrust around weather modification.

00:12:30.680 It'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.

00:12:40.920 There have been in the past operations that were deliberately intended to cause flooding.

00:12:46.740 So 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.

00:12:55.060 Now, the fundamental difference between cloud-seating now and in the past isn't just that we use drones.

00:12:59.960 It's that with radar, and specifically new kinds of radar, we can measure what our effect is on the cloud.

00:13:05.880 Whereas before, you know, you would fly up into a cloud, sprinkle some magic beans, and then maybe it would rain, maybe it wouldn't.

00:13:11.380 We can't say what the effect was.

00:13:12.960 We can now measure that.

00:13:14.160 And so how effective was Operation Popeye?

00:13:17.020 It's very hard to say.

00:13:19.060 But 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.

00:13:28.780 But again, if there is any evidence of that, happy to engage with people online about it.

00:13:33.000 I bet that governments definitely use weather modifications, be it Operation Popeye or otherwise, for strategic purposes.

00:13:43.080 And I bet they're still doing it to this day.

00:13:44.800 Why not?

00:13:45.580 Like, why abandon that stuff?

00:13:46.580 But 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.

00:14:03.060 So just to clarify, you said you launched three drones?

00:14:07.800 In a typical operation, we do, but we flew a plane in Texas.

00:14:11.360 Oh, okay, okay.

00:14:11.880 So what was, you talked a little about this, what was this, like a farmer said, hey, I need some rain?

00:14:17.860 And what is the scale area that your seeding operation would impact?

00:14:23.600 Yeah.

00:14:24.080 So 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.

00:14:34.320 So 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.

00:14:45.580 I'll also say, you know, I can absolutely handle it.

00:14:49.600 I feel no responsibility for the flood, obviously, but can handle people accusing me or sending me death threats about that.

00:14:56.920 To the poor farmers in Texas that are just trying to pay for more rain because their crops will die without it.

00:15:03.760 Like they are totally undeserving of the virulent, virulent death threats that they've gotten.

00:15:08.460 And that being said, though, I am still sympathetic to the people that have lost so much and that have emotions running high.

00:15:14.900 And I think that people want to find a scapegoat.

00:15:17.780 They 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.

00:15:27.740 Unfortunately, there are still natural disasters.

00:15:30.400 There is nobody responsible for this here.

00:15:32.580 And that's more tragic.

00:15:36.120 However, cloud seeding right now, right, it's used for precipitation enhancement.

00:15:41.060 It's used to make more water for people that are suffering from drought.

00:15:43.460 And there's huge droughts that are causing, you know, the city of Phoenix to cut off water to residencies right now.

00:15:47.740 And so we need some sort of weather modification right now with serious regulatory oversight from the state and federal governments.

00:15:53.980 And, like, most business owners aren't asking for more regulation.

00:15:57.420 I am because I want people to feel like this is a trustworthy and beneficial technology.

00:16:01.220 But all of that to say, yeah, it's used for mitigating drought right now.

00:16:05.480 It has been attempted to be used for severe weather suppression in the past.

00:16:10.960 So 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.

00:16:32.940 Now, 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

00:17:01.480 and continue to be beholden to these tragic natural disasters.

00:17:06.420 How does it work? How does spraying silver iodide make clouds or make rain?

00:17:12.520 Totally. So we don't make clouds. We can't make clouds.

00:17:15.900 We take existing big fluffy clouds that have water in them.

00:17:20.480 We'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.

00:17:31.480 And silver iodide, it has a crystal structure that's very similar to ice.

00:17:35.820 And 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,

00:17:46.180 that all then become big enough to precipitate and sometimes melt back into rain.

00:17:50.000 In Utah and Colorado, where we also operate, filling up reservoirs and enhancing snowpack, we mostly do snowpack enhancement.

00:17:56.640 In Texas, it's rain enhancement.

00:17:59.200 The last interesting thing to say is that with radar, right, specifically with something called dual polarization radar,

00:18:05.880 you can discriminate between liquid and ice in cloud and in so doing measure what your effect on that cloud is.

00:18:13.640 Is it possible to cloud seed using lasers?

00:18:15.640 I haven't figured out how to do that.

00:18:19.920 I think a lot of people have talked about either HAARP or lasers or sound to percuss clouds and shake the water out of them.

00:18:29.460 I am a technologist and business owner, and so a lot of these technologies are peripherally interesting to me,

00:18:36.020 but I haven't yet seen any evidence to suggest that there is.

00:18:38.740 There was a story a while ago, a decade plus, where there were discussions about universities publishing positive results

00:18:49.260 for using infrared lasers to trigger rainfall in clouds or things like that.

00:18:54.080 But I guess just some general questions, I suppose, is there a risk from silver iodide being in the water

00:18:59.860 and then going into our crops and going into our land?

00:19:02.340 Totally worthwhile question, right?

00:19:03.640 So there's generally like three questions that come up or concerns around cloud seeding.

00:19:07.580 And one is, are you polluting with what you're dispersing into those clouds?

00:19:12.100 And so silver iodide itself, like should you eat it hand over fist?

00:19:15.700 No, 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,

00:19:25.300 dispersed over hundreds of square miles,

00:19:27.660 there's already two parts per million of silver in most American soil.

00:19:32.980 After decades of cloud seeding from these old operations in Utah and California and Colorado,

00:19:38.900 we've only seen an increase in eight parts per trillion above the background amount.

00:19:43.500 That's like almost an immeasurably small increase.

00:19:47.280 It's not even necessarily statistically significant,

00:19:49.700 and it's a million times less than what's already naturally in the soil.

00:19:53.460 So have we seen any adverse ecological, agricultural, or human health impacts from silver iodide from cloud seeding?

00:20:00.760 No, categorically and like absolutely not.

00:20:04.060 And that isn't to say that like the notion of a more organic, biodegradable material in the future

00:20:11.820 is something I'm not interested in, right?

00:20:14.180 Like just for the PR, if anything, that seems to make sense.

00:20:17.500 And to preempt any potential ecological issues, that would be possible.

00:20:20.940 Are there any other chemicals used in cloud seeding aside from silver iodide?

00:20:25.620 Salt, table salt is used.

00:20:28.300 It's also worth saying like strontium, barium, aluminum.

00:20:34.820 These things are often referenced in like soil samples or rain samples,

00:20:38.660 and then people accuse cloud seeding of having produced those.

00:20:42.040 Like we don't use any strontium or barium or aluminum for cloud seeding.

00:20:46.020 I don't know of anybody that does.

00:20:49.060 There might be more in the atmosphere now from other pollution,

00:20:51.900 but that actually is worth like driving a point home on.

00:20:56.460 Right now, we already modify the weather unintentionally in so many ways, right?

00:21:02.120 Like just take, for example, building a city.

00:21:04.820 The heat island from a city, from all of the like streets that you build and the concrete,

00:21:10.220 changes the precipitation patterns and the heat around the city, right?

00:21:14.300 If we talk about emissions, whether it's to do with like the degradation of the ozone hole

00:21:19.700 in the last century or CO2 or just sulfates that come from our factories,

00:21:24.660 we're already modifying the weather unintentionally right now.

00:21:28.480 And I think Rainmaker's thesis is that with caution and with regulation and with the mindset

00:21:34.040 of stewardship, we should intentionally try to modify the weather for both

00:21:38.580 humanity's flourishing and also creations.

00:21:40.660 You know, it's really fascinating as I was reading, I've read several articles about the,

00:21:45.660 I guess they call it sort of the terraforming of Vegas in that we've modified the weather

00:21:52.700 of Vegas in one really simple way.

00:21:56.140 When a human being flies from their hometown, let's say, let's say they're in Chicago or they're

00:22:00.860 in Omaha into Vegas, they're bringing water with them in their bodies.

00:22:05.440 And then by virtue of going to the bathroom, it increases the moisture levels in the desert,

00:22:10.280 which then results in an increase in clouds over a very long period of time.

00:22:14.840 I'm curious if like, these are considerations in your research, in the work that you have

00:22:19.480 to do in the regulations, the long-term impact of increasing the amount of water.

00:22:24.140 So I'll put it this way.

00:22:25.640 If you have an area of farmland, let's say it's in Texas or Utah, and they have an average

00:22:30.280 of an, I don't know, an inch of rainfall per year or something, they then say, we need more

00:22:34.840 rainfall.

00:22:35.240 So you come in.

00:22:36.840 The first question I guess I have is, how much, how much of, how much rain do you create

00:22:43.080 in these areas with a sustained cloud seeding operation?

00:22:47.620 Is it going to be a noticeable increase in the, you know, per inches per year?

00:22:52.920 So right now, given cloud seeding operation, if you look at all the data from our ops and

00:22:58.300 then from other academic research, produces less than like a centimeter of precipitation

00:23:03.760 on a given event.

00:23:05.200 And maybe the technology, I'm sure that the technology can be improved meaningfully in

00:23:10.280 the future, but any given operation is not capable of inducing like a flash flood.

00:23:16.160 It is a de minimis amount in terms of the like length of precipitation on the ground, but

00:23:23.340 in terms of the volume of water distributed over, you know, a hundred square miles, that's

00:23:28.380 that's very consequential.

00:23:29.540 Like that's a lot of water.

00:23:30.600 That's tens of millions of gallons from just one op.

00:23:34.100 With respect to like whether we should be or how we should think about changing the environment.

00:23:40.980 First of all, like before we even think about greening deserts, right?

00:23:45.240 We just have to get back to baseline.

00:23:46.560 Like there is less precipitation now, there's less water available now in a lot of these

00:23:50.840 regions like California, the Colorado River Basin, writ large, Texas, than there was a

00:23:55.760 hundred years ago.

00:23:56.720 And so the farmers and the people that settled the West, they had more water than we do now.

00:24:02.320 And by cloud seeding, we can get closer to, or at least back to that amount of water.

00:24:07.700 Then the second thing as well is like, how do we think about making more water?

00:24:11.360 Well, we should do it with a mindset of stewardship, of a mindset of stewardship.

00:24:16.420 And so I think it's worth saying that another question that comes up in cloud seeding is

00:24:20.040 like, well, are you playing God?

00:24:21.740 Right.

00:24:23.020 And first of all, like in a very material sense, we already modify creation and specifically

00:24:28.680 the water cycle in a whole host of ways intentionally right now for both our benefit and the

00:24:33.480 environments.

00:24:34.060 Like God, I believe in God.

00:24:36.440 I happen to be a Christian, but God like made the rivers flow in a particular direction.

00:24:42.460 Right.

00:24:42.720 And then we build dams and reservoirs to store that water and redirect their flow.

00:24:47.260 God put the salt water in the oceans and we desalinate it and take it out for our interest

00:24:52.400 now.

00:24:52.680 And also there's water in the ground that was there from, you know, essentially the beginning

00:24:57.220 of time that we pump up faster than it would ever naturally come up in springs for the sake

00:25:02.020 of our environment and for the sake of our farms and our cities.

00:25:05.180 In fact, actually talk about like unintentional consequences or like unintentionally modifying

00:25:11.120 the weather.

00:25:12.020 We've pumped so much groundwater out of the earth that the axis of the earth has changed.

00:25:16.900 Have you ever heard about this before?

00:25:18.080 The tilt of the earth has changed.

00:25:19.140 I've heard about cities sinking.

00:25:20.480 I actually did a report on this.

00:25:22.240 In California, they pumped so much groundwater because of the drought that small cities

00:25:27.740 were actually sinking several inches.

00:25:31.000 Yeah.

00:25:31.340 Yeah, exactly.

00:25:31.860 And if we don't, here's something really, really concerning.

00:25:36.180 You know, we had the dust pool about a century ago and that was awful.

00:25:40.300 Like that destroyed the lives of so many Americans.

00:25:43.480 Well, there's an impending dust pool now because of aquifer degradation, right?

00:25:48.140 We're pumping so much more out of the aquifers than is sustainable.

00:25:51.320 We're pumping so much more out of the aquifers than naturally percolates into them that as the

00:25:56.340 water levels go down, the sediment compresses and the amount of water you can even store

00:26:01.080 in the aquifers long term is being permanently reduced.

00:26:04.320 And so if we lose these aquifers, then we lose the capacity to have groundwater ever again

00:26:09.060 in the future.

00:26:09.740 And so as the Ovalala in Texas and the Midwest is being drawn down, like we have to produce

00:26:14.260 more water because the alternatives are either not having groundwater ever again or needing

00:26:22.040 to tell farmers to stop farming and making everybody have like two minute showers.

00:26:26.620 And so, again, I think this should be something that there's federal regulatory oversight for,

00:26:31.180 state level regulatory oversight for, transparency and the ability for people to ask questions

00:26:36.200 and consent to it a hundred percent.

00:26:38.460 But if we don't produce more water in the areas where there are droughts, then there

00:26:43.100 are impending disastrous consequences.

00:26:46.200 I guess just, you know, possibly the last question, maybe it'll lead to more.

00:26:49.880 But what I was alluding to about, you know, Vegas and the and the and the changing of this

00:26:54.380 terrain, the concrete of the city, like you mentioned, it's a heat.

00:26:57.540 What did you call it?

00:26:58.080 Heat Island.

00:27:00.140 Yeah.

00:27:00.800 Vegas is this big concrete block.

00:27:02.580 It's really hot.

00:27:03.380 But also, they keep shipping in food, they keep shipping in people, which has inadvertently

00:27:07.580 been terraforming the city and the desert.

00:27:10.700 I should say the desert.

00:27:11.840 And interestingly as well, many people want grass.

00:27:13.940 So they're artificially bringing in gas and then humans bring in this water because they

00:27:18.780 want it to happen.

00:27:20.200 I feel like and I don't mean to imply this is a net negative or a bad thing.

00:27:24.800 Let me just start by saying in the in the whole climate change argument, there are people

00:27:28.500 that are arguing that an increase in CO2 will increase the speed at which crops grow.

00:27:32.100 I don't know, whatever, make your arguments.

00:27:34.500 But if you are increasing the amount of rainfall in a particular area more so than it's experiencing

00:27:39.720 now, could it change that type of terrain in some way that we can't predict?

00:27:46.220 So, again, a mindset of stewardship and caution and regulatory oversight is super necessary

00:27:53.100 because this is going to be consequential.

00:27:55.300 Right.

00:27:55.420 What you can see now with regenerative agriculture, which I'm totally in favor of, right, like

00:28:01.540 I think we should have way more regenerative agriculture.

00:28:04.100 If you plant crops and maintain those crops, specific grasses in areas that used to be

00:28:09.620 deserts, those crops will keep more water in the soil and then they'll release natural

00:28:14.340 dust particles that facilitate more cloud formation and subsequent precipitation.

00:28:18.340 And so you get this virtuous cycle from regenerative agriculture by producing more water in a lot

00:28:23.720 of these regions and then growing crops or growing grasses, we'd actually retain more water

00:28:28.580 and then get more natural precipitation as well.

00:28:31.000 So should we do that wantonly?

00:28:33.700 Should anybody be allowed to do it?

00:28:35.140 Absolutely not.

00:28:35.980 But, like, are there potential virtuous cycles that could lead to a more abundant United States

00:28:42.980 by cloud seeding?

00:28:44.580 Yeah, absolutely.

00:28:45.840 And my hope is that, first and foremost, like everybody affected in Texas has prayers and

00:28:52.660 family and supplies sent to them and that they are taken care of.

00:28:56.660 But then secondly, that nobody takes this natural disaster as an opportunity to drum up political

00:29:02.740 support for baseless claims that would ban a technology that ultimately could help hundreds

00:29:08.820 of millions of people across the United States and then billions across the world.

00:29:13.260 Man, it must be the weirdest thing to wake up and be blamed for trillions of gallons of

00:29:18.520 water flooding a state.

00:29:20.120 I mean, that's just it's nuts.

00:29:22.200 I know there's a lot of people that just don't like weather modification in general, because

00:29:26.640 I think it's it's hard to understand.

00:29:29.160 And there are fears that many weather events are disasters.

00:29:33.740 A thunderstorm could be a disaster for somebody.

00:29:36.060 The power could go out.

00:29:36.720 Their basement could flood.

00:29:37.580 It could cause, you know, could ruin their lives.

00:29:39.360 So the idea that we would be intentionally doing that, I think, to many people, they view

00:29:43.200 it negatively.

00:29:44.560 But I think you make a good point.

00:29:46.380 And I largely agree.

00:29:47.900 We we intentionally modify the weather more than just cloud seeding.

00:29:51.060 But is there is there anything else you want to add before we wrap up here?

00:29:54.020 Um, I think I would just want to say that if anybody does have questions, if anybody is

00:30:01.740 skeptical, I am doing my darndest to answer every single question that people do pose to

00:30:06.540 me and will continue to do so for as long as it is necessary to build trust and transparency

00:30:12.540 here.

00:30:12.980 And so if you are concerned, whether you ask questions in good faith or bad faith or threaten

00:30:18.460 to kill me, you know, I'm happy to do that.

00:30:21.200 Uh, geez, I would prefer that, um, uh, there's been a lot of it, but, uh, in general, uh, 0.70

00:30:28.380 you know, I'm, I'm, uh, praying for the people of Texas, uh, despite cloud seeding, not having

00:30:34.940 any responsibility for it.

00:30:36.100 And, um, happy to talk with everyone about cloud seedings potential right on.

00:30:39.780 Where can people find more from you?

00:30:41.420 Well, you can go to rainmaker.com, which is our corporate website where you can learn

00:30:45.600 more about cloud seeding and what we're doing.

00:30:47.300 And you can also go to, uh, a Dorico, a D-O-R-I-C-K-O, uh, on my, uh, X handle.

00:30:54.800 Right on, man.

00:30:55.280 Well, I do appreciate you joining me and explaining all of this.

00:30:57.420 Uh, we'll see you next time.

00:30:58.820 Tim, I appreciate you, man.

00:30:59.880 Thanks so much.

00:31:00.080 Take care.

00:31:02.180 That of course was, as you learned, the CEO of Rainmaker.

00:31:06.580 And, uh, I'm just going to say, guys, nobody, nobody trusts anybody.

00:31:12.860 And I, I get it.

00:31:14.260 Uh, there was this big post by, uh, somebody posted a quote, quote from what if, from Rudyard

00:31:19.140 Lynch, what if alt history, what if alt history, and he was basically saying, everyone's going

00:31:23.840 insane because of the internet.

00:31:25.680 And the best thing you can do is get away from it now and build up your life and protect

00:31:29.200 yourself and secure your resources.

00:31:31.000 And he's half right.

00:31:32.240 He's half right.

00:31:33.020 I think I'll do a big thing about, you know, record about it and talk about it.

00:31:36.500 But I don't, I don't, you know, the media will claim one thing.

00:31:41.580 They'll lie.

00:31:42.280 They'll tell you not to trust what you see with your eyes and ears.

00:31:45.360 And that's why we ended up in this position where people are going to say, Hey, these

00:31:48.380 cloud seeders, they were, they were doing this right before the flood.

00:31:51.800 The challenge is, how do you know?

00:31:55.240 I certainly don't think the guy should get death threats because that doesn't solve

00:31:58.060 any problems, even if it is the cloud seeding that caused the floods.

00:32:00.760 I think investigation and deep dives and challenging him and, and, and having him come on and bring

00:32:07.400 him to debates, make him be part of that conversation is the best way we go about doing this stuff.

00:32:11.620 But I've got to tell you, man, for the people in Texas, uh, I, I hope, and I pray for the

00:32:15.580 best is these are tragic stories and the people of New Mexico.

00:32:19.500 And I also said, again, I, we haven't gotten anywhere near as bad because we are elevated

00:32:23.320 quite a bit here where I'm at, but the rain has been ridiculous.

00:32:27.220 It's not, it's not a joke.

00:32:28.400 I mean, we've, we've, we've had endless rain for months now, which is people are saying

00:32:33.060 they've never seen it this bad.

00:32:34.360 And the groundwater is, I mean, the, the land where we're at is just, you're walking on

00:32:38.980 sludge.

00:32:39.520 It's slush.

00:32:40.320 And then, uh, it's crazy, man, but I, not to downplay what's going on in Texas, man.

00:32:44.880 I hope and pray for the best.

00:32:45.860 So I appreciate you guys hanging out.

00:32:47.260 We're going to gear up this raid for our friend Russell Brand, who is live now.

00:32:53.060 Thank you guys so much for hanging out.

00:32:54.480 Smash that like button.

00:32:55.460 Share the show with everyone, you know, and, uh, we'll be back tonight at 8 PM for Timcast

00:33:02.180 IRL.

00:33:03.080 Don't miss it.

00:33:04.000 Share the show.

00:33:04.620 We need your support.

00:33:05.600 Thanks for hanging out.

00:33:06.200 We'll see you all then.

00:33:06.840 We'll see you all then.

00:33:15.520 We'll see you all then.

The Culture War - Tim Pool - July 09, 2025

Cloud SEEDING BLAMED For Texas Floods, Deaths, Company CEO SPEAKS Out ft. Augustus Doricko

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