Wild conspiracies about the weather are spreading online. The media can help | Arwa Mahdawi

Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has earned the dubious honour of being one of the most unhinged US politicians in recent memory, has an important message for the American people: they control the weather. Last week, in the wake of the devastation from Hurricane Helene, the far-right representative from Georgia tweeted the following: “Yes they can control the weather. It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.”

Who is they? Good question. Greene might have meant the non-binary deep state that secretly controls the world. Or, considering she has previously insinuated that California wildfires were started by energy companies, in conjunction with the Rothschilds, using a space laser, in order to facilitate high-speed rail projects, she might have meant Jewish people. She certainly won’t elaborate. She’s been asked to clarify her antisemitic “Jewish space lasers” comment plenty of times and likes to tell reporters to “fuck off”.

It’s also possible that Greene meant the government. (Of which, of course, she is a representative – something she often seems to forget.) Before her they post, Greene posted a map of the south-eastern US with the message: “This is a map of hurricane affected areas with an overlay of electoral map by political party shows how hurricane devastation could affect the election.”

In other words: Greene seemingly thinks that the Democratic party engineered a devastating hurricane to wipe out voters in Republican areas so that Kamala Harris will win the election. Very normal stuff.

Alas, Greene is not the only person spreading ridiculous conspiracy theories about Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton being engineered by the government. Social media is awash with them. I was disturbed to see an acquaintance from my elementary school, who unfortunately went down an anti-vaxxer conspiracy theory rabbit hole during Covid, post on Facebook that Hurricane Helene had been created by BlackRock because it bought shares in a lithium mining company in Asheville, North Carolina. How do you reason with someone who believes this sort of nonsense?

You don’t, is the simple answer. Having arguments with random individuals who have drunk a lot of conspiracy Kool-Aid is rarely productive. What’s more productive, I think, is understanding where these ideas come from. They come, of course, from people feeling powerless and excluded. But, more specifically, I think these particular conspiracies about man-made hurricanes stem from the fact that the media hasn’t done a very good job of explaining geoengineering.

The most potent conspiracy theories are layers of lies wrapped around a tiny grain of truth: something factual that people like Greene can point to and say, look, we’re not crazy. The US government obviously did not engineer Hurricane Helene or Hurricane Milton. You cannot control hurricanes. But the grain of truth, in this instance, is that people can intentionally impact the weather to some degree. Countries around the world have been experimenting with weather modification techniques for decades now: a process known as climate engineering or geoengineering. And, as the climate crisis intensifies, geoengineering efforts are heating up. Arid countries like Saudi Arabia, for example, are pouring enormous amounts of money into weather-modification programs that might combat desertification.

In many ways, geoengineering is a lot like AI: a transformative but poorly understood technology that has the potential to change the world for the better if harnessed correctly and do a lot of damage if it isn’t. It’s also an umbrella term that encompasses various different concepts. Some of these concepts, like removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, are fairly uncontroversial. Others, however, are a lot more experimental or just plain irresponsible.

It is a great gift to conspiracy theorists that many past weather-modification experiments have been conducted in secret or have been dangerously maverick. In 1952, for example, there was a terrible flash flood in Britain that killed 35 people and was logged as “the hand of God”. In 2001, however, a BBC Radio 4 investigation unearthed documents that suggested an experiment in artificial rainmaking, Operation Cumulus, conducted by the Ministry of Defence for future military advantage, may have been implicated. There is no clear evidence of this, to be clear, but the project did end after the floods.

Similarly, there have been attempts by the US government to weaponize the weather via cloud seeding: a method of artificially stimulating precipitation by adding small particles of substances like silver iodide to clouds. During the Vietnam war, there was a secret five-year cloud-seeding experiment called Operation Popeye, which was aimed at lengthening the monsoon season in Vietnam to make certain truck routes inoperable. It was a failure.

Attempting to weaponize the weather, I should be clear, is very much illegal. In 1977, the United Nations banned the military or hostile use of environmental modification techniques through the Environmental Modification Convention. But with historical examples like Operation Cumulus and Operation Popeye, you can see how modern-day conspiracy theories about Democratic-made hurricanes wiping out Republicans can flourish, can’t you?

Indeed, even writing about these examples is tricky. You don’t want to inadvertently provide fuel for conspiracy theorists. But, again, it can not be stressed enough that these conspiracy theories are a very clear signal that the media needs to be doing a better job of informing the public about geoengineering. There needs to be far more investment in cultivating science writers who can break down these complicated topics for public consumption.

More broadly, there needs to be more public input into the future of environmental modification techniques – just as there needs to be more public input into how AI is rolled out. A number of geoengineering startups are taking community engagement seriously: holding town hall meetings to address concerns about the techniques they’re using and build trust. But we need to go beyond these piecemeal efforts and ensure the public has a direct say in how geoengineering develops and how it is regulated. And it must be regulated: geoengineering tech bros should not be allowed to “move fast and break things”. Otherwise, all future progress will be tainted by conspiracy theorists insisting that a mysterious they controls the very air we all breathe.