Do you trust the federal government to meddle with the weather?
The Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency held a hearing titled “Playing God with the Weather — a Disastrous Forecast.” During the hearing, members analyzed the federal government’s role in weather control and geoengineering activities and any potential underlying consequences.
“Weather modification is playing God with our skies, using chemicals we don’t fully understand. We don’t know what the consequences will be, but we know they could be devastating. The American people deserve transparency!,” said DOGE Subcommitee on X/Twitter.
Chairwoman Marjorie Green (R-GA) asked whether “the Earth’s, climate and temperatures—has that been something that has changed historically since the creation of the world?”
Dr. Roger Pielke Jr., Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said “The changes over the last century and a half have been judged to be largely driven by the accumulating greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, so that’s not particularly controversial. What is controversial is, ‘what are the effects? When will we know them?’ I would disagree with that we can control weather with carbon dioxide emissions. There’s no knob that says more extreme weather, less extreme weather. There’s a lot of great reasons for reducing carbon dioxide emissions, but I don’t think anyone should think we’re going to stop hurricanes or floods or atmospheric rivers using that knob.”
The gist of the testimony was that the consequences of weather control and geoengineering activity are unknown and poorly understood.
Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX), DOGE Subcommitee member, said, “Even small weather modification can spark the BUTTERFLY EFFECT. We don’t know what chemicals are being used. We didn’t vote for this, and Americans deserve to know what’s happening in our skies.”
Pielke testified “[W]eather (control) activities have been widely implemented in the United States and around the world for 70 years. Nobody calls it weather control anymore, because scientists understand that controlling the weather is simply not possible. Despite the long track record of experience with operational weather modification activities, the effectiveness of weather modifying activities for actually modifying the weather is unknown.”