07-10-2025, 10:05 PM
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/ar-AA1Il1cA
Augustus Doricko knew when he founded a cloud-seeding start-up in 2023 that he’d have to contend with misunderstandings and conspiracy theories surrounding the technology. Still, he wasn’t quite prepared for the sheer volume of online fury he has faced in the wake of the catastrophic Texas floods that have killed more than 100 people and nearly twice that many missing.
“It has been nonstop pandemonium,” Doricko said in a phone interview Wednesday.
Doricko and his company, Rainmaker, have become a focal point of posts spiraling across social media that suggest the floods in Kerr County were a human-made disaster. An array of influencers, media personalities, elected officials and other prominent figures — including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) and former Trump adviser Michael Flynn — have publicly raised the possibility that cloud-seeding operations like Rainmaker’s might have caused or at least exacerbated the historic deluge.
That’s impossible, atmospheric scientists say. Cloud seeding, in which planes scatter dust particles through clouds to trigger rain and snow, remains a fledgling technology, the effects of which are too limited and localized to produce anything remotely like the 15 inches of rain that drowned swaths of South Central Texas over the Fourth of July weekend.
“The amount of energy involved in making storms like that is astronomical compared to anything you can do with cloud seeding,” said Bob Rauber, a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign atmospheric science emeritus professor who has studied the technology. “We’re talking about a very small increase on a natural process at best.”
That hasn’t stopped conspiracy theorists from latching onto cloud seeding as an incendiary explanation for natural disasters. The search for a scapegoat has turned a spotlight on a controversial technology that has drawn interest from drought-stricken Western states and dozens of countries looking to replenish water reservoirs, despite limited evidence that it works and broader social and environmental concerns about altering the weather. And it underscores how conspiracy theories can flourish in the aftermath of natural disasters as people seek information — and the clout that can come from providing sensational answers.
Augustus Doricko knew when he founded a cloud-seeding start-up in 2023 that he’d have to contend with misunderstandings and conspiracy theories surrounding the technology. Still, he wasn’t quite prepared for the sheer volume of online fury he has faced in the wake of the catastrophic Texas floods that have killed more than 100 people and nearly twice that many missing.
“It has been nonstop pandemonium,” Doricko said in a phone interview Wednesday.
Doricko and his company, Rainmaker, have become a focal point of posts spiraling across social media that suggest the floods in Kerr County were a human-made disaster. An array of influencers, media personalities, elected officials and other prominent figures — including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) and former Trump adviser Michael Flynn — have publicly raised the possibility that cloud-seeding operations like Rainmaker’s might have caused or at least exacerbated the historic deluge.
That’s impossible, atmospheric scientists say. Cloud seeding, in which planes scatter dust particles through clouds to trigger rain and snow, remains a fledgling technology, the effects of which are too limited and localized to produce anything remotely like the 15 inches of rain that drowned swaths of South Central Texas over the Fourth of July weekend.
“The amount of energy involved in making storms like that is astronomical compared to anything you can do with cloud seeding,” said Bob Rauber, a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign atmospheric science emeritus professor who has studied the technology. “We’re talking about a very small increase on a natural process at best.”
That hasn’t stopped conspiracy theorists from latching onto cloud seeding as an incendiary explanation for natural disasters. The search for a scapegoat has turned a spotlight on a controversial technology that has drawn interest from drought-stricken Western states and dozens of countries looking to replenish water reservoirs, despite limited evidence that it works and broader social and environmental concerns about altering the weather. And it underscores how conspiracy theories can flourish in the aftermath of natural disasters as people seek information — and the clout that can come from providing sensational answers.
