“They” can management the climate, and the proof is within the patents, stated Georgia Republican U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
On Oct. 7, Greene posted a viral meme exhibiting a line drawing of an offended particular person saying, “They’ll’t management the climate!!!” Beneath that, a determine gestured to an inventory of what the meme described as “climate modification patents.”
Not all of the listed patents have been legible, however the earliest dated again to 1891 and the newest was from 2001. They included a 1914 patent for a balloon “rain maker” that expired in 1931; a 1917 patent on an thought to burn extremely flamable gas as a way of “defending from toxic gasoline in warfare”; and a 1968 patent for an “mechanically adjustable airfoil spray system with pump” that may very well be used to spray herbicide from planes.
(Screenshot/X)
Greene’s climate management sentiment — which she has repeated multiple times since Oct. 3 — drew criticism as hurricanes have battered the southeast United States.
(Screenshot/X)
Throughout Oct. 9 remarks about Hurricane Milton, President Joe Biden decried the onslaught of misinformation that has plagued disaster relief efforts as undermining confidence within the catastrophe response and harming individuals who need assistance. He twice condemned Greene’s climate management rhetoric, calling it “past ridiculous.”
“It’s gotta cease,” Biden stated.
Meteorologists and atmospheric science specialists informed PolitiFact that they knew of no expertise that enables anybody to manage the climate or create a hurricane. The patents listed in Greene’s meme don’t show that anybody can management the climate, they stated.
“These are foolish, frivolous patents,” stated James Fleming, an emeritus professor of science, expertise and society at Colby Faculty and creator of “Fixing the Sky: The Checkered Historical past of Climate and Local weather Management.”
Moreover, securing a patent does not prove an invention is sensible, could be utilized or might be efficient. Our evaluation of a number of the patents discovered that not solely do they not show people might management climate options corresponding to hurricanes, however some appeared to don’t have any direct connection to climate expertise.
PolitiFact contacted Greene and he or she didn’t reply.
Researchers who’ve studied weather modification have discovered little success, specialists stated, and their work wouldn’t have enabled climate management.
Paul Ullrich, a professor of regional local weather modeling on the College of California, Davis, stated that if climate management have been attainable “any person would have monetized it” and “made a fortune.”
“The climate is extremely chaotic, therefore why it’s nearly not possible to foretell the climate greater than two weeks upfront,” he stated, including {that a} hurricane, for instance, has a big “cone of uncertainty.”
“Any modifications that we made to the environment would have equally unpredictable outcomes, so positively wouldn’t represent any type of management,” Ullrich stated.
Specialists stated they knew of no expertise that would create or management hurricanes.
Ullrich stated a typical mature hurricane generates “200 occasions as a lot energy as the entire electrical producing capability of the planet.” A hurricane’s observe is managed by world circulation, and “we’d must considerably modify strain and wind speeds over the entire Gulf of Mexico and Southern United States to have any affect on its trajectory.”
Specialists stated these claims additionally ignore how not possible the physics of a human-made hurricane would even be.
“The quantity of power required to generate a hurricane is a lot larger than any power that we might muster up,” stated meteorologist Charles Konrad, the director of the Southeast Regional Local weather Middle in North Carolina.
Ulrich agreed with Konrad: “I dare not do the mathematics on that one, however that sort of power launch would principally wipe out life on the planet.”
Kristen Corbosiero, a College at Albany atmospheric and environmental sciences professor, stated that climate is a “pure phenomenon.”
“All climate in our environment is because of unequal heating of the Earth and the environment’s (and ocean’s) try to steadiness out that heating,” she stated.
Greene’s statements drew pushback from Republicans, too.
In an Oct. 8 news release, U.S. Rep. Chuck Edwards, R-N.C., stated he wished to “dispel the outrageous rumors which have been circulated on-line.”
“No one can management the climate,” Edwards said. “Present geoengineering expertise can function a large-scale intervention to mitigate the destructive penalties of naturally occurring climate phenomena, but it surely can’t be used to create or manipulate hurricanes.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis weighed in.
“If I might management the climate, I’d do 78 (levels) and sunny year-round,” he said Oct. 10 throughout a St. Lucie County, Florida, press briefing. “These are pure occurrences. We’ll cope with tropical climate for so long as we’re Floridians.”
Specialists informed PolitiFact they knew of no patented merchandise or expertise that allow climate management.
Patents don’t must be for precise merchandise, Corbosiero stated.
A patent “could be for an thought that would have completely no foundation in actuality and no precise product could ever be constructed from a patented thought, not to mention a product that really does what the patent/thought was about,” she stated.
Ullrich stated lots of the patents listed associated to cloud seeding, which he described as “the one type of climate modification I do know of that’s employed in observe.”
“Principally the thought is that you just dump lots of mud or aerosols into the environment they usually act as surfaces for the formation of clouds and rain,” he stated. “It will probably have some affect on rising the quantity of rain or snow you get from a selected storm.”
Nevertheless, he stated he wouldn’t forged that as “controlling the climate,” as a result of it really works provided that a storm already has lots of moisture and impacts solely “the timing of the precipitation.”
Konrad stated cloud-seeding analysis has been “very localized” and there’s no manner the approach might “substantively have an effect on a giant hurricane.”
The patents Greene’s meme pointed to spanned 1891 to 2001, and lots of on the record have been too small to learn. They included:
- A 1891 patent for a “methodology for producing rain-fall” described as “elevating confined liquefied carbonic-acid gasoline into the higher areas of the environment” and releasing it via an explosion, ensuing within the gasoline’ speedy evaporation chilling the environment and producing a cloud able to rainfall — a probably early type of what would later change into often known as cloud seeding.
- A 1969 patent for “titanium dioxide pigment coated with silica and alumina” described a course of for making use of pigment that yields “glorious smoothness and excellent sturdiness upon outside publicity.” We discovered no clear connection to climate management.
- A patent requested in 2001 for a “hurricane & twister management machine” that described utilizing “audio turbines” to venture sound waves towards the sides of a climate system in a way that will “disrupt, improve or direct” its formation. USA Today reported that this product was by no means created. Specialists stated the invention might have penalties, corresponding to damaging the listening to of people that used it.
Fleming informed The Associated Press that way back to Greek mythology, individuals have believed they may management the climate, however he described that as a “failed thought.”
Konrad stated credible scientific analysis takes time, builds on scientific experience and is carried out “out within the open” and vital technological developments — corresponding to ones enabling climate management — could be in scientific literature.
“Gosh, if we had these applied sciences they usually might actually forestall any lack of life or something we’d be utilizing them,” Konrad stated. “We wouldn’t conceal one thing like that.”
Greene stated patents relationship again to the 1800s present that folks can management the climate.
Specialists informed PolitiFact that they knew of no expertise that enables anybody to manage the climate or create a hurricane, and denied that the meme’s patents proved climate management is feasible. These patents don’t present that they’ll. We fee this declare Pants on Fireplace!
This reality examine was initially published by PolitiFact, which is a part of the Poynter Institute. See the sources for this reality examine here.
