Geoengineering, weather modification: Conspiracy theories downplay climate change

On August 12, former U.S. President and current Republican candidate Donald Trump returned to X (formerly Twitter) after nearly a year-long hiatus from the platform. The comeback was in the form of a much-hyped interview hosted by tech billionaire and X owner Elon Musk. Besides climate change, the interview covered topics such as the recent assassination attempt on Trump, immigration, and Trump’s political agenda with Musk endorsing Trump, who faces Vice President Kamala Harris in November’s presidential bid.

Downplaying global warming and the catastrophic impacts of climate change, Trump said, “The biggest threat? It’s not global warming, where the ocean’s gonna rise one-eighth of an inch over the next 400 years … and you’ll have more oceanfront property, right?” 

Trump’s dismissal of rising sea levels at a time when the American south is already feeling the effects of it exposed millions of viewers to half-truths potentially legitimizing claims on climate change denialism that routinely go viral.

However, it probably was a comment that resonated with many. A study published earlier this year showed that nearly 15 percent of Americans deny climate change as real, and Trump has played a major role in cementing the belief. 

Social media has also been rife with similar statements in recent times, with many users attributing recent extreme weather events like Hurricane Beryl and the 2024 Dubai floods to "weather modification" conspiracies instead of human-induced climate change. 

Although experts and scientific studies concur that climate change is the primary driver of these events, such misinformation continues to circulate on social media. 

Hurricanes, floods, and war — Conspiracy theories cover it all

Just after Dubai was hit by an extreme weather event in the form of heavy rains in April leading to record floods, Robby Starbuck, a conservative American commentator with around 564,000 followers known for spreading climate misinformation, wrote on X, “Dubai airport looks like an apocalyptic movie. Videos of the flooding are insane. I’ve seen some blaming climate change when the cause is actually from the use of weather modification.” At least 21 people lost their lives in the flood.

The post that includes a visual of the submerged Dubai airport has so far garnered around 13.6 million views. Another post with a similar claim has been shared 10,000 times so far and garnered 29 million views on X. 

Screenshot of the post by Robby Starbuck. (Source: Screenshot/X/Modified by Logically Facts)

However, there are enough reports confirming now that the Dubai floods weren’t caused by cloud seeding, but were likely due to a normal weather system worsened by climate change. A study carried out by World Weather Attribution, a consortium of scientists who study climate models, concluded that climate change played a major role in the deadly floods. 

Screenshots of X posts by the ‘Concerned Citizen’ account. (Source: Screenshots/X/Modified by Logically Facts)

Screenshots of X posts by the ‘Concerned Citizen’ account. (Source: Screenshots/X/Modified by Logically Facts)

Similarly, Hurricane Beryl, which left a trail of destruction in parts of the Caribbean and the U.S., killing 38 people in June and July, broke multiple meteorological records. But the event was also connected with weather modification.

An X post that has 3.4 million views and 4,000 reposts wrote, “‼️Hurricane Beryl is the earliest CAT 5 hurricane in recorded history. People are now speculating whether it has been geoengineered or not‼️ Is the Bouvet Island Blob one anomaly that demonstrates man-made weather modification in the South Atlantic? Could this be the smoking gun?” 

Other users commented that they “don’t believe hurricanes are naturally occurring anymore,” stating they’re geoengineered. Another Facebook user found a similarity between the path of Beryl and a total solar eclipse that occurred on April 8, 2024, to falsely claim that the hurricane was geoengineered. 

Geoengineering has been defined as “the intentional manipulation of the climate system to counter global climate change” but is largely a theoretical concept. 

However, these claims are nothing but conspiracy theories. Multiple experts have been quoted in reports confirming the link between climate change and Hurricane Beryl. 

Influential handles amassing hundreds of thousands of followers routinely spread misinformation on climate change. For instance, an X account called ‘Concerned Citizen’ with nearly 549,000 followers in a recent post linked ‘chemtrails’ with weather modification and geoengineering. The same account has also posted videos of extreme events like floods, typhoons, and wildfires to volcano eruptions attributing them to weather modification and foul play to deny their links with climate change. 

As the climate crisis intensifies, the global search for solutions has accelerated, leading to numerous scientific experiments aimed at developing technologies to modify the weather or climate. One such potential approach is geoengineering, like solar geoengineering, which reflects a portion of sunlight back into space. 

Weather modification involves deliberate manipulation of weather patterns using techniques like cloud seeding that increase rainfall or snowfall. Although scientists have clarified that it is unlikely to significantly impact extreme weather events, deniers have exploited these mostly theoretical ideas to deny the reality of climate change. 

For instance, when the revelation that cloud seeding was being used by the U.S. in the Vietnam War came to light, the United Nations approved a ban on weather modification techniques deployed with “hostile intent.” However, even now, there are references to this military usage of cloud seeding on social media that falsely connect recent extreme weather events to manipulative modification rather than climate change. This is reflected in international conflicts, even with Iran accusing Israel and other foreign countries of stealing clouds to create a drought.

Screenshots of X posts that connect the Vietnam cloud seeding incident with recent weather extremes and conspiracy theories about weather modification. (Source: Screenshots/X/Modified by Logically Facts)

Also, studies have found that ‘chemtrails,’ a conspiracy theory dating back to the 1990s, is adding fuel to the fire on social media, with many connecting it with geoengineering through false and misleading claims, many of which have been debunked by Logically Facts. 

Screenshots of X posts falsely connecting geoengineering and weather modification with the ‘chemtrails’ conspiracy theory. (Source: Screenshots/X/Modified by Logically Facts)

Spikes in ‘online interest’ amid major events

A 2023 Cambridge University study analyzed more than 800,000 X posts between 2009 and 2021 tagged with #geoengineering and found that there is a large amount of spillover between geoengineering and conspiracy theories, especially around ‘chemtrails’ with the common link being the idea that bad actors are “weaponizing’” the weather.

A 2024 study by John Cook and his colleagues at the University of Melbourne found that 60 percent of climate misinformation on X are either ad hominem attacks on climate science/scientists or conspiracy theories. The researchers also found that “extreme weather events can act as spikes of misinformation arguing that the extreme weather wasn’t linked to climate change.”

An analysis of past one-year data on Google Trends also revealed that the search term ‘cloud seeding’ was trending worldwide around mid-April (2024) after Dubai was hit by record rainfall, leading to historic floods. ‘Dubai cloud seeding flood’ was a top related query, the analysis revealed.  

Screenshot of Google Trends showing worldwide results for the search term ‘cloud seeding’. (Source: Screenshot/Google Trends)

According to Google Trends data, Kenya ranked second after the UAE in searches for 'cloud seeding' during April-May 2024, a period also marked by heavy floods in the country. 

Screenshot of Google Trends showing results from Kenya for the search term ‘cloud seeding’. (Source: Screenshot/Google Trends)

When wildfires in Hawaii, U.S. in early August 2023 were plagued by claims of testing “weather weapons” on social media, despite being widely debunked, an analysis on Google Trends revealed that the search term “directed energy weapons” trended globally.  “Directed energy weapon Mauii” was a top related query, the analysis revealed.  

Screenshot of Google Trends showing worldwide results for the search term ‘directed energy weapons’. (Source: Screenshot/Google Trends)

Why do people fall for conspiracies? 

These kinds of posts are circulating at a time when the world has witnessed an unprecedented number of record-breaking temperatures and an alarming rise in extreme weather events. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s Sixth Assessment Report, released in 2021, clearly states that the human-caused rise in greenhouse gases has increased the frequency and intensity of such extreme weather events.

However, even a first-hand experience of different climatic catastrophes hasn’t made some people more aware to accept climate change as a tangible reality. For many online users, the whole thing has instead turned out to be ‘counterproductive’ as claims ‘scapegoating’ geoengineering and other weather modification techniques for extreme weather events are circulating on social media to deny anthropogenic climate change. 

Screenshots of social media posts attributing geoengineering and other weather modification techniques for extreme weather events. (Source: Screenshots/Facebook/X/Modified by Logically Facts)

It has also been found scientifically that personal experiences of extreme weather events do not necessarily make a difference. A 2021 study concluded that “it cannot be taken for granted that personally experiencing extreme weather phenomena makes a difference in perceptions of climate change.” 

Josh Horton, Research Director (Geoengineering) of David Keith's Research Group at Harvard University, told Logically Facts that attributing weather events to human manipulation allows people to assign blame to specific actors, making the situation feel more controllable. “I think such theories represent attempts to simplify complex phenomena… this makes it easier to assign responsibility or blame and to feel like we’re not subject to forces almost completely out of our control.  Needless to say, these theories aren’t true,” he said.

U.S. climate scientist Michael Mann told Logically Facts, “Yes, there is in some cases a component of “science denial”, not of climate change itself but of its worst impacts. And we have indeed seen bad actors—fossil fuel companies, petrostates like Russia and Saudi Arabia, and individuals like Elon Musk who are connected to them—weaponize misinformation and disinformation in an attempt to deny the catastrophic consequences of fossil fuel burning and human-caused warming we are now seeing in the form of devastating weather extremes.”

Experts also say denialism and conspiracies are hampering geoengineering research for being too controversial. 

“Floods, wildfires, heatwaves, and droughts are getting more likely around the world due to climate change, which is caused primarily by the burning of oil, gas, and coal - which is itself a form of geoengineering, albeit not an intentional one,” Clair Barnes, Research Associate at the Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute told Logically Facts, “Pointing to activities like cloud seeding to explain extreme weather events is absolutely a form of climate denialism and a distraction from the real culprit, which is our continued burning of fossil fuels.”

(Edited by Ilma Hasan)