“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 displaying a line drawing of an offended particular person saying, “They will’t management the climate!!!” Beneath that, a determine gestured to a listing of what the meme described as “climate modification patents.”
Not all of the listed patents had 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 concept to burn extremely flamable gas as a way of “defending from toxic fuel in warfare”; and a 1968 patent for an “robotically adjustable airfoil spray system with pump” that may very well be used to spray herbicide from planes.
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Greene’s climate management sentiment — which she has repeated a number of instances since Oct. 3 — drew criticism as hurricanes have battered the southeast United States.
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Throughout Oct. 9 remarks about Hurricane Milton, President Joe Biden decried the onslaught of misinformation that has plagued catastrophe aid 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 advised PolitiFact that they knew of no know-how that enables anybody to regulate 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, know-how 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 doesn’t show an invention is sensible, may be utilized or might be efficient. Our evaluate of a number of the patents discovered that not solely do they not show people may management climate options comparable to hurricanes, however some appeared to haven’t any direct connection to climate know-how.
PolitiFact contacted Greene and she or he didn’t reply.
Nobody can management the climate or create hurricanes, specialists say
Researchers who’ve studied climate 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 had been potential “any individual would have monetized it” and “made a fortune.”
“The climate is extremely chaotic, therefore why it’s virtually unimaginable to foretell the climate greater than two weeks prematurely,” he stated, including {that a} hurricane, for instance, has a big “cone of uncertainty.”
“Any modifications that we made to the ambiance would have equally unpredictable outcomes, so undoubtedly wouldn’t represent any type of management,” Ullrich stated.
Specialists stated they knew of no know-how that might create or management hurricanes.
Ullrich stated a typical mature hurricane generates “200 instances as a lot energy as the entire electrical producing capability of the planet.” A hurricane’s monitor is managed by international circulation, and “we’d must considerably modify stress and wind speeds over the entire Gulf of Mexico and Southern United States to have any impression on its trajectory.”
Specialists stated these claims additionally ignore how unimaginable the physics of a human-made hurricane would even be.
“The quantity of vitality required to generate a hurricane is a lot better than any vitality that we may muster up,” stated meteorologist Charles Konrad, the director of the Southeast Regional Local weather Heart in North Carolina.
Ulrich agreed with Konrad: “I dare not do the maths on that one, however that type of vitality 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 ambiance is because of unequal heating of the Earth and the ambiance’s (and ocean’s) try to stability out that heating,” she stated.
A home lies toppled off its stilts after the passage of Hurricane Milton, in Bradenton Seaside on Anna Maria Island, Fla., Oct. 10, 2024. (AP)
Greene’s statements drew pushback from Republicans, too.
In an Oct. 8 information launch, 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 stated. “Present geoengineering know-how can function a large-scale intervention to mitigate the unfavourable penalties of naturally occurring climate phenomena, nevertheless it can’t be used to create or manipulate hurricanes.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis weighed in.
“If I may management the climate, I might do 78 (levels) and sunny year-round,” he stated Oct. 10 throughout a St. Lucie County, Florida, press briefing. “These are pure occurrences. We’ll take care of tropical climate for so long as we’re Floridians.”
So what about all these patents?
Specialists advised PolitiFact they knew of no patented merchandise or know-how that allow climate management.
Patents don’t have to be for precise merchandise, Corbosiero stated.
A patent “may be for an concept that might have completely no foundation in actuality and no precise product could ever be produced from a patented concept, not to mention a product that truly does what the patent/concept 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 concept is that you just dump a number of mud or aerosols into the ambiance and so they act as surfaces for the formation of clouds and rain,” he stated. “It could have some impression on growing the quantity of rain or snow you get from a selected storm.”
Nonetheless, he stated he wouldn’t solid that as “controlling the climate,” as a result of it really works provided that a storm already has a number of moisture and impacts solely “the timing of the precipitation.”
A water rescue workforce member walks by means of flood waters at an residence advanced within the aftermath of Hurricane Milton, Oct. 10, 2024, in Clearwater, Fla. (AP)
Konrad stated cloud-seeding analysis has been “very localized” and there’s no means the method may “substantively have an effect on a giant hurricane.”
The patents Greene’s meme pointed to spanned 1891 to 2001, and plenty of on the listing had been too small to learn. They included:
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A 1891 patent for a “methodology for producing rain-fall” described as “elevating confined liquefied carbonic-acid fuel into the higher areas of the ambiance” and releasing it by means of an explosion, ensuing within the fuel’ speedy evaporation chilling the ambiance and producing a cloud able to rainfall — a probably early type of what would later grow to be referred to as cloud seeding.
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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 out of doors publicity.” We discovered no clear connection to climate management.
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A patent requested in 2001 for a “hurricane & twister management machine” that described utilizing “audio turbines” to challenge sound waves towards the perimeters of a climate system in a fashion that might “disrupt, improve or direct” its formation. USA Immediately reported that this product was by no means created. Specialists stated the invention may have penalties, comparable to damaging the listening to of people that used it.
Fleming advised The Related Press that way back to Greek mythology, folks have believed they may management the climate, however he described that as a “failed concept.”
Konrad stated credible scientific analysis takes time, builds on scientific experience and is carried out “out within the open” and important technological developments — comparable to ones enabling climate management — could be in scientific literature.
“Gosh, if we had these applied sciences and so they may actually stop any lack of life or something we might be utilizing them,” Konrad stated. “We wouldn’t conceal one thing like that.”
Our ruling
Greene stated patents relationship again to the 1800s present that individuals can management the climate.
Specialists advised PolitiFact that they knew of no know-how that enables anybody to regulate 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 will. We fee this declare Pants on Fireplace!
RELATED: No, cloud seeding wasn’t used to create Hurricane Milton
RELATED: Video doesn’t show Hurricane Milton was geoengineered. It’s from 2021
