Latest / Elon Musk Podcast / Marjorie Taylor Greene DOGE Hearing: 'Playing God With The Weather'

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Marjorie Taylor Greene DOGE Hearing: 'Playing God With The Weather' · Elon Musk Podcast

• 0:01
  Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Elon Musk
• 0:04
  Podcast. This is a show where we discuss
• 0:07
  the critical crossroads, the Shape, SpaceX, Tesla X, The
• 0:11
  Boring Company, and Neurolink. I'm your host, Will.
• 0:15
  Walden. Thank you.
• 0:21
  Humans have been trying to control the weather for
• 0:23
  centuries. Native American tribes perform
• 0:26
  ceremonial dances to summon rain.
• 0:28
  During droughts. The Mayans sacrifice humans to
• 0:31
  their rain God. Today, people are still trying
• 0:35
  to control the weather, but some things have changed.
• 0:38
  Modern attempts at weather control don't appeal to
• 0:41
  divinity. Instead, they use technology to
• 0:44
  put chemicals in the sky. Cloud seeding, for instance,
• 0:48
  uses silver or lead iodide to try to increase rainfall in a
• 0:52
  specific location. What's also changed over time is
• 0:56
  the scale of ambition. Today's advocates of
• 1:00
  geoengineering don't just want to address droughts or improve
• 1:04
  conditions for agriculture. They want to control the Earth's
• 1:07
  climate to address the fake climate change hoax and head off
• 1:11
  global warming. That, of course, requires
• 1:14
  massive interventions. What methods do they use?
• 1:19
  One is to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
• 1:23
  Yes, the same carbon dioxide that keeps plants alive and
• 1:28
  prevents mass starvation. Another method they want to use
• 1:32
  is to block the rays of the sun from hitting the earth.
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  You heard that right. Yes, the same sign that makes
• 1:42
  all life possible on Earth. Some scientists think they can
• 1:46
  predict and control the impact of geoengineering.
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  But even the best scientific models will never be able to
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  capture all of God's wonderful creation and nature's mysteries.
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  So we can predict the real impacts these global scale
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  interventions would have little better than the Native Americans
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  could know the impact of their rain dances.
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  And we are not talking about experiments that take place
• 2:11
  within the four walls of a laboratory.
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  Our world is the laboratory, and we happen to be the lab.
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  Rats blocking the sun would have unknown consequences that no
• 2:23
  scientific climate model could ever reliably predict.
• 2:28
  This could include serious reductions in crop yields,
• 2:32
  significant changes in plant and animal life, disastrous ozone
• 2:36
  depletion, not to mention the damage done to human health.
• 2:40
  The reality is that the federal government has a long history of
• 2:44
  experimenting with weather modification.
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  That includes a 1947 attempt by the military and General
• 2:52
  Electric to intercept a hurricane off the coast of
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  Jacksonville, FL. It includes an event in the 50s
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  and 60s where the US Army admitted to spraying a
• 3:03
  mysterious chemical fog over a neighborhood in St.
• 3:06
  Louis, MO, which residents now claim it is giving them cancer.
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  It includes Project Storm Fury, a series of efforts in the 60s
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  and 70s to weaken hurricanes by seeding clouds with silver
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  iodide. And it includes Operation
• 3:23
  Popeye, an effort to create monsoons to aid our military
• 3:28
  efforts during the Vietnam War, literally weaponizing weather.
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  While these are different events scattered throughout history, a
• 3:36
  serious campaign to commercialize geoengineering to
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  fight global warming would be a vastly larger enterprise and
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  profitable hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars could
• 3:49
  disappear into the coffers of research universities and the
• 3:53
  academic scientists who beat the drum of global warming alarmism.
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  Venture capitalists are already trying to get rich backing
• 4:00
  companies like Make Sunsets, which inject aerosols into the
• 4:05
  atmosphere to reflect sunlight back into space.
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  It's worth asking, what if scientists could somehow manage
• 4:14
  to create a temperature dial that could be rotated to
• 4:18
  reliably set the global climate? Who would control the dial?
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  After all, people in different regions prefer different weather
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  conditions based on their local geography, economy and way of
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  life. The global climate impacts
• 4:31
  everyone and doesn't respect state or national borders, so
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  would we need a world government to make choices on how to to
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  turn the climate dial? Where does it end?
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  Despite the profound questions around geoengineering, the
• 4:47
  scientific community is pressing ahead, and they are getting
• 4:51
  financial support to do so from universities and left-leaning
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  philanthropist like Bill Gates, who has funded geoengineering
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  research. A June 2023 Biden White House
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  Science Office report on solar engineering notes academia,
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  philanthropy and the private sector have examined preliminary
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  applications of climate intervention techniques such as
• 5:15
  stratospheric aerosol injection and marine cloud brightening,
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  which are techniques classified as solar radiation modification,
• 5:23
  or SRM, intended to rapidly limit temperature increases.
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  One thing we learned from COVID is that it's a mistake to allow
• 5:33
  the professional scientific community alone to determine
• 5:37
  federal science policy. The same professional scientific
• 5:41
  community that closed ranks around the need to close schools
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  and businesses due to COVID is of a single mind when it comes
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  to global warming. They are convinced that global
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  warming is such an immediate risk to mankind that it
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  justifies the catastrophic risk of blocking out the sun.
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  It's for the greater good, they say.
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  I don't think it's the job of the federal government to help
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  these people play God with the weather.
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  In fact, I think it's the job of Congress to protect our people
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  and make sure that weather and climate control experiments and
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  activities do not create adverse, unintended consequences
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  for the rest of us. That's why I'm grateful for the
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  transparency the Trump administration is shedding on
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  this issue. Leading this effort is EPA
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  Administrator Lee Zeldin. I am now going to play a video
• 6:30
  clip in which he recently addressed this issue personally
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  and directly. Americans have urgent and
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  important questions about geoengineering and contrails.
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  The American public deserves and expects honesty and transparency
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  from their government when seeking answers.
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  But for years, people who ask questions in good faith were
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  dismissed, even vilified, by the media and their own government.
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  That era is over. The Trump EPA is committed to
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  total transparency. As a result, I tasked my team at
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  EPA to compile a list of everything we know about
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  contrails in geoengineering for the purpose of releasing it to
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  you now, publicly. In other words, I want you to
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  know everything I know about these topics.
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  And without any exception, instead of simply dismissing
• 7:36
  these questions and concerns as baseless conspiracies, we're
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  meeting them head on. We did the legwork, looked at
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  the science, consulted agency experts, and pulled in relevant
• 7:51
  outside information to put these online resources together.
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  Everything we know about contrails to solar
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  geoengineering will be in there. That means that anyone who reads
• 8:04
  through this information will know as much about these topics
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  as I do as EPA Administrator. To anyone who's ever looked up
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  to the streets in the sky and asked what the heck is going on,
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  we're seeing headlines about private actors and even
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  governments looking to blot out the sun in the name of stopping
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  global warming. We've endeavored to answer all
• 8:28
  of your questions at the links on your screen.
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  In fact, EPA shares many of the same concerns when it comes to
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  potential threats to human health and the environment,
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  especially from solar geoengineering activities.
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  The enthusiasm for experiments that would pump pollutants into
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  the high atmosphere has set off alarm bells here at the Trump
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  EPA. Prior to now, EPA has never been
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  this proactive to raise awareness about concerns with
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  geoengineering and to stop this activity from being scaled up.
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  This is what it looks like when government actually listens to
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  the will of the people and doesn't try to squash it.
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  You can always trust this administration and this EPA to
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  take your concerns seriously. Answer your questions honestly
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  and carry out the will of voters with integrity.
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  I look forward to hearing from our witnesses, but first I yield
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  to Ranking Member Stansbury for her opening statement.
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  Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. Well, Doge is back and there's
• 9:44
  going to be a lot to unpack in this hearing.
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  But I think first and foremost, we want to acknowledge that the
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  purpose of this subcommittee and why it was created in the 1st
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  place by the majority was to root out waste, fraud and abuse.
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  That's literally the mandate for the DOGE subcommittee.
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  And I want to emphasize that we remain focused on that mission.
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  In fact, we are working on a report on the waste, fraud and
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  abuse that we're currently seeing in this administration.
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  And I think it's important to also recognize that we are 14
• 10:18
  days from a government shutdown. And so I'm troubled to see that
• 10:23
  the subcommittee, which is designed to address government
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  spending, to streamline efficiency of government
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  programs, has strayed so far from its mission.
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  Especially is there such pressing matters facing our
• 10:35
  country, including a government shutdown, The passage of the big
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  ugly bill, which not only drove the federal deficit by $4
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  trillion, but is kicking millions of Americans off their
• 10:47
  healthcare and about to make their healthcare premiums go up.
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  Tariffs that are causing inflation to go up, and putting
• 10:53
  small family businesses out of business and administration
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  that's flouting the rule of law every day.
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  And a total lack of transparency in the Epstein case is the
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  administration has still refused to comply with the subpoena that
• 11:07
  this committee issued. So there's a lot of important
• 11:12
  things that this committee could tackle.
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  And I would think that a topic involving environmental science
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  would be more well suited to a committee that actually deals
• 11:21
  with science or environmental issues.
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  But I am happy to talk about climate change and weather
• 11:26
  modification. It's a topic that I've spent
• 11:28
  many years in my career working on.
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  In fact, I worked more than 20 years as a water resources
• 11:34
  manager working on drought and water planning issues in the
• 11:37
  state of New Mexico. And I know how important
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  addressing drought and water issues is for our farmers and
• 11:44
  ranchers out there and personally and professionally.
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  There's a lot to discuss with respect to weather modification,
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  and so we're going to talk about it.
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  Let's talk about it. Certainly there's a lot of DOGE
• 11:56
  related topics we could talk about with respect to climate
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  change and weather programs, including the dismantling of
• 12:02
  climate, natural resources and emergency response programs, the
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  firing of federal officials, dismantling of EPA, the illegal
• 12:10
  freezing of federal funding, removal of the US from
• 12:14
  international climate agreements, dismantling clean
• 12:16
  energy programs, catastrophic response to natural disasters,
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  including what we saw in Texas. And all of these topics would be
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  ripe for an oversight hearing. So I hope that we can use this
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  hearing to discuss some of those issues.
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  But with respect specifically to weather modification, whether
• 12:35
  it's cloud seeding or other technologies, I actually agree
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  with many of the assertions about the need for further
• 12:42
  discussion for their science and potentially further regulation
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  of these particular technologies.
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  But it's it's important that we distinguish between fact and
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  fiction, between clickbait and real solutions.
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  So let's talk about some facts. Weather modification and cloud
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  seeding, as was mentioned, it's a real thing.
• 13:01
  It exists. It has been practice in varying
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  forms since the 1940s. Increasingly, folks are looking
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  at this as a opportunity to increase rain and precipitation.
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  But the science is still out on many of these technologies.
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  And we absolutely need to understand what are the
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  implications for air quality, for precipitation and the
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  implications also for water rights in the West, because this
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  could have far reaching implications.
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  But it's also important to understand that many of these
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  technologies are in the R&D phase.
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  They're in limited use in the number of states.
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  And it's not actually technologies that the federal
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  government even widely supports. This is largely in the private
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  sector. So in the world of science, it
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  is widely acknowledged that more science is needed to understand
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  use, efficacy and impacts of these technologies.
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  So, so those are the facts. Those are the facts.
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  But it's hard to understand why we're discussing banning these
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  practices outright in this committee when the oversight
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  committee, in another subcommittee, literally as we're
• 14:04
  sitting here right now, is having a hearing about
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  dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency and the actual
• 14:11
  bill under discussion. And this committee is trying to
• 14:14
  use the EPA to regulate these particular practices.
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  So the inconsistency governance is very confusing here.
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  But there's a more insidious issue here, which I think we've
• 14:27
  already heard in some of the comments, which is the using of
• 14:30
  the platform of Congress to proffer anti science theories to
• 14:34
  platform climate denialism and to ultimately put our
• 14:39
  communities at risk by continuing to without
• 14:43
  disinformation. So I'm grateful that we're
• 14:46
  joined today by Doctor McCracken, who has spent his
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  career very distinguishedly at the national labs, helping to
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  bring together scientists globally and across the United
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  States to understand climate change, its impacts, and to help
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  our communities really understand what is real here in
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  terms of the science. And we hope to dig in to
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  understand what we can do to help address drought, fire and
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  flooding and how it's impacted our communities.
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  So with that, I yield back and I think the gentlelady.
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  Without objection, Representative Sue Brahmanyam of
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  Virginia is waved on to the subcommittee for the purpose of
• 15:24
  questioning the witnesses at today's subcommittee hearing.
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  I'm pleased to introduce our witnesses today.
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  Doctor Rodger Pilkey Junior is a senior fellow at the American
• 15:35
  Enterprise Institute. He is an expert on science and
• 15:39
  technology policy, the politicization of science and
• 15:43
  energy, and climate. Mr. Christopher Marks is a
• 15:46
  meteorologist and policy analyst at the Committee for a
• 15:50
  Constructive Tomorrow. He's an expert on climate and
• 15:54
  weather. Doctor Michael McCracken is the
• 15:57
  chief scientist for climate change programs at the Climate
• 15:59
  Institute. Again, I want to thank all of
• 16:02
  you for being here to testify today.
• 16:05
  Pursue it to Committee Rule 9. G.
• 16:07
  The witnesses will please stand and raise their right hand.
• 16:15
  Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you are about
• 16:19
  to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
• 16:22
  truth, so help you God? Let the record show that the
• 16:26
  witnesses have answered in the affirmative.
• 16:28
  Thank you and you may take a seat.
• 16:31
  We appreciate you being here today and look forward to your
• 16:34
  testimony. Let me remind the witnesses that
• 16:37
  we have read your written statements and they will appear
• 16:41
  in full in the hearing record. Please limit your oral
• 16:45
  statements to 5 minutes. As a reminder, please press the
• 16:49
  button on the microphone in front of you so that it is on
• 16:53
  and the members can hear you. When you begin to speak, the
• 16:57
  light in front of you will turn green after 4 minutes.
• 17:01
  The light will turn yellow when the red light comes on.
• 17:04
  Your 5 minutes have expired and we would ask that you please
• 17:08
  wrap it up. I now recognize Doctor Pilkey
• 17:12
  for his opening statement. Chairwoman Green, Ranking Member
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  Stansbury, thank you for the opportunity to testify today.
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  For the past 30 years, I've studied the connections of
• 17:22
  atmospheric science research and decision making, first as a
• 17:24
  scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, then
• 17:27
  as a professor at the University of Colorado, and most recently
• 17:30
  as a Senior Fellow with the American Enterprise Institute.
• 17:32
  My written testimony discusses policy issues associated with
• 17:35
  weather modification and geoengineering.
• 17:38
  My prepared March begin with three recommendations, followed
• 17:40
  by 10 take home points, which those are discussed in depth in
• 17:43
  my written testimony. So first, recommendation
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  Congress should enact legislation to improve oversight
• 17:49
  of weather modification activities, including first,
• 17:52
  requesting an assessment from the National Academy of Sciences
• 17:55
  that precisely quantifies what is known and unknown about the
• 17:59
  effectiveness of weather modification projects to date
• 18:01
  and clarifying the prospects, forever being able to achieve
• 18:04
  certainty in quantifying that effectiveness.
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  And 2nd, improving the required reporting and communicating of
• 18:10
  weather modification activities under the 1972 law that defines
• 18:14
  weather modification in the United States.
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  Second recommendation, Congress should standardize U.S.
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  Federal law governing weather weather modification, ensuring
• 18:23
  that all states are governed by identical legislative authority.
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  3rd recommendation, the United States should lead diplomatic
• 18:30
  talks on an international solar engineering non use agreement
• 18:35
  with the ultimate goal of reaching broad agreement on a
• 18:37
  collective ban on outdoor experiments involving solar unit
• 18:41
  engineering and sufficient institutionalized capability to
• 18:45
  monitor the atmosphere to ensure compliance with the ban.
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  My 10 take home points 1st Weather modification and
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  geoengineering have various definitions in science and
• 18:55
  policy Precision is necessary for effective discussion #2
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  Under the 1972 U.S. law, a quote weather modification activity is
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  defined as quote any activity performed with the intention of
• 19:08
  producing artificial changes in the competition, behavior or
• 19:12
  dynamics of the atmosphere. End Quote.
• 19:14
  According to the Intergovernmental Panel on
• 19:16
  Climate Change, geoengineering refers to quote a broad set of
• 19:20
  methods and technologies that aim to deliberately alter the
• 19:23
  climate system in order to alleviate the impacts of climate
• 19:27
  change. Thus, most forms of
• 19:29
  geoengineering fall under the definition of weather
• 19:32
  modification activity. Arguably, the direct air capture
• 19:35
  of carbon dioxide would not fall under this definition, but other
• 19:39
  simple technologies may be Painting roofs to change albedos
• 19:42
  to cool cities or aforestation could fall under this definition
• 19:46
  #4 Weather modification activities have been widely
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  implemented in the United States and around the world for 70
• 19:52
  years. Many decades ago, weather
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  modification was called weather control.
• 19:58
  Nobody calls it weather control anymore because scientists
• 20:00
  understand that controlling the weather is simply not possible
• 20:04
  #5 despite the long track record of experience with operational
• 20:07
  weather modification activities, the effectiveness of weather
• 20:10
  modifying activities for actually modifying the weather
• 20:13
  is unknown. A hypothesis worth exploring
• 20:16
  systematically would be whether the precise quantification of
• 20:20
  the outcomes associated with weather modification is even
• 20:22
  possible given the scientific record.
• 20:25
  There is no record of geoengineering being implemented
• 20:28
  anywhere in the world. Some proposed projects, such as
• 20:31
  in Washington state and in Sweden, have been halted prior
• 20:34
  to implementation #7 due to the uncertain effects of weather
• 20:38
  modification and the fact that geoengineering has not occurred.
• 20:42
  There is no basis for occasional assertions that governments or
• 20:45
  others are actually altering the weather #8 Supporters of
• 20:49
  geoengineering deployment experiments involve an
• 20:51
  interesting coalition of interest.
• 20:54
  It involves those who think we are in a climate emergency and
• 20:57
  have to act, those who believe we're not in a climate emergency
• 21:01
  but geoengineering would be better than emissions
• 21:03
  reductions, and finally, those who support who are in or are
• 21:07
  involved in geoengineering research #9 the US Congress has
• 21:12
  options for improving research, understanding and oversight of
• 21:15
  weather modifying activities. My written testimony summarizes
• 21:18
  many of these, drawing upon the excellent work of the Government
• 21:20
  Accountability Office and Congressional Research Service,
• 21:24
  2 crown jewels in this institution #10 Finally, my
• 21:29
  written testimony goes into detail explaining my decision to
• 21:31
  join more than 500 other scientists and academics from
• 21:34
  around the world to call for a Solar Engineering Non use
• 21:38
  agreement. I'll just briefly state first,
• 21:41
  the understandings are not sufficiently developed to know
• 21:44
  what the outcomes would be and unintended consequences are
• 21:47
  almost certain to happen. Second, our 70 year history with
• 21:51
  wetter weather modification should give us some humility in
• 21:54
  thinking that we can understand what the consequences might be.
• 21:57
  We've been trying to modify the weather for 70 years and we
• 21:59
  don't know if we're modifying the weather.
• 22:02
  And finally, we have one earth and experimenting on it carries
• 22:05
  considerable risks. I have likened geoengineering to
• 22:07
  risky gain of function research on viruses with uncertain
• 22:10
  benefits and catastrophic risks. I look forward to your questions
• 22:14
  and our discussions. Thank you.
• 22:17
  Thank you. I now recognize Mr. Martz for
• 22:19
  his opening statement. I'd like to thank the
• 22:22
  Chairwoman, Ranking Member, and subcommittee for this hearing on
• 22:25
  weather modification in geoengineering and for giving me
• 22:28
  the opportunity to provide my perspective as a meteorologist
• 22:31
  on this highly contentious issue.
• 22:33
  My meteorologist and policy analyst for the Committee for
• 22:35
  Constructive Tomorrow and I graduated from Millersville
• 22:38
  University of Pennsylvania with my Bachelor Science degree in
• 22:40
  May. My testimony table focus
• 22:42
  primarily on two things and that's distinguishing airplane
• 22:45
  condensation trails from weather modification in geoengineering,
• 22:48
  which are three separate things, as well as why geoengineering,
• 22:52
  particularly solar radiation modification.
• 22:54
  The solar geoengineering should be prohibited given the
• 22:57
  uncertainties about climate change itself as well as the
• 22:59
  uncertainties that geoengineering could have on
• 23:01
  both the environment and life on earth.
• 23:03
  Now in social media circles, people will often confuse
• 23:06
  weather modification with geoengineering.
• 23:07
  And to further complicate matters, you will see videos and
• 23:11
  pictures of these ominous looking line shaped clouds that
• 23:14
  are bashed across the sky. And a lot of people claim that
• 23:17
  these are evidence that the government is manipulating the
• 23:19
  weather, especially in the large scale.
• 23:21
  And they can do things such as steer hurricanes or generate
• 23:24
  hurricanes, which was a popular narrative after Hurricane
• 23:27
  Helene's remnants ravaged eastern Tennessee, northeast
• 23:30
  Georgia and the Carolina backed country last fall.
• 23:33
  And more recently people have claimed that clouds had caused
• 23:35
  the Texas floods this summer which killed I think over 100
• 23:38
  people. Unfortunately now contrails are
• 23:40
  aligned shaped ice coastal clouds that form an altitude
• 23:42
  about 20,000 feet behind the aircraft.
• 23:44
  The exhaust from aircraft is primarily composed of invisible
• 23:47
  water vapor, CO2 and tiny particulates such as soot, which
• 23:51
  act as cloud condensation nuclei, which make it easier for
• 23:54
  water vapor in the air to condense onto those surfaces and
• 23:57
  form droplets which then freeze and form these seriform clouds
• 24:01
  that are artificial type cirrus clouds that resemble the feather
• 24:04
  like clouds you see in the sky ahead of a warm front.
• 24:07
  Now although contrails are definitely more common today
• 24:09
  than they were 30 years ago, that's largely because there's
• 24:11
  increased air traffic and there's no compelling evidence
• 24:14
  that contrails are being deliberately created to alter
• 24:16
  weather patterns or block out the sun's energy, especially
• 24:19
  since contrails actually have a net warming effect on the
• 24:21
  planet. Now in my written testimony, I
• 24:23
  attached a photograph of contrails over London in
• 24:25
  September 1940. Now weather modification On the
• 24:28
  contrary, is a completely different issue and it is very
• 24:31
  real. Although the its effects are
• 24:32
  uncertain, it is the deliberate attempts to alter local weather
• 24:35
  patterns. The most common example of this
• 24:37
  is cloud sitting and there's two different methods of cloud
• 24:39
  sitting. One is injecting clouds,
• 24:41
  especially mixed phase convective clouds in the
• 24:43
  summertime with these agents, these hyproscopic water
• 24:47
  attracting particles like salt to increase rainfall.
• 24:50
  The other option is in the winter time, especially in the
• 24:52
  Intermountain W, which has faced water storage problems for the
• 24:55
  last 25 years due to drought and also increased water demand from
• 24:58
  a growing population. They inject winter time clouds
• 25:01
  with dry ice and silver iodide to increase snowpack.
• 25:04
  Now, the federal government has been involved in cloud seeding
• 25:07
  since the 1940s. Examples of this include, as
• 25:09
  previously mentioned, Project Cirrus, Operation Popeye, and
• 25:12
  Project Storm Fury, but the results of these in the long
• 25:14
  term have been inconclusive. Cloud seeding may affect
• 25:17
  rainfall locally from a cloud by up to 15%, but it's largely
• 25:19
  ineffective. Large scales 9 states actively
• 25:23
  facilitate cloud seeding programs, but they have strict
• 25:26
  regulations about when and where they can be implemented even and
• 25:29
  and. There are two states however
• 25:30
  that have bandit which is Florida and Tennessee.
• 25:33
  Now Geo engineering isn't a different issue from that.
• 25:35
  It's a proposed attempt to counter match global warming by
• 25:38
  either removing CO2 from the atmosphere or alternate amount
• 25:41
  of sunlight that reaches the Earth's surface, the latter of
• 25:43
  which is a very controversial topic.
• 25:46
  The stratospheric aerosol injection is the most widely
• 25:48
  researched SRM method and it involves the addition of sulfur
• 25:51
  dioxide mainly into the stratosphere and that chemical
• 25:54
  SO2 then reacts and becomes highly reflective sulfate
• 25:57
  aerosols which block out solar radiation.
• 26:00
  And this will be very similar to the cooling effects induced by
• 26:02
  major volcanic eruptions. The IPCC says that with high
• 26:07
  agreement that it could limit global warming to below 1.5°C
• 26:11
  above pre industrial levels. Now in regard to whether cloud
• 26:14
  sitting should be banned, I'm of the view that we should minimize
• 26:16
  your interference with nature. I appreciate how cloud sitting
• 26:19
  has advanced our understanding of cloud physics as a
• 26:22
  meteorologist and I, but trying to manipulate the weather even
• 26:26
  on a localized scale can have unintended consequences
• 26:29
  downstream. As far as the weather is
• 26:31
  concerned, the effects are uncertain, but there are some
• 26:34
  concerns with how it affects water tables in our soils.
• 26:37
  Because long term injection of silver iodide of the atmosphere
• 26:40
  can precipitate down into our soil and water tables and the
• 26:43
  long term effects of that on marine life and aquatic life and
• 26:47
  terrestrial plant life and animals has not been studied
• 26:50
  definitively in the long term. Now as far as the geoengineering
• 26:53
  goes, using the planet as a test monkey for emerging technologies
• 26:57
  poses all sorts of risks. Among these that have been
• 26:59
  highlighted by the EPA are stratospheric ozone depletion,
• 27:02
  acid rain and reduced crop yields.
• 27:03
  There's also the question of which such whether such large
• 27:06
  scale climate intervention is even necessary given the
• 27:09
  uncertainties regarding climate change.
• 27:10
  While the planet has gotten warmer over the last 100 years,
• 27:14
  there is uncertainty as to exactly how much influence
• 27:16
  humans have exerted on it. And it's uncertainty arises from
• 27:19
  the fact that models climate models produce too much warming
• 27:21
  with known in physics, which is why modelers have to
• 27:23
  artificially calibrate their models to the instrumental
• 27:26
  temperature record. There's uncertainty in the
• 27:27
  magnitude of the natural energy flows as measured by satellites,
• 27:30
  which is 6 times larger than the estimated energy imbalance
• 27:33
  caused by CO2. Which means that Mormon could be
• 27:36
  mostly natural and we just don't know, or it could be mostly
• 27:38
  anthropogenic. And finally, there is no
• 27:40
  fingerprint of anthropogenic or man made global warming that
• 27:43
  distinguishes it from natural variability.
• 27:45
  These uncertainties need to be resolved in the peer reviewed
• 27:47
  literature before world governments tried to much less
• 27:50
  consider intentionally. I'll turn the radiation balance
• 27:53
  with novel technologies that have not been tested.
• 27:55
  Thank you. This concludes my testimony.
• 27:57
  Thank you, Mr. Marks. I now recognize Miss Doctor
• 28:01
  McCracken for his opening statements.
• 28:04
  Thank. You, Madam Chair Green, Rankin,
• 28:07
  Mary. Doctor McCracken, you need to
• 28:10
  turn your mic off. Doctor, Doctor McCracken, can
• 28:16
  you turn on your microphone, please?
• 28:17
  I'm sorry. That's OK.
• 28:18
  Thank you. So thank you very much for
• 28:23
  inviting me here today. After earning my PhD, most of my
• 28:28
  career was spent at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab, mostly
• 28:31
  using computer models to analyze how natural and human induced
• 28:36
  factors might affect the climate and what the risk might be of
• 28:40
  that. My last nine years with
• 28:42
  Livermore were on assignment as a senior climate change
• 28:45
  Scientist with the Interagency office of the US Global Change
• 28:49
  Program here in Washington, including four years heading the
• 28:52
  Coordination office for preparing the first national
• 28:55
  assessment of the impacts of climate change, but also climate
• 28:59
  variability, which was an assessment called for in the
• 29:02
  Global Change Research Act of 1990.
• 29:06
  Since retiring, I've served on a number of positions on a pro
• 29:09
  bono with the Climate Institute President, International
• 29:12
  Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences, and as a
• 29:16
  participant in various other national and international
• 29:20
  activities. I'm currently on the steering
• 29:23
  circle of the Healthy Planet Action Coalition, which is a
• 29:26
  group that favors consideration of climate intervention or
• 29:30
  geoengineering, and on two groups that are seeking actually
• 29:34
  to address the issue to make energy more affordable.
• 29:37
  I want to say I'm not a paid employee or consultant of any
• 29:40
  organization. I'm here speaking as a
• 29:41
  scientist, and the views are my own.
• 29:45
  A primary lesson from the research career and from the
• 29:50
  scientific community is that climate change has changed in
• 29:54
  the past. Climate has changed in the past,
• 29:56
  and so it can be expected to be changeable in the future.
• 30:00
  And what scientific research has shown quite clearly is that
• 30:04
  these changes are not random. It isn't not just climate doing
• 30:09
  something randomly. There are causes in the past
• 30:12
  that has been things like volcanic eruptions or changes in
• 30:16
  the Earth's orbit around the sun, changes in atmospheric
• 30:20
  composition, changes in land cover, and research is really
• 30:24
  interest indicating now the global warming over the last two
• 30:28
  centuries is primarily being due not to natural factors but to
• 30:32
  human cost influences. Let me say briefly with respect
• 30:37
  to the subcommittee's interest in weather modification.
• 30:41
  Research has made clear that changing a major specific event,
• 30:45
  a hurricane or a drenching rain or or a drought, is just beyond
• 30:51
  human capabilities. That's not what's happening.
• 30:53
  Nature has so much energy involved.
• 30:55
  That's not going to happen. As my fellow panelists have
• 31:01
  said, there's not really scientifically convincing
• 31:04
  evidence that it works, but there's not scientifically
• 31:07
  convincing evidence that it doesn't work.
• 31:10
  And so it can perhaps increase rainfall and some very dry
• 31:15
  places. And this is because it's so
• 31:19
  uncertain. That's exactly why there's so
• 31:21
  little weather modification actually going on.
• 31:24
  It's just not clear. It's a worthwhile investment and
• 31:27
  it certainly cannot cause massive floods or or hurricanes.
• 31:31
  With respect to the subcommittee's interest in
• 31:34
  theoretical geoengineering, the notion is to explore if there
• 31:38
  are viable approaches to offsetting the increasing
• 31:42
  incidence of extreme weather and other impacts that are happening
• 31:47
  from climate change. My views sort of come from the
• 31:53
  broad scientific community and on this this issue, I disagree
• 31:59
  with these others panelists that thinking that research on
• 32:02
  climate and intervention is, is something that needs to be done.
• 32:07
  The approaches that are used in doing it are all based on what's
• 32:11
  happened naturally. So volcanic eruptions put sulfur
• 32:15
  dioxide in the atmosphere. It turns to sulfate.
• 32:18
  It reflects maybe 1% of solar radiation.
• 32:21
  It's not like it blanks out the sun in any sense.
• 32:26
  And and that can sort of exert a cooling influence.
• 32:29
  We had that after Mount Pinatubo, climate went down and
• 32:34
  the aerosol sort of got mixed and naturally removed the
• 32:36
  stratosphere and that climate sort of recovered and kept going
• 32:40
  up. So are there approaches that we
• 32:42
  can use that based on nature that we can optimize maybe
• 32:46
  putting in a little bit on a on a constant basis and see what
• 32:51
  happens, Try and try and learn about that.
• 32:54
  So nature has really done the experiments on this, on whether
• 32:57
  these approaches will work. That's not something that
• 33:00
  science really has to go back and do.
• 33:02
  So we have to do a see if the tailoring in the optimizing and
• 33:05
  how that will work, will it be beneficial or not.
• 33:09
  So there are a host of questions for research to consider.
• 33:13
  What's happening due to global warming is quite exceptional,
• 33:18
  particularly not just the temperature, but the dew point
• 33:22
  is going up and so places in low latitudes are having just almost
• 33:26
  intolerable situations and don't have the air conditioned space
• 33:30
  that we have to go into. There's increased and
• 33:33
  accelerated melting and loss of mass from Greenland and the
• 33:39
  Antarctic ice sheets. 20,000 years ago sea level was 400 feet
• 33:44
  lower than that and then on over the next 12,000 years, 2/3 of
• 33:48
  the ice on land melted and it came up.
• 33:51
  So there's about another 200 feet of sea level equivalent in
• 33:55
  the Greenland and then Antarctic ice sheets, and we really don't
• 33:59
  want to start those to get melty.
• 34:01
  Doctor McCracken, we've I'm sorry, yes, if you could just
• 34:03
  finish, please. Thank you.
• 34:04
  OK. Well thank you.
• 34:06
  I just said finally if I could, that there's no Geo engineering
• 34:11
  of any type going on at the global scale.
• 34:13
  There are a few localized efforts like to save the the
• 34:17
  coral, to preserve the coral. Great Barrier Reef computer
• 34:23
  simulation sort of indicate that.
• 34:25
  Doctor McCracken, your time's expired.
• 34:27
  Yes, thank you. I now recognize myself for 5
• 34:31
  minutes of questioning. For years, anybody who
• 34:34
  questioned whether modification was labeled crazy or a
• 34:37
  conspiracy theorist. Now we've learned that they've
• 34:40
  been doing it for decades. And not only is it a
• 34:43
  multibillion dollar industry, the government has invested a
• 34:46
  lot of Americans hard earned tax dollars into it.
• 34:50
  They've been forced to spin it and apparently it is now the
• 34:52
  only way we are going to save humanity.
• 34:55
  However, let's look at the risk. According to GAO, injecting a
• 34:59
  cloud with silver iodide increases precipitation anywhere
• 35:03
  from zero to 20%. It could be even more, but the
• 35:08
  truth is that we really don't know for certain.
• 35:11
  The questions that are asked is can you control the exact amount
• 35:15
  of precipitation that a cloud will produce if it is injected
• 35:18
  with silver iodide or another cloud seeding agent?
• 35:21
  Can you control where the precipitation is going to land
• 35:24
  with 100% certainty? Can you say that it will not
• 35:28
  'cause or enhance flooding with 100% certainty?
• 35:33
  Is there any way to measure with absolute certainty the
• 35:36
  effectiveness of seeding a cloud?
• 35:38
  Do we know with 100% certainty how much rain a cloud would have
• 35:43
  produced if it had not been seeded?
• 35:46
  And lastly, did the American people ever get to have a say in
• 35:50
  any of this? The truth is that there's
• 35:52
  absolutely no way to measure the effectiveness of cloud seeding.
• 35:56
  But something else that needs to be known as the American people
• 35:59
  deserve to know that there is very little rules and
• 36:03
  regulations over this. These companies that perform
• 36:06
  cloud seeding and other types of geoengineering projects have to
• 36:09
  fill out forms from NOAA and they have to list what agents
• 36:13
  they're using. And there is a category that
• 36:16
  simply says other, and they don't have to even fill out what
• 36:20
  other means. And I think that's extremely
• 36:22
  concerning, but I'd like to talk a little bit more about solar
• 36:26
  geoengineering. It's completely different, more
• 36:30
  consequential approach to human manipulation of the the planet's
• 36:34
  climate. One geoengineering company
• 36:36
  called Make Sunsets injects aerosol into the atmosphere to
• 36:40
  reflect sunlight back into space.
• 36:43
  I want to, I want to show you their frequently asked questions
• 36:47
  page on their website. Mr. Mr. Pilkey.
• 36:53
  It says here they says, what are you doing?
• 36:55
  It says we're using balloons to launch reflective clouds into
• 36:58
  the stratosphere. And then it says, why?
• 37:00
  It says unless we reflect sunlight, 10s of millions of
• 37:04
  people will die and 20% of species may go extinct.
• 37:08
  We're using the most effective way to reflect sunlight that we
• 37:11
  found and can afford to deploy. Mr. Pilkey, is it true that 10s
• 37:16
  of millions of people will die if if they don't do this?
• 37:20
  There's nothing you can find in the IPCC or other scientific
• 37:24
  literature to suggest that's a consequence.
• 37:27
  Sometimes those stark claims are made to try to scare people into
• 37:30
  other forms of action on climate change.
• 37:33
  So if you don't change energy policy, we're going to mess up
• 37:37
  the stratosphere. And that's how I interpret.
• 37:38
  That sounds like a a major threat to to make for their
• 37:42
  company to make money. They said, how long do you make
• 37:45
  sunsets? Clouds stay in the sky.
• 37:47
  Depending on the altitude and latitude at which we will
• 37:50
  release them, anywhere between six months and three years.
• 37:55
  They also say, is it legal? They say yes, it falls under the
• 37:59
  Weather Modification Act. Then they have a question here,
• 38:03
  Mr. Marks, I would like you to stop doing this.
• 38:06
  And they say, and we would level future with breathable air and
• 38:10
  no wet bulb events for generations to come.
• 38:12
  Convince us there's a more feasible way to buy us time to
• 38:15
  get there and we'll stop. We'll happily debate anyone on
• 38:18
  this, Mr. Martz. They don't think that the rest
• 38:22
  of us have a say in this. What do you, how do you think?
• 38:26
  What do you think about that? Well, I think that the climate,
• 38:28
  the air is not going to be breathable, is just patently
• 38:31
  ridiculous. Carbon dioxide, although it is a
• 38:33
  greenhouse gas. And yes, I do agree that some of
• 38:36
  the warming at least that we've seen in the last 100 years is
• 38:38
  probably due to CO2 emissions. There's no indication that the
• 38:42
  air is going to become unbreathable.
• 38:43
  It makes up 0.04% by dry air volume of Earth's atmosphere.
• 38:49
  And some submariners in the Navy are subject to the
• 38:53
  concentrations exceeding 5000 parts per million and are just
• 38:56
  and are just fine. Well, let me, let me ask another
• 38:58
  question, Mr. Marks. You know, it's, it's sulfur,
• 39:03
  right, that is put into the air. Is there health consequences for
• 39:08
  people, especially like after volcanic eruptions?
• 39:11
  Is there health consequences to to that type of injection into
• 39:15
  the atmosphere? Well, sulfur dioxide, if it's
• 39:17
  injected into the stratosphere, obviously it blocks out solar
• 39:20
  radiation. And so that would potentially
• 39:22
  could, that could, if it's implemented on a large enough
• 39:24
  scale over a long period of time, it could reduce crop yield
• 39:28
  because obviously plants need sunlight to grow.
• 39:30
  They need water and CO2, just basic photosynthesis.
• 39:34
  And there's also concerns that if it gets into the troposphere,
• 39:36
  it could create acid rain, and that is called acid deposition
• 39:41
  into the soil. And that makes it hard for
• 39:44
  plants to always say they grow, and that harms plant animal life
• 39:46
  as well. Obviously, Mr. Martz, I'm out of
• 39:48
  time. Thank you very much.
• 39:50
  I now recognize Miss Stansbury for 5 minutes.
• 39:55
  Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. Well, I do believe we've
• 39:58
  actually discovered the purpose of the EPA, literally This is
• 40:02
  why the EPA exists, is to regulate, study and understand
• 40:07
  how modifications to the environment impact human health
• 40:10
  and the environment. And in fact, that is the primary
• 40:13
  purpose of the Science Advisory Committee for the EPA.
• 40:16
  You do a regulatory process, you look at the science, you
• 40:20
  determine whether or not it's good for the environment and for
• 40:24
  human health, and then. If it's not, then you come up
• 40:26
  with science based solutions to regulate it.
• 40:29
  That's literally why the EPA exists.
• 40:31
  So I'm, I'm excited we've, we've discovered why the EPA exists
• 40:35
  today in this committee hearing. But arguably the largest
• 40:39
  geoengineering experiment in human history is climate change.
• 40:43
  And Doctor McCracken, I am really grateful that you're here
• 40:47
  to help us cut through the noise on all of this.
• 40:49
  You've had a distinguished career at our premier national
• 40:53
  labs and you've also been intimately involved in helping
• 40:56
  to bring together consensus around climate change, including
• 41:00
  to understand both the global implications and carbon
• 41:04
  emissions and also what that looks like in terms of
• 41:07
  downscaling for specific places. And so I just want to, I had to
• 41:11
  print this is a well known graph for anybody who has studied and
• 41:16
  understands climate change. But but the science, the science
• 41:19
  is very, very, very, very clear. Since the beginning of the
• 41:24
  industrial revolution, you can see here that carbon emissions
• 41:28
  have gone up steadily and global temperatures have also gone up.
• 41:33
  And the chemistry and the physics of that is that it
• 41:35
  creates energy in the atmosphere that affects the entire global
• 41:39
  distribution of weather events. So, you know, there's a lot of
• 41:43
  misinformation that gets put out there for folks that don't
• 41:46
  really understand the science of climate change.
• 41:48
  And it's it's representation at the local scale is very
• 41:51
  different in different places and it's always changing.
• 41:54
  So, Doctor McCracken, I hope that you can help us understand
• 41:59
  a little bit more. I mean, at the most basic level,
• 42:03
  we have the opportunity to educate the public here in this
• 42:05
  committee today. What is the global scientific
• 42:08
  consensus about how we address this?
• 42:14
  Well, the, so we have good indications that what's
• 42:17
  happening with the CEO carbon dioxide is it's coming from
• 42:20
  human activities, primarily from fossil fuels, some from
• 42:24
  deforestation. And we know also from history
• 42:27
  and physics and and a number of other ways that that's going to
• 42:30
  lead to trapping of heat and making things warmer.
• 42:34
  If you want to stop getting warmer, and we've been going up
• 42:38
  significantly at a very rapid pace compared to geological
• 42:43
  times, you basically have to stop and phase out CO2
• 42:47
  emissions. Exactly.
• 42:49
  And you know, I want to just correct something that was
• 42:51
  discussed earlier, which is that the the idea was put forward
• 42:55
  that somehow we want to eliminate carbon dioxide on
• 42:59
  planet Earth. That's not, let's just be honest
• 43:02
  and clear about this. That is not possible by the laws
• 43:06
  of physics. OK, so let let's just say that.
• 43:10
  But really what we're talking about is reducing the amount of
• 43:14
  atmospheric carbon that is in the atmosphere so that we get
• 43:17
  back to something more approximating pre industrial
• 43:21
  revolution activities because it is driving the capture of heat
• 43:26
  on planet Earth and heat creates energy.
• 43:28
  That's just anyone who's taken physics or chemistry.
• 43:31
  That's that's what climate change is.
• 43:33
  It's increasing energy on planet Earth and that causes more
• 43:37
  extreme flooding, more extreme storms, that causes drought in
• 43:41
  some places. It changes the whole
• 43:43
  distribution of how the planets energy functions.
• 43:46
  And that is really what climate change is.
• 43:49
  So in terms of reducing our carbon footprint, you know,
• 43:52
  we're headed in the coming months into the latest
• 43:56
  incarnation of the Council of Parties, a COP, to prepare for
• 44:01
  international climate negotiations.
• 44:04
  The president has removed us from climate commitments, and
• 44:08
  the GOP has just taken away many of the tools we have to reduce
• 44:12
  carbon emissions through the big ugly bill.
• 44:15
  Tell us what the consensus is in the scientific community about
• 44:19
  addressing carbon pollution in the United States.
• 44:21
  What do we need to be doing here in the United States?
• 44:25
  Well, we we've started by trying to use efficiency, We've started
• 44:29
  by trying to change our energy system.
• 44:32
  The key thing about our energy in the US is most of the
• 44:36
  renewable energy, solar and wind is out West and, and in the
• 44:40
  Midwest and a lot of the demand is in the East Coast.
• 44:43
  And just as it which is unfortunate.
• 44:47
  So what you do with natural gas when you have a different place
• 44:50
  where the source is and where the where it's needed is, you
• 44:53
  create pipelines. We need to do the equivalent of
• 44:58
  a pipeline for electricity across the US.
• 45:00
  It would be very beneficial to the country to do that and what
• 45:04
  is necessary to at the cheapest energy for the future.
• 45:08
  Thank you. The gentlelady's time has
• 45:10
  expired. I now recognize Mr. Cloud from
• 45:12
  Texas for 5 minutes of questioning.
• 45:15
  Thank you. Thank you all for being here.
• 45:17
  I think most people, you know, back home tuning into this would
• 45:20
  first of all be shocked to find out that maybe some of the
• 45:25
  suspicions like weather modification is one of those
• 45:27
  things it's like not really been talked about and people like, is
• 45:29
  it happening? Is it not?
• 45:30
  I don't know. I see things online and they
• 45:33
  come to find out like, OK, this has really been happening for
• 45:35
  decades. This is not conspiracy theory.
• 45:37
  This is like fact. There's businesses involved in
• 45:40
  doing this. And, and that brings up all
• 45:45
  these questions about how is this happening?
• 45:47
  How was that permitted? Is any business just able to go
• 45:50
  out and hey, I want to modify the weather in my area because I
• 45:53
  want rain. Well, what about these people
• 45:54
  who don't want rain and where those lines and how does that
• 45:57
  work? And and then there comes the
• 46:00
  liability side of this. You know, recently I'm from
• 46:03
  Texas. And so, you know, I was, I was
• 46:05
  there at Kerrville when the tragedy happened and everybody's
• 46:09
  concerned some cloud seeding happened a couple days.
• 46:12
  Prior and I'm not a meteorologist, you are and Mr.
• 46:15
  Martz and and I guess there's an understanding that that was.
• 46:19
  Too far away I guess, but it does bring up the question about
• 46:22
  liability and what if it was with the business be liable then
• 46:25
  or not and all these questions. I was wondering, Mr. Pelkey, if
• 46:28
  you want to, if you could touch on kind of those thoughts and
• 46:31
  what the current framework is and and.
• 46:34
  Just kind of. Give us a one-on-one for the
• 46:36
  citizenry. In a sense, yeah.
• 46:38
  Let me say, I mean, I've been aware of weather modification
• 46:42
  all my life. My dad was meteorologist.
• 46:43
  Yeah, but you're involved in this, right.
• 46:45
  And so when I was preparing for this hearing, I looked at the
• 46:47
  NOAA database and I was, you know, shocked to find there was
• 46:51
  more than 1100 reports in that database or covering the last 10
• 46:56
  years or so. So weather modification is
• 46:58
  ongoing and the reporting is, is not particularly good.
• 47:02
  Assessing the effectiveness is not good.
• 47:03
  And that leads people to ask questions.
• 47:05
  So if we go back to projects, Sears back in 1947, I think it
• 47:10
  was Hurricane King, it started dissipating and then it took a
• 47:13
  left turn and then struck the US.
• 47:16
  It's it's a natural question when someone intervenes in a
• 47:19
  system to say, did your intervention 'cause this bad
• 47:22
  thing to happen? This is why I've recommended
• 47:26
  having a very public, a very authoritative study.
• 47:29
  We can't have Republican science and Democrat science.
• 47:31
  We have to have science that's trusted by everyone to assess
• 47:35
  what weather modification has been done, what have been the
• 47:39
  effects. If we don't know what the
• 47:41
  effects are, what research can we do to know those effects?
• 47:44
  And if we can't know the effects, maybe that would
• 47:47
  structure how we think about going forward with that
• 47:49
  technology. Mr. Marks, do you want to speak
• 47:52
  to that? Yeah, I largely agree with that.
• 47:56
  I was actually going to bring up Project Cirrus, which obviously
• 47:58
  was a concern. There's also the concern, you
• 48:02
  know, in the case of like geoengineering, I know it kind
• 48:04
  of going off topic from weather modification, but it's a similar
• 48:07
  kind of issue here. If you were to, and if it were
• 48:10
  to be, if they were to implement this and it were to be
• 48:12
  successful, it were to 'cause you know, a few tenths up to a
• 48:15
  maybe a degree Celsius of global cooling, you know, over the
• 48:18
  course of three to five years. And of course, you'd have to
• 48:21
  continue to do that over several years because the aerosols mix
• 48:24
  out. But there's also the concern
• 48:27
  that say, say we did this, you know, and the instantaneous
• 48:29
  cooling occurred and there was a, you know, a really cold
• 48:32
  winter, you know, that that sent, you know, temperatures
• 48:36
  plunging below 0 down into Louisiana.
• 48:38
  We saw this actually this past this past winter with the Gulf
• 48:40
  Coast winter storm and the Arctic outbreak.
• 48:44
  Say something like that happened.
• 48:45
  Well, people will then probably, you know, blame that on the
• 48:49
  geoengineering. In fact, we know kind of through
• 48:52
  what natural variability, you know, obviously the effects of
• 48:54
  this with volcanic eruptions. I'm in 18618 fifteen rather
• 48:58
  Mount Tambor erupted and caused the year without a summer in
• 49:01
  1816 when there were two feet. There was 2 feet of snow in
• 49:05
  Vermont in June and during that same period there were frost in
• 49:09
  Georgia. The Congress that the
• 49:10
  chairwoman's district. So there's definitely concerns
• 49:13
  about that. And there's, there would be, you
• 49:14
  know, lawsuits filed after project series.
• 49:16
  There were lawsuits filed and obviously the results were
• 49:20
  eventually inconclusive. And the, the US Weather Bureau
• 49:23
  put together a team of scientists that showed that the
• 49:26
  Hurricanes can make those kinds of turns all on their own.
• 49:30
  And that kind of let the that, that allow the lawsuits to kind
• 49:32
  of subside. But there are definitely real
• 49:34
  concerns about that happening in the future.
• 49:36
  You know what I mean? Again, we just saw this with the
• 49:37
  Texas floods with I think it was Rainmaker Corporation if I'm
• 49:40
  correct. Obviously they when they seated
• 49:42
  that was day of the days before and it was I think 150 miles
• 49:45
  southeast of Houston. So it had no effect.
• 49:47
  But the people still ask the questions, and it also raises
• 49:50
  the concern of lawsuits being brought against these companies.
• 49:52
  Well, and then I had a question and Doctor McCracken, you talked
• 49:55
  about this too. You said there's no scientific
• 49:57
  evidence that it works through that.
• 49:58
  It doesn't. You mentioned that to Mr.
• 50:01
  Pelkey. You know, we've had people not,
• 50:04
  not on our subcommittee that I'm aware of it, on our general
• 50:07
  oversight committee, say, you know, the year's going to end.
• 50:09
  I think the countdown's down to six years now, you know, and,
• 50:13
  and there's this hysteria built around what we can and cannot do
• 50:17
  yet. There's no data for it.
• 50:18
  And I had to say, like our economy, we've spent trillions
• 50:21
  of dollars on this and like, are we actually moving that date out
• 50:27
  or, you know, I mean, what's, what's the question on that
• 50:29
  anyway? I.
• 50:32
  Thank you. I now recognize Miss Norton from
• 50:34
  the District of Columbia. Thank you, Madam Chair.
• 50:42
  The non partisan civil service is essential to our democracy.
• 50:49
  The Trump administration's gutting of the federal workforce
• 50:54
  is cruel, irresponsible and dangerous.
• 50:58
  Federal workers keep the federal government running.
• 51:02
  They do essential work every day that keeps Americans safe.
• 51:08
  Nonpartisan civil servants at the Federal Emergency Management
• 51:12
  Agency provide aid after storms, hurricanes, floods, tornadoes
• 51:20
  and wildflowers. The agency's employees have
• 51:25
  warned Congress that the federal government is not ready to
• 51:30
  respond to hurricane season. More than 180 agency employees
• 51:38
  sent a letter on August 25th warning that the cuts to the
• 51:44
  agency have hurt its ability to respond to emergencies.
• 51:52
  Instead of taking preparedness seriously, the Trump
• 51:57
  administration retaliated against the employees and put
• 52:03
  the public signers on leave. Doctor McCracken, what are the
• 52:10
  most important things? We should be.
• 52:14
  Doing to ensure federal agencies are prepared to respond to
• 52:20
  climate change, Eliminating extreme weather.
• 52:28
  Well, the the research they have been providing is, is
• 52:31
  information on what impacts will occur in particular places.
• 52:35
  So we talked about global climate change and people think
• 52:40
  about the science from the global scale, but impacts and
• 52:43
  what happens to people really depends on where you are.
• 52:47
  And so when we had the first National Climate Assessment, we
• 52:50
  did 20 regional workshops asking about what was happening in each
• 52:55
  region, what were their concerns.
• 52:57
  And it was fascinating that water resources was common among
• 53:01
  all of those kinds of kinds of areas and, and everything, but
• 53:06
  in a very different way. I mean, you wouldn't think water
• 53:08
  would be a problem in Alaska. You might expect it to be a
• 53:11
  problem in the Rio Grande Valley.
• 53:14
  But it was a problem everywhere with different kinds of changes.
• 53:18
  And what we we really wanted to do was try and provide each
• 53:22
  region access to the information so it could keep its economy
• 53:27
  strong, so it could keep doing things that make a difference.
• 53:30
  I mean, in in Washington, one of the very interesting things that
• 53:33
  has been done, it's known as one of the cities with the most
• 53:36
  trees. That's sort of a weather
• 53:38
  modification effort to provide shade and to provide moisture
• 53:43
  evaporation. One of the first weather
• 53:46
  modification assessments done in the US was done by Thomas
• 53:51
  Jefferson. He basically noticed that
• 53:54
  clearing the coastal plain in the Atlantic of a forest to have
• 53:57
  farms affected the sea breeze. And so there are effects going
• 54:02
  on. You want to think about what's
• 54:04
  going on in your region. You need to have information
• 54:06
  that's specific to your region and that's a translation issue
• 54:10
  of getting from the global models down to what's happening
• 54:13
  locally. What it what is the statistics
• 54:16
  of the weather that is going to change?
• 54:18
  Warmer nights, hotter days, more frequent hot days, higher,
• 54:23
  higher dew points, those are the kinds of things that that people
• 54:27
  really need to know about to help build their resilience and
• 54:30
  protect themselves. Doctor McCracken, why is it so
• 54:37
  important that scientists follow the data and not presuppose
• 54:44
  their conclusions? Well, it's very So what we try
• 54:49
  and do is scientists is reconcile multiple things.
• 54:53
  One is the data that comes in and the observations.
• 54:57
  Another is our theoretical understanding of how physics
• 55:01
  works, about cold air being denser than warm air and how
• 55:05
  things move. Another is looking back over the
• 55:08
  history of the Earth to try and understand and figure out why
• 55:13
  those changes were occurring that are shown in the geology.
• 55:16
  And So what scientists are looking for is consistency
• 55:20
  across things, not just that anyone.
• 55:22
  You can't believe just one or the other.
• 55:24
  You have to look at consistency across all of those aspects.
• 55:30
  Thank you, and I yield any time remaining to the Ranking Member.
• 55:39
  The the gentlewoman's time has expired.
• 55:41
  I now recognize Mr. Burchett from Tennessee for 5 minutes of
• 55:44
  questioning. Thank you, Chair Lady, briefly,
• 55:47
  Mr. Marks, can you explain what cloud seeding is?
• 55:52
  Yes, I can happy to explain it. So cloud seeding is the attempts
• 55:59
  to enhance rainfall or snowpack on a very localized scale and
• 56:04
  obviously back. Localized meaning.
• 56:08
  We're talking on a like a couple kilometers, 2 kilometers, yeah,
• 56:13
  yeah. Are the.
• 56:14
  Are the materials used in cloud seeding safe?
• 56:19
  There's are some concerns with silver iodide and how that
• 56:22
  precipitate when it precipitates out into the soil.
• 56:25
  There's concerns that it negatively can affect marine
• 56:28
  life, aquatic life, terrestrial life because of the the way
• 56:33
  least of silver at high concentrations.
• 56:36
  As far as dry ice, the dry ice method of it, which is something
• 56:39
  with those pellets sublimate into CO2.
• 56:41
  That's that's a harmless method. Would you would?
• 56:44
  You feel comfortable drinking a glass of water with several
• 56:48
  parts per million of silver iodide in it.
• 56:50
  I probably would not want to do that, no.
• 56:53
  OK, that's a good, good answer. Are states seeing measurable
• 56:59
  successes in cloud seeding? Not, not on a very large scale.
• 57:05
  We're talking not, not on a scale that's for 200 kilometers,
• 57:09
  but on a on a localized scale. There is some evidence that the
• 57:13
  statewide efforts especially in the Intermountain West in
• 57:16
  Colorado can increase like the snowpacker or or precipitation
• 57:20
  by up to 15%. But their range is 0 to about
• 57:24
  20% based on the pure review studies that I have read.
• 57:28
  But there's not a 100% success rate with that.
• 57:30
  That being said, I don't think that we should be trying to do
• 57:34
  that. Are you familiar with the
• 57:35
  process where they basically do it in a grid and then they
• 57:40
  follow it on the satellite to see where the rain had fallen
• 57:44
  to, to verify in fact that it was effective or not effective?
• 57:49
  Yeah, I've seen that they do. There's obviously control areas
• 57:51
  and areas of experimentation and there was also very inconclusive
• 57:55
  in the literature. And basically the process is
• 57:58
  they put this stuff in the air, it gets in the clouds, moisture
• 58:03
  condenses on it and it falls in the form of water droplets or
• 58:06
  snow weather due to the temperature, correct?
• 58:08
  Correct. OK.
• 58:10
  Is it possible that there could be lawsuits in the future of, of
• 58:14
  people say they're being robbed of their rainfall, Say if the if
• 58:19
  the winds were in a westerly position and the clouds were to
• 58:23
  empty, say in one county that was east of this area, and then
• 58:30
  they thought that the the rain should have come to them.
• 58:32
  And yet, yeah, it was literally stolen from them by the the
• 58:36
  cloud seeding prior to that. I think that people, I think
• 58:41
  there could be concerns for lawsuits of, of stuff like that
• 58:44
  for for sure. And that's that's something that
• 58:47
  we probably almost saw or we might see from the Texas floods
• 58:50
  this year. Again, the results are going to
• 58:52
  be and I think the court findings would find it.
• 58:54
  There's really no evidence that it that it had any material
• 58:57
  effect because most of the studies show little effect.
• 59:00
  But again, the results are inconclusive.
• 59:02
  But that doesn't stop there being lawsuits being filed.
• 59:05
  It should have the companies that were selling this process
• 59:08
  to have come back and say we're not effective.
• 59:11
  Correct. Yeah, I know so.
• 59:12
  There would be. That would be interesting to
• 59:14
  see. Mr. Pelkey Is the government
• 59:17
  engaging in any weather modification or geoengineering
• 59:20
  activities? The federal government is not
• 59:24
  state governments, the GAO reported.
• 59:27
  There's nine states in the US that support, and I will say
• 59:31
  effectiveness is measured not just in rainfall but also in
• 59:33
  marketing. I'm from Colorado and the state
• 59:37
  let's it be known that for ski season there's clouds getting
• 59:40
  going on so. And they've been doing it in the
• 59:42
  past, though. They've been doing it for
• 59:44
  several decades, the federal government.
• 59:45
  Has been doing. It the federal government peaked
• 59:47
  its weather modification investments in the 1970s, if it
• 59:50
  was in this year's budget, it would be the equivalent of $500
• 59:52
  million. So it was a substantial effort,
• 59:56
  but it did peak and it has declined.
• 59:58
  OK, what was the end result of that?
• 1:00:01
  Uncertainty as you heard that there's, there's not a lot of
• 1:00:05
  good science out there to say cloud sitting has this effect in
• 1:00:09
  this region. And I question whether it would
• 1:00:13
  even be possible because when you do an experiment, you have a
• 1:00:15
  control and then you haven't the experiment and you compare the
• 1:00:18
  two. We have one Earth.
• 1:00:20
  And so it's, if you can't, you can use models and so on.
• 1:00:23
  But it is very difficult, I think, for weather modification
• 1:00:26
  to reach that bar of certainty that would be required to
• 1:00:29
  understand cause and effect. OK, Yeah, we can't keep
• 1:00:32
  investing in it. Could the weather modification
• 1:00:35
  activities or other countries have a harmful effect on
• 1:00:37
  Americans? So this is 1 where I think it
• 1:00:40
  necessarily has to be international.
• 1:00:44
  It's in the 19. We've heard in the 1960's the US
• 1:00:47
  government sought to employ weather modification techniques
• 1:00:50
  as a weapon of war. And it would be important for
• 1:00:54
  the community to get together and whether it's like nuclear
• 1:00:57
  non proliferation to disclose and and set the ground rules for
• 1:01:01
  that type of research, just like you might do for gain of
• 1:01:03
  function research on viruses. Thank you.
• 1:01:06
  Thank you, Chair Lighting. Thank you.
• 1:01:08
  I now recognize Mr. Burleson from Missouri for 5 minutes of
• 1:01:12
  questioning. Thank you.
• 1:01:17
  Madam Chair. Doctor Pilkey, just to begin
• 1:01:21
  with the basics, can you help us understand the difference
• 1:01:24
  between localized efforts that might have and and Geo forming
• 1:01:33
  efforts from a from a policy perspective, Weather
• 1:01:37
  modification, as as you heard from Mr. Marks, is seeks to
• 1:01:42
  affect rainfall over, say, a drainage, a ski area, a small
• 1:01:46
  area. Geoengineering, as it's defined
• 1:01:49
  by the IPCC, seeks to counter the effects of global climate
• 1:01:52
  change. So at the much larger scale.
• 1:01:56
  And usually the effects of climate change, for better or
• 1:01:58
  worse, are measured in global average surface temperature.
• 1:02:01
  So affecting that that metric is, is the focus of
• 1:02:04
  geoengineering. Mr. Martz, I think.
• 1:02:07
  And I saw in your notes that you refer to it as that cloud
• 1:02:12
  seeding or a lot of these efforts really don't have and
• 1:02:16
  you had a term for it. I'm trying to get back to that
• 1:02:20
  where it the, the impact is. It's but it's hard to get beyond
• 1:02:26
  so many kilometers, right? Correct.
• 1:02:29
  Yeah, above. Let me find it here just so I
• 1:02:31
  get my terms right. You had a word.
• 1:02:33
  For it mesoscale, yes, yes and there's different levels of of
• 1:02:39
  mesoscale. So basically, so I said here, so
• 1:02:43
  All in all cloud sitting is incapable of altering weather
• 1:02:46
  patterns on what Orlanski in 1975, it's a period paper
• 1:02:49
  defines as the as a scale level, particularly Mesoalpha, which is
• 1:02:53
  greater than or equal to 200 kilometers.
• 1:02:55
  So above that, that horizontal distance 200 kilometers, there's
• 1:02:58
  really absolutely like no effect that that way, not that much we
• 1:03:01
  do know. But on small, much smaller
• 1:03:03
  scales than 200 kilometers, there is a very much a lot of
• 1:03:06
  uncertainty as to the efficacy of cloud seeing from a rainfall,
• 1:03:10
  precipitation standpoint. And the big reason for this is
• 1:03:12
  because natural variability is so large.
• 1:03:15
  Yeah, Yeah. So I, I, I hear you.
• 1:03:18
  So I think if folks are listening or paying attention,
• 1:03:22
  you can definitively say you got, I mean, your PhD, you're a
• 1:03:26
  meteor meteorologist, You can definitively say that these are
• 1:03:33
  cloud seeding. While it may occur, it's
• 1:03:36
  probably not occurring as often as people think because it's
• 1:03:39
  it's, its effects are unknown or not certain.
• 1:03:44
  It's and, and then in addition, it only has effects a small
• 1:03:49
  region. Would you both agree with that?
• 1:03:52
  Yes, for all the effort that's been put in the weather
• 1:03:54
  modification, if it is having an effects, they're not large
• 1:03:58
  enough that we can really see them very clearly.
• 1:04:00
  I would agree to that, yes. Would you say that in general,
• 1:04:03
  we kind of have a little bit of an arrogance about our impact on
• 1:04:07
  on this planet? Very much so, and I also find
• 1:04:12
  that it's a lot with climate change as well.
• 1:04:14
  Obviously. Again, I'm going to just put a
• 1:04:16
  disclaimer here before I am called a climate denier by
• 1:04:19
  people. I agree that CO2 is a greenhouse
• 1:04:22
  gas and yes, all else being equal, it does cause warming in
• 1:04:25
  the lower atmosphere. However, how that translates to
• 1:04:28
  changes in extreme weather is very much more complicated.
• 1:04:31
  And I find that there's a very stark parallel between people
• 1:04:35
  who claim that, you know, hurricanes are being caused,
• 1:04:38
  it's called are caused by cloud seeding and it they're able to
• 1:04:40
  control hurricanes, as well as people who think that hurricanes
• 1:04:42
  are caused by, you know, a one part per 10,000 increase in
• 1:04:45
  atmospheric carbon dioxide. And in fact, in my chart here
• 1:04:50
  that I show shows data that shows that neither hurricane
• 1:04:54
  frequency nor intensity is measured by the cumulative cycle
• 1:04:57
  and energy index have increased since 1990.
• 1:05:00
  And that's data from Colorado State University, actually one
• 1:05:03
  of the schools that Doctor Pilkey's father taught at, I
• 1:05:06
  believe, And there's also no increase, that there's an
• 1:05:11
  increase in rapid intensification events globally.
• 1:05:13
  This is a chart she went back to 1990.
• 1:05:15
  This was provided to me by Doctor Phil Clots back also from
• 1:05:20
  CSU, and it shows that there's no increase since 1990 in the
• 1:05:24
  number of rapid intensification events, which is the frequent,
• 1:05:26
  which is a measure of how fast hurricanes intensify and is
• 1:05:29
  defined as a 30 knot increase or greater in 24 hours.
• 1:05:33
  So there have been increases in heavy rainfall in some regions
• 1:05:36
  and there's been decreases in other regions and some of that
• 1:05:39
  could be tied to a warmer, you know, atmosphere in the Clausius
• 1:05:41
  collapron relation. But overall, the idea that we
• 1:05:46
  are able to control whether even through climate change is
• 1:05:49
  largely grossly overstated. Thank you.
• 1:05:52
  I yield back the rest of my time.
• 1:05:55
  The gentleman yields. I now recognize Mr. Sue
• 1:05:58
  Brahmanyan from Virginia for 5 minutes of questioning.
• 1:06:02
  Thank you. Madam Chair, I'm very concerned
• 1:06:05
  about the this administration firing climate scientists and
• 1:06:10
  scientists generally and cutting off research for science.
• 1:06:15
  And we had a really good group of people outside NASA yesterday
• 1:06:21
  talking about the importance of science and climate science.
• 1:06:24
  And Doctor McCracken, I would just get your thoughts on what,
• 1:06:29
  what is going to be the implications of cutting off this
• 1:06:31
  kind of research and these types of firings and, and what, what
• 1:06:35
  is that going to mean for our future when it comes to our
• 1:06:39
  climate as well as science generally in our country?
• 1:06:44
  Well, without the information, it's hard to get projections of
• 1:06:48
  exactly what's going to happen to get the best information.
• 1:06:51
  So people can feel, can prepare themselves, can be resilient, so
• 1:06:56
  society can design infrastructure that that will
• 1:07:00
  withstand things. When when you increase the
• 1:07:03
  temperature, when you have the CO2 concentration high, though
• 1:07:07
  90% or so of the warming is going on in the ocean, what
• 1:07:12
  happens with when the ocean warms, it keeps the air warm,
• 1:07:15
  but it also evaporates more moisture.
• 1:07:18
  And when the that moisture laden air comes over land and runs
• 1:07:25
  into a mountain range or a Mesa or something, it forces out
• 1:07:29
  these drenching rains. And it's happening not just in
• 1:07:32
  Texas, which was really tragic, but there's also been tragic
• 1:07:35
  events in Pakistan and India and other locations that when the
• 1:07:41
  ocean warms, that heat just adds to the moisture.
• 1:07:45
  And if the ground is saturated in water already, all the
• 1:07:49
  additional moisture that comes out will run off and that
• 1:07:53
  creates floods that are larger than the region is used to.
• 1:07:58
  And these weather events are costing us 10s of billions of
• 1:08:03
  dollars, not more. As a country, it's going to cost
• 1:08:05
  us trillions eventually. You know, what can we do to
• 1:08:11
  prevent these weather events in the future?
• 1:08:17
  Well, if you want to stop ocean warming, you basically have to
• 1:08:20
  stop having carbon dioxide trapping, trapping infrared
• 1:08:27
  radiation and energy that's hard to do to stop and get rid of all
• 1:08:32
  the CO2 emissions. They provide a very valuable
• 1:08:35
  service until it's proving difficult.
• 1:08:38
  And that's why climate intervention is something we
• 1:08:41
  want to look at and see. It's an approach to trying to
• 1:08:44
  see if you can suppress the heating of, of the atmosphere as
• 1:08:50
  a whole, mainly of the ocean, if you can, because the land will
• 1:08:53
  respond pretty quickly. But the ocean build up of heat
• 1:08:57
  is something that will persist for very long times.
• 1:09:00
  And it, it just causes these atmospheric rivers that are
• 1:09:04
  occurring that hit California that it are hitting other
• 1:09:09
  countries. It's a a very serious issue and
• 1:09:13
  can cause great harm. And there's it's very hard to
• 1:09:17
  withstand it as things happen and.
• 1:09:20
  Is do you think it's are we too late?
• 1:09:23
  Is there or is there things we can still do when it comes to
• 1:09:28
  curving the negative effects of climate change?
• 1:09:32
  Well, there are, there are some doomsayers out there, but
• 1:09:35
  there's certain things, certain things we can do.
• 1:09:36
  One thing is cutting methane emissions.
• 1:09:39
  Methane is natural gas that leaks out from fossil fuel,
• 1:09:44
  things that comes from agriculture, other things that
• 1:09:47
  has an atmospheric lifetime that's very short, where a CO2
• 1:09:50
  has a long lifetime. So if you can sharply cut CO2
• 1:09:54
  emissions, that really helps. And there is an international
• 1:09:57
  initiative to do that. And, and so that's one of the
• 1:10:02
  first things that that people will urge as something to to, to
• 1:10:06
  do. Great.
• 1:10:08
  Thank you. I yield back.
• 1:10:11
  The gentleman yields. I request unanimous consent that
• 1:10:14
  the subcommittee have a second round of questions for the
• 1:10:17
  witnesses without objection. So ordered.
• 1:10:20
  I now recognize myself for 5 minutes of questioning.
• 1:10:24
  It's an interesting observation to listen to the discussion
• 1:10:29
  between what I would call two sides in the belief on on
• 1:10:33
  climate. And I'd like to ask each of you,
• 1:10:37
  and I'll start with you, Doctor Pelkey has the Earth's, has
• 1:10:42
  Earth's climate and and temperatures.
• 1:10:46
  Has that been something that has changed historically since the
• 1:10:49
  creation of the world? Yeah, there's there's long time
• 1:10:54
  series that go back thousands, millions of years showing vast
• 1:10:58
  changes. However, the changes over the
• 1:11:00
  last century and 1/2 have been judged to be largely driven by
• 1:11:05
  the accumulating greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
• 1:11:08
  So that's not particularly controversial.
• 1:11:10
  What is controversial is what are the effects when we know
• 1:11:13
  them. I I would disagree with Doctor
• 1:11:16
  McCracken that we can control weather with carbon dioxide
• 1:11:19
  emissions. It's there's no knob that says
• 1:11:21
  more extreme weather, less extreme weather.
• 1:11:23
  There's a lot of great reasons for reducing carbon dioxide
• 1:11:25
  emissions, but I don't think anyone should think we're going
• 1:11:28
  to stop hurricanes or floods or atmospheric rivers using that
• 1:11:32
  knob. Mr. Mart.
• 1:11:35
  I largely agree with Doctor, Doctor Pilkey about that
• 1:11:37
  assessment pretty much entirely. I do agree that obviously the
• 1:11:42
  planet has gone through all sorts of ebbs and flows
• 1:11:44
  throughout its 4 1/2 billion year history.
• 1:11:47
  And obviously the Earth has gotten warmer over the last 100
• 1:11:50
  years. And I do agree that some, most,
• 1:11:52
  I don't know how much of it is due to CO2 emissions, because
• 1:11:55
  CO2 is a greenhouse gas. The laws of physics are very
• 1:11:57
  clear on on that. However, there is uncertainties
• 1:12:00
  as I highlighted in my testimony here.
• 1:12:03
  And this is something that some of the scientists who work very
• 1:12:07
  closely on this one and is Doctor Roy Spencer at the
• 1:12:09
  University of Alabama in Huntsville.
• 1:12:11
  He's a science team leader on one of NASA satellites that
• 1:12:14
  measures the radiation flows and out of the atmosphere.
• 1:12:16
  I know him very well. Mr. Martz, I only have a short
• 1:12:19
  amount of time. So obviously the the natural
• 1:12:23
  energy flows in and out of the Earth's atmosphere.
• 1:12:25
  Right, but that's not controlled by man.
• 1:12:27
  I mean, did man create the Ice Age?
• 1:12:29
  No. Yeah.
• 1:12:30
  Right. So none of us were alive back
• 1:12:32
  then to know for sure. Doctor McCracken, do you do you
• 1:12:36
  believe that the world has seen climate changes through it since
• 1:12:39
  the creation of the world? Well, I I'd say I'm convinced by
• 1:12:43
  the evidence that that has happened, yes.
• 1:12:45
  Yeah. Thank you.
• 1:12:47
  I'd also like to ask you all if you believe that people, regular
• 1:12:53
  people, the American people and people all over the world, do
• 1:12:57
  they have the God-given right to clean air, clean water, clean
• 1:13:01
  crops? Or should governments and for
• 1:13:04
  profit business, businesses and then scientists be be allowed to
• 1:13:10
  override ordinary people, citizens of the United States
• 1:13:15
  and spray all types of chemicals into the air, whether it's from
• 1:13:20
  the ground or in the sky? Who, who, who's who?
• 1:13:22
  Has a God-given right over that Doctor Pilkey?
• 1:13:26
  Yeah, it's in my testimony. That's why I called for enhanced
• 1:13:30
  oversight and regulation. I'm, I have this old fashioned
• 1:13:33
  view, I'm a political scientist by training that the government
• 1:13:36
  is the people. And if we start talking about
• 1:13:38
  the government being separate from the people, then we,
• 1:13:40
  something's messed up out there. And so I would much rather see
• 1:13:43
  people, normal people, feel like the the government belongs to
• 1:13:46
  them and that they they are one and the same.
• 1:13:49
  The government or clean air, clean skies and clean land.
• 1:13:52
  Well, the way we regulate and get clean air as we come
• 1:13:55
  together and work and call it government, call it whatever you
• 1:13:59
  want to call it, but there's there's no way to have clean air
• 1:14:02
  to regulate geoengineering unless people can come together
• 1:14:04
  and make decisions that this is in our common interest.
• 1:14:07
  Right, Mr. Martz. I agree with that sentiment as
• 1:14:11
  well. I think that there obviously
• 1:14:13
  needs to be stricter oversight and regulation on these some of
• 1:14:16
  these technologies and and probably some more research into
• 1:14:19
  them, but I think there should be largely good Doctor Pilkey, a
• 1:14:23
  non use agreement, especially on the solar geoengineering aspects
• 1:14:25
  of it. And as a final point, yes,
• 1:14:28
  people are people should have a right to, you know, free, you
• 1:14:32
  know, I'm sorry to clean air or clean water and, and all of
• 1:14:35
  that. Doctor McCracken.
• 1:14:37
  Yes, of course they should. And there's actually a lawsuit
• 1:14:40
  of the youth trying to ensure that is something that the
• 1:14:42
  government does to make sure that there is clean air, clean
• 1:14:46
  water and a healthy climate. Yeah, thank you.
• 1:14:49
  I, I agree with that. I just want to point back to a
• 1:14:53
  government funded project that that was in a government housing
• 1:14:58
  where in St. Louis, MO where the US Army
• 1:15:03
  sprayed that some sort of chemical fog over these people,
• 1:15:07
  basically making them Lab Rats in an experiment.
• 1:15:10
  And that's how people feel today about all types of weather
• 1:15:13
  modification and geoengineering. No one wants to be a lab rat.
• 1:15:17
  And I appreciate your comments Where we only have one earth,
• 1:15:21
  one earth and we really honestly should be, should be taking care
• 1:15:26
  of that. My my time has expired.
• 1:15:36
  Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. Thank you all for being here.
• 1:15:39
  Doctor Pelkey, could you just briefly explain the difference
• 1:15:43
  between cloud seeding and geoengineering?
• 1:15:47
  I'll give you the broad brushes, but cloud seeding is an effort
• 1:15:50
  to modify precipitation over a small scale.
• 1:15:53
  Geoengineering is an effort to counter the effects of human
• 1:15:56
  caused climate change at the planetary scale.
• 1:15:58
  Got it. And.
• 1:16:00
  Last July, as, as, as you know, there were catastrophic floods
• 1:16:03
  in in Texas. Have you seen any evidence to
• 1:16:06
  suggest the cloud seeding contributed to those floods,
• 1:16:10
  exacerbated the problem or or had any impact on them?
• 1:16:13
  I'll defer to Chris, who's talked about that in his
• 1:16:15
  testimony. Sure.
• 1:16:17
  Hi, Congressman. There is no evidence that while
• 1:16:20
  there is, let me backtrack here. While there is evidence that
• 1:16:23
  cloud seeding can be effective, there's also an evidence that
• 1:16:25
  it's not as effective. There is very inconclusive
• 1:16:27
  results in literature on it because natural variability is
• 1:16:30
  so large. As far as the Texas floods go,
• 1:16:32
  in particular, I think the cloud seeding, the company that was
• 1:16:37
  accused of it was Rainmaker if I'm, if I'm correct on that.
• 1:16:40
  But when they seeded, when they did cloud sitting activities,
• 1:16:42
  they did it I think 2 days before the the rain began and it
• 1:16:46
  was 200. I think it was 150 miles
• 1:16:47
  southeast of Houston, TX or not Houston, San Antonio, if I'm
• 1:16:51
  correct on that. Which means that in terms of the
• 1:16:53
  Texas Hill Country, there was no way for that cloud sitting to
• 1:16:57
  have any had had had any material effects on the on the
• 1:17:00
  floods. Got it.
• 1:17:03
  And Mr. Mark, so continue with you.
• 1:17:06
  Are you familiar with the butterfly effect?
• 1:17:09
  Yes, I am. OK, got it.
• 1:17:11
  It, you know, kind of the the foundational principle of chaos
• 1:17:15
  theory that small changes in initial conditions in a complex
• 1:17:19
  system can have second. Third quarter, 4th order.
• 1:17:23
  Consequences that are seemingly unpredictable.
• 1:17:26
  How do, how do you think about that concept being applied to
• 1:17:30
  weather seating? What it you know, small changes
• 1:17:34
  in a in a complex system and how, how can you understand, how
• 1:17:37
  can we get comfortable that there aren't going to be 3rd,
• 1:17:40
  4th order impacts of a potentially much larger
• 1:17:44
  magnitude? I think that there are again,
• 1:17:47
  obviously very much large uncertainties about it and
• 1:17:50
  obviously some more research into it needs to be done
• 1:17:52
  probably on a modeling effort. But trying to, I think that the
• 1:17:57
  to do it as far as the environmental impacts of it in
• 1:18:00
  particular need to be studied, especially with silver iodide
• 1:18:04
  and how it affects our water tables and our soil because
• 1:18:07
  there's definitely concerns about that.
• 1:18:09
  And and I think there is to be more labs, laboratory studies on
• 1:18:12
  that, more research that's funded to do that kind of thing.
• 1:18:16
  Given the complexity of the issue here and how how large
• 1:18:22
  that this problem is, how how do you study something like that?
• 1:18:26
  I think that you would employ a group of scientists and you need
• 1:18:30
  to do some sort of bipartisan effort to look and see what we
• 1:18:33
  know about it. And in A to do a comprehensive,
• 1:18:35
  thorough report, that would be people from different
• 1:18:40
  perspectives that come together and discuss and mesh out the
• 1:18:42
  details and then conduct experiments on it.
• 1:18:44
  Because in science you can't just also you can't just use
• 1:18:46
  them in modeling. You also have to test things and
• 1:18:49
  do it through a laboratory experiment to have observations
• 1:18:51
  because all science is numbers. Got it.
• 1:18:55
  And Doctor Pilkey, back back to you.
• 1:18:56
  It's been reported that China has spent $2 billion in the past
• 1:18:59
  decade on weather modification activities.
• 1:19:03
  How? How could an adversary use what
• 1:19:05
  weather modification for nefarious purposes?
• 1:19:09
  Yeah, this is a great question and also gets to your last
• 1:19:12
  question as to why we want to understand effectiveness,
• 1:19:15
  because if it's not effective, then they're not going to be
• 1:19:17
  able to do much with it. And so This is why, as I said in
• 1:19:21
  my testimony, let's start with the questions that that Sherwin
• 1:19:24
  Green had in her first 5 minutes of, of, of questioning.
• 1:19:27
  Fantastic questions. You guys have the National
• 1:19:29
  Academy of Sciences at your disposal where you can ask
• 1:19:32
  exactly these questions. And a great question would be,
• 1:19:36
  given what we know about weather modification, what could our
• 1:19:39
  adversaries and enemies put it to use and how would we know it?
• 1:19:42
  I will also say this is one reason why it's really important
• 1:19:46
  to make sure that the observations and monitoring of
• 1:19:49
  our atmosphere is fully funded, not just for scientists to do
• 1:19:53
  research. But so with that, what is your
• 1:19:54
  opinion on how an how an adversary could could use
• 1:19:58
  weather modification? So my understanding is that
• 1:20:00
  weather modification is not particularly effective.
• 1:20:02
  And so I based on that level of knowledge, not much, but it's
• 1:20:07
  certainly something that I would want.
• 1:20:09
  A range of experts to weigh in on, given that we don't know
• 1:20:12
  what's going on in China and elsewhere.
• 1:20:15
  Got it. Thank you, Madam Chair, Yield
• 1:20:16
  back the remainder of my time. The gentleman yields.
• 1:20:19
  I now recognize Miss Stansbury for 5 minutes of questioning.
• 1:20:23
  Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. Well, there's a lot going on in
• 1:20:25
  this hearing, so I want to kind of break it into pieces because
• 1:20:28
  I think it might help first out some of the challenges I think
• 1:20:32
  the conversation is having. So let's talk about cloud
• 1:20:35
  seeding as a technology. As a technology.
• 1:20:38
  The idea of cloud seeding is just that it's based on the
• 1:20:40
  physics of clouds, which is that in order to have rain or
• 1:20:44
  precipitation, a water droplet has to be heavy enough to
• 1:20:48
  condense the fall out of a cloud that that's what cloud seeding
• 1:20:51
  is based on. And so there's been
• 1:20:53
  experimentation going back to the 1940s to introduce different
• 1:20:57
  particles into the atmosphere to see if dust store these other
• 1:21:02
  chemicals can create a precipitation moment and has
• 1:21:06
  been identified by a number of our witnesses today.
• 1:21:10
  There is still a lot of research to be done about its efficacy.
• 1:21:14
  There are studies that have showed in certain instances it
• 1:21:17
  may have increased the probability of a specific
• 1:21:20
  incidence of precipitation. But there's also a lot of data
• 1:21:24
  needed and there's a very robust analysis that GAO has engaged in
• 1:21:29
  and talked to experts so that that's the science around cloud
• 1:21:33
  seeding, that that's cloud seeding.
• 1:21:35
  But climate change is a different situation.
• 1:21:37
  Let's talk about climate change. And I think every single witness
• 1:21:41
  here has identified that there's no dispute in the scientific
• 1:21:44
  community the global carbon emissions have gone up and that
• 1:21:49
  we know from observational data. This isn't a theory.
• 1:21:53
  This is not like, oh, we're we're trying to figure out if
• 1:21:57
  this is true or not. The data are very clear.
• 1:22:02
  We have had an increase in global, global temperature.
• 1:22:06
  It has manifest in regional temperature increases across
• 1:22:11
  different parts of the planet and in places like the American
• 1:22:14
  Southwest, like where I'm from, it is manifest in an increase in
• 1:22:19
  temperature year after year, especially over the last 30
• 1:22:22
  years, a decrease in precipitation year after year
• 1:22:26
  for the last 30 years, and the most intense drought we've seen
• 1:22:31
  in recorded history since there was a major geologic change in
• 1:22:38
  the planet. That's just facts.
• 1:22:41
  That's just observational data. That's just measuring what we
• 1:22:45
  see in the environment. So there's no dispute over that.
• 1:22:51
  And So what scientists have consensus about is that carbon
• 1:22:56
  is a pollutant that is coming from industrial activity all
• 1:23:00
  around the planet. It is a challenge that involves
• 1:23:04
  the Commons, which is our atmosphere.
• 1:23:06
  I agree wholeheartedly with the chairwoman that we should be
• 1:23:11
  regulating, spraying or putting things into the atmosphere.
• 1:23:14
  And that's exactly what the EPA does.
• 1:23:17
  That is why the EPA on the consensus of scientists not only
• 1:23:21
  across the United States, decided to regulate the emission
• 1:23:26
  of carbon because we know it's contributing to changes in the
• 1:23:31
  global atmosphere. That's increasing energy in the
• 1:23:34
  atmosphere that is producing measurable effects on the
• 1:23:38
  ground. Now, I agree that the incidence
• 1:23:41
  of individual weather events, the ability to change the
• 1:23:45
  trajectory of individual weather events, whether it's something
• 1:23:48
  as powerful as a hurricane or something as powerful as an
• 1:23:52
  atmospheric river, as was stated by Doctor McCracken, those are
• 1:23:58
  those are events that are so massive in scale.
• 1:24:01
  We don't we don't know that an A individual entity or pollution
• 1:24:07
  in one place is is culpable, if you will, for an incident
• 1:24:12
  happening. What we're talking about is a
• 1:24:15
  change in global chemistry and global atmospheric physics that
• 1:24:20
  is driving the distribution of weather events all across the
• 1:24:24
  planet. And that is why it is a common
• 1:24:29
  cool problem. It is why we need international
• 1:24:32
  climate agreements. It is why 10s of thousands of
• 1:24:35
  scientists around the world are urging countries to take climate
• 1:24:39
  action now. It is why the United States
• 1:24:42
  regulates carbon, or was until Donald Trump took away those
• 1:24:45
  regulations just a couple of months ago.
• 1:24:47
  It's why we measure carbon emissions.
• 1:24:50
  It's why we're prepared as Democratic members of Congress
• 1:24:53
  to go show our faces and good faith on international forums
• 1:24:57
  that the United States still stand strong with climate
• 1:25:00
  action. Because as one of my colleagues
• 1:25:03
  just pointed out across the aisle, it is an international
• 1:25:07
  problem. It is an international problem.
• 1:25:10
  Pollution and one side of the planet affects the entire global
• 1:25:13
  Commons. And that is why we need climate
• 1:25:16
  action in the United States and every single country on planet
• 1:25:20
  Earth, because it affects all of us.
• 1:25:23
  So that's what the science tells us, and I want to just be clear
• 1:25:27
  on that. And with that I yield back.
• 1:25:30
  The gentlelady yields. I now recognize Mr. Fallon from
• 1:25:32
  Texas for 5 minutes of questioning.
• 1:25:35
  Thank you, Madam Chair, appreciate it.
• 1:25:36
  And I love the civil discourse. We need more of it in the
• 1:25:39
  country, that's for sure. Doctor McCracken, thank you for
• 1:25:42
  coming. And it's it's not often that I
• 1:25:45
  get to talk to and converse with somebody has learned it as you
• 1:25:49
  Sir, you were graduate from Princeton.
• 1:25:51
  Is that correct? Yes.
• 1:25:52
  In 64, excuse me, in 196464, I don't know when that became 61
• 1:25:58
  years ago and that's something, but it's a huge.
• 1:26:01
  One time ago. Fair to say you've been a
• 1:26:03
  climate scientist for over half a century.
• 1:26:05
  Yes, Sir. Do you think that there's a
• 1:26:07
  growing tendency for those in power, or at least I should say
• 1:26:12
  for those, some of those in power, to engage in, in climate
• 1:26:17
  alarmism? The scientists try, when they
• 1:26:24
  speak about it, to be very careful in how they talk.
• 1:26:27
  But I'm not talking about scientists.
• 1:26:28
  I'm talking. About but in the politicians,
• 1:26:30
  but in the yeah, in the media and others, things get
• 1:26:34
  simplified and amplified. So in other words, like frat?
• 1:26:38
  Gets reported, so that happens, yes.
• 1:26:39
  Like making frightening fear mongering claims of doom and
• 1:26:43
  gloom and being more hyperbolic and serious about climate and
• 1:26:47
  the and the weather. Is that fair statement?
• 1:26:52
  Well, I think the situation that we're facing is rather
• 1:26:55
  unprecedented in what's happening.
• 1:26:58
  And, and I apologize, doctor, I just have limited time.
• 1:27:01
  So kind of yes or no, I suppose. Like for instance, Al Gore, a
• 1:27:06
  former vice president of these United States made a name for
• 1:27:09
  himself, some would say fame, some would say notoriety with
• 1:27:12
  his his activism within the climate realm.
• 1:27:16
  And in 2009 he said that he there he believed there was a
• 1:27:19
  75% chance that the polar ice cap would be ice free in the
• 1:27:23
  summer months. Did that ever happened since
• 1:27:25
  2009? No, that did not.
• 1:27:28
  That's not that has not happened.
• 1:27:30
  In fact, on the Southern Pole, the Antarctica shelf grew a
• 1:27:33
  little bit, didn't it? From 21 to 23.
• 1:27:37
  Well, there are variations that occur with what?
• 1:27:40
  But it didn't happen. He made a claim in O Nine.
• 1:27:41
  It was rather it's been proven to be egregious.
• 1:27:43
  It never happened. In 2006, in his documentary and
• 1:27:47
  Inconvenient Truth, he claimed that sea levels could rise up to
• 1:27:51
  20 feet in the near future. Did that happen?
• 1:27:56
  It's starting to accelerate. And it did it.
• 1:27:58
  Did it happen? It hasn't happened yet.
• 1:28:00
  Not 20 feet. No, but that's a possibility.
• 1:28:03
  But it did not happen in the near future. 20 feet.
• 1:28:07
  Fact, we're at the right now. We're at elevation 410 feet in
• 1:28:10
  DC. You grew up in Schenectady, NY.
• 1:28:13
  I grew up in Pittsfield, Mass, very close to one another.
• 1:28:15
  We are at 1039 feet in elevation.
• 1:28:18
  Princeton was a 203 feet. What is a beach house?
• 1:28:21
  What's the elevation of a beach house?
• 1:28:24
  They tend to be a few feet. Yeah, zero, 2-3, something like
• 1:28:27
  that. It's interesting that the Al
• 1:28:29
  Gore ran for president or in the Democratic ticket in 2000,
• 1:28:32
  didn't make it. But the next president,
• 1:28:34
  Democratic president did was Barack Obama, and he invested
• 1:28:37
  $12 million in a beach house in Martha's Vineyard.
• 1:28:42
  And Joe Biden, the next Democratic president, has
• 1:28:44
  invested nearly $4 million, at least current value and a beach
• 1:28:48
  house. Sea level pretty much 2 feet,
• 1:28:51
  not to 20 feet. And in fact, what really
• 1:28:53
  happened was sea levels rose, according to the National
• 1:28:56
  Oceanic Atmospheric Administration.
• 1:28:59
  And from 1993 to 2020, one 3.8 inches, not 20 feet.
• 1:29:05
  By that rate, it will take 1136 years to reach 20 feet.
• 1:29:11
  I don't think we would define that as in the near future.
• 1:29:15
  Another committee member, a former committee member of the
• 1:29:18
  Oversight Committee in 2021 made some interesting claims.
• 1:29:23
  She claimed that crop yields are already projected to fail and by
• 1:29:28
  2028 famine will hit the. World's most vulnerable.
• 1:29:31
  Populations. Do you agree with that
• 1:29:33
  statement, Sir? I'm sorry, I missed exactly what
• 1:29:35
  Oh. Sure.
• 1:29:36
  No, no, that's OK In a former member of this committee who's
• 1:29:39
  rather prominent in the political realm, said that by
• 1:29:42
  2028, which is only 18 months from well less than that now,
• 1:29:46
  that crop yields would are projected to fail and famine
• 1:29:50
  would hit the world's most vulnerable populations.
• 1:29:54
  It is amazing how fast one can get into situations of drought
• 1:29:59
  and failures in particular regions has that, it has not.
• 1:30:04
  So if I can, because I just have 30 seconds left, I just wanted
• 1:30:06
  to share some data and facts, which are friends, like the five
• 1:30:10
  poorest countries in the world, which would be the most
• 1:30:13
  vulnerable. Madagascar had a population in
• 1:30:16
  2000 of 16,000,000. Today it's 31 million, it's
• 1:30:19
  doubled. Liberia, 3,000,000, now 6.
• 1:30:22
  Somalia 9,000,019 million. Now Democratic Republic of the
• 1:30:25
  Congo was 50 million, now it's 113,000,000.
• 1:30:29
  Mozambique 18,000,036 million. You see the trend?
• 1:30:33
  It is doubled. Famine has not occurred.
• 1:30:35
  It is hyperbolic, It is not serious.
• 1:30:38
  Madam Chair, I yield back. But a gentleman yields.
• 1:30:41
  I now recognize Miss Crockett from Texas for 5 minutes of
• 1:30:44
  questioning. Thank you so much, Madam Chair.
• 1:30:47
  The Republicans have been so busy protecting pedophiles and
• 1:30:51
  rapists that they forgot what this subcommittee is supposed to
• 1:30:54
  be about. We're supposed to be talking
• 1:30:56
  about improving government efficiency.
• 1:30:58
  We're supposed to be talking about protecting taxpayer
• 1:31:00
  dollars from corruption. But congressional Republicans
• 1:31:03
  have led the most corrupt administration in American
• 1:31:07
  history. Run wild.
• 1:31:08
  Republicans have turned the United States government into
• 1:31:10
  the world's largest Ponzi scheme.
• 1:31:13
  And it isn't surprising the corruption is rampant in this
• 1:31:16
  administration because, well, we know who the president is.
• 1:31:20
  It's actually been 84 days since our last hearing.
• 1:31:24
  The chairwoman could have called a hearing about how this is the
• 1:31:27
  weakest hiring market since 2017, and we all know who the
• 1:31:30
  president was in 2017. We could have had a hearing on
• 1:31:34
  how Donald Trump's illegal tariffs are increasing the cost
• 1:31:37
  of living for their constituents.
• 1:31:39
  We could have had a hearing on why the Bureau of Prisons is
• 1:31:42
  accommodating human traffickers like Ghislaine Maxwell.
• 1:31:46
  We could have had a hearing on how the president is using the
• 1:31:49
  office to enrich himself and his family and friends.
• 1:31:53
  We could have had a hearing on how this administration is
• 1:31:56
  illegally stealing more than $400 billion in congressionally
• 1:31:59
  directed funds, but they'd rather distract you from the
• 1:32:02
  fact that their constituents are likely to die from their
• 1:32:05
  decisions to cut healthcare and SNAP before some chemtrail
• 1:32:12
  conspiracy. The Republicans don't care about
• 1:32:16
  their constituents suffering from anything.
• 1:32:18
  They've been railing against the American people for the last
• 1:32:21
  nine months, and they've been doubling down.
• 1:32:24
  Taking your health care wasn't enough.
• 1:32:26
  They've attacked Americans housing, they've attacked
• 1:32:29
  Americans food and child care assistance, and they've attacked
• 1:32:32
  Americans environmental protections.
• 1:32:34
  They're letting the oil companies and big data companies
• 1:32:38
  write their energy and environmental policies.
• 1:32:41
  These policies not only lead to sicker people, they also lead to
• 1:32:45
  dirtier water, more polluted air, and increased utility
• 1:32:50
  bills. And we know that these policies
• 1:32:53
  will disproportionately impact Black and brown communities
• 1:32:57
  around the country. So, Doctor McCracken, the Trump
• 1:33:01
  administration has dismantled agencies, fired scientists,
• 1:33:05
  defunded research, and is defunding universities.
• 1:33:09
  Do these actions disincentivize institutions from engaging in
• 1:33:14
  research and deter students wanting to work on climate
• 1:33:19
  science? I would think the answer to that
• 1:33:23
  would be yes. Thank you so much.
• 1:33:25
  And Doctor McCracken, wouldn't you agree that eliminating
• 1:33:29
  Environmental Research can have devastating impacts on
• 1:33:32
  communities, particularly Black and Brown communities, which are
• 1:33:36
  often located in highly industrialized areas?
• 1:33:40
  Yes, I agree. And I might just say during the
• 1:33:43
  national assessment, that was one of the issues we tried to
• 1:33:46
  address by having some of the historically black colleges be
• 1:33:50
  looking at the assessment of climate change and its
• 1:33:53
  significance in the Gulf Coast region.
• 1:33:55
  Thank you so much. I have a couple of UCS that I
• 1:33:59
  want to answer into the record really quickly at this moment.
• 1:34:03
  One is from September 11th of 2025.
• 1:34:08
  It says August 2025, Earth's third hottest August on record
• 1:34:13
  for nations and territories set or tide their all time heat
• 1:34:19
  record in August, Japan, Brunei, the UAE and Martinique.
• 1:34:25
  Without objection, so ordered. The next one that I have is AUC
• 1:34:29
  that says State of the Climate 2025 on track to be second or
• 1:34:34
  third warmest year on record. Without objection, so ordered.
• 1:34:40
  The third one is natural disasters have caused more than
• 1:34:43
  $131 billion in losses so far in 2025 from CBS News.
• 1:34:48
  Without objection sorted. The reason that I wanted to
• 1:34:53
  point these things out because I think that we can't have a
• 1:34:56
  hearing like this unless we settle on some basics.
• 1:35:00
  One of those basics being that climate change is real.
• 1:35:03
  Whether or not any individual has accurately predicted exactly
• 1:35:07
  the day or how bad is going to be and when is one thing.
• 1:35:14
  But the reality is that as I was listening in, while I wasn't
• 1:35:17
  physically here, I was tuned into the hearing.
• 1:35:19
  I will say that even the Republican witnesses admitted
• 1:35:23
  that we are heating up. So the question is, what is it
• 1:35:27
  that we need to do to actually turn the heat down?
• 1:35:30
  Unfortunately, it seems like this administration's decision
• 1:35:34
  has been to defund any and everyone that actually could
• 1:35:38
  work on saving us because we don't know what will happen if
• 1:35:42
  this dag on planet, and yes, it's more than the United States
• 1:35:45
  heats up to a ridiculous amount. I can tell you that other
• 1:35:49
  countries acknowledge that climate change is real and that
• 1:35:53
  we have real work to do and it is within the science realm
• 1:35:56
  instead of the conspiracy realm. And thank you.
• 1:35:58
  With that I will yield. The gentlelady yields.
• 1:36:01
  I now recognize Mister Jack from Georgia for 5 minutes of
• 1:36:04
  questioning. Well, thank you very much, Madam
• 1:36:07
  Chairwoman, and I want to commend our witnesses for your
• 1:36:10
  testimony. I find it enlightening
• 1:36:12
  throughout today's hearing. And if I could start with Mr.
• 1:36:14
  Martz, just to establish for this subcommittee's record,
• 1:36:18
  could you briefly describe for us the history of weather
• 1:36:21
  modification within our country? When did it start and how do we
• 1:36:24
  arrive to where we are today? The weather modification has
• 1:36:27
  been proposed at least since the 1890s, to my knowledge.
• 1:36:31
  Probably before that and back in the 1940s is really when it got
• 1:36:36
  started. Obviously there was Project
• 1:36:37
  Cirrus and then they really started to peak during the 19.
• 1:36:42
  About the 1960s and 70s is when it peaked in.
• 1:36:45
  Starting in the 1980s, it started to significantly
• 1:36:47
  decrease on a federal level. There's still a lot that's being
• 1:36:50
  done at a state level, in a local level, but the federal
• 1:36:54
  government, as Doctor Pilkey had mentioned, does not largely is
• 1:36:57
  not largely involved in such activities.
• 1:36:59
  And to understand the science behind this, as I understand the
• 1:37:02
  40s and 50s, scientists started experimenting by using, if I'm
• 1:37:07
  not mistaken, silver iodide and dry ice to simulate
• 1:37:10
  precipitation. And you mentioned, and I'm glad
• 1:37:14
  you did mention Project Cirrus. This matters to both the
• 1:37:17
  chairwoman and I because we represent the incredible state
• 1:37:19
  of Georgia. But if you could brief this
• 1:37:22
  committee on what happened with Project series.
• 1:37:24
  And and as I understand it, Savannah, the third largest city
• 1:37:29
  in our state, was struck by a hurricane because of some of the
• 1:37:33
  activities they're in. Yes, a project series.
• 1:37:36
  So an atmospheric Scientist by Anna Vincent Schaefer.
• 1:37:38
  He worked for General Electric, General Electric Laboratories
• 1:37:42
  and he discovered in 1946 he discovered that by putting dry
• 1:37:46
  ice into an environment with super cool liquid water droplets
• 1:37:50
  that he could get it to to freeze and this would could be
• 1:37:54
  done. He extrapolated this to the
• 1:37:56
  atmosphere where it could spur microphysical reactions and
• 1:38:00
  clouds to auto precipitation. NO has a great article on this.
• 1:38:03
  So they partnered with a Naval research laboratory and the Army
• 1:38:07
  Signal Corporation to experiment in hurricanes.
• 1:38:10
  So in October 1947, I think it was October 13th, 1947, they
• 1:38:14
  flew 2B17 and AB29 and they dumped huge chunks of dry ice.
• 1:38:19
  And specifically in their first in their first round, which was
• 1:38:22
  half an hour, they jumped 80. Hold on, where is it at?
• 1:38:29
  They jumped, they jumped a whole lot of dry ice and it was 80 lbs
• 1:38:35
  rather over 100 mile course and wanted to see what the cloud
• 1:38:40
  changes were in the hurricane. And then they did two more mass
• 1:38:43
  droppings with 50 lbs each. And obviously the next day the
• 1:38:46
  hurricane I was 50 miles east a 50 miles West rather of where it
• 1:38:50
  was supposed to be. And the hurricane made 135° turn
• 1:38:54
  and hit Georgia. And so this obviously was
• 1:38:58
  generated a bunch of lawsuits and they were thrown around.
• 1:39:02
  And one of the actually the head of General Electric, General
• 1:39:05
  Electric at the time said he was 99% sure that it changed course
• 1:39:09
  due to cloud seeding. However, the US Weather Bureau,
• 1:39:11
  which is now the National Weather Service, put together a
• 1:39:13
  team of scientists and they found that really, there's no
• 1:39:16
  evidence that the cloud seeding had that kind of effect, because
• 1:39:21
  hurricanes can do those kinds of turns naturally all on their
• 1:39:23
  own, and there's been similar tracks to that in the past.
• 1:39:26
  I'm grateful for that explanation.
• 1:39:28
  And again, Madam Chairwoman, just want to submit for the
• 1:39:30
  record that our own state was impacted by weather modification
• 1:39:34
  in a hurricane that was not meant to strike.
• 1:39:36
  Our state, naturally did strike our state in 1947.
• 1:39:41
  In closing, I'm curious. One of my constituents, a really
• 1:39:44
  smart guy from Coweta County, has raised the threat of SAIS,
• 1:39:49
  stratospheric aerosol injections to myself and would love for you
• 1:39:53
  to comment, Mr. Martz, on on on how SAIS are potentially going
• 1:40:00
  to be developed over the years to come and and what this
• 1:40:02
  committee can do to combat the threat thereof.
• 1:40:06
  Yeah, to my knowledge, there's not really any sort of solar Geo
• 1:40:09
  engineering that's being done worldwide to my to my knowledge.
• 1:40:12
  There have been some attempts that have been shut down, such
• 1:40:14
  as the University of Washington project, which I think got 20
• 1:40:17
  minutes in before it was halted. But there it is the proposed
• 1:40:21
  attempt and it's a very real proposal to inject primarily
• 1:40:25
  sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, which is a layer
• 1:40:27
  above the troposphere where we live.
• 1:40:30
  And that these sulfur dioxide is reacts with other, the gas is in
• 1:40:34
  the atmosphere and it forms sulfate aerosols, which are
• 1:40:37
  highly reflective because their width in terms of the microns,
• 1:40:40
  the tenths of microns is about the width of the radiation of
• 1:40:44
  sunlight coming in. It's very highly reflective
• 1:40:48
  particles. And so it could cause, if it was
• 1:40:52
  successfully implemented, if it were to be implemented, could
• 1:40:54
  cause significant global cooling that would counteract, you know,
• 1:40:57
  the warming that we've seen in the last 100 years.
• 1:41:00
  But we know what the climate was like during the Little Ice Age.
• 1:41:03
  We know what the winters were like in 1850.
• 1:41:05
  It was not a very pleasant time. So it claims that you know the
• 1:41:09
  today's climate is is not ideal compared to them are just false.
• 1:41:13
  Well, I appreciate in closing you acknowledging the threat of
• 1:41:16
  SAISI. Want to thank my constituent for
• 1:41:18
  briefing me on that thread. And Madam Chair, I want to
• 1:41:21
  commend you for holding this hearing.
• 1:41:22
  I think this is a hearing people will study for years to come,
• 1:41:25
  and I appreciate the testimony that our witnesses provided
• 1:41:27
  today. And with that I yield back.
• 1:41:29
  Thank you, Mister Jack. In closing, I want to thank our
• 1:41:32
  witnesses once again for their testimony today.
• 1:41:35
  I now yield to Ranking Member Stansbury for closing remarks.
• 1:41:40
  Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I'll just note you can put
• 1:41:43
  anything in a hearing record, whether or not it's true or not.
• 1:41:47
  So we'll just say that for the record.
• 1:41:50
  But I am grateful that we had this hearing today because as I
• 1:41:53
  said earlier, we finally discovered the purpose of the
• 1:41:56
  Environmental Protection Agency, which is to study and use
• 1:42:00
  science to inform the regulation of pollution.
• 1:42:04
  And I've heard a lot of statements from my colleagues
• 1:42:07
  across the aisle today identifying that yes, indeed, we
• 1:42:11
  do want to study and regulate pollution in the atmosphere,
• 1:42:15
  that we want to make sure it's not adversely affecting
• 1:42:18
  communities, which is the foundation of environmental
• 1:42:21
  justice, which is something that we care deeply about.
• 1:42:24
  And we understand that we can have cross-border impacts, which
• 1:42:28
  is why we need international agreements and action on climate
• 1:42:32
  change. All of these are the reason why
• 1:42:36
  the Environmental Protection Agency exists.
• 1:42:39
  All of these are the reasons why the federal government funds
• 1:42:42
  science. All of these are the reasons why
• 1:42:45
  we have federal scientists who helped to vet science.
• 1:42:48
  As was noted about the National Academies.
• 1:42:51
  All of This is why we need to take climate action.
• 1:42:56
  Now. I I want to just address some
• 1:42:58
  comments I heard about urgency. Now, one of the things that we
• 1:43:02
  didn't have the opportunity to get into today and our
• 1:43:05
  discussion, even though we did, of course establish that the
• 1:43:09
  science is real, the observational data is real about
• 1:43:12
  the increase of carbon dioxide emissions and how that's driving
• 1:43:15
  temperature and precipitation changes around the world.
• 1:43:18
  But the reason why there is a global consensus about the need
• 1:43:22
  and urgency of interaction right now is because there's an
• 1:43:26
  overwhelming consensus in the scientific community that we
• 1:43:30
  could reach a tipping point. And this is really about trying
• 1:43:34
  to address the global risks of reaching A tipping point because
• 1:43:38
  we know from physics and chemistry that if there is too
• 1:43:42
  much energy in the atmosphere, it could continue to ratchet up
• 1:43:46
  the impacts of these extreme events.
• 1:43:49
  And we're already seeing these impacts.
• 1:43:51
  We're already seeing it in my home state of New in New Mexico.
• 1:43:54
  We've had the largest, most catastrophic fires ever in
• 1:43:57
  recorded history, including back before humans were recording on
• 1:44:02
  paper what happened. We've seen the largest scale
• 1:44:05
  floods that we've ever seen in specific locations because of
• 1:44:08
  extreme weather events. We are seeing temperature
• 1:44:12
  changes and and snowpack changes that are impacting food
• 1:44:17
  production, that are impacting farmers.
• 1:44:20
  It's already happening. We can't deny our eyeballs.
• 1:44:23
  It's happening in front of us. The data are there.
• 1:44:27
  And so the reason why there's an urgency to act on a global scale
• 1:44:30
  right now is because we want to make sure that the Earth does
• 1:44:35
  not cross the tipping point because of the things we're
• 1:44:39
  putting into the atmosphere. Now, the way that we do that is
• 1:44:43
  we have to take an all of the above approach because carbon
• 1:44:46
  emissions are coming from all different sources.
• 1:44:49
  There are some sources that are putting more in the atmosphere
• 1:44:51
  and there are some less, and that is why we passed the
• 1:44:54
  largest, all of the above climate strategy in American
• 1:44:58
  history three years ago in the Inflation Reduction Act.
• 1:45:01
  That's exactly what that bill was designed to do.
• 1:45:03
  It was designed to address utility sector scale changes,
• 1:45:07
  transportation changes, manufacturing changes, to help
• 1:45:10
  people make that transition so we can reduce carbon emissions
• 1:45:14
  and we can prevent our planet from crossing a tipping point.
• 1:45:18
  That's all it is. It's not alarmism like that is
• 1:45:21
  literally all we're trying to accomplish by climate action is
• 1:45:25
  to keep our planet in some sort of balance because yes, we have
• 1:45:28
  one Earth. We have one Earth.
• 1:45:30
  This is our home. And so that is why we need
• 1:45:33
  climate action. That is why the firing of
• 1:45:37
  federal employees, the defunding of science, the firing of EP as
• 1:45:42
  science panel, the deregulation of carbon emissions, and the
• 1:45:46
  whole scale attack that we're seeing on the federal science
• 1:45:49
  enterprise is not only problematic for many, countless
• 1:45:53
  reasons in terms of continuing this enterprise, but because
• 1:45:56
  it's dangerous for the planet and for our communities.
• 1:46:00
  And so I hope that my colleagues who seem to care about
• 1:46:03
  emissions, who seem to care about environmental justice as
• 1:46:07
  I've heard in this hearing, who seem to care about the localized
• 1:46:11
  impacts of putting things in the atmosphere, can understand why
• 1:46:16
  we need climate action now and without a yield back.
• 1:46:21
  I now recognize myself for closing remarks.
• 1:46:24
  What we've learned here today has been fascinating.
• 1:46:28
  I hope the people watching it at home have been able to see the
• 1:46:30
  radicalized positions on the other side of the aisle.
• 1:46:34
  Remember, if you even question that someone could control the
• 1:46:38
  weather, you were labeled A conspiracy theorist or crazy.
• 1:46:42
  Then they change the message to, well, it's not hurting anyone
• 1:46:46
  and it is to provide water for people.
• 1:46:49
  And now they've come for full circle around to the point that
• 1:46:52
  modifying the weather is how they save the planet from
• 1:46:56
  global, from the global warming hoax.
• 1:46:59
  Whether you agree or not, the people clearly disagreed with
• 1:47:04
  the climate hoax and disagreed with my Democrat colleagues, so
• 1:47:09
  much so that they made a big change last year.
• 1:47:12
  They elected President Trump and they elected Republicans to
• 1:47:16
  control the House and the Senate.
• 1:47:18
  These climate activists have come so far that they are
• 1:47:22
  actively trying to inject chemicals into the air to block
• 1:47:26
  the rays of the sun from hitting the earth, and they want to take
• 1:47:31
  away our God-given rights, our God-given rights over the earth
• 1:47:36
  in order to satisfy their godless climate cult beliefs.
• 1:47:42
  Imagine these geoengineering projects were implemented at
• 1:47:45
  large scale across the globe because that's what they want to
• 1:47:48
  do. These life giving rays of the
• 1:47:51
  sun provide essential functions to the human body, including the
• 1:47:55
  strengthening of the immune system, inflammation reduction,
• 1:47:58
  strengthening of bone health, and so much more.
• 1:48:01
  The effects of the human body of a lack of sun exposure include
• 1:48:05
  irregular circadian rhythm, depression and mental illness
• 1:48:09
  deficiency and bone strength which can lead to a form of
• 1:48:12
  tuberculosis and many more health problems.
• 1:48:15
  Not to mention the potential damage done to the plant and
• 1:48:18
  animal life as well as a possible ozone depletion.
• 1:48:22
  And as mentioned here with one of our witnesses, potentially
• 1:48:26
  cooling the earth could also 'cause people to freeze to
• 1:48:30
  death, crops to to die and could literally lead to killing
• 1:48:35
  millions and millions of people. Radical climate alarmist.
• 1:48:39
  Worship the climate as if it is a religion.
• 1:48:42
  They are so radical they glue themselves to the road blocking
• 1:48:46
  traffic and destroy artwork in museums.
• 1:48:49
  They scream global warming is going to kill us all and that
• 1:48:52
  U.S. cities are going to vanish underwater.
• 1:48:55
  One other interesting hypocrisy of the left is that they truly
• 1:48:59
  if they truly believed their global warming hoax and the
• 1:49:03
  rising sea levels the the cost of all of us will be underwater
• 1:49:09
  in a few short years, why are they investing millions of
• 1:49:12
  dollars into beachfront properties across the same coast
• 1:49:15
  they they claim will be underwater?
• 1:49:18
  Bill and Melinda Gates own a $43 million beachfront front home in
• 1:49:21
  California. The Obamas own a $12 million
• 1:49:25
  waterfront compound in Martha's Vineyard.
• 1:49:28
  Mark Zuckerberg is building a $270 million beachfront compound
• 1:49:32
  in Hawaii. Mark Cuban owns the $19 million
• 1:49:36
  beachfront mansion on the coast of California.
• 1:49:40
  What this whole debate comes down to is who controls the
• 1:49:43
  skies? Do we believe in God and that he
• 1:49:46
  has dominion over his perfect creation of planet Earth?
• 1:49:50
  Do we believe that he has given us everything we need to survive
• 1:49:54
  as a civilization since the beginning of time?
• 1:49:57
  Or do you believe in man's claim of authority over the weather
• 1:50:01
  based on scientists that have only been alive for decades and
• 1:50:06
  weren't here to witness the climate changes since the
• 1:50:08
  beginning of time? This is why I've introduced
• 1:50:12
  introduced my bill, the Clear Skies Act to end weather
• 1:50:15
  modification and geoengineering. Because I don't believe planet
• 1:50:19
  Earth is a lab and I don't believe people are Lab Rats.
• 1:50:23
  I believe that people have the right and they have the
• 1:50:25
  God-given right to have clean air, clean skies, clean water
• 1:50:31
  and clean food. And with that, and without
• 1:50:35
  objection, all Members have 5 legislative days within which to
• 1:50:39
  submit materials and additional written questions for the
• 1:50:42
  witnesses, which will be forwarded to the witnesses.
• 1:50:45
  Hey, thank you so much for listening today.
• 1:50:47
  I really do appreciate your support.
• 1:50:49
  If you could take a second and hit the subscribe or the follow
• 1:50:52
  button on whatever podcast platform that you're listening
• 1:50:54
  on right now, I greatly appreciate it.
• 1:50:57
  It helps out the show tremendously and you'll never
• 1:50:59
  miss an episode. And each episode is about 10
• 1:51:02
  minutes or less to get you caught up quickly.
• 1:51:05
  And please, if you want to support the show even more, go
• 1:51:08
  to patreon.com/stagezero and please take care of yourselves
• 1:51:14
  and each other and I'll see you tomorrow.