When the fossil fuel industry started its war on science 40 some years ago, they set out to destroy American’s faith in the institutions and media that had informed our civic lives for many decades.
They succeeded, spectacularly. The collateral damage is that, on the fringes, we now have numbers of heavily armed and completely delusional citizens who have become convinced not just that climate change is a deep state conspiracy, but that vaccines are toxic, education is evil, and that Joe Biden and Barack Obama are in a secret bunker steering tornadoes and hurricanes with deadly weather weapons.
The Texas Department of Agriculture is not conducting weather modification, Commissioner Sid Miller said Wednesday, addressing what he describes as false claims circulating on social media in the wake of the devastating Central Texas floods.
“There has been a lot of misinformation flying around lately, so let me clarify: the Texas Department of Agriculture has absolutely no connection to cloud seeding or any form of weather modification,” Miller said in a statement.
Miller said that since SB 1303 was passed in 2011, the Department of Agriculture has had no legal authority, responsibilities, or involvement in any weather modification programs.
“That authority was transferred out of our hands more than a decade ago,” Miller said.
“Weather modification and control,” according to the Texas Legislature, means “changing or controlling, or attempting to change or control, by artificial methods the natural development of atmospheric cloud forms or precipitation forms that occur in the troposphere.”
Miller said that as an eighth-generation farmer and rancher, he turns to faith when faced with a drought.
“Let’s put an end to the conspiracy theories and stop blaming others,” his statement read. “Our priority should be the recovery efforts in the Texas Hill Country, as we stand in solidarity with our fellow Texans.”
Contrails are line-shaped exhaust clouds or “condensation trails” that are visible behind jet aircraft. Aircraft engine exhaust is composed of water vapor, carbon dioxide (CO2), and other emissions that are commonly found when combusting fuel, such as sulfur oxides (SOx), hydrocarbons (HC), and particles (see the graphic below). Since aircraft typically fly at high altitudes where it is very cold, the very hot exhaust coming out of the jet engine reacts with the very cold air sometimes causing an exhaust cloud to form that you can see under certain atmospheric conditions. Jet aircraft form contrails under these atmospheric conditions for the same reason that you can see the exhaust from your vehicle or your own breath on a cold day.
Contrails are a normal effect of jet aircraft operations and have been since its earliest days of air travel. If you are seeing a lot of contrails in your area it is because there are a lot of jet aircraft flying overhead.
The federal government is not aware of there ever being a contrail intentionally formed over the United States for the purpose of geoengineering or weather modification.
There IS the introduction of a chemical agent into the atmosphere that triggers flood causing rainfalls. It’s called greenhouse gasses that warm the atmosphere to evaporate more water which will form the basis of excess rainfall. Definitely ban that.