EPA Publishes New Web Resources Examining Geoengineering, Cloud Seeding

Skies in Las Vegas on April 11. Marianne Donnelly

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) unveiled new online resources on July 10 regarding geoengineering and other weather modification in an effort to address public concern.

The information release comes after concern and accusations spread across social media following the catastrophic floods in Texas, North Carolina, New Mexico, and other areas of the country, with one weather modification company in Texas reporting having received death threats for conducting a scheduled cloud seeding operation in another part of the state two days before the floods began.

That company’s CEO, Augustus Doricko, denied his company’s operations had anything to do with the catastrophic floods and sought to help define the differences between weather modification methods.

Three days later, it appears that EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin also seeks to provide clarification on the subject.

“Americans have questions about geoengineering and contrails,” Zeldin said on social media platform X.

“They expect honesty and transparency from their government when seeking answers. For years, people who asked questions in good faith were dismissed, even vilified by the media and their own government. This ends today.”

Zeldin later added in a statement, “We’re publishing everything EPA knows about these topics” on the new sites.

Referring to what some claim to be chemtrails, or particulate trails, but what the EPA referred to as “contrails,” the EPA said in the statement that it has created a new webpage that “addresses head-on various claims that these occurrences are actually an intentional release of dangerous chemicals or biological agents at high altitudes for a variety of nefarious purposes, including population control, mind control, or attempts to geoengineer Earth or modify the weather,” saying these “myths and misconceptions” have “persisted for decades.”

The EPA said another new online resource will be focused “specifically on solar geoengineering activities, which involve cooling the Earth by reflecting sunlight back to space, usually through injecting gases, like sulfur dioxide, into the upper atmosphere where they form reflective particles.”

“The resource delves into the current state of science and research surrounding geoengineering, including the potentially negative impacts it could have on the environment and human health, including depleting the ozone layer, harming crops, altering weather patterns, and creating acid rain,” the EPA stated.

When it comes to geoengineering, Zeldin said his agency “shares the significant reservations many Americans have” about it, and the EPA added that it released details regarding how it has worked to identify and track private actors potentially engaged in geoengineering activities.

The EPA also said its new online resource provides information on “weather modification and cloud seeding”—which involves releasing small amounts of silver iodide and table salt into clouds in order to make them rain over areas of land otherwise left in drought—and the governmental actions at the state and federal levels related to that.

In the meantime, though, Doricko and his cloud seeding team continue to face death threats.

“I can handle death threats, needless and unfounded though they are,” he said on X. “Threatening to doxx or harm my family is atrocious. The people that are endangering my family by knowingly inflaming baseless accusations will be held to account.”