Marjorie Taylor Greene's Hearing On "Weather Modification" Goes As You'd Expect

Marjorie Taylor Greene, ever the enthusiastic 
purveyor of conspiracy theories, held quite
a recent Congressional hearing on weather
modification. We give the play by play. 

While the madness of Trump and late night TV and First Amendment violations and other general stupidity was going on, our friend Marjorie Taylor "Jewish Space Lasers" Greene was hard at work. 

Her latest was leading a House hearing on weather modification, or more precisely, weird weather conspiracy theories.  

Greene is seeking a federal ban on geoengineering and weather modification. She's among those who appear to think like horrible disasters like Hurricane Helene were not regular events or climate change-driven calamities, but some insidious government plot.

Hence here hearing earlier this month.  She announced: 

"Today's advocates of geoengineering don't just want to address droughts or improve conditions for agriculture......They want to control the Earth's climate to address the fake climate change hoax to head off global warming. That of course, requires massive interventions."

Of course, pretty much every scientist will tell you climate change is not "fake" or a "hoax" and is the real problem behind many of the weird weather extremes the world has been experiencing. But to Greene's mind, we need to stop making sense, to take a page from an old Talking Heads album and concert movies.  

As ABC notes, there have been no efforts to modify the climate on a global scale, mostly because there's no technology to make that possible. 

Then we get into the "science" part of the hearing. And I use that term "science: more loosely than I ever have before. Greene gave us this dire warning:  

"One (intervention) is to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Yes, the same carbon dioxide that keeps plants alive and prevents mass starvation."

Of course the problem isn't that there's carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It's just that humanity has pumped too much of it into the air.  The whole burning fossil fuel thing. There are no mad scientists out there bent on removing all the carbon dioxide from the air to kill us all. 

There's been some tentative efforts to research efforts that would remove some of the CO2 from the air, but that hasn't really been effective at all yet. 

"Another method they want to use it to block the rays of the sun from hitting the Earth. You heard that right. Yes, the same sun that makes all life possible on Earth."

Sigh, again, there are no mad scientist trying to block all sunlight and kill us all.  As always with these whackadoodle statements, if you dig deep enough you find the tiniest kernel of truth amid the word salad. 

The idea of using technologies to reflect a portion of sunlight back into space to lower temperatures around the world has been around for decades. But there has been almost no real-world experiments with this. 

The Biden White House in 2023 produced a paper on this idea, known as solar radiation modification, but it was a general research roadmap which has so far gone nowhere to speak of.

No Marjorie Taylor Green hearing would be complete without her and like minded minions bringing up chemtrails. Repeatedly. Sigh. 

Chemtrails are fictional sprays coming out of aircraft, dreamed up by conspiracy theorists.  There's plenty of those theories, including ideas that the government is trying to poison the populace or do mind control on everybody or some bizarre thing, 

What all these people think are chemtrails is just water vapor from the exhaust of jet engines.

You know all that steam you see coming out of car tailpipes on frigid winter mornings? It's basically the same thing coming out of planes. Except often that water freezes and forms white streaks in the sky. They're just high level clouds. 

But wispy clouds are boring. Coming up with wild stories about covert government operations spraying us all into oblivion is much more sexy. 

 Some of Greene's cohorts came up with some wild bits of "information" which were, well, dubious to put it extremely politely.  Rep. Brian Jack, R-GA claimed a release of dry ice into a 1947 hurricane steered the storm into Georgia. 

It's true that the government released dry ice into a 1947 hurricane as an experiment. It's also true the storm made a hard left turn and came ashore near Savannah, Georgia. But the reason it did so was not the dry ice. It was steering currents in the atmosphere that would have been there with or without the dry ice. 

Besides, that hurricane started its westward turn before planes dumped anything into the storm. 

Also, experiments in the era also showed that dumping dry ice, or the more modern silver iodide used in clouds seeding failed to change the strength of hurricanes. They're much too powerful to succumb to human intervention, at least so far. 

Another one, Rep. Pat Fallon, R-Texas, said that Al Gore's estimation of when the polar ice cap was wrong, so therefore basically all climate science was wrong. 

In reality, there's an alleged quote by Gore from 2009 that the Arctic would be ice-free by 2013, which of course has not happened. 

Gore did not actually say that, but he did at the time accidentally misrepresented data when he suggest some models gave a 75 percent chance the Arctic would be ice-free in the summertime by 2014 to 2019. That's not exactly what researchers said, as they generally weren't giving a timeline as to when that would happen.

But, apparently, if one person -  Gore - got his facts mixed up on one aspect of climate change, then the whole idea of climate change is apparently false.  

Melanie Stansbury, D-NM, the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee that held the hearing, did come up with one gem that I would rate as absolutely factually true. 

She said: "There's a more insidious issue here, which I think we've already heard in some of the comments, which is using the platform of Congress to propel anti-science theories to platform climate denialism and to ultimately put our communities at risk by continuing to put out disinformation."

 

Trump Administration Feeling Heat On Texas Flood Response

The grim search for bodies continue after
the July 4 catastrophic floods in Texas,
as our early look at Trump era FEMA
response is not great, 

 The Trump team is finding out it's harder to manage major disasters than they thought.

And the public is learning why a fully staffed Federal Emergency Management Agency might not be such a bad idea after all. 

Let the state's handle it, FEMA isn't necessary,  the Trumpers said.  This Texas flood will manage itself, they must have thought. Or at least disappear in the next news cycle, so it won't be a problem for them anymore. 

We know that if something doesn't directly benefit Trump or his minions, it's not worth dealing with it. So to their minds, why mess with that Texas mud pit?

But when disasters get this big and stay under the media spotlight like the Texas floods have done, it gets harder and harder to control the narrative.    

At last check, at least 134 people were confirmed dead  in the Texas flooding   Huge swaths of the Texas Hill Country are devastated, with houses washed away, others with flood damage up to the ceilings 

The Trump folks are publicly patting themselves on the back about what a good job they're doing with the Texas flood, but the evidence suggests otherwise. 

CALLS UNANSWERED

The New York Times on July 11 reported the now-really short-staffed FEMA was answering very few calls for help after the Texas disasters. Answer rates to the FEMA disaster assistance hotline fell to roughly the 35 percent rant on July 6 and just 16 percent on July 7. 

As USA Today reports: 

"The lack of responsiveness happened because the agency had fired hundreds of contractors at call centers, according to a person briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal matters.

The agency laid off the contractors on July 5 after their contracts expired and were not extended according to the documents and the person briefed on the matter.

Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, who has instituted a new requirement that she personally approve expenses over $100,000, did not renew the contracts until Thursday, five days after the contract expired. FEMA is part of Department of Homeland Security."

It appears to me ICE Barbie, as I call her, did not worry about this mess-up until it appeared there might be a public relations problem brewing. 

ICE Barbie, who is much better at cosplaying and posing for the media, naturally went on TV.  Here's her quote from her appearance on NBC's 'Meet the Press with Kristen Welker."

"No employees were off of work....... Every one of them was answering calls, so false reporting, fake news and it's discouraging. It's discouraging that during this time, when we have such a loss of life and so many people's lives have been turned upside down, that people are playing politics with this because the response time was immediate."

Notice the careful wording.

A lot of employees had been let go. The ones that were left were answering calls. I'm sure every one of the few remaining did answer calls, as Noem said. She just left out the part that a bunch of people who could have helped handle the big call volume weren't there anymore. 

Any criticism is supposedly "playing politics."  The crisis in Texas is far from over, so you'd think prodding an agency to actually help people is the definition of caring about "so many people's lives."

MICROMANAGING

Noem's micromanaging - reviewing any expenditure over $100,000 - also slowed the response to the Texas flood in other ways. As CNN reported:

"For FEMA, where disaster response costs routinely soar into the billions as the agency contracts with on-the-ground crews, officials say that threshold is essentially 'pennies' requiring sign-off for relatively small expenditures.

In essence, they say the order has stripped the agency of much of its autonomy at the very moment its help is needed most.  

'We were operating under a clear set of guidance: lean forward, be prepared, anticipate what the state needs, and be ready to deliver it,' a longtime FEMA official told CNN. 'That is not as clear of an intent for us at the moment.'"

This for instance meant FEMA couldn't pre-position Urban Search and Rescue crews from a network of teams stationed regionally around the country. Noem reportedly didn't authorize FEMA's deployment of  the Urban Search and Rescue teams until more than 72 hours after the flooding started.

For their part, the Noem team used other search and rescue assets and didn't need this Urban Search and Rescue Team. 

The head of FEMA's Urban Search and Rescue branch,  Ken Pagurek, resigned Monday over frustrations with Noem and other Trump appointed FEMA heads. CNN reported that he quit after months of frustration with the Trump administration's efforts to dismantle the agency.

Another talented, needed person leaving because of this idiotic bunch.  Said a DHS spokesperson: 

"FEMA is shifting from a bloated, DC-centric dead weight to a lean, deployable disaster force that empowers state actors to provide relief for their citizens......The old processes are being replaced because they failed American emergencies for decades."

The spokesperson has it exactly backwards. Until now, FEMA has been praised for its rapid response I'm the immediate emergency in the hours and days after the disaster strikes.

UNEVEN DIRECT RESPONSE

The very valid criticism of FEMA comes in the recovery phase, where applying for assistance and money for rebuilding roads, other infrastructure, homes, and businesses, and girded for the next disaster, always seemed to become a horrible, bureaucratic slog. 

That's where the FEMA reform coulda, shoulda happened. 

FEMA has ultimately arrived in Texas, and they do seem to be trying to help. Parts of the old, better FEMA infrastructure are still there. At least for now.  

Victims are being encouraged to contact FEMA, despite the phone issues to start claims. The agency has set up a help center and has started processing claims. 

Some Texas flood victims said that FEMA has been helpful so far, which is a glimmer of encouragement here.

But private and church groups are leading the way, searching for victims, mucking out damaged homes and setting up field kitchens for people whose houses have washed away or otherwise have been left uninhabitable. 

Still the Texas FEMA stumbles are disconcerting. 

I doubt FEMA and the Trump administration will change course much, but the bad Texas disaster response is certainly being noticed. 

"Heck of a job, Secretary Noem," the Houston Chronicle editorial board sarcastically wrote. The remark is a throwback to former President George W. Bush's notorious and highly inaccurate praise for then-FEMA Director Michael Brown as New Orleans flooded during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Several Democratic members of Congress demanded an investigation into Noem's response to the disaster. Rep. Ed Markey, D-Massachusetts called for her resignation. None of this will happen, given the Republican fealty to whatever Trump and his minions do, but it's notable. 

The irony is that Noem, acting FEMA director David Richardson and the Trump administration is undoing what had been badly needed FEMA reforms after the Katrina debacle.

Speaking of Richardson, he didn't make any public statements and appearances for more than a week after the floods. Usually, FEMA directors are splattered themselves all over the news when there's big disasters, giving overviews of the federal response to these calamities. 

Richardson, who famously seemed unaware that the U.S. has a hurricane season, does not have five or more years of disaster management experience. The post-Katrina reforms require FEMA directors to have such experience, but the Trump administration is getting around that by keeping him as the so-called "acting" director. 

Another indication how unseriously the Trumpsters take disaster responses

And remember, this terrible flood happened in a red state.  Trump is the probably the most sinister transactionally motivated person in the world. He'll help his supporters until he doesn't need them anymore. 

But he'll attack his perceived enemies and try everything he can not to help.  What if the Texas disaster happened in a blue state?

We got a taste of that during and after the immense and deadly California wildfires back in January.  

Trump threatened to withhold disaster aid to California unless the state enacted voter ID laws. Never mind that those ID laws have nothing to do with wildfires. That casts doubt on whether he will approve $40 billion California Gov Gavin Newsom has requested to help pay for fire recovery costs.  

Meanwhile, other disasters have hit since Texas and more loom, Wildfire season is ramping up.  Forecasts point toward weather conditions in the coming days and weeks across much of the West that favor large fires. 

Hurricane season has started. The big ones usually hit soon - mostly in August and September. Those flash floods keep hitting all kinds of communities in the United States.

We've known for months that Trump and his loyal band of sycophants are not inclined to help their fellow Americans. Again, because there's nothing in it for them. No profits, no monetary gain. And gawd forbid any of this crew to help disaster victims because it's the right thing to do.

Trump, according to numerous reports, at least once called fallen military service members "losers and suckers."

I think he believes disaster victims are losers and suckers, too.