Marjorie Taylor Greene is once again pushing conspiracy theories, to nobody's surprise. On October 3, 2024, MTG posted on the site formerly known as Twitter: "Yes they can control the weather. It's ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can't be done."
Commenters immediately clapped back. Here are some of my favorites:
Are the weather controllers in the room with you right now? Are you able to speak without them noticing? Hold up one pipe bomb for yes, two for no.
She's talking about with a sharpie, right?
Okay, but if "they" control weather, then the next logical extreme is that humans caused climate change. She really didn't think this talking point through.
And I think the Lincoln Project's response might be the best. They posted, "Your shoes, m'lady" accompanied by an image of Ronald McDonald clown shoes.
If MTG's weather ramblings were just harmless nonsense, I'd let it go. But they aren't—these right-wing conspiracy theories are dangerous, as they foment outrage at various groups who can then become the targets of virtual or actual violence. HuffPost explains Greene's latest weather conspiracy theory:
Right-wingers have long promoted wild theories about weather control, and Greene, a Donald Trump ally, gave them a big boost . . . Greene didn't specify in her tweet who "they" were (although such insinuations are typically antisemitic, and wouldn't be out of place coming from a congresswoman who once blamed wildfires on Jewish space lasers). But another post, from earlier in the day, seemed to suggest Greene was blaming Democrats.
"This is a map of hurricane affected areas with an overlay of electoral map by political party shows how hurricane devastation could affect the election," Greene wrote Thursday morning, seeming to accuse Democrats of manufacturing a storm to kill hundreds of their fellow Americans, and render thousands more homeless, as part of a scheme to make Republican voters unable to participate in next month's elections.
The map Greene posted appears to have been created by Matt Wallace, a dodgy crypto influencer and conspiracy theorist with over 2 million followers on X. "This took me a long time to make!" Wallace wrote on Sept. 30, posting an image of the map. "I created map showing the path of destruction of Hurricane Helene with an overlay of the 2020 election results… The storm seemed to almost methodically miss the bluest parts of those crucial swing states, while simultaneously ravaging the red parts. What a crazy coincidence!"
. . . Their conspiracy theory about Hurricane Helene is completely baseless, having emerged from a far-right media ecosystem long obsessed with the government's supposed ability to control the weather for nefarious purposes. Particularly on Elon Musk's current iteration of X, those theories have flourished.
Conspiracy theories about weather often feature "chemtrails." David Keith, a Professor of Applies Physics at Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, wrote a response to chemtrail believers on the website of the research group he runs at Harvard. The research group, he explains, is "a fast-growing team of researchers working at the intersection of climate science and technology with a focus on the science and public policy of solar geoengineering." Surely this group of geoengineering experts would know if people can really "control the weather," right?
Keith first explains the Chemtrails Conspiracy Theory:
Chemtrails refers to the theory that governments or other parties are engaged in a secret program to add toxic chemicals to the atmosphere from aircraft in a way that forms visible plumes in the sky, somewhat similar to contrails. Various different motivations for this alleged spraying are speculated, including sterilization, reduction of life expectancy, mind control or weather control.
We have not seen any credible evidence that chemtrails exist. If we did see any evidence that governments were endangering their own citizens in the manner alleged in the chemtrails conspiracy, we would be eager to expose and stop any such activities.
He then emphatically states that "There is No Evidence for the Existence of Chemtrails," explaining:
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. The claim that there is a large-scale secret program to spray materials from aircraft is extraordinary. Yet all the evidence we have seen to date has been very weak. The most common claim is simply that aircraft contrails look "different", without any comparative analysis. This as convincing as saying that alien beings walk among in disguise as people because some people act very strangely.
If there really were a large-scale program dumping material from aircraft at the scale described, there would have to be a large operating program to manufacture, load and disperse materials. If such a program existed at the scale required to explain the claimed amount of chemtrails, it would require thousands or perhaps tens of thousands of people. It would be extraordinarily hard to keep such a program secret because it would be so easy for a single individual in the program to reveal it using leaked documents, photographs or actual hardware.
Moreover, if such a program was intended to cause harm to their fellow citizens—as is alleged by people who believe in the chemtrails conspiracy—then people working in the program would have very strong personal motivations to reveal it.
We don't trust that governments will always do the right thing, but we do trust the goodwill of individuals who take risks to blow the whistle, exposing government misdeeds.
Finally, he has a message specifically for people who believe in chemtrails:
If you believe in chemtrails, ask yourself how you can be so certain that there is indeed a grand conspiracy. Consider alternative, simple explanations. Remember that the Internet is filled with people who are completely sure about stuff that just isn't true. Remember that while governments can keep secrets that involve only a few people they do a very bad job of keeping large-scale programs secret. The Russians, for example, knew specific details about the Manhattan project before the first nuclear weapons test, and that was a case where those involved had a clear patriotic motivation to keep the secret.
If you think that aircraft contrails "look different" or are "behaving strangely" consider that regular aircraft condensation trails (contrails) are sometimes long-lasting and the way they look can change suddenly along a flight path as aircraft fly through regions with different temperature and humidity. This is well understood and has been demonstrated by ground observation and by scientific research performed by thousands of people over many decades. Of course it's possible that something else is going on, but to prove it one would need more than simple photographs of something that looks entirely consistent with normal contrails.
At the end of his statement, he provides a list of helpful resources for further reading on the matter. I guess it's worth a shot to share these with anyone you might know who believes in weather-control conspiracy theories. Something tells me MTG is too far gone to be pulled back to reality, though.