Last month, a cloud-seeding startup called Rainmaker raised $25 million in Series A funding. Just weeks later it was being unfairly accused by conspiracy theorists for causing the tragic floods in Texas. - "I suddenly got thousands of notifications on my phone," recalls Rainmaker CEO Augustus Doricko. "It was because [retired] General Mike Flynn jumped in and insinuated that cloud-seeding was responsible."
Before continuing, I want to be clear that I called Doricko, not the other way around, after a reader alerted me to the situation. He feels frustrated, not victimized — an important distinction in light of a death toll that now stands at 120 souls. What it does: Rainmaker uses drones to enhance rain, with contracts in such drought-vulnerable states as Texas, Utah, Colorado, and California. - It's next-gen cloud-seeding, with Rainmaker also designing drones for weather conditions that may be dangerous for human pilots.
- As Axios Pro's Katie Fehrenbacher notes, China also has been testing drone-based cloud seeding.
What happened: Texas regulators have suspension criteria for cloud seeders, in order to mitigate the chance of flooding after severe weather. - Doricko says those thresholds were met on July 3, but that Rainmaker stopped operations in the region on July 2 because of what its own meteorologists were seeing. He adds that such pauses occur "tens of times" per year.
- The Guadalupe River began flooding late in the evening of July 3 into the early hours of July 4.
- Moreover, some third-party climatologists have argued that Rainmaker's cloud-seeding can't produce the amount of precipitation that led to this outcome. Instead, they believe it was caused by remnants of Tropical Storm Barry.
Fever swamps: Flynn's tweet, which says he'd "love to see the response" from Rainmaker, has been seen one million times, - He never posted the company's response, nor even seems to have acknowledged it. Instead, he later replied to another post about the supposed threat of "weather modification."
- It's also worth noting that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said one day after the floods that she'll introduce a bill that would make any "weather modification" a felony.
The other side: This is about extreme voices, not regular partisans. - Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), for example, said at a press briefing that he's seen "zero evidence" that weather modification played a role in the floods, and dismissed "crazy theories" on the internet.
The bottom line: This episode highlights the increased risks being faced by both climate-tech entrepreneurs and investors, well beyond federal funding cuts. - A couple folks I reached out to declined to comment on the record, saying they no longer feel comfortable doing so in this political environment.
- Welcome to the rise of climate cancel culture.
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