The Republican War on… Weather?!

The Republicans seem to be at war with… weather forecasting?!

A Republican War on Weather Forecasting… Where Have I Heard That Before?!

I’ve been seeing all sorts of weird news items about Republicans getting conspiratorially stupid about weather forecasting. Now… where have we heard that before?

Oh, that’s right: it was right here on this Crummy Little Blog That Nobody Reads (CLBTNR), back on 2021-Jul-12. ^[1]

There were 2 particularly egregious cases, each surreal enough to earn a patch from Dissent Pins, as shown here:

• Representative Louis Gohmert (R-TX), often used as the reference standard for political stupidity, asked the US Forest Service whether they could change the orbit of the moon to fix climate change.

  And then he got mad when reporting about him talking to the Bureau of Land Management used the abbreviation BLM, because he feared people would think he was talking to/about Black Lives Matter. Because clearly that’s worse than thinking the US Forest Service can mount a space expedition to change the orbit of the moon.

• The second was our old friend, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). She took a break from her usual allegations that:
  • Democrats are satanist cannibals running a child sex ring, or that
  • Muslims should not be allowed in public office, or that
  • Mass shootings are staged by liberals, or that
  • “Zionist supremacists” are causing Muslim migrations to drive whites to extinction, or that
  • Democratic officials should be executed.

  No, no: she had more important fish to fry. She claimed the California wildfires were deliberately started by PG&E in conjunction with the ever-present Rothschild family, using secret Jewish space laser stations, in order to clear a path for high-speed rail.

  (I almost wanted that one to be true, because I could at least apply for a gig on the secret Jewish laser space station. I bet the pastrami in the canteen would be really good.)

Hwæt! We in geardagum, þrym gefrunon Republicans

So what fell beasts do Republican heroes fight now, as did Beowulf of old? ^[2]

Apparently, the dark art of weather forecasting. No doubt there are witches involved, somewhere.

The billionaires want to shut down government weather forecasting so they can privatize it to make you pay them for it. The fossil fuel oligarchs want all research on climate change stopped and all data suppressed.

Weather Modification: The Latest Right-Wing Conspiracy Theory

And then there’s our very special little girl, Marjorie Taylor Greene. She apparently thinks Democrats control the weather and keep throwing hurricanes at Republican states. She’s introduced a bill to ban the practice of weather control, called the ‘Clear Skies Act’. ^{[3] [4]}

Remember back on this CLBTNR when we mentioned the flooding in Texas? And how they refused flood prevention money from the Biden administration because that was a “criminal treasonous communist government”? And how they took some of the money anyway, and instead of spending it on flood control spent it on sheriffs? Well… apparently now they’ve taken to thinking that the Democrats caused their flooding with weather control, rather than taking any responsibility for their negligence of flood control & warning. Despite refusing flood control money or diverting it to cops.

Apparently, as shown by this extract from social media, this belief has spread to the Florida Attorney General, who thinks somebody’s modifying the weather to harm him.

Greene, eager to capitalize on this, also repeats the right-wing conspiracy theory that jet contrails are some kind of weird toxic chemical thing (“chemtrails”), instead of the water vapor they really are. She claims the 2024 Hurricane Katrina, which killed 224 people, was created by the then Democratic federal government. (Her arguably equally crazy compatriot, Gov Ron DeSantis of Florida, has also tried to outlaw weather modification in Florida.)

A trenchant reaction:

Atmospheric scientist Matthew Cappucci wrote: “It’s not a political statement for me as a Harvard-degreed atmospheric scientist to say that elected representative Marjorie Taylor Green doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about.

“She’d be equally qualified to fly a Boeing-737, practice nuclear medicine or train zebras.”

You can read the text of her proposed bill ^[5], if you don’t believe me and want to mainline the crazy for yourself.

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has been dealing with this kind of crap for a long, tedious time. They’re tired of your “chemtrail” nonsense. After all, if Democrats could hurl storms at red states, why do they keep missing?!

Here’s a debunking of those claims published back in 2024. ^[6] Honestly, a trenchant summary would be, “No, all of that is crap.” But they much more politely point out that:

• No, the government does not create and use hurricanes as political weapons.
• No, NOAA does not modify the weather.
• No, NEXRAD Doppler radars do not steer hurricanes, let alone at red state communities.
• No, there’s no “solar geoengineering”, whatever that would be if it existed, which it does not.
• No, HAARP and SCOPEX don’t do that, either.

Just… no. Stop that. Have some dignity.

Deeper Down the Rabbit Hole

In fact, the seed for this whole mishegoss of a blog post came from reading something by PZ Myers at Pharyngula. ^[7] He points out that MAGA-type people are listening to Marjorie Taylor Greene’s delusions, with predictably violent, stupid, and destructive results.

Apparently, whackos are now out to destroy weather radars.

Our sources today come from an Arizona publication ^[8] (since the “brains” of the group comes from there, more or less), from an Oklahoma publication ^[9] (since one of his minions destroyed a weather radar power supply there), and of course CNN ^[10] goes into the background a bit.

Here’s what seems to have gone down:

• One Michael “Lewis Arthur” Meyer leads an anti-government militia-like group called Veterans on Patrol.
• Meyer describes himself as a “homeless transient”, who “spent time on the Arizona border with Mexico” apparently because he’s rabidly anti-immigrant.
• He has a history of making bizarre accusations involving child sex abuse rings and the ever-present “chemtrails” of right-wing delusion.
• He now thinks that Doppler radars used for weather reporting are being used to create weaponized weather. He thinks they are “directed energy weapons” like a “loaded weapon pointed at the American people.”
• He considers it “God’s work” to destroy weather radars, because they are “weather weapons” being used by the military “in mockery of God”.
• His Telegram channel has about 6600 subscribers; he’s not a ‘lone gunman’, to use the argot of other conspiracy theorists.
• He persuaded one Anthony Tyler Mitchell to climb over a fence, destroy a weather radar power supply, and then spray-painting the lens of a security camera.
  • Yes, in that order.
  • These are not people smart enough to carry out plans that involve constraints like “disable the security cameras before you commit a crime in front of them”.
  • Meyer described Mitchell after this crime as “a patriot”.

Offices of NOAA and the National Weather Service are severely short-staffed due to the Trump administration firing most of their employees or forcing them into early retirement. So it’s hard for them to allocate extra people to security to guard their radars against knuckleheads.

So… who are those guys?

The Southern Poverty Law Center describes Veterans on Patrol ^[11] as a violent anti-government militia, with Christian nationalist aspects, hard-right views on immigration, and encouragement of vigilante/extra-legal violence. They have also apparently drunk deeply at the QAnon well.

The mix of religious fanaticism, right-wing extremism, and vigilante violence leads them to believe they operate above the law, as fascists generally do:

According to VOP statements, group members believe their activities are sanctioned by God, and they therefore don’t have to comply with state or federal laws.
…
As an organization, VOP is designated a militia by the SPLC for its internal hierarchical structure, past firearm field-training exercises, and paramilitary-style activities its members believe are enforcing national security measures. Throughout the years, members have also been spotted carrying firearms while they patrol the desert for cartel hideout spots and for migrants crossing through the region. The group also engages in coordinated harassment campaigns against humanitarian and immigrants’ rights groups.

Apparently they have anti-vaccine views, typical fears of child cannibalism/organ harvesting weirdness, and a peculiarly anti-Mormon bent (link added to explain conspiracy theories around adrenochrome):

“Of course the Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints instruct their Members to inject themselves with a Bioweapon created with Aborted Fetal Matter with the technology to alter the Image that God imprinted on us … HIS Image. 80 million in Pfizer assets provide the Satanic Leaders incentive. Following the money of ALL Religions these days shows their investment in Globalists, who are compromised of Satanic Pedovores [sic] devouring innocent Children for sacrificial purposes and their ‘Fountain of Youth’ known better as Adrenochrome. God sees an overwhelming majority of the Mormon Church Members as Lost Sheep following their False Prophets. Satan provides this Cult plenty of wealth and power, and their Members do not question the Blasphemy taught by their Founder Joseph Smith, who was a Free Mason known for ‘Tall Tales.’” — VOP Telegram, March 20, 2022

Apparently this mind-set comes with a Peculiar tendency to Capitalize Oddly.

And of course it’s all mixed with the usual Christian fundamentalist obsession with the Book of Revelation and thinking COVID-19 vaccines alter your genes:

“Global currency will accompany the Mark and the world will see WEALTH being created instead of spiritual health being destroyed. Nearly all those who wore a mask or conceded to taking anti-fertility vaccinations with DNA altering nano technology created from unborn murdered babies in the womb will take the Mark. Americans crave wealth, power, and personal gain… The numbers of socialists, Marxists, and communist people needed to ensure Christians are overwhelmed and eventually separated from persecution have already poured across our border and continue to do so.” — VOP Telegram, May 20, 2021

There’s a lot more at the SPLC site, but it’s all disgusting and stupid. They seem to have ingested all the crazy conspiracies which the American right wing now purveys wholesale.

We’ve written before on this CLBTNR about statistical models that conclude conspiracy organizations tend to have relatively short lifetimes ^[12], because you just can’t keep secrets very well without extreme measures.

Now from Pennycook and others at Cornell & MIT comes an analysis of just how some conspiracies do survive for a while: they’re so damn certain of their nonsense! ^[13]

Their meta-analysis of 8 studies of a total of 4181 US adults showed conspiracy believers consistently overestimated their performance on numeracy and perception tests, even after they learned their actual performance. There’s a lot to go into in this paper, which is worth a Journal Club on its own. But here are some highlights:

• They controlled for indicators of analytical thinking, need for uniqueness, and narcissism, but still found the overconfidence independent of those other factors.
  
• Conspiracy believers had their overconfidence correlate with belief in an idea even more when the idea itself was outlandish. Consider their Figure 2, shown here.
  • The horizontal axis is the “overall believability” score of a conspiracy idea, i.e., the true ones are on the right.
  • The vertical axis is the Pearson correlation between a subject’s overconfidence and belief in a conspiracy.
  • True (proven) conspiracies are in yellow, while false ones are in green.
  • Conclusion: People who believe in conspiracy theories are even more likely to double down with overconfidence when their particular conspiracy theory is wildly unreasonable. They believe, and over confidently so, when the idea is wildly bogus.
    
• Conspiracy believers massively overestimated how much others agree with them: when 12% of the participants agree, they thought 96% would agree. This is illustrated in their Figure 4, shown here.
  • The horizontal axis is the actual rate at which other test subjects believe a conspiracy theory.
  • The vertical axis is the rate at which the conspiracy’s adherents think other people agree with them in their belief.
  • The diagonal line is when those 2 are equal: a well-calibrated person would believe about other people’s beliefs (vertical axis) roughly what the others think (horizontal axis). If data points are above this line, agreement is being overestimated.
  • Conclusion: As you can see, agreement is wildly overestimated. Conspiracy believers think that their beliefs are just “what everybody knows is true”.

There’s a great deal more here – I haven’t even begun to dig into the details of their statistical models. But the conclusion should be clear: conspiracy believers are wildly overconfident and think their beliefs are widely shared. This could contribute to their ability to keep secret due to overconfidence, or not care about secrecy because they believe their theory is widespread.

We’ve written before on this CLBTNR that excessive certainty about anything is a cognitive injury. ^[14] Here we see it in its more florid, delusional form.

The Trump Solution: Deliberate Destruction of Scientific Infrastructure

One might hope a reasonable government would defend, well, reality here. They could explain how weather forecasting works, how radars are a good thing, and they could even provide security.

But, as Sen Markey (D-MA) reports below, they’re doing the opposite:

In Texas, they failed to issue warnings about the flooding. Stung by that accusation of failure, they propose to castrate the government by amputating its ability to send warnings at all. If you can’t send a warning, then nobody can criticize you when you don’t send a warning, right?

Of course, that’s the response of destructive idiots.

But it goes deeper: they are deliberately destroying scientific infrastructure, like a band of criminal arsonists.

From a report on NPR ^[15] comes news that the Trump administration is directing NASA to de-orbit and destroy at least 2 major satellite missions (emphasis added):

The data the two missions collect is widely used, including by scientists, oil and gas companies and farmers who need detailed information about carbon dioxide and crop health. They are the only two federal satellite missions that were designed and built specifically to monitor planet-warming greenhouse gases.

These are the Orbiting Carbon Observatories.

The equipment is “state of the art and is expected to function for many more years”, so there’s no point in wanton destruction of a good scientific platform unless you don’t want scientists to be able to tell the truth about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

They’d prefer to blind you about climate change, so the fossil fuel incumbents can continue to profit without competition from cheaper green energy.

Deliberate Obstruction of Already-Approved Green Energy Projects

And yet… you fall through into deeper holes yet: the deliberate obstruction of nearly-complete green energy projects. After all, it can’t be allowed to be better than fossil fuels, or people might get the wrong idea!

In this case, the Trump administration has pulled the plug on multiple wind farms offshore of blue states, one being very near completion. ^{[16] [17] [18] [19] [20]}

It even looks as though something like a bribe was involved, in the case of Empire Wind, q.v.

There are currently 5 major offshore wind power projects under construction. Of those, 3 are under immediate attack:

• Empire Wind 1: This is a $5 billion project under construction off the New York Coast.
  • The commercial lease on the federal offshore area was signed in 2017-March (under the first Trump administration!).
    • It was approved under the Biden administration 6 years later in 2023.
    • Construction began in 2024.
  • It is projected to come online in 2027, generating a whopping 810 megawatts of power.
  • The main developer is the Norwegian company Equinor.
• Revolution Wind: This is a $4 billion project, 80% complete, off the coast of Rhode Island.
  • Construction started in 2023.
  • At 80% complete, it is projected to come online in 2026, generating 704 megawatts, 400MW to Rhode Island and 304MW to Connecticut. Apparently 70% of the turbines are already installed.
  • The main developer is the Danish company Ørsted.
• US Wind: This is a project off the coast of Maryland.
  • It was approved in 2024-Sep, at the end of the Biden administration. So it’s just getting started.
  • It is projected to generate 300 megawatts of power in its initial phase, ramping up over time to a whopping 1,800 megawatts!

It’s clear that Trump’s policy was to stop wind power, whether by propaganda, fossil fuel subsidies, or encumbering already-issued permits and denying new ones. From Ars Technica, :

On Trump’s first day in office, the president issued a memorandum (^[21]) halting approvals, permits, leases, and loans for both offshore and onshore wind projects.

The GOP also targeted wind energy in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, accelerating the phaseout of tax credits for wind and solar projects while mandating lease sales for fossil fuels and making millions of acres of federal land available for mining.

The chaos monkey’s antics are beginning to implement that declared policy, if only by the creation of chaos:

• In April, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management issued a stop-work order at Empire Wind 1.
  • Their immediate excuse was that they thought the Biden administration “rushed through its approval without sufficient analysis.” As a reminder, it was 6 years from the signing of the offshore lease to the issue of the permit under Biden.

  • But then construction was allowed to resume in May. The reason is about as awful as you might think; both the NYT and Ars Technica report a policy bribe (emphasis added):

    In a statement to Politico’s E&E News days after the order was lifted in May, the White House claimed that Hochul “caved” and struck an agreement to allow “two natural gas pipelines to advance” through New York.

    Gov. Hochul denies offering any such policy bribe to favored gas companies, while the White House crows proudly about having solicited the policy bribe, or so it appears. (Usually the one who took the bribe wants to keep it quiet, while the one who paid it complains. Here, as with everything Trumpian, it’s exactly backwards: they’re proud of likely extorting fossil fuel concessions. It’s DEI for fossil fuels!)

• In August, the Trump BOEM issued a stop-work order for Revolution Wind, even though it’s 80% complete and about to go online in less than a year.

  • The “reason”, though we’re stretching a point to call it that, was according to Ars Technica (emphasis added):

    “… the protection of national security interests of the United States and prevention of interference with reasonable uses of the exclusive economic zone, the high seas, and the territorial seas.”

  • They did not explain what the national security issues were. But Trump’s Commerce Department is opening an investigation, again according to Ars Technica:

    “… the effects on the national security of imports of wind turbines and their parts and components, …” ^[22]

    Do these numpties actually think wind turbines are a national security threat? My guess is no, that’s just the excuse. Speculation is that Trump is seeking to impose tariffs on imported wind turbine technology, and this is a way to get his hands around their throats to extract money and create confusion.

• US Wind in Maryland, apparently also known as “Marwind”, is a much larger project, but at an earlier stage.
  • However, according to Reuters, the Trump administration intends to withdraw federal approval.
  • They will also, in an uncharacteristic expression of thoroughness, seek to block the building of the on-shore construction & operations site, so it will be more difficult to resume construction if the appeal on the project license goes in favor of US Wind (as seems likely). That’s… vindictive: if you can’t deny them a license, then destroy their ability to construct anything on land.

It’s not all about the oceans, though. The NYT article also mentions that Trump is attempting to reverse approval of the Lava Ridge Wind Project in southern Idaho, for alleged unspecified “legal deficiencies.” And Trump’s Department of Energy has issued an order compelling a coal-burning power plant in Michigan to continue running.

Apparently intimidation works. From the NYT:

In the wake of Mr. Trump’s election, some companies have said they will halt plans to develop any more offshore wind projects in the country for the foreseeable future.

From Ars Technica:

“The unfortunate message to investors is clear: the US is no longer a reliable place for long-term energy investments,” said the American Clean Power Association, a trade association, in a statement on Friday.

You can have all the opinions you want about wind, but it’s still there, still green, still abundant in power, and every other developed nation in the world knows this. You can think otherwise, if you insist delusion. But – to continue the theme of impending marine disaster – it’s getting late, and the Lorelei still sings to lure us to die with fossil fuels:

Die Luft ist kühl und es dunkelt,
Und ruhig fließt der Rhein;
– Heinrich Heine, “Die Lorelei”

The Weekend Conclusion

So there you have it:

• the hysterical legislation to outlaw weather modification that does not exist,
• the war on weather to privatize & sell the weather information with the army of psychotics on their domestic terrorism campaign against scientific instruments,
• the sequestration of data & outright destruction of instruments that might point a finger at fossil fuels & climate change, and
• the impoundment of funding & withdrawal of permits on late-stage energy projects, so they will never come to fruition without a major bribe to the fossil fuel oligarchs.

As Trump repeatedly demonstrates: he might be personally too stupid and impulsive to carry out a plan correctly, but he will cause immense damage along the way. Those manipulating him are counting on that destruction.

As we’ve remarked earlier on this CLBTNR ^[23], it is much easier to destroy than it is to create. When the fanatics of the Robespierre period of the French Revolution executed scientist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier on 1794-May-08, the French mathematical deity Joseph-Louis Lagrange remarked:

It took them only an instant to cut off that head, but France may not produce another like it in a century.It took them only an instant to cut off that head, but France may not produce another like it in a century.

So it is today with Trump in the role of Robespierre, destroying what took most of a century to build: our scientific infrastructure, our soft power in the world, and now our near-future energy infrastructure.

As you can see here, the Weekend Publisher disapproves.

Actually he disapproves of more or less everything. But he especially disapproves of right-wing destruction of public goods like science in particular, and of the destruction of civilization in general.

He’s a cat of great and good taste.

He’s an anglophone & francophone cat, but if he knew Latin, he’d approve of this CLBTNR’s regrettably necessary motto:

Ceterum censeo, Trump incarcerandam esse.

Addendum 2024-Sep-24: Revolution Wind Restarts

Reuters reports ^[24] that a federal judge has ruled that Ørsted can resume construction on the Revolution Wind project. Trump had previously blocked it from being finished on “national security grounds”, even though it was already 80% complete. All offshore foundations are in place and 45 of the 65 wind turbines are installed.

Apparently this is not final: the Trump administration case can still proceed, though it appears the wind farm may be finished and delivering electricity by the time it’s decided.

Will Trump be stupid enough to demand the dismantling of a 704 Mw generating facility?

---

Notes & References

1: Weekend Editor, “Really, Republicans?”, Some Weekend Reading blog, 2021-Jul-12. ↩

2: Hint: Try an Old English Translator on the section title. You should get something like: “Listen! We have heard the glory of Republicans in days of yore”, which is pretty close to the opening of Beowulf. (Though instead of using it heroically, I’m using it as mockery. The needs of the times are what they are.) ↩

3: K Plummer, “Marjorie Taylor Greene Announces Bill To Tackle ‘Weather Modification’”, Newsweek, 2025-Jul-06. ↩

4: K Bogardus, “Marjorie Taylor Greene introduces ‘weather modification’ ban”, Politico Pro (ClimateWire), 2025-07-17. ↩

5: MT Greene, “A BILL To prohibit weather modification within the United States, and for other purposes. “, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s House web site, retrieved 2025-Aug-25. Archived locally here, against the day she inevitably tries to memory-hole it.↩

6: NOAA Staff, “Fact check: Debunking weather modification claims”, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration web site, 2024-Oct-23. ↩

7: PZ Myers, “The perils of listening to Marjorie Taylor Greene”, Pharyngula blog, 2025-Jul-21. ↩

8: R Ruelas, “Anti-government group with Arizona ties takes credit for weather radar sabotage”, AZ Central, 2025-Jul-11. NB: Regrettably paywalled. The link here goes to an archive.is snapshot. ↩

9: JC Smith, “An OKC man is accused of vandalizing a TV station’s radar. Who else could be involved?”, The Oklahoman, 2025-Jul-11. ↩

10: A Freedman, “A militarized conspiracy theorist group believes radars are ‘weather weapons’ and is trying to destroy them”, CNN, 2025-May-05. ↩

11: SPLC Staff, “Veterans on Patrol”, Southern Poverty Law Center, downloaded 2025-Aug-26. ↩

12: Weekend Editor, “On the Lifetime of Conspiracies”, Some Weekend Reading blog, 2022-Jun-12. ↩

13: G Pennycook, et al., “Overconfidently Conspiratorial: Conspiracy Believers are Dispositionally Overconfident and Massively Overestimate How Much Others Agree With Them”, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2025-May-24. DOI: 10.1177/01461672251338358. NB: Regrettably paywalled. A preprint is available here. ↩

14: Weekend Editor, “On Certainty as Cognitive Injury”, Some Weekend Reading blog, 2024-Nov-07. ↩

15: R Hersher, “Why a NASA satellite that scientists and farmers rely on may be destroyed on purpose”, NPR, 2025-Aug-04. ↩

16: M Lewis, “Trump admin halts $5 billion NY offshore wind project mid-build”, Electrek, 2025-Apr-17. ↩

17: A Hughes, “Trump admin issues stop-work order for offshore wind project”, Ars Technica, 2025-Aug-25. ↩

18: M Copley, “Trump administration halts work on an almost-finished wind farm”, NPR, 2025-Aug-23. ↩

19: L Friedman, B Plumer, M Joselow, “Trump Administration Orders Work Halted on Wind Farm That Is Nearly Built”, New York Times, 2025-Aug-23. NB: Regrettably paywalled. The link here goes to an archive.is snapshot. ↩

20: Reuters Staff, “Trump administration plans to cancel approval of Maryland offshore wind project”, Reuters, 2025-Aug-26. ↩

21: White House Staff, “Temporary Withdrawal of All Areas on the Outer Continental Shelf from Offshore Wind Leasing and Review of the Federal Government’s Leasing and Permitting Practices for Wind Projects”, White House memoranda, 2025-Jan-20. ↩

22: Commerce Dept Bureau of Industry and Security, “Notice of Request for Public Comments on Section 232 National Security Investigation of Imports of Wind Turbines and Their Parts and Components”, Federal Register, Docket No. 250818-0143, XRIN 0694-XC133, 2025-Aug-25. ↩

23: Weekend Editor, “Hank Green, John Green, and the Great Asymmetry”, Some Weekend Reading blog, 2022-May-22. ↩

24: Reuters Staff, “Orsted resumes work on US offshore wind farm after stop-work order lifted”, Reuters, 2025-Sep-24. ↩