Patents can be filed for inventions that are impractical and products that never get made.
"They" can control the weather, and the proof is in the patents, said Georgia Republican U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
On Oct. 7, Greene posted a viral meme showing a line drawing of an angry person saying, "They can't control the weather!!!" Beneath that, a figure gestured to a list of what the meme described as "weather modification patents."
Not all the listed patents were legible, but the earliest dated back to 1891 and the most recent was from 2001. They included a 1914 patent for a balloon "rain maker" that expired in 1931; a 1917 patent on an idea to burn highly combustible fuel as a means of "protecting from poisonous gas in warfare"; and a 1968 patent for an "automatically adjustable airfoil spray system with pump" that could be used to spray herbicide from planes.
Meteorologists and atmospheric science experts told PolitiFact that they knew of no technology that allows anyone to control the weather or create a hurricane. The patents listed in Greene's meme do not prove that anyone can control the weather, they said.
"These are silly, frivolous patents," said James Fleming, an emeritus professor of science, technology and society at Colby College and author of "Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control."
Furthermore, securing a patent does not prove an invention is practical, can be applied or will be effective. Our review of some of the patents found that not only do they not prove humans could control weather features such as hurricanes, but some appeared to have no direct connection to weather technology.
PolitiFact contacted Greene and she did not respond.
Researchers who have studied weather modification have found little success, experts said, and their work would not have enabled weather control.
Paul Ullrich, a professor of regional climate modeling at the University of California, Davis, said that if weather control were possible "somebody would have monetized it" and "made a fortune."
"The weather is incredibly chaotic, hence why it's almost impossible to predict the weather more than two weeks in advance," he said, adding that a hurricane, for example, has a large "cone of uncertainty."
"Any modifications that we made to the atmosphere would have similarly unpredictable outcomes, so definitely wouldn't constitute any sort of control," Ullrich said.
Experts said they knew of no technology that could create or control hurricanes.
Ullrich said a typical mature hurricane generates "200 times as much power as the whole electrical generating capacity of the planet." A hurricane's track is controlled by global circulation, and "we'd need to significantly modify pressure and wind speeds over the whole Gulf of Mexico and Southern United States to have any impact on its trajectory."
Experts said these claims also ignore how impossible the physics of a human-made hurricane would even be.
"The amount of energy required to generate a hurricane is so much greater than any energy that we could muster up," said meteorologist Charles Konrad, the director of the Southeast Regional Climate Center in North Carolina.
Ulrich agreed with Konrad: "I dare not do the math on that one, but that kind of energy release would basically wipe out life on the planet."
Kristen Corbosiero, a University at Albany atmospheric and environmental sciences professor, said that weather is a "natural phenomenon."
"All weather in our atmosphere is due to unequal heating of the Earth and the atmosphere's (and ocean's) attempt to balance out that heating," she said.
A house lies toppled off its stilts after the passage of Hurricane Milton, in Bradenton Beach on Anna Maria Island, Fla., Oct. 10, 2024. (AP)
Greene's statements drew pushback from Republicans, too.
In an Oct. 8 news release, U.S. Rep. Chuck Edwards, R-N.C., said he wished to "dispel the outrageous rumors that have been circulated online."
"Nobody can control the weather," Edwards said. "Current geoengineering technology can serve as a large-scale intervention to mitigate the negative consequences of naturally occurring weather phenomena, but it cannot be used to create or manipulate hurricanes."
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis weighed in.
"If I could control the weather, I would do 78 (degrees) and sunny year-round," he said Oct. 10 during a St. Lucie County, Florida, press briefing. "These are natural occurrences. We will deal with tropical weather for as long as we're Floridians."
Experts told PolitiFact they knew of no patented products or technology that enable weather control.
Patents don't need to be for actual products, Corbosiero said.
A patent "can be for an idea that could have absolutely no basis in reality and no actual product may ever be made from a patented idea, let alone a product that actually does what the patent/idea was about," she said.
Ullrich said many of the patents listed related to cloud seeding, which he described as "the only form of weather modification I know of that is employed in practice."
"Basically the idea is that you dump a lot of dust or aerosols into the atmosphere and they act as surfaces for the formation of clouds and rain," he said. "It can have some impact on increasing the amount of rain or snow you get from a particular storm."
However, he said he wouldn't cast that as "controlling the weather," because it works only if a storm already has a lot of moisture and affects only "the timing of the precipitation."
A water rescue team member walks through flood waters at an apartment complex in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton, Oct. 10, 2024, in Clearwater, Fla. (AP)
Konrad said cloud-seeding research has been "very localized" and there is no way the technique could "substantively affect a big hurricane."
The patents Greene's meme pointed to spanned 1891 to 2001, and many on the list were too small to read. They included:
Fleming told The Associated Press that as far back as Greek mythology, people have believed they could control the weather, but he described that as a "failed idea."
Konrad said credible scientific research takes time, builds on scientific expertise and is conducted "out in the open" and significant technological developments -- such as ones enabling weather control -- would be in scientific literature.
"Gosh, if we had those technologies and they could really prevent any loss of life or anything we would be using them," Konrad said. "We wouldn't hide something like that."
Greene said patents dating back to the 1800s show that people can control the weather.
Experts told PolitiFact that they knew of no technology that allows anyone to control the weather or create a hurricane, and denied that the meme's patents proved weather control is possible. These patents don't show that they can. We rate this claim Pants on Fire!
RELATED: No, cloud seeding wasn't used to create Hurricane Milton