The Hubris of Cloud Seeding

What the Texas flash flood teaches us about natural systems vs. technology and profits

Campers’ belongings lie on the ground on July 7, 2025 following flooding on the Guadalupe River, at Camp Mystic, Hunt, Texas. [Marco Bello/Reuters]

Stories are starting to circulate that two days before Texas was hit with catastrophic flash floods, a private company was seeding the clouds over that same region. There’s a video below if you haven’t heard it.

But let’s zoom out and see what this story tells us about our current context.

Two Approaches to Rain Making

There’s no doubt that drought is a real and growing challenge. With human ingenuity and advanced technology, it’s unsurprising that we want to step in and play rain maker. I’m even teaching my daughter how to do it. When she turns 21 in 2035 these (working with nature) skills will be in demand.

But there are two very different ways of making rain. One is tech-inspired cloud seeding (the approach used in Texas) and the other is natural rain enhancement through biogenic aerosols. The Texas flash flood offers a perfect case study in two radically different approaches to solving the same challenge - and their dramatically different outcomes.

As a side-note, I first came across cloud seeding more than 30 years ago when I was invited into a community of rice growers in Thailand. They told me about The Royal Rainmaking Project, which traced back to November 14, 1955, when His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej was traveling from Nakhon Phanom Province to Kalasin Province. During this journey through the drought-stricken northeastern region, the then 28-year-old monarch observed the severe effects of water deficiency on local communities.

“At that time, I looked up at the sky and saw that there were many clouds, but they were all blown past the arid land. The solution lies on how to make those clouds fall as rain in the locality,” the King wrote in his personal account of the experience.

Thanks to the King’s observation and 14 years of research, the first Thai test run took place in 1969. (Cloud seeding in Western nations traces back even further.) In Thailand, it involved seeding granulated dry ice and plain water into clouds. The experiment was a success and in 1974, a major drought was averted thanks to their ongoing research and commitment to avoid chemicals and involve the community. More about this later.

The Top-Down Technological Fix: Today’s Cloud Seeding

Cloud seeding as used in Texas is the quintessential top-down technological “solution.” Armed with silver iodide particles and aircraft, technologists and wealthy investors promise to hack the weather in as little as 15 minutes. According to the video below, Rainmaker, backed by billionaire Peter Thiel, deploy chemical agents into cloud systems, claiming they can enhance rainfall by up to 20%.

This approach is what I call civilizational hubris. It’s common in the late stages of all empires. It’s the belief that complex natural systems can be controlled through direct technological intervention. The mindset is seductive: identify a problem, deploy a technology, achieve immediate results, collect the profits.

The Texas floods reveal the darker side of this hubris. While scientists and fact-checkers debate causation, the incident highlights a fundamental flaw in top-down approaches: they operate without true understanding of system complexity.

The challenges with cloud seeding as deployed in Texas extend beyond potential catastrophic failures:

• Zero public oversight of operations that affect entire populations. (In the Thai example entire communities were involved in petitioning and then supporting the research - it was a bottom-up approach).

• Chemical accumulation in ecosystems with unknown long-term effects. (In Thailand, the communities insisted on researchers coming up with natural ingredients.)

• Flash flooding as unintended consequences. (When moist air repeatedly cycles over an area without rain falling, it’s because there are no natural spores on which to condense. Torrential rain is often the outcome, whether cloud seeding takes place or not. There is no evidence from Rainmaker’s website that this analysis is done prior to seeding. In Thailand, the communities who knew the weather patterns knew when the seeding should go ahead.)

The Bottom-Up Natural Solution: Sending Spores Into the Air

Contrast this with nature’s approach to rain enhancement through biogenic aerosols. Trees and forests naturally release volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) that form cloud condensation nuclei, creating what amounts to a distributed, self-regulating rain enhancement system. It’s an intricate dance between the land and the air.

This bottom-up approach works through ecosystem-mediated precipitation. It’s where forests - planted by humans or natural - create their own weather through complex atmospheric feedback loops. Instead of rushing for immediate results, this system operates through:

• Strategic afforestation that optimizes natural BVOC emissions

• Regional climate modification through vegetation over years to decades

• Continuous atmospheric conditioning that builds resilience

• Multiple co-benefits including biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and improved air quality

The elegance lies in its systemic integration. While cloud seeding focuses singularly on precipitation, biogenic aerosol enhancement delivers multiple benefit streams that strengthen entire ecosystems.

Why Top-Down Approaches Will Increasingly Fail

The failure of top-down technological solutions stems from limitations in human consciousness and perception:

• Linear Thinking vs. Systems Complexity: Cloud seeding assumes linear cause-and-effect relationships in chaotic systems. A 20% enhancement might seem modest, but as the video below notes, it can be the difference between manageable rain and catastrophic flooding. The presenter, Kim Iversen, compares it to an insignificant cigarette butt starting a wildfire.

• Technological Arrogance: The belief that we can improve upon billions of years of natural evolution through crude technological intervention represents a form of consciousness that prioritizes control over understanding.

• Externalized Costs: Top-down solutions typically ignore broader system effects, externalizing risks to communities and ecosystems that had no say in the decision.

Why Bottom-Up Approaches Work

Natural, bottom-up solutions are aligned with how complex systems actually function:

• Distributed Intelligence: Rather than centralized control, forests operate as distributed networks where each tree contributes to atmospheric conditioning based on local conditions.

• Adaptive Resilience: Natural systems evolve feedback mechanisms that self-regulate and adapt to changing conditions over time.

• Multiple Benefits: Bottom-up approaches typically deliver co-benefits that strengthen the entire system, creating positive feedback loops rather than unintended consequences.

• Evolutionary Wisdom: Natural systems represent millions of years of trial and error, incorporating learning that no human technology can match.

The NEXUS 2030 Lens

Technological faux pas like cloud seeding show how trapped we are in late-stage civilizational thinking that prioritizes immediate results (and profits) over long-term systemic health. The alternative is evolving toward a consciousness that works with natural systems rather than against them. Typically, this involves communities understanding the flow of moist air over their regions and planting trees that can seed clouds from the bottom with spores released when the trees feel they are ready.

The cloud seeding versus biogenic aerosol case study suggests that sustainable solutions emerge from understanding and amplifying natural processes rather than attempting to override them. This represents a shift from domination consciousness to partnership consciousness. It’s a shift from seeing ourselves as separate from nature to recognizing ourselves as part of natural systems.

The Path of Natural Intelligence

The temptation to implement technological quick fixes will only grow as environmental challenges continue to grow. But the lesson of cloud seeding is clear: hubristic interventions in complex systems create unpredictable and potentially catastrophic consequences.

Navigating the next few decades elegantly and boldly requires:

• Humility in the face of natural complexity

• Patience to work with natural timescales

• Wisdom to recognize when our interventions cause more harm than good

• Consciousness to see ourselves as part of the systems we’re trying to heal

The rain will come when we learn how the land dances with the clouds rather than commanding them. I believe we’ll see more and more communities coming together with their place-based wisdom and rejecting technological hubris. Let’s hope it happens before we create irreversible damage.

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References

1. The Thai Royal Rainmaking project represents a unique example of how scientific innovation, driven by compassionate leadership and direct appeals from agricultural communities, successfully addressed chronic drought problems affecting millions of rice farmers in Thailand's northeastern provinces. Deep dive.

2. Rainmaker Technology Corporation based in El Segundo, California: https://www.rainmaker.com/media

3. For alternative water and rain approaches, see our extensive collection at https://bit.ly/Alt-Water.