Interpreting the weather

Texas floods in the media environment

It’s such a cliché to talk about living in a post-truth society, but it’s a cliché because we all know it’s true.

In fact, it’s been true for almost a decade now. This media environment that slowly erodes any working epistemology to navigate the world has been forming for decades. It’s not a new problem, but the problem is mature enough now that we’re really seeing how much damage it can do to political structures and cultures and the psychology of those who live within that environment.

I remember when the phrase “fake news” first entered the discourse. If you recall, it originated in 2016 to refer to obviously fake articles shared around on Facebook that tricked old people into believing that Obama was using little mosquito robots to collect blood or whatever. Trump, in classic Trump fashion, slapped down an uno reverse card and said that actually it was legacy media that was the real “fake news.”

The political innovation Trump figured out in 2016 is that you could just flagrantly lie and then accuse your enemies of doing the real lying. This was exacerbated by QAnon, conspiracy theories which attempted to decode any piece of media—from actual political documents to various pieces of pop culture—to explain why Trump’s administration wasn’t doing the things they hoped it would do. By the time Trump returned for a second term, QAnon was less a group of conspiracy theorists and more a mode of thought, where all things in all media contain any meaning or connection. The introduction of generative AI has been the final nail in the coffin: you can produce any evidence you want with a few prompts and you can deny any evidence you want by accusing it of being AI. Postmodernity is ascendant.

At least 120 people have died after flash floods hit the Texas Hill Country. The number is likely higher than that. This flood, like a lot of the extreme weather we’ve witnessed in the past few years, is one of the consequences of climate change, and we’re going to be seeing more and more weather events like this.

Unfortunately, the right wing media sphere’s complete embrace of postmodernism funnels a catastrophe like this into a mess of nonsensical, paranoid discourse. In response to the floods, Marjorie Taylor Greene introduced a bill banning weather modification. The far right extremist group Veterans on Patrol has begun sabotaging radars operated by the National Weather Service in response to “the recent weather weapon deployed against Texas, which resulted in a high number of child murders.” This flash flood is being treated as a direct attack by liberals and leftists on a red state, and this conspiratorial interpretation has been echoed by Michael Flynn and Georgian congressional candidate Kandiss Taylor.

Greene has been using weather modification as a rhetorical device to take weather events and pin active blame on whoever she wants. But there really isn’t anyone to blame for the flood. Weather events like this are being accelerated by climate change, and so you could certainly blame the oil industry on some level, but that’s not to say the oil industry pressed a giant red ‘Flood Texas’ button and laughed maniacally. No one directly caused the floods—it was a tragic combination of meteorological events, some of which are fueled by carbon emissions.

What worries me is that Greene has been testing a rhetorical device to take extreme weather events—which we know will be increasing in frequency due to climate change—and apply active (not structural) blame to her political opponents. She did it with Hurricane Helene, and she’s doing it now. It’s both a way to continue denying climate change when it’s consequences are becoming more apparent and also a way to target her enemies. It’s very difficult to argue with this because it’s insane and obviously wrong, but truth no longer exists and no one seems to know how to do basic research or critical thinking anymore.

Ryan Teague Beckwith, newsletter editor for MSNBC, wrote a short piece making the case that perhaps these conspiracy theories are a step toward MAGA figures accepting the existence of climate change. They are, after all, beginning to acknowledge that human actions can impact the weather, even if that’s an obsession with cloud seeding rather than carbon emissions. I think Beckwith is being pretty naive here, and his argument only makes sense if you think any of these figures are acting in rational, good faith. They are not. They are looking for politically convenient arguments to deny reality and target their enemies.

I think these arguments about weather modification are here to stay. Most people, whether they like to admit it or not, have an understanding of science and technology that comes primarily from science fiction. This is why people can so quickly believe that large language models are able to contain consciousness—we’ve all seen a lot of movies where robots have personhood. For many people, I think, the recent advances in technology, like generative AI, are proof that we are beginning to live in the science fiction world we know from our entertainment. But these technologies don’t work they way they do in movies, and understanding how they actually work is essential for making any ethical or political assessments about their use.

Weather modification does exist. Cloud seeding does exist. It does not exist like in a movie. In dry regions of the country, some businesses have experimented with releasing silver iodide into clouds to aid in the formation of ice crystals, leading to increased rainfall. NOAA doesn’t engage in this or fund any of this, and all attempts at weather modification are required to provide a report about it to NOAA at least ten days beforehand per the Weather Modification Reporting Act of 1972. Doing this has increased the snowpack in the Nevada mountains by about 10%. This is a far cry from triggering a massive flood via a “weather weapon.” We’re talking about a small increase in precipitation in some dry regions of the country.

Most technology is more boring than it sounds. But how it sounds is all that matters when we are living in a media environment entirely divorced from reality, and when our worldview is shaped primarily by fiction.

This is the media round-up, a newsletter where I (Josiah) tell you about everything I’m watching, reading, listening to, and producing.

New from me

No new podcasts episodes this last week. Christian Rock Summer 2025 will continue over on the Fruitless Podcast, and I have the next episode recorded, but I haven’t had a ton of editing time this week, so you’ll be getting that sometime next week.

However, for those of you who subscribe to The Worst of All Possible Worlds’ Patreon, I do have one new thing for you. I made an appearance on the show this last week, on sort of a weird episode where both Josh and AJ were out. It was just Brian and I, and we talked about Pulse (2001), the video essay about Pulse that Brian made a few years back, and my own video essays. It was a bit of a loose discussion about the experience of being on the internet and making things on the internet. You should go check it out.

I don’t have much else I want to write about this week. I watched Pulse, which you can hear about on that episode. I also watched Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004) this last week which was fun but I don’t have much to say about it. I also started reading I, Robot by Isaac Asimov because I’m trying to do more reading for pleasure. I might write a bit more about that when I get farther, but right now I’ll just say I’m having a good time with it.

Alright, I’ll see you all next week.