'Stop lying': After recent hurricanes around the world, weather conspiracy theories explode

Des théoriciens du complot accusent les intempéries d’être artificielles. ILLUSTRATION UNSPLASH. – Tino Rischawy

"Du jour au lendemain, des idées qui autrefois étaient ridicules deviennent soudainement populaires", déplore le météorologue Matthew Cappucci auprès de Rolling Stone. It's hard to be a weather expert when it's so turbulent. The anxiety before the hurricane arrives, the damage to be dealt with, the fear of injury… make people particularly quick to seek inaccurate, but more reassuring, answers.

Also, with the passage of Helen and Milton in the United States, and even with Storm Kirk in France, conspiracy theories are exploding.

The “control” weather

"I've been doing this job for forty-six years and it's never been like this. I've been inundated with worrying messages telling me to stop lying, and that the government controls the weather,", the meteorologist explains.

Anxiety is the breeding ground for conspiracy theories. To avoid the fear of an incomprehensible world, conspiracy theorists are ready to invent anything: as long as they have answers. And that's what some people did about Hurricane Milton.

Former US President Donald Trump, for example, said that hurricane relief funds are being spent on migrants, reports the BBC. On X, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said that “Yes, they can control the weather”, about the government.

Weather and climate

“Weather refers to the “weather” at a given moment or over a short period (a day, a week, etc.). Climate, on the other hand, is studied over periods of at least 30 years, and up to on the scale of a century, a millennium, or even much longer when studying past climates!”, poses the Climate Action Network. Also, a short-lived cold or wet episode does not mean that the climate is not warming. On the contrary, it is often a sign that it is abnormally out of order.

Creating the storm

From France, conspiracy theorist figure Silvano Trotta relays a quote, diverted, from an American channel: “Cloud seeding is booming… We've been doing it since the 1940s… We have been manipulating the weather for a very long time." To which one Internet user responds: "They are the ones who have caused climate change and disruption for a long time." "So that they no longer commit bioterrorism to reduce the population", adds another.

The technique of cloud seeding consists of injecting aluminum salts into them in order to encourage raindrops to form. A method used in agriculture that has never been used to cause low pressure systems as large as Kirk's.