A Republican congressman has publicly refuted Consultant Marjorie Taylor Greene’s latest declare that somebody is “controlling” the climate to summon hurricanes, calling them “outrageous.”
“Sure they will management the climate,” Greene wrote on X final week, after Hurricane Helene swept throughout the Southeastern U.S., killing at the least 227 folks. “It is ridiculous for anybody to lie and say it may’t be accomplished.” Greene did not specify who “they” had been.
She then posted a picture of Helene overlaid on an electoral map, suggesting that the hurricane’s path had been deliberately set in movement to focus on Republican-leaning counties. The map appeared to have been created by Matt Wallace, a crypto influencer and conspiracy theorist with over 2 million followers on X.
“This took me a very long time to make!” Wallace wrote on Sept. 30, posting a picture of the map. “I created map exhibiting the trail of destruction of Hurricane Helene with an overlay of the 2020 election outcomes… The storm appeared to virtually methodically miss the bluest components of these essential swing states, whereas concurrently ravaging the crimson components. What a loopy coincidence!”
Marjorie Taylor Greene on Sept. 24, 2024, in Savannah, Georgia. She is being mocked after claiming the climate could be managed.
Evan Vucci/AP
Greene’s posts rapidly went viral, with one receiving a user-generated neighborhood observe that clarified present “climate management” expertise is proscribed to small-scale cloud seeding and can’t generate massive storms or hurricanes.
She was extensively mocked for her posts, with Russell Foster, a former Democratic congressional candidate in Texas, writing on X: “If we management the climate then why the hell do we now have such droughts all over the world & wildfires getting worse annually? They might simply flip the rain on & refill the billions of gallons of water America is needing proper now & cease the fires. Marjorie Taylor Greene is dumb AF.”
Rep. Chuck Edwards, a Republican who represents one of many hardest-hit areas in western North Carolina, additionally felt compelled to debunk Greene’s conspiracy concept, calling it “outrageous.”
“Over the previous 10 days, I’ve been happy with how our mountain communities have come collectively to assist each other. We now have seen a stage of assist that’s unmatched by most some other catastrophe nationwide; however amidst the entire assist, we now have additionally seen an uptick in untrustworthy sources making an attempt to spark chaos by sharing hoaxes, conspiracy theories, and rumour about hurricane response efforts throughout our mountains,” he wrote on his congressional web site.
“Whereas it’s true, the Federal Emergency Administration Company’s response to Hurricane Helene has had its shortfalls, I am right here to dispel the outrageous rumors which were circulated on-line.
“Hurricane Helene was NOT geoengineered by the federal government to grab and entry lithium deposits in Chimney Rock,” mentioned the assertion. “No one can management the climate. Charles Konrad, director of the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Southeast Regional Local weather Middle, has confirmed that nobody has the expertise or capability to geoengineer a hurricane. Present geoengineering expertise can function a large-scale intervention to mitigate the adverse penalties of naturally occurring climate phenomena, however it can’t be used to create or manipulate hurricanes.
“I encourage you to do not forget that the whole lot you see on Fb, X, or some other social media platform isn’t at all times reality. Please be sure to are reality checking what you learn on-line with a good supply.”
Newsweek reached out to Greene through electronic mail outdoors of regular enterprise hours for a response.
The congresswoman is thought for selling conspiracy theories. In 2021, the Home Democratic majority eliminated her from her committee assignments attributable to her assist of such theories, racist feedback, and former endorsements of violence in opposition to outstanding Democrats.
In 2018, she claimed that the Rothschilds, a rich Jewish banking household typically related to antisemitic conspiracy theories, had been concerned in a scheme to make use of house lasers to ignite wildfires in California for revenue.