Apr 6, 2025 · 28m · tbpn
Augustus Doricko (Rainmaker) Talks Terraforming, Regulation Battles, and Climate Tech
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Rainmaker founder Augustus Doricko joins hosts John Coogan and Jordi Hays to discuss the technological promise of cloud seeding, addressing regulatory hurdles, persistent conspiracy theories, urgent American water scarcity, and his company's commercial vision for desert terraforming.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 45.7% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 2.4 Guest teaching 5.0 Guest disagreement 1.3 The hosts pushing back 1.3
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 12:37 Augustus dismisses the downwind drought premise as lacking scientific evidence
Augustus directly dismisses the intuitive fear that cloud seeding steals water from downwind neighbors, citing atmospheric data showing 91% of atmospheric water leaves the US unused.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 8:29 John challenges Augustus on longitudinal safety and unintended chemical accumulationJohn pushes back against dismissing safety concerns, pointing out that low doses can become harmful at scale and comparing long-term silver iodide dispersion to unknown vaping health risks.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 9:09 Augustus details eight decades of safety data and silver iodide LD50 toxicity levelsAugustus thoroughly educates the host by establishing that cloud seeding has 80 years of empirical tracking, yields merely parts-per-trillion traces, and has a lower lethal toxicity than household table salt.
The host holds their own ▶ 22:54 John cites Blake Masters' plan to power California desalination via nuclear energyJohn demonstrates domain familiarity by detailing Blake Masters' decade-old policy proposal to reallocate river water inland while sustaining California purely on nuclear-powered desalination.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Welcome and Regulatory Backlash Over Cloud Seeding | 2 | 4 | 1 | 1 | The hosts welcome Augustus and ask him to explain the regulatory backlash and media narratives surrounding his company. Augustus educates them on how 29 state bills are conflating cloud seeding with chemtrails and solar radiation management. | |
| The Hidden Reality of American Water Scarcity | 2 | 6 | 1 | 1 | The hosts ask why water scarcity is underestimated by the public. Augustus reels off detailed statistics including California's mandate that 500,000 acres turn to desert by 2030, housing bans in Phoenix, and severe droughts across Florida farmland. | |
| Pioneering Weather Tech and Regional Political Dynamics | 2 | 5 | 2 | 1 | Jordi asks about balancing commercial execution against regulatory bans and asks if Augustus is the last man standing. Augustus reframes using Peter Thiel's zero-to-one concept, calling himself the first man standing, and notes the political division is east-west rather than left-right. | |
| Safety Profile and History of Silver Iodide | 3 | 7 | 2 | 3 | John presses on the risks of novel chemical dispersal and long-term toxicity using the analogy of vaping. Augustus thoroughly dismantles the novel risk premise, explaining that cloud seeding has 80 years of data dating back to 1945 and that silver iodide's LD50 is lower than table salt. | |
| Unintentional Climate Modification and Second-Order Effects | 3 | 6 | 2 | 2 | John asks about second-order climate effects, contrails, and downwind moisture deprivation. Augustus explains that human infrastructure already modifies weather unintentionally and points out that only 9% of atmospheric water over the US ever precipitates naturally. | |
| Desert Reforestation and Modern Terraforming Ambition | 2 | 5 | 1 | 1 | John brings up a viral video of desert greening in China and asks if planting trees would be simpler PR. Augustus explains that reforestation historically requires vast conveyance and seeding, comparing the ambition to the Central Valley and the Hoover Dam. | |
| Commercial Terraforming and Land Value Arbitrage | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Jordi shares a story from Hereticon about terraforming the Salton Sea and asks how large projects get funded. Augustus outlines Rainmaker's planned land fund strategy to buy non-arable desert land at $6k/acre and arbitrate it into high-value farmland with seeded water. | |
| Desalination Conveyance Challenges vs. Atmospheric Water | 4 | 6 | 2 | 2 | John queries why desalination isn't the primary solution for water scarcity. Augustus acknowledges desalination's utility for coasts but demonstrates why massive conveyance pipeline costs make it non-viable for the American interior compared to atmospheric harvesting. | |
| Personal Resilience, Faith, and Future Outlook | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Jordi asks Augustus how he handles online vitriol and death threats personally. Augustus attributes his resilience to his Christian faith and high school debate background in a lighthearted, supportive concluding exchange. |
Statements from this episode (14)
Doricko: 29 US States Have Proposed Legislation Banning Weather Modification
“The state of the union is 29 states this year have proposed legislation to carte blanche all weather modification and atmospheric engineering.”
Doricko: Banning Cloud Seeding Is Like Banning Rocketry or Fission
“I think that if you ban five seating, you're basically banning like rocketry or fission.”
Doricko: California water strategy requires 500k farmland acres fallowed by 2030
“The California State Water Supply Strategy, like, from the Department of Natural Resources, says that half a million acres of farmland have to turn into desert by 2030 in California. In order to like maintain water supply for the cities.”
Doricko: Phoenix is banning new housing development over water shortages
“Like Phoenix, Arizona is banning new housing development because there's not enough water.”
Doricko: 14 million acres of Florida farmland are currently in drought
“Well, fourteen million acres of farmland in Florida is currently in a drought.”
Doricko: Cloud seeding politics split East-West over water, not Left-Right
“It's not really like a right-left issue, so much as it is like an east-west, west issue, because the west doesn't have water. So Democrats and Republicans alike on the western half of the US are like, oh, this is sick. I would love to have water. Then the peop…”
Doricko: Decades of studies show no health impacts from cloud seeding silver iodide
“People have done 80 or 30 or 50 years, depending on the watershed, studies on the concentration of silver iodide that ends up in the water and the soil. And after decades of operation, you only see parts per trillion of this stuff. Like, you need super sophist…”
Doricko: Silver iodide is less toxic by lethal dose than table salt
“If you think about the, like, LB-fifty, like the lethal dose of silver iodide, it's less than salt. It's less than table salt. It's milligrams per kilogram with salt, and then it's 2800 for silver iodide. So this is like a resoundingly safe material to be usin…”
Doricko: Only 9% of atmospheric water over the US precipitates
“It turns out that only nine percent of all of the water that traverses the atmosphere in the United States precipitates over it. The vast majority is either recycled by the oceans, precipitates over the oceans, evaporates away, and never condenses again over t…”
Doricko: No reliable data shows cloud seeding causes downwind drought
“The evidence of downwind drought is totally uncompelling. Nobody's provided reliable data there”
Doricko: Desert reforestation requires water conveyance and cloud seeding
“You need the water though, so unless you're setting up enormous conveyance systems, which China largely is, and cloud seeding in addition to that, it's a non-starter.”
Doricko: Rainmaker will launch a land fund in 2026 to terraform desert
“I'm going to wait until Q one or Q two, 26 to do this, but we're just going to stand up a land fund and we're just going to start buying up the land that currently isn't arable, primarily in Arizona and California, because the same acre of land that's worth li…”
Doricko: Desalination cannot solve interior US water scarcity due to conveyance costs
“The problem with desalination for gigascale American projects for a lot of the world that is currently undersupplied with respect to water is conveyance. We can set up a huge desal project in LA. Sweet. No dice for Colorado. Doesn't matter for Nevada. Barely e…”
Hays: Cloud seeding startups should own the land they rain on
“Cause like that, that does feel like, you know, verticalizing and like capturing the full value that, that you guys can create over time is just like very obviously, like you should own the land that you're raining water down on and, you know, gain you know, t…”