The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 45 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
DiRico: Rainmaker and cloud seeding had no connection to Texas floods
“Rainmaker and cloud seeding had nothing to do with the flooding that unfolded”
DiRico: Marjorie Taylor Greene's weather modification bills lack scientific credibility
“I think it would be both disrespectful to the families involved and baseless and without any technical or scientific credibility if that legislation were to go through”
DiRico: Tropical Storm Barry would have caused Texas flooding regardless
“Tropical Storm Barry, the remnants of which blew into Texas, was going to cause inordinate flooding regardless.”
DiRico: Rainmaker suspended Texas cloud seeding over two days before floods
“It was over two days prior that Rainmaker had suspended all of its cloud seeding operations in Texas, because one, our forecasters and our meteorologists saw that there was going to be this severe weather event, and we needn't operate to produce more water whe…”
DiRico: Rainmaker suspended Texas operations two days before flooding occurred
“It was over two days prior that Rainmaker had suspended all of its cloud seeding operations in Texas because, one, our forecasters and our meteorologists saw that there was going to be this severe weather event, and we needn't operate to produce more water whe…”
DiRico: Rainmaker's July 2 flight released 70g silver iodide and 500g salt
“On July second, we conducted 1:19 minute cloud seeding flight where we released about 70 grams of silver iodide and 500 grams of salt, table salt. That was released at about 1600 feet above ground level into two clouds that dissipated over the course of two ho…”
DiRico: Rainmaker flew a single 19-minute seeding mission on July 2
“On July second, we conducted 1:19 minute cloud seeding flight where we released about 70 grams of silver iodide and 500 grams of salt, table salt. That was released at about 1600 feet above ground level into two clouds that dissipated over the course of two ho…”
DiRico: Lack of federal weather oversight invites unaccountable foreign operations
“If we don't have access to weather modification technology, If we don't regulate this at a federal level and ensure that there's accountability and attribution for these activities, then other people, other nation states could be conducting weather mod in the …”
Doricko: Cloud seeding is the only way to supply water to Arizona
“Like you need it to come from either the mountains in Flagstaff or the Colorado River. And the only way to get it, there's cloud seeding.”
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: 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: No reliable data shows cloud seeding causes downwind drought
“The evidence of downwind drought is totally uncompelling. Nobody's provided reliable data there”
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: Rainmaker supplies water more cheaply than desalination
“We can bring water more cost-effectively than even desalination.”
DiRico: China increased annual weather modification budget to $1.4B in 2025
“China recently, I think on the last time I was on TBPN, I talked about how they had a three hundred million dollar annual budget for their weather modification program. That as of 20, 25 has been up to 1.4 billion dollars.”
DiRico: China is deploying 100,000 cloud-seeding generators in Tibet
“But in building, ah, a 100,000 of these ground generators, and also using the Wing Long II and a bunch of their other military drones for aerial cloud seeding they're turning Tibet into, ah, a reservoir, a snowpack reservoir of unprecedented scale that will fe…”
DiRico: China increased weather modification budget to $1.4B in 2025
“China recently, I think on the last time I was on TVP and I talked about how they had a three hundred million dollar annual budget for their weather modification program, that as of 2025 has been up to 1.4 billion dollars.”
DiRico: Rainmaker advocates for increased federal regulation of cloud seeding
“And so that's why I am advocating for way more regulatory scrutiny from the federal government for cloud seeding and weather mod ops.”
Doricko: Nobody knows how TSMC's Arizona plant will get its water
“Particularly like the teams, the TSMC plant in Arizona, nobody knows where the water for that's going to come from.”
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: 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: Tennessee is trying to criminalize weather modification
“They're actually trying to elevate the punishment for weather modification to a criminal offense.”
Doricko: El Segundo engineered high-production aesthetics to make hard tech appealing
“It's been a very deliberately engineered aesthetic effort to make hard tech sick, because if it's not, then everybody's going to end up in finance again. The next generation, the lower class of zoomers, they're going to end up doing software engineering.”
DiRico: Western US farms and governments contract Rainmaker for cloud seeding
“Throughout the Western United States, farms conservationists, governments concerned with their aquifer supply of water, and also reservoirs for both industrial and residential drinking water contract with Rainmaker to produce more water via cloud seeding.”
DiRico: US weather modification programs are largely funded by municipal money
“So right now it's largely public municipal money that is going into these weather modification programs to increase water supply when there is drought or in preparation for drought.”
DiRico: Academic proof of cloud seeding attribution only emerged in 2017
“The first of which is that it wasn't until 2017 that attribution had been Physical attribution of cloud seeding's effects had been seen and proven in an academic context.”
DiRico: Operation Popeye used Vietnam War cloud seeding to cause flooding
“There was something called Operation Popeye during the Vietnam War, where the deliberate intention of cloud seeding was to cause precipitation that would Like cause flooding and then impede supply chains on the Ho Chi Minh trail.”
DiRico: China plans 100,000 Tibetan plateau weather modification generators
“One thing that we do know about the weather mod program that they do have going is that they're planning to build a hundred and a 100,000 ground generators on the Tibetan plateau.”
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: 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: 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…”
Doricko: Rainmaker uses drones and remote sensing for cloud seeding
“Rainmaker is making earth habitable by making it precipitate more, more rain and more snow in air environments. So farms that don't have enough water ecosystems that need to be restored and cities in arid regions that need water. We're making that happen with …”
Doricko: Rainmaker aims to seed clouds for 2034 Salt Lake Olympics
“Something in the distant future for Rainmaker is the Winter Olympics in 2034 are going to be held in Salt Lake, and China In 2008 had this whole big show and dance where they made it rain before the parades. So it didn't end on the Olympic games. We want to sh…”
Doricko: Rainmaker's long-term identity is a full terraforming company
“Rainmaker long-term is the terraforming company, right? We want to take, Any ecosystem and make it both symbiotically flourishing for humankind and the environment.”
Doricko: Valar Atomics is shattering timeline expectations for building nuclear reactors
“My dear friend Isaiah Taylor is absolutely kicking ass when it comes to nuclear. And I think blowing the lid off a lot of people's expectations about how long it takes to build a reactor, to get power positive.”
Doricko: Almost all El Segundo hardware startups use Rangeview for parts
“When it comes to like immediate supply chain in Gundo, I think everybody has, or has already, or is having a part made by range view from Cameron Schiller's company.”
Doricko predicts a major surge in US printed circuit board manufacturing
“Boards, I think actually we are going to see, if not just because of soft banks, a hundred billion dollars that they maybe do or don't have we will see a lot more of in the United States soon.”
DiRico: Rainmaker primarily uses drones for cloud seeding operations
“So Rainmaker
Is primarily using drones for operations.
we also have inherited some ground generators from previous operations.”
Doricko: Rainmaker banned factory bunk beds as team and government visits grew
“We decided like a month ago okay, we're big enough now. We're hiring like serious scientists. We're bringing government people through. No more bunk beds in the factory.”