Wrestling Over Weather Control

On Monday, Representative Monty Fritts talked with the Pamphleteer about his controversial weather modification bill. The legislation, which put restrictions on geoengineering initiatives such as cloud seeding and other particle dispersions aiming to alter weather and sunlight, set off a media firestorm. While pundits and Tennessee politicians alike pulled out the tin foil hats—chastising the bill for encouraging chemtrail conspiracy theorists, a myth likened to “Yetis or Sasquatch or Bigfoot”—it passed with a healthy majority vote in both the house and the senate. 

A few months out from his July prayer tour that took him from Mountain City to Memphis, the freshman state legislator filled us in about his goals for next year’s General Assembly.  A 10-year Army veteran who came out of military retirement to re-enlist in 2003 and serve during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Fritts isn’t afraid of an uphill battle. Given his background as the Director of Operations at Nuclear Fuel Services and a Physical Scientist for the National Nuclear Security Administration, the conversation naturally veered toward state energy policy.

Regarding your weather modification bill, there was a lot of rhetoric from the left and pushback from people who were against it. They tried to make the legislation sound ridiculous and silly, but in the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee, you brought up the Stratospheric Aerosol Injection research approved by the Biden administration. We also saw Augustus Doricko—a cloud seeder from California—testify against some of the language used in the bill. What was it like trying to combat the media and bring the discussion back down to earth in order to address these issues?

I think some of that is just keeping it simple. I really think, for some of those who took a side against this, it's because they just really couldn't grasp what was taking place. I think some of my colleagues made a couple flamboyant statements about things that they don't have the background to understand. There's probably some politics in it, too. 

You mentioned the 45-page White House document of congressionally mandated study. It lays out, very clearly, some of the SAI that you mentioned and the development of policies to use aerosol injection of chemical compounds, metals, and polymers into the atmosphere to control this climate change that everybody's so alarmed about. I would offer this: I'm very much convinced that many of the folks that are pushing climate alarmism are doing so to your detriment. They're doing so to be able to exercise more control over the decisions you can make today, like some of this bad energy policy. They're greatly connected. 

We sell credits on everything now. The supposed selling of carbon credits, all of those geoengineering efforts, have an end goal of costing you and me more to keep the lights on. Perhaps even costing us more in our health. One of the things that I offered in that committee was a very simple premise, just so folks like Justin Jones could maybe understand it if they thought about it for a moment: everything that goes up must come down. So, if we are introducing even small amounts of silver iodine for the cloud seed, I think that's problematic. 

When you look at the White House report, if you look at the Department of Energy or National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration documents, they talk about marine cloud brightening. So, on a very large scale, injecting particles or nanoparticles in the atmosphere to reflect the sunlight and somehow reduce its intensity upon the earth. Quite honestly, to me, it's crazy to even consider doing that.

The climate change narrative attributes weather changes, such as global warming, to carbon emissions. Are you wary that your law could be weaponized to push back against the burning of fossil fuels?

The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation were helpful in writing this bill, and we were very aware of that. When you read the legislation, it's really very simple: it says, “for the express purpose of.” The reason we included those words is because those who may be on the other side of this issue—those that would want to stop us from using internal combustion engines or having a factory or a foundry, any of those other things where you may generate a flue gas or an off gas—it's not “for the express purpose of” such.

You hinted at it earlier, but do you think that perhaps these solar geoengineering studies and initiatives may be a mechanism to usher in more federal regulation within each state?

Yes, ma'am. I think we've seen that in lots of other areas before, where we create a problem or leverage a problem—if there is indeed one—just to usurp more control over the citizenry. I think this certainly bears the fingerprints of that. If that is the case, when you consider the potential health risks of what we're doing to our water and food supply, the air that we breathe, I just think it's unacceptable. 

Looking to the Constitution: I’ve talked about the enumerated powers of the US government and unfortunately, some businesses today—some of the large global corporations—think they've adopted the ability to treat [us] as test subjects. That's not okay. I think you and I probably have not consented. If I ask folks if they're okay with their children or their grandchildren or their grandparents being unwittingly exposed to chemicals being dispersed in the air that are placed there—if it's happening, even put a big if in there—everybody is somewhere on the scale of no, to heck no.

If you and I go to work in a factory, we have laws in place today. OSHA and TOSHA enforce those, and you and I have a right to know the hazards in the workplace: the chemicals that we're exposed to, what the entry routes for those chemicals are, and the companies that make the chemicals produce Material Safety Data Sheets so that you and I understand the exposure and how to protect ourselves from those chemicals. So I think I have an obligation to interpose for folks like yourself and our grandparents, our grandchildren, etc. and say, “Hey, this is not okay.” That's why we passed that, to prohibit the licensing of such in the state of Tennessee.

Are you going to bring forward any legislation to refine or expand your bill during the upcoming session?

Some of the Western states are concerned about the cloud seeding part of this weather modification, which is much like what Mr. Doricko does. [He] is a super nice young man, we're just on different sides of that issue. I don't think that we should be seeding clouds, either. 

If we have eight states in the United States that are actively and effectively cloud seeding today, then: A, is it detrimental to that state long-term? And B, is it detrimental to our state? As we increase the manipulation of the clouds to get it to rain more in California or Texas or Arizona or wherever, are we robbing folks East of the Mississippi of rainfall that they need? In the Northern Plains? I don't know. I think that's a question to ask. 

I met with our Attorney General just last week to discuss this matter and have an open conversation about the fact that I do plan to expand the current legislation. I would argue that if we were transporting hazardous waste from one state to the other, if a company or a government agency of another state was spilling hazardous waste along Interstate 40 from Shelby County to Davidson County to Roane County, that we would take an active interest in stopping that from happening. To address that person, we would have to do the most American of concepts: we would have to prove that the person who's accused is guilty of doing such before we levy a fine or, God forbid, jail time. To get this legislation to that point is going to take some dollars. We were swinging for the fence in getting this passed, because I think we are the first—at least in the last 50 years or so— to do something that prohibits such. Had we tried to add something that carried a $150,000, $250,000, or $2 million price tag, I would have never gotten it passed. I wouldn't have gotten the support from the governor's office.

You mentioned how climate change initiatives—including the Stratospheric Aerosol Injection studies—and energy policy seem to intertwine. Is there anything else you’ve worked on in terms of energy?

Last year, we resolved to have an energy policy in the state of Tennessee. This year, we restructured the State Energy Policy Advisory Council. What I'm trying to do is invert the current paradigm. The current paradigm is that we have political strategies that drive our energy policy across the US. What I would like to see Tennessee do is be a leader in developing energy strategies that equip good political policy.

I wanted to make sure that we had—with what I expect to be a coming nuclear renaissance—criticality safety and nuclear waste management supply chain people on that council. Of course, we've got our power providers and natural gas. We've even got a position on the council now for crude oil refining because Shelby County, Memphis has about one percent of the nation's sweet crude refining capacity. I'd like to see that be two or three percent. I think it's good for Memphians, I think it's good for Tennessee revenue, and I think it's also good because we have fewer perturbations of the operational schedule in Memphis than we have in Lake Charles, Louisiana or Houston, Texas.

We also added an innovative energy position on that council. We've got some entities here in East Tennessee that have a cellulose to hydrogen production capability. They operate natural gas internal combustion generators in combination with hydrogen to fuel rather large engines to produce electricity. Between that and a local solar farm we've got here—it's a sausage factory, Wampler’s Farm—I just think there's some options like that that we're not exploring today. We should be looking at all options. We absolutely should not be removing capacity before we have capacity available and online, because we're growing so fast in Tennessee.

All those words just to say: we're going to have to have a little bit of a say in this. Our Constitution doesn't give the federal government the right to make all our energy decisions. That's not one of the enumerated powers in the Constitution, so I want to see Tennessee push back on that a little bit.