What about this activity? Consent of the governed? No concerns about Alaska’s fish and wildlife? He claims he got authorization. Apologizes for being less than forthcoming while experiments across the land were taking place. No “were” about it. Are. Documented by Alaskan citizens.
Thoughts?
Alaskan State Representative Schwanke emailed us about our results in Alaska. Sharing our response here, but first some context:
Rainmaker will always respond to inquiries and concerns with transparency and good faith.
I believe that cloud seeding will change the world for the better, especially the western United States. But, I also know that coastal elites in D.C. and San Francisco have repeatedly lied to and acted against the interest of normal Americans.
I am an American and will always serve the interests of all our nation’s people. We’ll always make sure to work with locals before operating, as we did in Alaska.
Email here, some relevant docs in the reply:
Representative Schwanke,
My name is Augustus Doricko and I’m the CEO of Rainmaker. I wanted to reach out to you directly to discuss your concerns and answer any questions about our research operations in Alaska and communication with the state.
Firstly, it is not lost on me that cloud seeding raises eyebrows and begets questions. You may wonder why Rainmaker exists at all and why we came to Alaska?
Why Rainmaker? I started this company to help alleviate the droughts and glacial melt happening in the western United States. Our nature, agriculture, cities and industry depend on precipitation that we simply do not have enough of. Cloud seeding is a technology invented 80 years ago by General Electric that helps make non-precipitating clouds precipitate. Provided we use it cautiously and measure our results precisely, I believe it will help the American west. Our primary innovation at Rainmaker is our ability to use radar to measure how much precipitation we make. The drones just make it more efficient.
Why Alaska? Our technology only works in clouds with small, non-precipitating, cold liquid drops of water. We freeze those drops into snowflakes large enough to fall. In the lower 48, there are about 7 months per year with sufficiently cold clouds. Alaska has the right conditions all summer long to continue improving this technology, and our aspiration was to get better at cloud seeding so we could deliver more water to the Great Salt Lake and Colorado River this winter.
I acknowledge that we could have done more to proactively engage with the community ahead of our research campaign, and your point is well taken. That said, we did proactively reach out to Alaska DNR, CIRI, and NNAI to discuss our interests and receive formal permission to conduct research in Alaska before operating. The letters from each entity are attached (although there seems to have been a scanning error on some and we’ll follow up with the full documents). Our team has befriended their neighbors in Kenai and become regulars at the Salty Dawg.
I was there this weekend and think the Kenai is some of the best country I’ve ever seen. The last thing I’d want to do is endanger or harm it in any manner and can assure our operations are demonstrably safe.
If you have any questions, I’d love to take a video call with you this week. I’m very grateful for your concern for your constituents and to Alaska for helping achieve a breakthrough that will help mitigate glacial melt and save millions of people from drought.
Warm regards,
Augustus Doricko
