Let me tell you a story of when I wandered into the wrong hearing room this January. It turned out to be the most informative thing I’ve witnessed in Concord all year.
I was there for a different bill before a different committee. I showed up early expecting to catch the tail end of the bill ahead of the one I was there to observe, only to find the schedule had collapsed. The committee had stacked eleven bills back to back, eight on firearms and three on the death penalty, with 30 minutes of testimony allotted for each. Anyone who has spent time in hearing rooms on these topics in the past knows that 30 minutes for bills like those isn’t a schedule. It’s fantasy. By noon everything was running several hours behind and predictably so. The first sign to me that the system was cracked.
And so I wandered.
I found myself in the hearing room for the House Science, Technology and Energy Committee. A committee whose name I believe implies a certain standard of epistemic rigor.
Brought before the New Hampshire House this session was House Resolution 35, a resolution urging the prohibition of weather modification and geoengineering activities in the state. Were this simply another bill, I could have excused the Legislature for its actions. At the end of the day, it would have simply been a policy position, one based on bad science, but still a policy position where reasonable people could debate it.
But this was not a bill — it was a resolution, and embedded in it was something else entirely. A finding of fact. A formal declaration by the General Court that weather modification activities harm human health, aviation, agriculture, the environment and the economy of New Hampshire. Not a concern worth studying. Not a hypothesis. A declaratory fact entered into the public record as established truth. And one that was contradicted by over 70 years of operational data and peer reviewed research.
By complete accident, I found myself uniquely qualified to speak on this resolution. While earning my degree in aeronautics with a minor in atmospheric science, I studied weather modification. In the summer of 2017, I flew cloud seeding missions for the North Dakota Cloud Modification Project, one of the longest running and most documented weather modification programs in the world.
I want to be clear about something. I am not arguing that cloud seeding is beyond scrutiny. There exists peer reviewed literature such as a 2016 study that raises legitimate questions about cumulative effects in repeatedly seeded areas. That is exactly the kind of evidence a Science Committee should be debating. But it was never brought up even once. The principal finding of fact was not built on that study or anything like it.
So I testified. I brought up the operational data. I spoke to 70 years of documented history, though I’ll admit I had arrived by accident with no preparation. The data that would have dismantled this resolution was sitting on a public website. The committee didn’t need me to find it. But they didn’t request more evidence. They didn’t acknowledge reasonable cause to doubt the resolution’s central claim. Perhaps more importantly, they never requested an evidentiary basis from the prime sponsor. And so the committee deadlocked. Nine to nine.
Before the floor vote, Rep. Dale Swanson — a certificated pilot, Air Force Academy graduate, engineer, and member of the Science, Technology and Energy Committee — stated plainly that the resolution was not supported by evidence, and that testimony given to the committee cast doubt on whether the resolution even understood the activities it sought to address. In response, the prime sponsor described the resolution as “an important statement of principles.”
On the floor of the New Hampshire House of Representatives, largely along party lines, HR 35 passed. Not because the evidence supported it. But in spite of the fact that it didn’t.
A finding of fact entered into the public record by the General Court carries institutional weight, and it can shape future legislation, agency guidance and public understanding. That standard deserves more than an unsubstantiated claim. It deserves more than a statement of principles. It deserves what the Science, Technology and Energy Committee failed to provide: An honest, evidence-based inquiry into whether the claim is actually true.
New Hampshire deserves a General Court whose findings are backed by evidence. That is not a partisan position but the minimum standard we should demand from our elected officials when they make a declaration of fact.
Kyle Haines is a certificated airline pilot and former weather modification pilot. He is a resident of Merrimack and a candidate for New Hampshire State Representative in Hillsborough District 12.