Cloud seeding: Should we be playing god and controlling the weather?Almost half of the world’s population will be at risk from water shortages by 2030. But is the answer a rather controversial method of inducing rainfall that came to life in the Forties with rocky beginnings, asks Jessica Brown
If you wanted a guarantee that it wouldn’t rain on your wedding day in 2015, you could have done so for the small price of £100,000. That's what Luxury holiday company Oliver’s Travels offered with a promise of “fair weather and blue skies”, which may sound like just a gimmick to get the loved-up to cough up, but behind its grand promise was the same technology being used by governments around the world to control rain.
Droughts are becoming more commonplace due to climate change, and according to the UN, almost half of the world’s population will be at risk from high water stress by 2030. Countries are trying to mitigate some of this by inducing rainfall with a method called cloud seeding.
Playing with the weather might sound like something from the future, but governments have been implementing cloud seeding operations for decades. The method was discovered in 1946 by Dr Vincent Schaefer, who, as Bruce Lambert wrote in his obituary of him, was “hailed as the first person to actually do something about the weather and not just talk about it”.
Then Schaefer and his colleague, Bernard Vonnegut, discovered that silver iodide, which is structurally similar to ice, also did the job.
Now, cloud seeding uses magnesium, sodium chloride and potassium chloride. In 2016, 56 countries had cloud seeding operations, compared to 42 in 2011, as estimated by the World Meteorological Association.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_ ... 60146.htmlWell I never, there may be something in it after all.
Article goes on to explain warfare use and now using drones to
alter the electrical properties of clouds to induce electrical seeding I had heard of cloud seeding but never really thought it was done on any great scale or with any real success but it says Middle East countries do it with success, namely UAE.
But this increased rainfall is having less than desirable effects on a country ill-equipped for such heavy rainfall. In December last year, rain caused almost 600 accidents in Dubai, while in the city of Jeddah in Western Saudi Arabia was damaged by floods in 2009 that reportedly killed more than 100 people; igniting questions of why the country doesn’t have effective drainage systems in place. Weather manipulation might explain the weather patterns changing over the years with the cover all excuse of global warming for blatant tinkering by tptb. Mad scientists at work putting the world in peril or just a bit of harmless help for dry countries?