6 ms·
> all while weather modification science here in the US is treated like alchemy I don't fully agree with this statement, it's more that you're not just affecti
by chomp 5y ago
> all while weather modification science here in the US is treated like alchemy
I don't fully agree with this statement, it's more that you're not just affecting your rainfall, but neighbors as well. As we speak, 8 of the Western states in the US are performing scientific trials together.
There's no hard data that shows exactly how much weather modification actually works. Some data shows 5 to 15% increased snowfall, but that's just statistical analysis. Once we get hard data that shows the cost/benefit, you're likely to see more weather modification efforts (e.g. how many dollars per acre-foot of water? Is this cheaper or more expensive than pipelines, or drinking water reservoirs? What would a budget look like for bolstering our agriculture? Can a state government budget a few million for the next year due to an anticipated reduction in rainfall? How many million would we need? What's the human and ecological (particularly beneficial bacteria and algae) impacts of being exposed to AgI?)
We also don't know how wide-scale it works. Yes, China can seed clouds to reduce smog to have blue skies for PRC meetings in Beijing, but can it work on the scale of say, an entire mountain range? Or the agricultural area of an entire state? Can't say. It's only been in the last few years that we've gotten RADAR and compute that's capable of analyzing our experiments.
Also another thing, you can generate precipitation, but even weather modification technology can't overcome a drought. If you have a high pressure system (like the one currently sitting over most of the West US at the moment) you're stuck with dry skies.