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Earlier today I watched a video[0] that helped contextualize the water situation in Iran. The key takeaway for me was that Iran has been rapidly depleting their

Earlier today I watched a video[0] that helped contextualize the water situation in Iran. The key takeaway for me was that Iran has been rapidly depleting their water reserves and they don't have any ways to quickly refill them, nor do they have treaties with neighboring countries to guarantee water. That video doesn't mention cloud seeding at all. How should we think about cloud seeding? Does this technology actually move the needle at all on Iran's water needs or is this just some dubious marketing campaign? [0] https://youtu.be/n8kSGH4I8Ps https://youtu.be/n8kSGH4I8Ps

a2tech 11mo ago
I assume marketing. I’m wondering what will happen when they force the afghan refugees back over the border into Afghanistan since they don’t have the water to give them. Climate change and bad decisions from the last 50 years are starting to bite now. It’ll just get worse. Expect migrations and countries collapsing as millions of people are pushed to migrate for survival.
- yard2010 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  - ceejayoz 11mo ago
    > using the water to fight a war Look, I know they didn’t fare well against Israeli F-35s and American B-2s, but the tech disparity isn’t quite as bad as them using Super Soakers for air defense. Ten million civilians are about to deeply suffer. A multi-year drought is a key contributor.
  - matt_kantor 11mo ago
    Why not both? I'm no expert, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_in_Iran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_in_Iran (and its sources) indicate that climate change is part of the problem.
- ants_everywhere 11mo ago
  > Climate change and bad decisions from the last 50 years are starting to bite now. It’ll just get worse. Expect migrations and countries collapsing as millions of people are pushed to migrate for survival. For those unfamiliar, climate change and drought are believed to be one of the major causes of the bronze age civilization collapse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse#Drought https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse#Droug...
  - waps 11mo ago
    In Iran the cause of the water shortage is at least 99.9% the current government's policies. If global warming accelerated matters it was by days or weeks probably. But you have to admit it would be very funny if a theocracy was forced to abandon it's capital by forces of nature.
  - marcosdumay 11mo ago
    People speculate climate change and drought are one of the causes for every major collapse in history. It's even likely, because people keep fighting the collapse until something forces their hands, and that's one recurrent big thing to trigger change. That said, we never had the climate change that strongly on history.
- londons_explore 11mo ago
  Drinking water is such a tiny proportion of total water use that it is essentially irrelevant. Water for farming and power stations are the things that will be hit first.
  - a2tech 11mo ago
    The drinking water is just part of the issue (as you said). Water is used in countless industrial processes, farming, EVERYTHING. if the water goes, so does everything else. And it’s not just water going away—it’s impingement by salt as well.
  - JumpCrisscross 11mo ago
    > Drinking water is such a tiny proportion of total water use A lot of water infrastructure needs minimum levels to function. Drinking water may be a small fraction of use. But if the big users deplete a reservoir below its minimum operational level, the fact that the dead water is enough to keep Tehran alive is more trivia than solace.
- zer00eyz 11mo ago
  > bad decisions from the last 50 Some of these "bad decisions" are ignoring the old systems, and ways. The hubris of "modernization" as better. The water systems of old Iran are fascinating, and well covered if you hunt around for the info. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qanat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qanat
  - fakedang 11mo ago
    Old techniques like Qanats and Shabestans aren't going to help Iranians deal with effluents in the water, or straight-up water misuse by businesses controlled by the Ayatollahs.
- breppp 11mo ago
  you mean more than the 1.1 million afghans they have already deported this year?
cyanydeez 11mo ago
Cloud seeding is real, buf unpredictable. Youre trying to get moisture to coalesce around the "seed" then fall where you want it. The dubious part is the coditions to rain are chaotic patameters and unpredictable.
- conspiracythery 11mo ago
  https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-107328 https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-107328 Right, the chance of it working is 0-20% in some tests and found to be highy conditional. I’m in support of them trying something to help, but it’s not a silver bullet (though it is silver iodide).
rjzzleep 11mo ago
One of Iran's biggest problems is that Iran, for no good reason other than the benefit of some big corporations (kinda similar to the California situation) is one of the biggest produce and dry fruit exporter in the world, and that one thing the government would need to do is shut down that excess capacity. A thing very few countries would do because it would punish some oligarch for the benefit of the whole of society.
- breppp 11mo ago
  By oligarch I assume you mean the IRGC which controls most of Iran's economy. In these kind of societies it's hard to think of the controlling powers as oligarchs as although they get rich off corruption, their power did not come from money but vice versa
  - tgma 11mo ago
    IRGC is a bunch of oligarchs who operate for their individual interests. It’s not as much of a unified entity as you’d imagine. It’s a vehicle for corruption.
unwise-exe 11mo ago
>>> How should we think about cloud seeding? It's a way to take someone else's rain.
- perhonen 11mo ago
  who owns the rain? what if it was just going to fall in the oceans?
  - barbazoo 11mo ago
    We’ll find out soon. Whoever is “taking” the rain is the one that owns it is my guess.
    - nerdponx 11mo ago
      My understanding is that cloud seeding has been going on for quite a while over Texas and the rest of the southern Plains. It's hidden in plain sight, and the only people who ever seem to talk about it are total wingnuts who also believe things like climate change is real but manufactured by the US and other world power militaries (using secret technology) for geopolitical purposes, often conflating real cloud seeding with variations on the classic chemtrails conspiracy theory. It's a largely unregulated continent scale weather and climate modification experiment. I haven't booked too deep into the research on it, but because powerful agricultural interests are involved, I'm sure nobody is looking too closely at externalities and would prefer to keep it that way.
  - londons_explore 11mo ago
    Less rain than you'd imagine falls on the oceans, due to the land having varying elevation and temperature, whilst the oceans have far more constant elevation and temperature so the conditions needed for rain happen less.
    - coderintherye 11mo ago
      That's just...wrong. "78% of global precipitation occurs over the ocean" [1] [1] https://gpm.nasa.gov/education/articles/nasa-earth-science-water-cycle https://gpm.nasa.gov/education/articles/nasa-earth-science-w...
scythe 11mo ago
I found a recent study that claimed to offer experimental confirmation of a mechanism for cloud seeding to work: https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1716995115 https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1716995115 > Despite numerous experiments spanning several decades, no direct observations of this process exist. Here, measurements from radars and aircraft-mounted cloud physics probes are presented that together show the initiation, growth, and fallout to the mountain surface of ice crystals resulting from glaciogenic seeding. These data, by themselves, do not address the question of cloud seeding efficacy, but rather form a critical set of observations necessary for such investigations. These observations are unambiguous and provide details of the physical chain of events following the introduction of glaciogenic cloud seeding aerosol into supercooled liquid orographic clouds. Apparently the goal is to turn supercooled water droplets into ice crystals. This makes a more physical sense than what was my first guess, seeding condensation nuclei. But seeding condensation would release a lot of heat, since the heat of condensation is pretty big, while the heat of fusion is quite a bit smaller.
downrightmike 11mo ago
Typically the precious metals needed have a cost that is more than the water gained. That assumes there are clouds just on the verge of raining that just need a small push.
- lazide 11mo ago
  Cite? Silver iodide is common, silver is not particularly expensive, and cloud seeding is used quite extensively - including in quite poor countries.

a2tech 11mo ago

I assume marketing. I’m wondering what will happen when they force the afghan refugees back over the border into Afghanistan since they don’t have the water to give them. Climate change and bad decisions from the last 50 years are starting to bite now. It’ll just get worse. Expect migrations and countries collapsing as millions of people are pushed to migrate for survival.

yard2010 11mo ago
[flagged]
- ceejayoz 11mo ago
  > using the water to fight a war Look, I know they didn’t fare well against Israeli F-35s and American B-2s, but the tech disparity isn’t quite as bad as them using Super Soakers for air defense. Ten million civilians are about to deeply suffer. A multi-year drought is a key contributor.
- matt_kantor 11mo ago
  Why not both? I'm no expert, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_in_Iran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_in_Iran (and its sources) indicate that climate change is part of the problem.
ants_everywhere 11mo ago
> Climate change and bad decisions from the last 50 years are starting to bite now. It’ll just get worse. Expect migrations and countries collapsing as millions of people are pushed to migrate for survival. For those unfamiliar, climate change and drought are believed to be one of the major causes of the bronze age civilization collapse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse#Drought https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse#Droug...
- waps 11mo ago
  In Iran the cause of the water shortage is at least 99.9% the current government's policies. If global warming accelerated matters it was by days or weeks probably. But you have to admit it would be very funny if a theocracy was forced to abandon it's capital by forces of nature.
- marcosdumay 11mo ago
  People speculate climate change and drought are one of the causes for every major collapse in history. It's even likely, because people keep fighting the collapse until something forces their hands, and that's one recurrent big thing to trigger change. That said, we never had the climate change that strongly on history.
londons_explore 11mo ago
Drinking water is such a tiny proportion of total water use that it is essentially irrelevant. Water for farming and power stations are the things that will be hit first.
- a2tech 11mo ago
  The drinking water is just part of the issue (as you said). Water is used in countless industrial processes, farming, EVERYTHING. if the water goes, so does everything else. And it’s not just water going away—it’s impingement by salt as well.
- JumpCrisscross 11mo ago
  > Drinking water is such a tiny proportion of total water use A lot of water infrastructure needs minimum levels to function. Drinking water may be a small fraction of use. But if the big users deplete a reservoir below its minimum operational level, the fact that the dead water is enough to keep Tehran alive is more trivia than solace.
zer00eyz 11mo ago
> bad decisions from the last 50 Some of these "bad decisions" are ignoring the old systems, and ways. The hubris of "modernization" as better. The water systems of old Iran are fascinating, and well covered if you hunt around for the info. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qanat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qanat
- fakedang 11mo ago
  Old techniques like Qanats and Shabestans aren't going to help Iranians deal with effluents in the water, or straight-up water misuse by businesses controlled by the Ayatollahs.
breppp 11mo ago
you mean more than the 1.1 million afghans they have already deported this year?

cyanydeez 11mo ago

Cloud seeding is real, buf unpredictable. Youre trying to get moisture to coalesce around the "seed" then fall where you want it. The dubious part is the coditions to rain are chaotic patameters and unpredictable.

conspiracythery 11mo ago
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-107328 https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-107328 Right, the chance of it working is 0-20% in some tests and found to be highy conditional. I’m in support of them trying something to help, but it’s not a silver bullet (though it is silver iodide).

rjzzleep 11mo ago

One of Iran's biggest problems is that Iran, for no good reason other than the benefit of some big corporations (kinda similar to the California situation) is one of the biggest produce and dry fruit exporter in the world, and that one thing the government would need to do is shut down that excess capacity. A thing very few countries would do because it would punish some oligarch for the benefit of the whole of society.

breppp 11mo ago
By oligarch I assume you mean the IRGC which controls most of Iran's economy. In these kind of societies it's hard to think of the controlling powers as oligarchs as although they get rich off corruption, their power did not come from money but vice versa
- tgma 11mo ago
  IRGC is a bunch of oligarchs who operate for their individual interests. It’s not as much of a unified entity as you’d imagine. It’s a vehicle for corruption.

unwise-exe 11mo ago

>>> How should we think about cloud seeding? It's a way to take someone else's rain.

perhonen 11mo ago
who owns the rain? what if it was just going to fall in the oceans?
- barbazoo 11mo ago
  We’ll find out soon. Whoever is “taking” the rain is the one that owns it is my guess.
  - nerdponx 11mo ago
    My understanding is that cloud seeding has been going on for quite a while over Texas and the rest of the southern Plains. It's hidden in plain sight, and the only people who ever seem to talk about it are total wingnuts who also believe things like climate change is real but manufactured by the US and other world power militaries (using secret technology) for geopolitical purposes, often conflating real cloud seeding with variations on the classic chemtrails conspiracy theory. It's a largely unregulated continent scale weather and climate modification experiment. I haven't booked too deep into the research on it, but because powerful agricultural interests are involved, I'm sure nobody is looking too closely at externalities and would prefer to keep it that way.
- londons_explore 11mo ago
  Less rain than you'd imagine falls on the oceans, due to the land having varying elevation and temperature, whilst the oceans have far more constant elevation and temperature so the conditions needed for rain happen less.
  - coderintherye 11mo ago
    That's just...wrong. "78% of global precipitation occurs over the ocean" [1] [1] https://gpm.nasa.gov/education/articles/nasa-earth-science-water-cycle https://gpm.nasa.gov/education/articles/nasa-earth-science-w...

scythe 11mo ago

I found a recent study that claimed to offer experimental confirmation of a mechanism for cloud seeding to work: https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1716995115 https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1716995115 > Despite numerous experiments spanning several decades, no direct observations of this process exist. Here, measurements from radars and aircraft-mounted cloud physics probes are presented that together show the initiation, growth, and fallout to the mountain surface of ice crystals resulting from glaciogenic seeding. These data, by themselves, do not address the question of cloud seeding efficacy, but rather form a critical set of observations necessary for such investigations. These observations are unambiguous and provide details of the physical chain of events following the introduction of glaciogenic cloud seeding aerosol into supercooled liquid orographic clouds. Apparently the goal is to turn supercooled water droplets into ice crystals. This makes a more physical sense than what was my first guess, seeding condensation nuclei. But seeding condensation would release a lot of heat, since the heat of condensation is pretty big, while the heat of fusion is quite a bit smaller.

downrightmike 11mo ago

Typically the precious metals needed have a cost that is more than the water gained. That assumes there are clouds just on the verge of raining that just need a small push.

lazide 11mo ago
Cite? Silver iodide is common, silver is not particularly expensive, and cloud seeding is used quite extensively - including in quite poor countries.