By Free Republic | Created at 2025-01-03 17:47:33 | Updated at 2025-01-09 14:37:31
5 days ago
Feds Say the Technology They Use to Control the Weather Doesn’t Work
Gizmodo ^ | January 2, 2025 | Matthew Gault
Posted on 01/03/2025 9:37:35 AM PST by BenLurkin
The report comes from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a nonpartisan watchdog group that investigates the U.S. government. It’s narrowly focused on “cloud seeding,” the practice of adding silver iodide crystals to clouds to make them bust and give up that sweet sweet rain. As droughts hit the western states on a routine basis, many local governments are attempting to use cloud seeding to bring the rains.
It’s not working well. The GAO conceded there’s some validity to cloud seeding, but that it’s almost impossible to measure its effectiveness. “Cloud seeding may increase water availability and result in economic, environmental, and human health benefits. In the studies GAO reviewed, estimates of the additional precipitation ranged from 0 to 20 percent,” the report said. “However, it is difficult to evaluate the effects of cloud seeding due to limitations of effectiveness research.”
The idea of seeding clouds with something to make them rain started in the late 19th century but wasn’t studied and perfected until after World War II. “Scientists demonstrated the basis of cloud seeding in the 1940s when they observed in the laboratory that water present in clouds could be artificially induced to create ice crystals using dry ice or silver iodide crystals,” the GAO said in its report. “Extensive federal funding of research and development, including field experimentation, followed this discovery. For example, in fiscal year 1978, total federal funding for weather modification was approximately $68 million, in 2024 dollars.”
Scientists could never quite prove it worked. Or, if it did, how effective the seeding was. In the 1980s, the federal government slashed cloud seeding funds. ...rado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming) are seeding the clouds.
(Excerpt) Read more at gizmodo.com ...
TOPICS: Weather
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1 posted on 01/03/2025 9:37:35 AM PST by BenLurkin
To: BenLurkin
Whadda mean? I thought this was all a tinfoil-hat, right-wing, black helicopter conspiracy theory?
2 posted on 01/03/2025 9:39:46 AM PST by Obadiah
To: Obadiah
This is just cloud seeding.
Not Dick Chene3y’s hurricane machine.
3 posted on 01/03/2025 9:42:05 AM PST by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is either opinion, or satire, or both.)
To: Obadiah
“Whadda mean? I thought this was all a tinfoil-hat, right-wing, black helicopter conspiracy theory?”
It’s FR, what do you expect? There ain’t no such thing as aliens and if there are they’re demons.
4 posted on 01/03/2025 9:43:03 AM PST by dljordan (What would Michael Collins do?)
To: BenLurkin
Chance of showers is now a “Special Weather Statement” ,LOL
5 posted on 01/03/2025 9:44:42 AM PST by butlerweave
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