Slashdot Mirror
Should We Change the Weather Even If We Can?
jonerik writes "According to this article in today's Christian Science Monitor, science will be able to make significant changes in weather systems in the next few decades. More than simply seeding clouds to produce rain, the technology will be available to nudge hurricanes out of the path of population centers, for instance. The big question is 'Should we?' 'Even if we can do this, is this something we really want to do?,' says Dr. Ross Hoffman, a vice president with Atmospheric and Environmental Research, Inc., who adds, 'Before we can really control weather, we have to be able to observe the weather and forecast the weather much better than we do now.' On the other hand, according to the article the genie may already be out of the bottle: 'According to the United Nations' World Meteorological Organization (WMO), at least 25 countries are engaged in weather modification projects to enhance rain and snowfall, or suppress hail. In the United States, 12 states have had weather modification programs. Texas runs a program at the county level for rain enhancement, while North Dakota is focusing on hail suppression.'"
I may sound like a horrible person here, but I really think that as soon as we start screwing around with nature, we throw the balance out the window. The human population is already way too large as it is. Much like developing cures for disease, stopping hurricanes from hitting population centers is just another way to screw over any form of population control. We may save more lives now, but I bet you its going to cost us in the end.
As a big supporter of population control, I feel I must respond to this. Population control is not about finding ways to kill existing people or even turning a blind eye to ways to save existing people from being killed. Population control is about trying to reduce the number of births. Once a person living their life, I don't think anyone in their right mind would say its in the best interest of humanity to let them die (and, please, let's not get into an abortion discussion here). The way to curb the population explosion is through economic, societial and educational reform.
You don't favor weather control? Fine. But please don't wrap yourself in the cloak of population control. You make us look like monsters. Population control is very humane. It has nothing to do with letting people die.
GMD
watch this
This is an arguable item on many levels. I believe that because we can make a hurricane move away from the coast we should. An even better notion would be to calm the storm a bit and let it hit with a lessened force (this was actually tried in the 1970s with devestating effects, so perhaps trial and error should not occur near populous coasts).
And for anyone who says we shoudl NOT modify the weather, I have a wakeup call for you. Your argument is weak because humans are always going to adapt their environment to suit their needs. This is human nature and it flies in the face of our ability to survive. Our natural instinct is to change our world in order to suit our needs, from changing arid land to farmland or building a shelter so that the rain does not soak us while we sleep. We are always going to seek ways to make our environment more appealing to us and this is just the next logical step in that direction.
Hammer of Truth
And Lord, it wasn't good.
And the brethren went away edified.
Survival of the fittest is an observation, not a criterium for living. If you are alive, you are surviving and therefore "fit", regardless of how you survive. Evolution doesn't have a goal...we aren't slowing down the creation of the ubermensch with welfare because evolution isn't leading us to the ubermensch in the first place.
OTOH, I don't like welfare. :)
Why not fork?
Water rights and international accords for allocating them are nothing new. Many river cross boundaries. Even bitter enemies (e.g. middle east) often can at least come to accomodations they can accept even if they protest them.
On the other hand few things can get more bitter since the supply is inelastic and its use critical. We (the US) certainly dont give mexico one more drop of water than we absolutely have to.
In the werstern US states more than the eastern US or in europe, Water rights are in fact more critical and more precious because the water distibution is paradoxically plentiful where it existis yet generally sparse. In fact its more sparse than the typical homestead land grant. hence in days of yore the guy that homsteaded around the water source effectively owned everything as far as he wanted to (or till the next watering hole) regardless of the actual property boundaries.
In the US west we have very recently reached the elastic limit of the supply. Many places (e.g. santa fe new mexico) are pumping at an unsustainable rate (which by the way causes depletion that is also irrevrsable even if you quit pumping it). And california, which has routinely taken unused water rights form other sates can no longer do so and thus is actually going to experience not just a water limit but an actual deficit when those rights are asserted by others.
So now we come to the final frontier: rain allocation. My guess its that the moment the amount of rain taken from the skys reaches a value that causes a depression of rainfall eleswhere that is detectable on the scale of the annual varialtion, perhaps like 1 or 2% of the available rain, then there's gonna be a show down.
Since weather is generally west to east, the eastern states will be robbed. This also means it will propably show up first intra-nationally rather than internationally since in the americas the countries are mostly divided north-south more than east west (or when they are east-west there is a mountain range making the rain issue partly moot). Even europe may experience some pain because some scientist belive the gulf-stream is about to be overrun by colder artic "underwater" rivers. This should depress their expected rainfall. Good thing they formed the EU or theired be some fights.
Interestingly specualtors are already buying up land in many northern US states on the assumption they may get some sort of water right allocation.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Is this the beginning of a time when countries can undertake weather-based warfare against others? Want to cripple the US economy? Just alter the weather patterns.
I assume that weather-tinkering (for benefit) in one part of the world could easily change weather patterns (possibly in a bad way..) in other parts of the world. Who is going to decide what manipulations go ahead -- the more powerful economies?
What's your GCNSEQNO?
I know a lot of people get upset about screwing with nature, but as i've said above, technical progression in our wiring, you cannot stop us scientist types doing it.
Perhaps knowledge gained through weather control could actually _SAVE_ our species, because we can use it to create a suitable environment when we populate other planets.
I'm changing the climate, ask me how.
I know that the logical question is "should we?" There are bound to be some consequences that we don't understand but what better way to try to understand than to experiment?
If we proceed carefully, I think that it is unlikely that we will cause any disturbances that are more catastrophic than a volcanic eruption or other large natural event. The world always seems to recover from these events.
If we do gain more understanding and are able to tune our weather the benefits could be enormous. Imagine steering hurricanes away from population centers or directing a little rain to an area that needs it or directing it away from an area that is already flooding.
This is as good an argument as "But think about the children". The real question is, of course: Can we really prevent weather catastrophes without harmful side effects, both short and long term? If we save 5000 people from a tornado, but doom another 5000 people (or more, or less) to a flood in a possibly distant part of the world, should we do it?
I feel that is the question being asked here. We don't really understand the atmosphere. We may understand it well enough to prevent a single hurrican from happening in a certain area (or causing it to happen), but we don't know enough to understand the implictaions on a global scale. Our atmosphere is a highly comple system that intertacts globally. Local changes can have unpredicatble results (think of the butterfly causing a storm). Until we understand it better, we shouldn't use a weather changing system either as a safeguard or a weapon. Not a safeguard because we don't know whether we will harm others by using it, and not as a weapon because it might backire horribly.
"Population control is about trying to reduce the number of births."
I find one thing aggravating about this. When people make this statement, they often neglect to mention that this applies only in countries where the birth rate is way out of control (e.g. Kenya which used to have avrg. 8 kids/woman). In other, developed countries (e.g. Europe, N. America) there is no harm in having 2-3 children/couple to maintain a sustainable population.
I'm not sure where you get the idea that population control is only necessary for 3rd world countries. Many environmentalists are very concerned about overpopulation in developed countries. Why? Simply because a single person in a developed country uses way more natural resources than a single person in a 3rd world country. Overpopulation is a problem for EVERYONE, not just those unfortunate enough to live in China or India.
Personally, I agree with you that allowing everyone 2-3 kids/couple to sustain the population is fine. What I'm less pleased about is couples that have more than this, regardless of what country they live in.
GMD
watch this
I was working a while ago with some folks from the national weather service, and they mentioned that cities grossly affect weather patterns. As they retain heat better than unpopulated areas (ie fields, natural grasslands).
The specific instance that he pointed out was that he has witnessed storm systems in the southeast US, moving from the gulf of mexico towards Georgia, and have them go around Atlanta, b/c of all the heat it retains.
-HockeyPuck
Governments usually are pretty good at declaring themselves immune to liability, at least from their own citizens... but aside from that, diverting the hurricane, making that rain fall or not fall, moving that tornado's path, et cetra, are much more likely to result in claims than not doing so. IANAL but as I understand it, you can't be sued for not doing something if you didn't have a duty to do it. Even "Good Samaritan" laws that might protect you from being sued for accidently breaking someone's leg dragging him out of the way of a train don't let you get sued for not doing so. Along with the legal situation - if one of 40 farmers who could benefit from a weather modification caused it, only he and not the other 39 would be sued by the 10 farmers who were flooded instead - this pretty much means only governments could even consider the risks.
Back when Hurricane Andrew (I think it was Andrew) blasted across lower Florida and flattened neighborhoods far from the ocean, I remember one victim who thought that thermonuclear weapons should have been used against the storm. "This hurricane could have been prevented!" he angrily insisted.
Somehow I doubt he would have been happy if he had ended up instead being merely showered with moderate soggy nuclear fallout, but since a hurricane dissipates thermonuclear-bomb quantities of energy every few seconds, I really doubt much is ever really going to be done to divert them. Which is probably a good thing, since if hurricanes were suppressed, the lack of atmospheric mixing and droughts resulting would probably cause more damage than the storms themselves.
...about cloning. Based on what I've seen here, the answer is conditional.
If controlling the weather will piss of religious people, then yes, we should do it. If not, then the usual prudence with regard to new science applies.