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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.
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.
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.
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
...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.