Control the Rain - Cloud Seeding

Zzzt writes "The Times Online reports that Russian president Putin will assure plesant weather at the Russian St. Petersburg 300th anniversary festival by seeding clouds. They plan to shoot dry ice into the clouds to get the moisture to condense prematurely. 'Vladimir Stepanenko, head physicist of St Petersburg's Geophysics Observatory, said: 'Our aim is to empty all clouds of rain before they hit the city borders.'' There is also brief mention of other fun things Russians do with weather control."

Comments

In mother russia

[Loosewire]

The weather no longer controls you :(

Re:In mother russia

[aoteoroa]

What's up with the offtopic mod? The post couldn't be more on topic. Redundant maybe because it's yet another "In Soviet Russia" joke but this time it was actually funny.

Vietnam?

[Bob Zer Fish]

I seem to remember someone saying that the Americans attempted to use this ploy against the Vietnamese. The vietnamese, being quite good at irrigiation, just irrgated huge areas of land, and the rain just was diverted elsewhere. Can anyone verify this?

Re:Vietnam?

[Anonymous Coward]

Operation Popeye is what you are referring to. It was marginally successful. They had better luck seeding storm fronts of hurricanes that were aimed at cuba. Now they use much more sophisticated techniques, primarily atmospheric heating in front of weather fronts. First they have to introduce target chemicals so they have something better to focus directed energy on.

Who ya gonna call? Cloudbusters!

[AtariAmarok]

All the Russians need is one of Wilhelm Reich's cloudbusters to do whatever they want with the clouds! They'd better make sure they dress up like the Sean Connery weather guy from "The Avengers" movie while they use it.

"But everytime it rains

You're here in my head

Like the sun coming out

Ooh, I just know that something good is going to happen" Cloudbusting, by Kate Bush.

Weather Control

[rudy_wayne]

I've always thought that a lot more work and research should be done on weather control. Things like floods, snow storms and hurricanes cost us Billions of dollars every year. Even if you can't eliminate them, if you could partially disperse or diminish them, the savings would be well worth it.

Re:Weather Control

[metamathica]

Things like floods, snow storms and hurricanes are highly unlikely to be altered. In the places where they happen, they are elements of the climate, not the weather.

The difference is an important one, and lost on most people. Weather varies from hour to hour, and is fundamentally impossible to predict precisely . Climate is large-scale observations, like how hot the summer will be (in general) and how cold the winter. Predictions of climate are much simpler, and not limited by chaotic interrelations.

Seeding the clouds is not new. The ski mountain where I grew up has been doing it for years to get early snow. It's easy to make a little rain or move it a little upwind; it's probably near impossible to make controllable climatic changes.

We have already made significant climatic changes by emitting greenhouse and ozone-depleting gases. Because climate is such a large-scale phenomenon, those are the sorts of changes that will change it. Changing the climate is a very bad thing, and our changes already threaten to make life on earth considerably less pleasant if we're not careful.

People who don't understand this distinction often wonder how we could predict global warming when we can't predict the weather. The average temperature during a month is a basically a thermodynamic function of incoming solar radiation, thermal reradiation and heat shielding. The chaotic local effects mostly cancel out on larger scales.

Re:Weather Control

[Strange Ranger]

For a good quick analogy on how hard it is to predict the weather vs. how hard it is to predict climate change, just drop a crisp new dollar bill out of your hand. Now try to predict exactly where it will land. Fairly impossible to do. That's weather prediction.

Now take 20 steps to your left and do it again. The only thing you can correctly predict is that the dollar bill will almost certainly land well to the left of its former landing position. That's climate prediction.

While no analogy is perfect, that one seems to be very successful at conveying the principles to the uninitiated.

Re:Weather Control

[Anonymous Coward]

While no analogy is perfect, that one seems to be very successful at conveying the principles to the uninitiated.

So you're telling me that climate prediction is 20x more expensive than weather prediction? Then I still don't understand why we can't spend the same amount on weather prediction and get it right.

Re:Weather Control

[Anonymous Coward]

Was that supposed to be funny? Are you drunk?

Re:Weather Control

[sebmol]

Right. I can already see companies or the government screwing up trying to control the weather with consequences we can barely imagine. We don't know how weather works and we certainly don't know why certain things happen the way they do. Thinking that with this kind of knowledge we could change the weather in a foreseeable manner is presumptuous at best, fatal at worst.

There is no doubt in my mind that we have the technology and energy requires to significantly influence the weather. But there's also no doubt in my mind that we have no clue as to what such intervention would cause. Since experimenting with the weather is kinda tough until we manage to do interplanetary travel cost- and effortlessly and use other--preferrably uninhabited--planets, it might make more sense to invest resources on that than building the 21st century equivalent of the atom bomb.

Weather control. Isengard style

[Anonymous Coward]

"I've always thought that a lot more work and research should be done on weather control"

I'm all for it if the end result includes a wizard standing on a tower chanting in Elvish in order to move storm clouds.

does this look familiar to anyone else ?

[count_sporkula]

http://www.joeclark.org/book/ (SFW)

hmmmmm ....

Correcting the history

[Anonymous Coward]

"I seem to remember someone saying that the Americans attempted to use this ploy against the Vietnamese. The vietnamese, being quite good at irrigiation"

The combatants in this conflict were the Vietnamese and Americans vs the Soviet Union. Therefore, this was a ploy that the Soviets used against Vietnam and its ally America.

Re:Correcting the history

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it eastasia or westasia that we've always been at war with, Mr. Orwell?

Making it rain in Russia

[Strange Ranger]

is a hell of lot more than a butterfly flapping its wings in China.

It occurs to me that we could use more research and that maybe we ought to deal with weather modification on an international level (global weather maps, climate history, meteorological cooperation) rather than on a more local one?

Not crying 'Wolf' here but it wouldn't be a bad idea.

Re:Making it rain in Russia

[sebmol]

Of course under the lead of the US of A, right? Countries already fight wars over one country upstream cutting off the water supply to countries further down. Imagine what kind of quarrels controlling the weather on an international level could cause. Not to mention the fact that you just created a weapon as nuclear ones without the mess of post-war radiation and nuclear winters.

Sucks to be the little people....

[malakai]

from the article:

Approximately one kilogram of dry ice is used for every square kilometre of rain cloud. Rainclouds will be burst at a safe distance of 30 miles (50km) outside the city, where locals, used to sudden rain on fine days, will have their umbrellas ready

For the good of mother russia you will enjoy a shitty Friday. Dosvidanya!

Russia's first private weather controlling agency, the Atmosphere Technologies Agency, will be taking part in the delicate operation. It is hoping for rainclouds. "No rainclouds equals no pay," Viktor Petrov, the deputy director, said.

Man, what a business model...

-Malakai

Re:Sucks to be the little people....

[Echnin]

Man, what a business model...

Capitalism and greed at their finest. That business model is what many companies go by; if there isn't a problem to fix, they don't get money for fixing it. Sometimes people will create a problem so they'll get money for fixing it. Socialism eradicates those problems.

Re:Sucks to be the little people....

[Shoggoth of Maul]

Especially when it would be a helluva lot cheaper to just pass out umbrellas. Imagine:

"Vladimir Putin Designer Umbrellas! The Fashion Statement of the Season!"
"What season is it, by the way?"
"I dunno. Now that we control the weather, it's kinda hard to tell."

I'll start it off

[breon.halling]

In SOVIET RUSSIA....

Re:I'll start it off

[Sherloqq]

In capitalist America... the weather controls YOU!

Rain-making linked to killer flood

[eddy the lip]

I'm sure advances have been since 1952, but I still think I'd avoid St. Petersburg (or at least the outlying villages). It didn't work out so well for the Brits.

Artificial rain making operations may have caused a storm that nearly wiped out an English village in 1952. New evidence has emerged that the UK's Royal Air Force was carrying out cloud seeding experiments that could in theory have led to the disaster.
New Scientist Article

Re:Rain-making linked to killer flood

[retostamm]

It's also done in the US on a regular basis, regulated by the Government

Licensing:
http://www.license.state.tx.us/weath er/weathermod. htm

History:
http://twri.tamu.edu/twripubs/WtrResrc /v20n2/text- 2.html

Weather Modification Association (since 1950)
http://www.weathermodification.org/

Re:Rain-making linked to killer flood

[wossName]

Interesting, maybe the inspiration for this Avengers episode (and the horrible movie adaptation) ?

Red Alert 2

[C0LDFusion]

I thought the Allies had the Weather Control. Oh, well. We got nukes. Ain't a bad trade.

Nothing new

[gehrehmee]

This sort of technique is used frequently here in Alberta, Canada, to stop hail storms from reaching urban or agricultural areas.

Developer laments: What Killed FreeBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

The End of FreeBSD

[ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]

When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.

Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.

FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.

It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.

So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.

Discussion

I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.

From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.

There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.

Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.

Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?

Shouts

To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.

To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. It'

Hope they will pour some oil into Baltic sea

[Muhammar]

...to calm the waves. And prevent the earthquake by releasing tectonic tensions with few megatonns detonated underground. They should also facade-lift the buildings, clean the rooftops, paint the grass greener in parks and re-locate all unsightly individuals out of city.

Socialism and greed

[Anonymous Coward]

"Socialism eradicates those problems"

Huh? Socialism makes all the problems of capitalism much worse. It lets the ruling class maximise their greed with no accountability or competition; after all, under socialism the rulers own everything and the people own nothing.

Operation Popeye

[Anonymous Coward]

They had better luck seeding storm fronts of hurricanes that were aimed at cuba.

You call the devistation of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and the consequent enormous costs for recovery there luck?

Cuba never got a fraction of what Haiti had to deal with courtesy of Uncle Sam.

Colorado ski resorts...

[dargaud]

...have been paying a lot of money to get the same thing done above their lands for many years now. But no one has been able to statistically prove that it indeed changes something.

Yes, I work in atmospheric research.

Similar discussion on Slashdot

[foxed]

See this Slashdot discussion from December on similar topics.

I found a good google cache of info on this.

[AForwardMotion]

The web site itself is down, but a google cache of it shows a lot of good information on military and civlian tampering of weather. You have to highlight it to see it since the background is black. Enjoy.

And the link is

[AForwardMotion]

http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:qJOjRCbmx8cJ: www3.bc.sympatico.ca/Willthomas/WeatherWarfare/Wea therwar.htm++Operation+Popeye&hl=en&ie=UTF -8 - The imbecile