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Major Study Concludes That Cloud Seeding Is Effective
An anonymous reader writes "A 45-year Australian trial is the best evidence yet that cloud seeding — the practice of artificially inducing clouds to make rain — really works."
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I thought this was some new bit torrent technique using the cloud or something.
Looks like its lunch time
Linked article points to Spray-On Solar Panels... Huh?
What I like best about this article is how the link has absolutely NOTHING to do with the summary.
So what shall we talk about?
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/2514/major-study-proves-cloud-seeding-effective
SYDNEY: A 45-year Australian trial is the best evidence yet that could seeding - the practice of artificially inducing clouds to make rain - really works.
Since the mid-20th century scientists have attempted to produce rain by dispersing chemical substances into the clouds and stimulating precipitation. However, until now, there has been little concrete scientific evidence that cloud seeding is effective.
"This is the first time that an independent analysis of cloud seeding data over several decades has shown a statistically significant increase in rainfall," said Steven Siems, a meteorologist from Monash University in Melbourne and leader of the study.
Significant finding
The Monash team, in conjunction with renewable energy firm Hydro Tasmania, analysed monthly rainfall patterns over the hydroelectric catchment area between May and October from 1960 until 2005.
As they detailed in the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology the analysis revealed higher levels of rain in the parts of the catchment where the rain making technique was used than in those where it was not.
"A number of independent statistical tests showed a consistent increase of at least five per cent in monthly rainfall over the catchment area," said Siems.
For the could seeding technique, the researchers select clouds using specialist weather radar technology that allows them to see all the tiny processes that take place within them.
Once clouds for seeding are chosen, minute particles of a silver compound are dusted into them by light aircraft to stimulate rain formation.
Super-cooled water
Anthony Morrison, a climatologist at Monash and co-author of the study, explained that these silver particles cause super-cooled water in the clouds to freeze. As these particular clouds are so high in the atmosphere that they are below freezing point, the frozen drops recruit water and get heavier causing them to fall from the clouds as rain.
However, the researchers caution that the result may be due to the unique clouds in this part of Tasmania and would be difficult to reproduce elsewhere.
"Clouds over the Southern Ocean are different to any other clouds", Siems told Cosmos Online. "They are really loaded with super cool liquid water." Just as important, he said, is the remoteness of the location: "the air in the Southern Ocean is exceptionally clean with virtually no pollution."
And the researchers are still at a loss to precisely explain how the technique was successful.
"They're really not comparable to clouds that have been seeded anywhere else in the world," said Morrison. "Further field measurements of cloud microphysics over the region are needed to provide a physical basis for these statistical results."
Despite the caveats, other experts are excited by the results.
"At long last there is scientific backup for the [cloud seeding] hypothesis that has been suggested over the years," commented Roger Stone, director of the Australian Centre for Sustainable Catchments at the University of Southern Queensland in Toowoomba.
However, while the study is a breakthrough, he noted that cloud seeding does not work in all locations and specific techniques have to be developed for each region.
"For example, in Queensland the conditions are highly different. It has to be the right time and exactly the right cloud for it to work," he said. "The key is to get a very good weather radar."
Let it snow
Paul Johnson, a spokesperson from Snowy Hydro, who are conducting similar experiments to artificial induce snowfall in Victoria's Snowy Mountains, said the results were promising. "It's another indicator that supports our preliminary data and backs up what the experts said in the beginning. That we would see an increase in snow."
Because of the unusual nature of
Good, Fast, Cheap - Pick any two. - RFC 1925
...Wildfires are pretty tough out there, so why not use this method?
Correct link by the way: http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/2514/major-study-proves-cloud-seeding-effective
Just me
Wow, apparently editors don't even LOOK at TFA these days :P
here it comes.
Even editors don't read the ONE-LINE summary. (Yeah, I must be new here.)
Haida Manga
omg this has been going on for years, and it has always been known to cause clouds.
now the australians think that they solved it, but only for their particular clouds?
how rediculous is this. russia china and us have been doing this for years. why do you think the ground is always wet before a big military march over there. THEY MAKE IT RAIN SO IT LITERALLY WONT RAIN ON THEIR PARADE.
look into it. its nothing new. and also related to chemtrails. but chemtrails are for other purposes.....
I myself find great success with the Great American Rain Dance...
...washing my car. Never fails!
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
I believe that between fertilizing the oceans with iron, painting all roofs white to increase the albido, and could seeding, we can make this planet just like our native home.
"Once clouds for seeding are chosen, minute particles of a silver compound are dusted into them by light aircraft to stimulate rain formation."
Does cloud seeding explain all of the paranoid "chemtrail" chatter found in the seedy underbelly of the internets?
Does this mean that countries could begin to wage "weather war"? If we stop rain from falling on a country, it would be just sieging a castle.
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I thought I may have to go a whole day without seeing a story about Australia on Slashdot.
I hate it when it's kdawson's day off!
Luckily for us timothy stepped into the breach.
So, what's the next BIG STORY: Australian Man Figures Out How To Use Light Switch?
Just to show how mind-warped IT people are, I immediately assumed that this that to do something with the IT 'cloud', rather than actual physical clouds... Go figure..
Kurt Vonnegut's older brother, Bernard Vonnegut, 1914-1997 was a meteorologist who figured this out while working for General Electric. Why is this news now?
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
Please..
Look up in the sky once in a while..
http://tinyurl.com/aerosolcrimes
What do you think they are spraying?
Come on hippies wake up!
Is the sky supposed to be white?
Peak oil is a lie.
http://tinyurl.com/peakoilisalie
Global warming is a scam.
http://tinyurl.com/globalwarmingisascam
http://tinyurl.com/9l6os
Well, timothy posted the non-story headline, so let's talk about timothy.
Combine this with the ability to put water IN THE AIR. Then allow it to be taken out in Utah and Colorado. That would fill up the reservoirs, which is needed for Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nv, and Southern Cal via the Colorado River Basin. Then we can skip the need to develop pipes or even in ground water.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Apparently in the early seventies the CSIRO (Australian Government funded research organisation) was directed to abandoned its research and development of computers in favour of cloud seeding.
Cloud seeding was said by the government of the day to be the next big thing, unlike these big computer thinga-me-bobs which had only limited application.
I dont think any Australia government has ever had a grasp on technology.
No one really expects much of Timmy anymore. TIM-MAH!
Man has to have his job purely 'cause he's friends with the other people running Slashdot -- not because of merit or anything like that.
I'd say it's the great training they get from kdawson....
>For the cloud seeding technique, the researchers select clouds using specialist weather radar technology
> that allows them to see all the tiny processes that take place within them.
Where's the control? How do they know that they are not (unintentionally, of course) *selecting* clouds that
would have produced rain anyway?
The fact that they are testing over decades actually works against reaching the conclusion they've reached.
I met once (and from thorough discussion would admit) a lady over in Orange city of California that has Morgellon's Disease. She even has video on YouTube. She is not delusional and has accepted that her health difficulties are just an autoimmune response to her cells having incorporated new functions directly from environmental influences not in her comfort or favor.
Sorry, but "accepting" something that has no basis in reality is being delusional. Just where does she get his whole "cells having incorporated new functions" nonsense from in the first place? I'm glad she's losing her tactile hallucinations, but she's not doing it through genuine medicine. If the placebo effect does it for her, then I wish her well.
But she's still crazy. Watch her first video. She goes to a doctor, they tell her what's going on, and she (like every other supposed "Morgellons" sufferer) rejects the diagnosis under the belief that she simply has the ability to tell tactile delusion from reality as if she's an objective observer on the whole situation. Instead, she turns to any solution that involves her body and not her mind, eventually spiraling into pushing quack medicines.
Look at her solution in the video! "NutraSilver?" It's just colloidal silver, a common quack cure for diseases popular in the conspiracy theory community -- gaining popularity during the Y2K scare.
But get this -- the manufacturers claim that their brand of colloidal silver is special because it uses "clustered water" (whatever kind of homeopathic / polywater / physics-defying BS that's supposed to be!) to "vector silver particles to the pathogens" without even once identifying what the pathogen behind Morgellons is supposed to be! Never mind that there's never been evidence of colloidal silver doing anything to bacteria in vivo. Never mind that in vitro studies are inconclusive. Never mind that even the few studies that have suggested an effect only showed an effect to bacteria in a petri dish (and not viruses, protozoans, fungi, or macroparasites). Forget all that -- just how the hell is silver supposed to do anything to an "autoimmune disease" as she calls her disease?
Oh, but even better is the claim that it's totally safe and causes no agyria "because it's pure silver and not a compound." The interesting thing about that is that tests on silver products that showed anti-bacterial effect in a petri dish is that the only ones that did have an effect were the ones that had ionic compounds -- the very compounds that lead to the worst agyria. So, even if silver was as awesome as they said it was, their product is designed to get the least effect out of it. (If you ignore the insane "clustered water" claims. "P-Chem? What's that? Hydrogen bonding? That's stable, right?")
So, what we have is a quack disease with a quack cure. What NutraSilver is claiming is frankly morally horrifying -- a fake cure for a fake disease. Pure con artistry at its finest, selling a potentially dangerous product to a vulnerable population, discouraging them from getting the help they actually need. Disgusting. And she's helping spread the lies.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
And trust me, you won't look 'rediculous' in it
I read a bit about this when I was skiing at Perisher Blue last a year and a half ago. The part that interested me most was the possibility to increase snowfall, which is great because our skiing resorts in Australia don't get a huge amount of snow.
Quite an amusing game if you haven't tried it
Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_(game)
Download site: http://intihuatani.usc.edu/cloud/
Basically you fly around and you make clouds. And if your clouds collide with evil clouds, then they produce rain.
FM Radio found to be great way to advertise, Cigarette smoke found to be bad for your health, and President Nixon Impeached!
Everyone thinks solar panels are unreliable due to bad weather. In fact, it's just a small technical issue that while installing, that beginners misinterpret. That "bad weather" on the solar panel is your shadow.
"The gun is good. The penis is evil. The penis shoots seeds, and makes new life to poison the Earth with a plague of men, as once it was, but the gun shoots death, and purifies the Earth of the filth of brutals. Go forth . . . and kill!"