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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
Even editors don't read the ONE-LINE summary. (Yeah, I must be new here.)
Haida Manga
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!
"painting all roofs white to increase the albido,"
It's "libido" or "albedo". Although I'm not sure what the color of the roof has to do with what goes on underneath it.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Actually, weather warfare was used in Vietnam. My father worked on it, documented it, and everyone knew it worked back in the late 1960's. Planes would seed clouds to wash out trails the North Vietnamese used to try and hinder their movements.
Well, now, pay attention people
Just in case you hadn't heard
There's some folks messin' 'round
With Mother Nature's little world, baby
And what they do is really freaky
They gets themselves a plane
And they fly it around with chemicals, baby
Tryin' ta make it rain
So when you're out there in that blizzard,
Shiverin' in the cold
Just look up to the sky
And thank the Government for the snow
And sing the low-down, experimental, cloud-seedin',
Who-needs-'em-baby? silver i-i-o-dide blues
Oh, yeah.
Woo!
--C.W. McCall, "Silver Iodide Blues"
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
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.
-
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.
Does cloud seeding explain all of the paranoid "chemtrail" chatter found in the seedy underbelly of the internets?
No. Crazy doesn't need an explanation. Witness "Morgellons Syndrome," people who think the moon landing was faked, and alien abductees. Some delusions just go viral on their own.
That said, sometimes I wonder if there *is* an explanation. Is there a way to predict what kinds of delusions will go mass delusion and which will stay localized to a few crazies (like Time Cube)? I mean, we know that trans-cranial magnetic stimulation can recreate the paralysis, terror, and hallucinations of an "alien abduction," so there's an underlying biological explanation for this. "Morgellons" (and delusional parasitosis in general) is more common among women over 40. Does that indicate a biological root? On the other hand, I feel skeptical about suggesting a strong biological link behind "the moon landing was faked" crazies; that's probably more the result of cultural influences, but is there any biological reason why that one resonates with some people still in a way that "9/11 was faked" no longer really does for nearly as many people after only 8 years?
Is "chemtrail" chatter the work of one inventive crazy whose explanations got popular among the crowd of paranoids who are easily influenced in that direction, or is there some deeper reason why that pattern of delusion resonates with some people. Is it biological? The result of deep-seated assumptions of our culture and way of life? Just the shallow zeitgeist of the day?
I dunno, but I like to think about this sort of thing. People are just the funniest creatures in creation some days.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
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.
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.
Oops, forgot to refresh the page after logging in
That stuff about Morgellons was amazing. I occasionally have the sensation described, but I don't think any more of it. Our 4 year old son occasionally has "itchy all over" feelings, though. Sometimes it manifests acutely in times of high stress, so we figure he's putting it on, though it's possible he "feels" it. Maybe it could be a histamine release because of the high stress, which would make the sensation real physically and mentally. Making light of it and scratching him all over can both relieve any itching (real or imagined) and defuse the situation - who doesn't like an all over scratch?
Anyway, I am reminded of a case I learned about in Immunology. An older woman was on high dose corticosteroids. She developed red weeping eyelash roots. My description doesn't do the pic justice. Turns out the corticosteroids were having an immunosuppressive effect (no surprises there) and the small parasites living in the eyelash follicles were able to breed uncontrollably. This was confirmed microscopically and she was treated successfully. Kicker is, most people have these parasites but a well functioning immune system keeps them in check. Remember that next time you get itchy eyelids...
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
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.
Does cloud seeding explain all of the paranoid "chemtrail" chatter found in the seedy underbelly of the internets?
No. Crazy doesn't need an explanation. Witness "Morgellons Syndrome," people who think the moon landing was faked, and alien abductees. Some delusions just go viral on their own.
I'm not saying that the chemtrail thing is true, I will only say that "the government said so" is not an adequate disexplanation. Perhaps it is 100% bullshit, but the federal government has used the general populace as guinea pigs repeatedly - so it's easy to believe. Perhaps bullshit conspiracy theories feed on the fact that there are so many real conspiracies designed to bone the public out of something for the benefit of the few?
Is "chemtrail" chatter the work of one inventive crazy whose explanations got popular among the crowd of paranoids who are easily influenced in that direction, or is there some deeper reason why that pattern of delusion resonates with some people.
Chemtrails resonate with people because we are living in a time when it is clear that burning fossil fuels for energy is fucking stupid (should have been made obvious by the industrial revolution, but anyway) and there the jets are, spreading pollution overhead, and leaving behind a visible cloud. We learned in elementary school that clouds form on particulate matter, so we equate these clouds with pollution, and lots of it.
If the federal government had a little more credibility, then perhaps people might believe them when they say that there is nothing going on outside the realm of ordinary aeronautic activity.
Spend a few days at my house, looking up, and you might start to believe it, too. But in the absence of proof, there are only two rational responses: abandon the search and call it good, or keep looking and try not to make assumptions.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"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!"
I'm not saying that the chemtrail thing is true, I will only say that "the government said so" is not an adequate disexplanation.
I already got a Morgellons believer, so I'm not surprised I picked up someone defending the chemtrails conspiracy belief. The problem with conspiracy theorists is that there is absolutely nobody who will be trusted with evidence of disproof or of unlikeliness. The government itself? Obviously untrustworthy! Atmospheric scientists and aeronautical engineers? In on the fix. Their very denials are proof enough! So, who is good enough to listen to?
Perhaps it is 100% bullshit, but the federal government has used the general populace as guinea pigs repeatedly - so it's easy to believe. Perhaps bullshit conspiracy theories feed on the fact that there are so many real conspiracies designed to bone the public out of something for the benefit of the few?
So, you're arguing for primarily cultural roots for the belief? Alright, then. I wonder in the alternative if it has to do with the fact that contrails are an easily observable part of life and whether our brains are wired to assume strange phenomena have unpleasant causes -- angry gods and other inhuman forces, invisible pathogens, too powerful governments, foreigners and people of other races, etc. -- rather than mundane or internal causes. Might it be the result of a survival adaptation that occasionally produces bad results in the modern world?
We learned in elementary school that clouds form on particulate matter, so we equate these clouds with pollution, and lots of it.
While the particulates help, the real primary cause of contrails is the sudden addition of extra water vapor from combustion (at higher elevations) or lower pressure vortexes from the wingtips and other surfaces (at lower levels). It's not primarily a "seeding" effect.
Spend a few days at my house, looking up, and you might start to believe it, too. But in the absence of proof, there are only two rational responses: abandon the search and call it good, or keep looking and try not to make assumptions.
The area I grew up in was a major crossing point for airplane routes. It wasn't all that unusual to be able to see three commercial airliners in the sky at the same time at least once a day, and a sky without a contrail in it was a rare occurrence. So, I'm not at all buying the circa 1996 theory that lingering trails are the result of special chemicals -- I've seen lingering trails for nearly two decades before that, and I have absolutely no reason to disbelieve the idea that atmospheric conditions have something to do with it. Contrails are just like any other cloud once formed.
As for absence of proof... There is absolutely no evidence that certain contrails are actually chemtrails. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and a certain level of skepticism is healthy -- especially when the experts agree that there's no cause for worry. At a certain point, we all have to trust the words of others about the way the world works. We can't be masters of all fields of study, and clinging to a belief that cuts counter to the consensus of people who have dedicated their lives to the study of a field and who certainly know more than you do is nothing more than sheerest ego -- especially when you don't offer a rational reason why they're wrong and how your alternate theory improves upon theirs. So, when people who study weather and people who make plans both disavow the theory, I go with them over someone whose credentials largely come down to paranoia and obsession.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
The area I grew up in was a major crossing point for airplane routes. It wasn't all that unusual to be able to see three commercial airliners in the sky at the same time at least once a day, and a sky without a contrail in it was a rare occurrence. So, I'm not at all buying the circa 1996 theory that lingering trails are the result of special chemicals -- I've seen lingering trails for nearly two decades before that, and I have absolutely no reason to disbelieve the idea that atmospheric conditions have something to do with it. Contrails are just like any other cloud once formed.
I'm not saying it's evidence for chemtrails, but this argument fails to debunk it because the argument is not that something new and special is going on, but that something special is happening more frequently. (Straw Man) I don't mind debunkings, I'm not married to the theory. I would like them not to be fallacious.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"