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Science

Should We Change the Weather Even If We Can? 475

Posted by Hemos from the changing-the-weather dept.
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.'"
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Should We Change the Weather Even If We Can? More

Should We Change the Weather Even If We Can?

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  • If you can make it rain on my bosses house.

  • we alread have (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bigskinnee ( 155373 ) on Thursday January 02, 2003 @07:48PM (#5002658) Homepage Journal
    We already have changed the weather by all the polution we produce. So why not.

    Maybe we can change it for the better.
    • We already have changed the weather by all the polution we produce. So why not.

      Maybe we can change it for the better.

      Weather or climate? Pollution has had a vast effect on the climates of the world - i.e. long-term weather and temperature patterns. A short-term change of the weather is unlikely to be able to repair our damaged climate.

  • could this perhaps explain the strange pattern striping in the sky i see so often in the california mountains?

  • Reminds me of a joke... (Score:3, Funny)

    by kenthorvath ( 225950 ) on Thursday January 02, 2003 @07:49PM (#5002666)
    Although he was a qualified meteorologist, Hopkins ran up a terrible record of forecasting for the TV news program. He became something of a local joke when a newspaper began keeping a record of his predictions and showed that he'd been wrong almost three hundred times in a single year. That kind of notoriety was enough to get him fired. He moved to another part of the country and applied for a similar job. One blank on the job application called for the reason for leaving his previous position. Hopkins wrote, "The climate didn't agree with me."

    Waka waka waka!

  • Do we understand enough? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by www.sorehands.com ( 142825 ) on Thursday January 02, 2003 @07:49PM (#5002668) Homepage
    Before making any changes, we should know what we are doing and all the ramifications. Then once we know that, we should then consider if we should change.


    Given the protections for natural habitats and that people are hit with large fines for plowing fields because that impacts wetland noone legally can change weather. That is if it is though through.

    • Re:Do we understand enough? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Malcontent ( 40834 ) on Thursday January 02, 2003 @08:00PM (#5002754)
      " Before making any changes, we should know what we are doing and all the ramifications"

      It will take many decades before we know what the ramifications are. Weather is an enourmously complex system. I doubt the people who stand to profit from weather modification will willingly wait one year let alone decades.

      As usual the extent of peoples concern for the rest of mankind and the future is but a shadow of their love of money.
      • Edward Lorenz' "butterfly effect" analogy is vastly overstated. First off while this effect does happen in certain nonlinear systems, to assume that this is what is going on in the weather everywhere is in lack of a proof. While this may have been true in the models being used at the time, the fact that the models were chaotic doesn't imply that real weather is. I half suspect that the reason the butterfly effect was pushed so much was to explain why all those models condradicted one an other as as much as a real guess about the nature of weather.

        Don't get me wrong. I'm not opposed to applying chaos theory to weather. And in some situations it probably fits. However most of us who did physics studied lots of systems that stabilized or didn't behave chaotically. Even some chaotic "systems" had a range where they weren't chaotic. (Using the term system and range or starting point loosely)

        I don't have the article handy, but New Scientist had an article a few months ago that compared the predictions of nonlinear behavior with measurement of how the weather corresponded to models. The article strongly argued that the problem was poor models and not chaos. The following [freeserve.co.uk] is a similar paper.

        It's very nice to say that some problems are in principle "unknowable." However, as I said, that is sometimes a crutch of late in science. Hard isn't undoable.

        • Here's a better paper related to the two above. It goes a little more in depth and gives some of the graphs I vaguely remembered.

          http://www.copernicus.org/EGU/npg/8/npg8/357.pdf [copernicus.org] Quoting from the conclusion: While the effects of chaos eventually lead to loss of predictability, this may happen only over long time scales. Exponential-on-average error growth does not necessarily imply rapid error growth. In the short term it is model error which dominates, and which must be considered in any scheme of quality control.

    • Re:Do we understand enough? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by darthBear ( 516970 ) <`hactar' `at' `hactar.org'> on Thursday January 02, 2003 @08:17PM (#5002872)
      Weather is actually a chaotic system as Edward Lorenz discoverd in the 1960s. Small changes to the inital conditions of the system very quickly result in massive differences in behavior. An often (perhaps over) cited analogy is the butterfly effect in which the flapping of a single butterfly's wings in Japan causes a storm in Alaska.

      What this means is that the ramifications will never be known. We cannot measure the weather precisely enough to make meaningful long term predictions nor can we control our actions precisely enough such that their effects can be known.

      See this [gweep.net] or this [duke.edu] for more information on chaos.

      • Re:Do we understand enough? (Score:4, Funny)

        by outsider007 ( 115534 ) on Thursday January 02, 2003 @08:22PM (#5002907)
        An often (perhaps over) cited analogy is the butterfly effect in which the flapping of a single butterfly's wings in Japan causes a storm in Alaska.

        Sounds like a big problem. Maybe we should kill all the butterflies in Japan.
        • outsider007 wrote:

          > Sounds like a big problem. Maybe we should kill
          > all the butterflies in Japan.

          Not a good idea. You would likely incur the wrath of a certain moth in Japan. When she flaps her wings, she topples towers and creates supertyphoons.

          And if you think Mothra can rain on your parade, you should have seen the temper fit her dark twin Battra threw after an early attempt at controlling the weather!

          "Mothra, you are Life Eternal! Hear the prayers of your servants. Come back to us from out of the legend. Come and save us with your power of Life!"
          US release of "Mothra", 1962
      • i just farted, hopefully it will rain on you.

        Scientists,
        as a wisconsinite, please do something to make it warmer, and stop listening to these cloud huggers.

      • Chaos (Score:3, Insightful)

        by DaveOnNet ( 636006 )

        "Chaotic" does not mean random, so it does not mean that ramifications will never be known. We may find conditions in which something we can do will very regularly (and perhaps through magnification of effects - chaos that is) increase rainfall or evaporation off the ocean in some area. Taking advantage of the regularity that we discover in the chaos will not prevent us from seeing the ramifications of our actions.
    • Frankly I don't know that we have a choice. Until Orbital Death Ray and Mind Control technology catch up, how are we supposed to execute our fiendish plans?
    • The best way to learn what the ramifications are has to be to go ahead and change the weather. If we don't like what happens, we can just change it back.

      No need to make this more complicated than it is.
  • I know a lot of farmers in rural NSW in Australia that are suffering from drought wouldn't mind. Although i think it will become a bit like genetically modified crops, or pesticide. The 1st world countries that can afford the technology will get it, but the 3rd world will have to wait.
    • From my very limited understanding of the Australian skys, one major problem will be the lack of moisture over the drought areas. It's no good trying to induce rain, when there is no water overhead.

  • David Eddings (Score:2, Insightful)

    by perrin5 ( 38802 )
    It's interesting to see that fantasy is also sometimes able to predict the future. David Eddings talked a little about this in one of his series. The point being that when you change weather in one part of the world, the air, energy and such have to go, and come from, somewhere. The effects could be huge...

    • Indeed, there *will* be lawsuits. . . (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kfg ( 145172 ) on Thursday January 02, 2003 @08:06PM (#5002802)
      for "stealing" somebody else's rain. Not to mention the legal "oops" factor that happens when you nudge that hurricane just a liiiiiiiiiiiittle too far to the left.

      For other weather control in fiction you might want to check out Poul Anderson's "Orion Shall Rise."

      KFG
      • Ya, but then could a government be liable for not diverting a hurricane when they had the capability? It's not that unreasonable a suggestion, especially when that decision costs lives...

        Scary thought...
        • 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.
    • oh yes, the famous, "for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction" that Edding proposed...

      yes garion summons up a storm, then gets yelled at by his uncle, but I would hardly call that a prediction. Besides, the point of that was to show Garions reaction, not as a desertation on weather control.

  • Population Control (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mr. phantastik ( 202943 ) on Thursday January 02, 2003 @07:51PM (#5002687) Homepage
    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.
    • I've always said similar things about welfare systems (a bit jokingly). Why should we help people who cannot help or support themselves? Didn't humans evolve to such a state by letting the monkeys that weren't clever get eaten by the lions?

      (this of course assumes that said people would not turn to robery and murder to sustain themselves, and that their children would not gain beneficial "mutations")
      • I see, the idea of the strongest and most able to cope should survive, you know this means that George Bush being the most powerful man in the world is the epoch of what we should all aim for.

    • That's Not Population Control (Score:5, Interesting)

      by GuyMannDude ( 574364 ) on Thursday January 02, 2003 @08:02PM (#5002775) Journal

      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

      • CONTACT and thanks for all the fish (Score:5, Funny)

        by goombah99 ( 560566 ) on Thursday January 02, 2003 @08:30PM (#5002959)
        Relax and grab your towel, this is not new. Life forms on other planets have routinely attempted weather control when they become advance enough. Generally this is about 100 to 200 earth years after the discovery of radio technology.

        By the way, this is also why the Seti project has been completely unsuccessful at detection other life forms since they are all dead.

        It is also why, the people of planet beta-3 have told me to tell you earthbeings, not to fret about your water. they're going to exterminate you and water their lawns with your planet.

        have a nice day, so long and thanks for all the fish.

        --ford perfect.

      • Yes, I believe the proper scientific term is "population culling" and not "control." I am also in favor of using practical knowledge and common sense in managing the growth (or decline) of the human population, but not by killing living people thank-you-very-much. Nor by imposing my viewpoint on others, but let's not get into that debate as this thread is about weather.

        Having said that, I don't believe that if we figure out a way to nudge hurricanes we should just blindly use it. What if hurricanes serve a very important meteorological purpose that we don't yet understand. If we begin mucking about with weather patterns, we invite rather drastic effects later on. There's no gaurantee -- just like everything else in life -- but I'd rather we spend several decades studying the effects of minor projects rather than have every state and world power get involved.

        No, I'm far from being a luddite or chicken little. I'm only saying we should be cautious when attempting something so vast. If everyone started increasing the rain that falls in their state, from where does that excess water come? Do massive droughts appear elsewhere? After awhile perhaps only the capital-rich nations can afford rain as everyone competes to cause more rainfall. Just as the developing nations don't have as much access to world oil, will they soon not have access to water? Scary.

      • If you want to make the biggest impact on the population there is one very simple thing you can do....

        stop water treatment and filtration. The NUMBER ONE thing that saves lives and lengthens the human lifespan is drinking clean and treated water. remove that one pesky thing and you instantly take a population hit.

        Everyone with an immuno-defeciency will die horribly within 2-3 months... dysentary can kill a healthy person, it will ravage someone that isn't up to par. Leigoniares Disease will take out another bunch... There are TONS of water borne diseases that can and will take a mighty healthy chunk out of the population.

        real population contril though is as you say... Unfortunately the human as a species is pretty stupid.. Animals don't have babies if the food/water or environment does not have favorable conditions ... Yet humans still happily reproduce... in areas where they cant feed themselves they still happily hump along...

        Population control is needed DESPERATELY in many areas of the world. the problem is that effective population control is always looked upon as bad or monsterous.. (limit the number of children to a family, forced birth control) and yet nobody looks at the starving family that is having it's 3rd child after the 1st starved to death and the second has one foot in the grave already as doing anything wrong.

    • Cost who? *Not* doing it might not cost the living people (I think it would), but it would certainly cost all the people that die.

      So I think you'll have to clarify what you mean by "cost" and what you mean by "us".

      I think what you're really saying is that you don't know what will happen if we continue to experience unchecked growth, both in population and economy. You'd like to see us approach something stable. Who's to say that some arbitrary limit on life-extending enginuity is going to be a stable solution? The future that I see is a whole lot more dystopian, but I imagine that the stable solution will only be acheived after we've exploited every possible life-extending enginuity, and the Earth is at it's absolute limit of human population, and there is an honest-to-goodness struggle for existence. And I imagine this will take at least a few hundred years, if not much longer.

      This isn't the future that I'd like, but short of a world authoritarian government, I don't see a way to avoid it. Start moving people to other planets, I guess.

      Balance is out the window.
    • OK...but of course, it's not my population you're controlling. I'd probably feel differently if I actually lived in a hurricane zone.
    • 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.

      I'll bite.

      You are making several questionable assumptions in your post.

      First of all, you're assuming that there is a size that the human population "should" be. How did you derive this value, and what was it? As far as I can see, the human race can survive at just about any population level it pleases - there's just a sliding scale of consequences, which in turn depends very strongly on _how_ people choose to run their lives. So both the desired population and the effects of maintaining this population are pretty arbitrary decisions.

      Second of all, you're assuming that there is a "balance" that must be maintained. Historically, the ecosphere has done a very good job of maintaining itself despite far greater changes than humanity has wrought. There is a continuum of possible balance points, each with their own consequences - where we want to place the balance point is a decision, not something dictated by nature.

      Much like developing cures for disease, stopping hurricanes from hitting population centers is just another way to screw over any form of population control.

      Hurricanes do not contribute substantially to population control.

      Neither does disease, really. We'll always die of _something_. The lag time is pretty much irrelevant over the long term. The period of fertility for women is pretty much the same, so people could live to age 300+ without affecting the number of children they had over the 20-year window. The number of children per couple is a social issue, not one of longevity.

      In summary, your argument makes no sense.

    • 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. :)

    • No need to feel like a horrible person. We're not throwing any balance out of the window, our scientific progression is all part of our nature - and it's all part of the balance. Just as we are using science to keep our numbers up by;

      solving more kinds of infertility

      finding cures for previously fatal diseases

      increasing our life expectancy

      so too is science going to have to kind ways to keep our numbers down; such as screwing with the weather.

      I don't think you can stop our technological progression. Nature will still find a balance; don't worry.

    • You know what the funny thing is? We'd rather say it costs too much money than to raise the bar on the quality of life for everyone. We'd rather save our money than feed a starving family. The funny thing is a single human life (when put in the proper environment) is worth more than all the money in the world because they are a human, fully capable of being intelligent, creative and productive (as opposed to a dog or any other animal). But we deserve whatever we get either way.

  • Absolutely (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Col. Panic ( 90528 )
    Hurricanes kill lots of people in countries where housing is not well developed. I remember seeing a news broadcast from Nicaragua as one hurricane was approaching and the people being interviewed were basically saying, "we have no shelter - we are going to die."

    I am not as concerned with changing wind/rain patterns as I am about reducing the amount of O3 in the atmosphere or ice at the poles.
    • I'm not as concerned with changing wind/rain patterns as I am about reducing the amount of O3 in the atmosphere or ice at the poles.


      Ummm... correct me if I'm wrong but wouldn't reducing the ozone (o3) cause severe problems with radiation, and wouldn't reducing the ice at the polar caps cause global sclae flooding?????

      Wow. Are you a Bush by any chance?

    • Re:Absolutely (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Dynedain ( 141758 )
      So you change the weather patterns so that hurricanes don't hit the coast (or at least not as hard).....suddenly, fertile farmlands 200 miles in from the coast have a severe drop in annual rainfall....those interviewed say "we have no food - we are going to die"

  • It depends (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Osty ( 16825 )

    I think the answer to this, like the answer to many questions, is a resounding, "It depdends!" For example, what environmental benefit does hail bring? Would it not be better to control hail, thus sparing millions of dollars in crop and structure damage? What benefit do we get from tornados? Hurricanes may be a tough one, because while they do cause lots of property damage, they bring rain and affect weather patterns farther inland than you would think. What about causing unseasonal monsoons? Would that cause environmental problems, or would the influx of water into the system be beneficial?


    Having the technology is good. There's nothing wrong with that. Using it, however, requires proper thought on the part of those who would use it.

  • If we did, then we have nobody to blame for crappy weather but ourselves and blaming ourselves ain't as much fun as blaming other people.
  • What, are you kidding? Me and my friends in the (Conservative Party of Choice) Party believe that man was put here by (Diety of Choice) specifically to meddle with things we don't understand!

    We have the (Diety of Choice)-given right to control our environment. (DoC) would not allow us to do something that would cause our extinction. We have the right to do whatever we wish, whenever we wish.

    Of course, no new-fangled technology will be used. We'll simply use slaves made up of minority populations. I mean, that's why (DoC) *put* them here, isn't it?
    • What are you kidding me? Me and my friends in the (Liberal Party of Choice) Party believe that man was put here by (Diety of Choice) specifically to meddle with things we don't understand!

      We have the (Diety of Choice)-given right to control our environment. (DoC) would not allow us to do something that would cause our extinction. We have the right to do whatever we wish, whenever we wish.

      Of course, no new-fangled technology will be used. We'll simply use slaves made up of minority populations. I mean, that's why (DoC) *put* them here, isn't it?
    • Holy crap! Rush limbaugh has a /. account! :-)
  • Mad scientists have had the ability to do this for years. And Superman also. Hell, you can probably buy something off the Home Shopping Network that can change the weather by now...

  • No (Score:2)

    by SuperDuG ( 134989 )
    ... No ...

    I guess I could go into a little more explanation, but I think no suffices for most here. One thing about weather is that it's supposed to be unpredictable, and well some areas are supposed to be different than others.

    If you want to go with the Chaos theory of a butterfly flapping its wings on the other side of the world causing a hurricane just imagine what causing or preventing a storm would do?

    Nature has a way to do most everything, weather being one of them. Haven't we learned yet ... don't screw with nature?

  • "It's gonna be raining men!"

    ----------
    The Weathergirls

  • Pfft, humans. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rainier Wolfecastle ( 591298 ) on Thursday January 02, 2003 @07:56PM (#5002724)
    Jesus, we can't even make an accurate 5-day forecast, and now we want to change the weather.

  • Scalar electromagnetics (Score:2, Insightful)

    by rxed ( 634882 )
    It all began with a Serbian fellow named Nikola Tesla, who came here to the United States in the late 1800's. Among other things Tesla was also known for having developed ways to use "Scalar Electromagnetics" ('Weather control'). The use of which could be for "Good" purposes or "not so good" ones.

  • and the weather is sacred... why? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by StandardDeviant ( 122674 ) on Thursday January 02, 2003 @07:59PM (#5002745) Homepage Journal
    Humankind has been modifying the environment to best suit our needs since before recorded history. Have we screwed up sometimes and not fully evaluated the consequences of our actions? Sure. But if we had avoided modifying the environment we wouldn't have anything approaching modern society (c.f. farming (modifying soil composition and topology), irrigation (water flow redirection), dam building (ditto), road construction (more mud moving)). There's nothing really novel about the idea of harnessing the power of the weather compared to, say, moving the course of a river except for the scale and complexity of the modified system. In other words, you just need better tools to do it and better tools to evaluate the consequences before you do it (precise forcast models would be a prerequisite, and these require the kind of computing power that has only been available in the last few decades and the kind of mathematical/physical models sophisticated enough to handle the details that have only been around for maybe 100 years).

    At one point it was the common belief that if you were to fly or drive a land vehicle faster than 100mph you'd be violating the laws of physics, making those domains permanently beyond the reach of man. Technology advanced and the impossible became mundane. All technological barriers look like hard walls from one side...

    • Re:and the weather is sacred... why? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by RatBastard ( 949 ) on Thursday January 02, 2003 @09:09PM (#5003224) Homepage
      The problem I have with weather contol is the potential for catastrophic damage should something go wrong, someone screw up, or someone should decide to use it as a weapon.

      Cuba nudges a hurican away from Havana and it then strikes a heavily populated area of Florida. Intentional attack or just a horrible accident?

      Pakistan changes the wind patterns and the Monsoons fail, leaving India to die of thirst.

      Some well meaning weather wizard tries to stop the tornados that routinely pummel the American southeast and accidently creates a weather system that produces tornadoes so powerful they kill tens of thousands of people?

      El Nino and La Nina are caused by very small changes in the tempurature of the Pacific ocean and yet they have powerful effects on the weather. What dangers will our intentional changes bring? And who will be responcible for these dangers?
  • For far too long, human society has been beholden to the whims of natural weather systems. Hurricanes destroy coasts, tornadoes ravage the plains, storm-swollen rivers flood their banks... the list goes on.

    But more important than any of those factors: Evil scientists have been unable to make use of weather-control machines, in order to promote their agendas of taking over the world! Only recently, with advances in weather control technology like the research done by Hank Scorpio's Globex Corporation [snpp.com], have we even begun to see the first generation of effective weather-control devices.

    My friends, only with the insane abuse of such machines can the world domination schemes of cartoonish supervillains like myself come to fruition. How can you stand to let your children live in a world where the threat of mad scientists unleashing typhoons upon unsuspecting populaces, as part of some contrived plan to acquire billions of dollars' worth of ransom from the target nation, is only a myth? I say, let weather machines be made available to the public, so that we can show them -- nay, show them ALL! MWA HA HA HA HA HA!



    Yours truly,

    Dr. Colossus

  • We do it all the time. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jericho4.0 ( 565125 ) on Thursday January 02, 2003 @08:01PM (#5002763)
    We humans have been impacting weather patterns sine we started burning forests. Jet contrails, indutrial pollution, large scale farming and irrigation/hydroelectric projects all have an impact on the weather. Oh yeah, and that whole global warming thing, too.

    Maybe it's a good idea to understand how we could control the weather better, but we seem a long way from understanding long term results.

  • Chaos Theory (Score:3, Interesting)

    by airrage ( 514164 ) on Thursday January 02, 2003 @08:01PM (#5002767) Homepage Journal
    Unfortunately, Chaos Theory [duke.edu] will kick your butt.

  • We have the ability, but must act responsibly (Score:5, Interesting)

    by smack_attack ( 171144 ) on Thursday January 02, 2003 @08:05PM (#5002792) Homepage
    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.
  • As soon as humans have the ability to stop a hurricane from hitting Louisiana, you know they will. If a hurricane is going to cost 10 billion dollars in damage, but it will only cost 500 hundred thousand dollars to steer the hurricane away, what do you think the insurance companies will do?

    At least, that is what the insurance companies will do the first dozen or so times. They will eventually get sued by the people that were adversely effected by the hurricane's new route. It'll all balance out, eventually. The rich will still get richer.

  • It's been tried. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CaptainCarrot ( 84625 ) on Thursday January 02, 2003 @08:07PM (#5002807)
    And Lord, it wasn't good [bbc.co.uk].
  • And then we will get a M$ distro of linux!
    Of course, the M$ programmers will be complaining about the unusually cold weather.

  • No way (Score:3, Funny)

    by FearUncertaintyDoubt ( 578295 ) on Thursday January 02, 2003 @08:13PM (#5002846)
    In fact, I'm writing a letter to my congressman to introduce legislation to prevent any butterflies from flapping their wings in Beijing. That ought to keep any crazy weather changes from happening.

  • Water rights (Score:5, Interesting)

    by goombah99 ( 560566 ) on Thursday January 02, 2003 @08:15PM (#5002861)
    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.

    • Re:Water rights (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Snafoo ( 38566 )
      Waitamoment. You're assuming that the supply of rain is inelastic. Recall, however, that those big white puffy things that become rain are in turn formed by evaporation from the surface of the ocean.Since weather control presumably works over the open water as well as it does over land, it is very likely that we could simply generate as much rain as we like by efficiently manipulating cloud-cover over open water. This could become the world's most powerful desalinisation tool.
  • Tornados and hurricanes kill people. They are also fairly predictable. Change the weather, prevent tornados/hurricanes. In 1998 alone 23,000 lives wre lost to hurricane/tropical storm related causes.(source:Insurance Site [insurance.com.my]) You want to tell families of victims we shouln't change the weather? This is about saving lives. If you don't change the weather, people die.

    • But think about the children (Score:4, Interesting)

      by anno1602 ( 320047 ) on Thursday January 02, 2003 @09:08PM (#5003215)

      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.

  • 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?

  • Are you kidding me? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Drakonian ( 518722 ) on Thursday January 02, 2003 @08:18PM (#5002880) Homepage
    I'm going to go out on a limb and say the potential benefit of this is bigger than any single item you can name. I think it's probably safe to say more people have died of drought and resulting famine than all other non-natural causes combined. Certainly more than war.

    People talk about lofty goals such as ending world hunger - this would go a long way. All though the dangers are unknown and possibly severe, I don't think there is a chance anyone will wait and see. They didn't with cell phones, and this would have a much larger impact.

    • If the land you are living on is no longer habitable then move the hell away! People who die in droughts are people subject to natural selection. If you want to live in a barren desert wasteland then don't bitch about the consequences and sure as hell don't be hitting me up for pocket change so you can live there.

      There is no reason to muck with the weather because some people don't get it and move to places that can actually sustain life.

      Whats next? Designer weather patterns? "Look it's North Dakota and we can all go out on our slippin slides in January."

      Nature does a fine job. Fuck with it at your own peril.

  • Could come in handy on other planets; (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Boss, Pointy Haired ( 537010 ) on Thursday January 02, 2003 @08:21PM (#5002897)
    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.
  • The problems with this kind of hypothetical debate are the contradictory assumptions.

    If we assume that we will hypothetically understand enough to change the weather, why can't we also assume that we will hypothetically understand the consequences of such an intervention as well?

    So far mankind seems to be doing pretty well.
  • it's the only way we (England) are ever going to win the Ashes [cricket.org] from the Aussies :-(

  • A world without Hurricanes (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RevDigger ( 4288 ) <haroldp.internal@org> on Thursday January 02, 2003 @08:33PM (#5002984) Homepage
    Would be like a world without tigers. Safer, maybe, but less interesting.

  • Nope (Score:2)

    by geek ( 5680 )
    Why should we? Are we so arrogant now that we think we can do a better kob than nature? Nature has 4 billion years of experience, why mess with it?

    It's not like we need to change anything. If you want to help people then make better ways of predicting nature to avoid hurricanes and monsoons. Don't go messing with nature and playing god.
  • I am making great progress on my weather control device, and I don't see any significant issues that should delay such wonderful mayhem! If it makes people more comfortable though, I will blackmail the world's goverments into abandoning all weather research (among other things). That way, you'll know that weather catastrophe-causing machines will only be in the possession of responsible people like myself and my henchmen.

    BTW, CmdrTaco, if you are interested, I wouldn't mind at all doing a Slashdot interview, answering the 10 highest moderated posts/revenge requests. Slashdotters, if you're interested in seeing someone's house torn to shreds by preternatural tornados, or small tropical island nations decimated by a freak hurricane, just let Taco know you'd like Slashdot to interview me. And make those requests interesting and malevolent!

  • Not real science. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pclminion ( 145572 ) on Thursday January 02, 2003 @08:40PM (#5003041)
    Science requires controlled conditions. Suppose you were trying to prove that cyanide gas kills fruit flies. So, you put some flies in a jar, hit them with cyanide, see them die, and write a paper. No respectable scientific journal would publish your work, because you didn't have a control. You should have had another jar, where the fruit flies were not given cyanide. Otherwise there is no way to establish a causal link between the cyanide and the deaths of the flies.

    This problem makes it extremely hard to do weather modification in a scientific way. We don't have access to a "control atmosphere." There is no fixed reference point to compare results against. We can never tell if our manipulations were the true cause of the effects we observe. And if we perform experiments in closed laboratory conditions, then we are no longer studying the real atmosphere by definition.

    If we gave serious thought to large-scale weather modification, we'd be insane. We only have one atmosphere. Not only is it unscientific, it's dangerous.

    • Re:Not real science. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Virtex ( 2914 )
      I see it a bit like drug testing. If you give a drug to one person and a placebo to another, you can't really draw any conclusions from it since the two people aren't identical. So what you do is conduct the test on a larger population and draw upon the overall differences between the groups. Weather testing could be performed in a similar manner by choosing a number of locations and testing the technology on some now, and some later. If things go well, the results should show an overall difference between the two groups.

    • Re:Not real science. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by GenetixSW ( 35311 )

      You have a very interesting point there, but I partially disagree, at least when it comes to comparing our results from the "control".

      Our control condition would be, more or less, all past meteorological data. Sure, it changes drastically from day to day, but it's still fairly periodic on an annual basis.

      A profound effect on the weather would be measurable and very easily noticeable. Say we manage to increase the rainfall in a region: we'd see a markedly increased rainfall which would then become the norm after several years. This rainfall might possibly adversely affect water levels elsewhere, which would also be measurable.

      That's a simplistic example, but my point is we'd still have a basis for comparison, so in effect we would have some form of control condition.

  • It's worth a try (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nomadicGeek ( 453231 ) on Thursday January 02, 2003 @08:42PM (#5003063)
    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.


  • Why stop now? [changingtheclimate.com]

  • We already modify the weather... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by HockeyPuck ( 141947 ) on Thursday January 02, 2003 @10:59PM (#5003753)
    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

  • Ask the millions of drowned Bangladeshis... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by vudufixit ( 581911 ) on Friday January 03, 2003 @12:51AM (#5004259)

    If they think there's anything wrong with developing technology that could have mitigated killer cyclones and torrential floods.
    I think you'll hear a resounding silence.

  • This reminds me of another discussion... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by stinky wizzleteats ( 552063 ) on Friday January 03, 2003 @02:57AM (#5004616) Homepage Journal

    ...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.

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