Weather Modification Machine

Weather Modification Machine?

A science fiction writer might imagine a future in which the President comes up with a new branch of the government… Department of Defense and Weather. And the position say -- the Minister of Weather Modification, perhaps -- dials up the day's weather for the country. A drought in the West? No problem, we'll just order a few gentle showers. A hurricane threatening the East Coast? Just stay calm, folks, we'll launch a small nuke to blast the storm apart.

They say truth is stranger than fiction, and such is the case with humans attempting to control the weather. Let's start with a brief history. Native American tribes, especially those living in semiarid desert country, such as the Pueblo, Hopi and Zuni, engaged in elaborate dances to coax moisture from the rain-stingy skies. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, rainmakers roamed across the western United States, promising to end droughts for a fee. Even the U.S. government got in on the act. In 1891, Congress appropriated $19,000 to conduct rainmaking tests. It would take another four decades before the scientists involved in the “control” of the weather began to overshadow these charlatans. The real turning point came in 1946, when two, chemists working at General Electric Research Laboratory in Schenectady, N.Y., discovered that they could introduce ice crystals into a supercooled cloud and create snow. They called the process glaciogenic cloud seeding. The basic science of cloud seeding goes like this: the drops of moisture in clouds can't freeze without some extra help. If these drops encounter crystals of silver iodide, they clump onto the crystals and freeze. Once the ice grows big enough, it falls from the cloud, either as snow or, if it passes through warmer air, as rain. For the next 30 years, researchers and entrepreneurs across the world began applying the principles; finally, scientists had found a way to control the weather -- at least in the lab.

It's one...