WEBVTT - How Weather Modification Works 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:04.760 Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to 0:00:05.160 --> 0:00:14.680 Stuff you Should Know Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome 0:00:14.720 --> 0:00:18.800 to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W. Chuff Bryant, 0:00:18.840 --> 0:00:25.640 and it's You Should Know Rainy Edition is the Rainy 0:00:25.800 --> 0:00:28.040 How appropriate that we're doing this one today because it 0:00:28.080 --> 0:00:31.000 has been raining in Atlanta for forty days and forty nights. 0:00:31.000 --> 0:00:33.080 It seems like it really has been. I've been breaking 0:00:33.120 --> 0:00:35.839 up the duck boots. Man, it's almost never wear those 0:00:35.880 --> 0:00:39.479 because it's not that rain. But well, yeah, sure it 0:00:39.600 --> 0:00:41.519 is as well, dude, we're in the midst of like 0:00:41.560 --> 0:00:44.520 a ten year drought. You know, we're still in drought 0:00:44.640 --> 0:00:48.440 level conditions. Yeah, and then tomorrow it says maybe even 0:00:48.520 --> 0:00:53.080 snow in the northern suburbs. That would be nice chance 0:00:53.159 --> 0:00:57.440 of rain or snow. Um. You know, despite all this rame, 0:00:57.520 --> 0:00:59.320 we still learn a drought condition and we haven't for 0:00:59.360 --> 0:01:02.320 a while. You remember we're back in two thousand seven, Yeah, 0:01:02.320 --> 0:01:05.400 when Sonny Purdue was the governor. They held in an 0:01:05.440 --> 0:01:11.560 official state prayer for rain, where Governor Purdue led a 0:01:11.600 --> 0:01:15.600 prayer for rain, saying like God, please rain, for the 0:01:15.600 --> 0:01:19.080 love of God, for the love of you please make 0:01:19.120 --> 0:01:23.280 your rain. Yeah, and it rained. Um. I think a 0:01:23.319 --> 0:01:24.600 lot of that had to do with the fact that 0:01:24.640 --> 0:01:27.160 he held that prayer on the night before it was 0:01:27.200 --> 0:01:30.600 calling for chance of rain. I don't remember it raining 0:01:30.640 --> 0:01:32.520 the next day. Yeah, rain the next day, and people 0:01:32.600 --> 0:01:35.800 were said, Oh, my goodness, God made it rain, Sonny 0:01:35.840 --> 0:01:40.800 produce the magic rain. Yeah, Mother Nature at work. So, um, 0:01:40.840 --> 0:01:45.360 you've got people praying for rain. You have the rain dance, um. Yeah, 0:01:45.680 --> 0:01:49.280 which is really hard to find any information on these days, 0:01:49.280 --> 0:01:52.880 but apparently the Pueblo had a pretty cool rain dance 0:01:53.320 --> 0:01:55.080 because you know, they lived in the southwest for it 0:01:55.080 --> 0:01:58.240 was very dry, so they knew what they were doing. Um. 0:01:58.320 --> 0:02:00.320 And then there's something that I discovered today called the 0:02:00.360 --> 0:02:06.560 Papa ruta, which is from um Romania, and basically, a 0:02:06.760 --> 0:02:10.080 girl from a village would run around wearing like a 0:02:10.120 --> 0:02:14.120 skirt with um made of like vines and branches, and 0:02:14.200 --> 0:02:16.720 she would go um dancing through the streets of the 0:02:16.800 --> 0:02:19.520 village and then go house to house and then when 0:02:19.520 --> 0:02:21.640 she was greeted at the door of each house, people 0:02:21.639 --> 0:02:24.960 would pour water on her and she would just continue 0:02:25.040 --> 0:02:29.000 dancing and people would be playing music and um. Eventually 0:02:29.000 --> 0:02:32.720 it would hopefully rain. Eventually that would evolve into the 0:02:32.720 --> 0:02:35.040 wet t shirt contest at the Animal City Beach. I 0:02:35.040 --> 0:02:39.640 guess that's probably where it came from. Who knew. Yeah, which, 0:02:39.760 --> 0:02:43.360 of course you referenced the fact that Panama City Beach 0:02:43.360 --> 0:02:50.040 was settled by Romanian settlers. Uh so Yeah, for a change, 0:02:50.080 --> 0:02:52.680 we're talking about the weather and it's not uh, some 0:02:52.760 --> 0:02:57.080 little boring chit chat. You know what I'm saying. You 0:02:57.080 --> 0:03:00.120 don't think this was boring chit chat. It's legit is. 0:03:00.880 --> 0:03:02.359 You know, usually when you're like, oh, you know, it's 0:03:02.440 --> 0:03:04.480 raining here, it's just a very boring way to say. 0:03:04.520 --> 0:03:07.079 I have not much to say what I'm saying. Let's 0:03:07.080 --> 0:03:10.160 see what this is actual. Yeah, it is. Uh, we're 0:03:10.200 --> 0:03:14.280 saying that. Um. Because we're talking about weather modification. You 0:03:14.280 --> 0:03:16.720 could say that rain dance was an early attempt at 0:03:16.720 --> 0:03:22.040 it um and then in the early twentieth century people 0:03:22.240 --> 0:03:25.840 started to try to apply science to it. And there 0:03:25.840 --> 0:03:29.160 were some pretty cool attempts early on by very smart 0:03:29.160 --> 0:03:31.040 guys from like Harvard and M I. T. And a 0:03:31.200 --> 0:03:36.000 Dutch guy um to basically either make it rain, to 0:03:36.040 --> 0:03:39.480 make it stop raining, or to deter some other kind 0:03:39.520 --> 0:03:44.840 of weather phenomenon like fog or hurricanes were tornadoes. Actually 0:03:44.880 --> 0:03:47.040 those came along a little later. But fog, I think 0:03:47.080 --> 0:03:50.080 you have down in They were trying to dispad fog. Yeah, 0:03:50.080 --> 0:03:52.520 a guy named Professor Henry G. Houghton of m I 0:03:52.560 --> 0:03:55.160 T Yeah. I think my favorite is the Harvard guy, 0:03:55.320 --> 0:04:00.360 Professor Emory Leon Chaffe. It sounds like he's be from 0:04:00.400 --> 0:04:02.480 the University of the South. Yeah. Well, he was flying 0:04:02.480 --> 0:04:06.840 around in a plane in nine um with charge sand 0:04:07.680 --> 0:04:09.960 whatever the heck that is. Well, I think it's saying 0:04:10.000 --> 0:04:13.760 that you apply an electrical current too. Ye, you'd do 0:04:13.880 --> 0:04:17.119 something through its eons, right, And he was dumping into 0:04:17.120 --> 0:04:19.840 the clouds and actually he was definitely onto something. I 0:04:19.880 --> 0:04:23.040 don't know where he figured that out, but he um was. 0:04:23.440 --> 0:04:26.960 I guess you could say the grandfather of cloud seating then, yeah, 0:04:27.279 --> 0:04:31.280 grand Grandpa Chaffee, all right, And things were kind of 0:04:31.360 --> 0:04:34.919 humming along a little bit until um, Kurt Vonnie gets 0:04:34.960 --> 0:04:39.640 older brother Bernie Bernard, Doctor Bernard really took it by 0:04:39.680 --> 0:04:43.119 the horns and made some headway as far as cloud 0:04:43.160 --> 0:04:46.360 seating and actually controlling the weather in the mid nine right. 0:04:46.520 --> 0:04:49.280 I guess he was researching that for ge and he 0:04:49.360 --> 0:04:53.080 figured out that silver iodide has virtually the same distance 0:04:53.160 --> 0:04:58.359 between um points and its crystal lattice structure as ice. 0:04:59.000 --> 0:05:00.600 So he said, you know what, all bet, this would 0:05:00.600 --> 0:05:04.080 be a really good stand in for ice formation. So 0:05:04.440 --> 0:05:06.600 if you put it into clouds, maybe it would make 0:05:06.640 --> 0:05:08.320 ice form. Yeah, and he even figured out how to 0:05:08.400 --> 0:05:11.240 generate it, right, yeah, Yeah, He's like, not only that, 0:05:11.320 --> 0:05:13.920 this is an all theoretical I'm a Vonn again, So 0:05:13.920 --> 0:05:16.240 I'm gonna just go the extra mile. You don't know, 0:05:16.279 --> 0:05:19.280 my little brother yet dreaming knocked out by his book 0:05:19.279 --> 0:05:22.000 and people are going to try to band t shirts 0:05:22.000 --> 0:05:24.440 with his quotes on it during Bamned Books Week. The 0:05:24.480 --> 0:05:31.680 irony is going to be lousing. So what's what's the process. Uh. 0:05:31.720 --> 0:05:35.000 While the process of creating it, he dissolves a mixture 0:05:35.120 --> 0:05:38.159 of or we're gonna call it a g I. Yeah, 0:05:38.320 --> 0:05:42.680 of a g I um an acetone, which is also 0:05:42.680 --> 0:05:47.200 id out is that right? Oh? Another with acetone? Yeah, 0:05:47.240 --> 0:05:50.000 the acetone is flammable. You can spray that through a nozzle, 0:05:50.160 --> 0:05:52.680 make the tiny little droplets. They burn those droplets up, 0:05:53.360 --> 0:05:55.719 and then that really makes it more efficient. One gram 0:05:55.720 --> 0:05:58.720 of a g I can then produce one hundred quadrillion 0:05:59.240 --> 0:06:02.919 nuclei for the ice crystals. So you take that stuff, 0:06:03.320 --> 0:06:06.640 you put it up in the clouds, it goes up. 0:06:06.720 --> 0:06:11.359 That's right. And it actually, according to Vonnegut's theories, um 0:06:11.560 --> 0:06:15.440 has a number of effects. Uh, and here's how it works. Yeah, 0:06:15.440 --> 0:06:18.440 this is regular confuse. Okay, this is what the segments 0:06:18.440 --> 0:06:21.800 we like to call Josh teaches Chuck in addition to 0:06:21.880 --> 0:06:26.120 the world Okay, you're ready. So you think that zero 0:06:26.120 --> 0:06:29.640 degrees celsius or thirty two degrees fahrenheit is where ice freezes. 0:06:29.800 --> 0:06:31.680 It is, That's what they always say. This is actually 0:06:31.680 --> 0:06:37.880 the melting point of ice. So ice ice um freezes 0:06:37.960 --> 0:06:42.640 between zero and negative thirty nine degrees celsius um. And 0:06:42.680 --> 0:06:46.040 it depends on the number of impurities, which will call nuclei. 0:06:46.640 --> 0:06:49.120 And when we're talking nuclei, when you're talking about cloud seating, 0:06:49.240 --> 0:06:52.080 you're talking about any particle that can attract water to 0:06:52.160 --> 0:06:55.080 become a rain drop, that can attract water, vapor and 0:06:55.080 --> 0:06:59.360 turning into ice through sublimation um and become snow or 0:07:00.080 --> 0:07:03.279 leat or anything like that. So a nuclei is anything 0:07:03.560 --> 0:07:06.520 that you introduced into a cloud that becomes the center 0:07:06.560 --> 0:07:10.040 of this precipitation right, See that already makes more sense. Okay, 0:07:10.280 --> 0:07:13.200 So with there's two types of clouds as far as 0:07:13.320 --> 0:07:16.560 Vonne Gets concerned, um or as technique is concerned, there 0:07:16.640 --> 0:07:20.440 is a super cool cloud which has water um that 0:07:20.600 --> 0:07:24.960 is less than zero degrees celsius present, and that's the 0:07:25.000 --> 0:07:28.600 ideal cloud for cloud seating, correct for one type of 0:07:28.600 --> 0:07:31.360 cloud seating for using silver iodide, Because what you're trying 0:07:31.400 --> 0:07:34.160 to do there is create ice. And if you're using 0:07:34.280 --> 0:07:40.040 silver idide, which has a similar structure to ice crystals, UM, 0:07:40.200 --> 0:07:41.880 you're going to use that in the super cool one, 0:07:42.160 --> 0:07:43.800 because if you use it in the other type, the 0:07:43.880 --> 0:07:46.280 warm cloud, it's not going to do anything because it's 0:07:46.280 --> 0:07:48.240 not going to form ice no matter what. The temperature 0:07:48.280 --> 0:07:49.840 is too high. But you can still see the warm 0:07:49.880 --> 0:07:52.800 cloud Correctly, you can't. So you use a silver iodide 0:07:52.840 --> 0:07:55.720 vonne Gets method is still in use today UM. Where 0:07:55.800 --> 0:07:59.000 you're burning silver eyedide mixed an acid tone. You create 0:07:59.080 --> 0:08:03.960 quadrillions of nuclei that float up into the cloud, create 0:08:04.160 --> 0:08:07.320 um an updraft. Because check this out, this is even 0:08:07.320 --> 0:08:10.520 more beautiful. When the silver iodide nuclei enter the cloud, 0:08:11.040 --> 0:08:14.080 they start to attract the water vapor and as the 0:08:14.080 --> 0:08:17.960 water vapor converts from vapor, not turning back into liquid 0:08:18.080 --> 0:08:21.960 because it's sublimation, that's right. Converts from liquid or vapor 0:08:22.280 --> 0:08:27.040 into ice. It creates heat energy as a result. It 0:08:27.080 --> 0:08:33.640 doesn't create it. It heat energy. It comes about right. Uh. 0:08:33.679 --> 0:08:36.360 And as that happens, that creates a convective current going 0:08:36.480 --> 0:08:39.560 up in the cloud, which creates a swirl and updraft, 0:08:40.000 --> 0:08:42.600 which makes the cloud bigger, which means that the stuff, 0:08:42.720 --> 0:08:45.000 the particles that happened at the top have longer to 0:08:45.040 --> 0:08:48.640 fall through to create more ice, accumulate more ice, and 0:08:48.760 --> 0:08:51.240 have a better chance of becoming snow. So that's the 0:08:51.280 --> 0:08:53.760 super cool cloud using silver iodide, so the cloud is 0:08:53.800 --> 0:08:58.200 literally pregnant with precipitation. Yeah, that not only creates snow 0:08:58.280 --> 0:09:01.080 and ice, but actually makes a cloud bigger to increase 0:09:01.120 --> 0:09:04.040 the likelihood that it will produce snow and ice. Just 0:09:04.120 --> 0:09:08.800 by introducing silver iodide bonding. It was a genius. The 0:09:08.880 --> 0:09:12.040 other way is to do to use a warm cloud, 0:09:12.600 --> 0:09:15.480 which is a cloud where the water temperature the air 0:09:15.520 --> 0:09:19.600 temperature is over zero decreased celsius. That's right, And then 0:09:19.640 --> 0:09:23.319 that is pretty simple. Is use table salt really or 0:09:23.440 --> 0:09:28.439 sand charge otherwise, but you want to dump that into 0:09:28.480 --> 0:09:31.800 the top of the cloud, right, and it requires dumping 0:09:31.840 --> 0:09:34.439 a lot of it too. Is that one of the 0:09:34.480 --> 0:09:37.480 problems with it. Yeah, I mean, it's just there's more 0:09:37.520 --> 0:09:39.880 to it. If you're doing UM, if you're using bonning 0:09:39.920 --> 0:09:42.720 its method, you can use the seating station on the ground. 0:09:43.440 --> 0:09:45.880 If you're if you're using static cloud seating where you're 0:09:45.920 --> 0:09:50.000 flying overhead and dropping stuff into the clouds. UM, you 0:09:50.080 --> 0:09:51.880 have to have a plane, you have to have a 0:09:51.880 --> 0:09:54.640 lot more of it. But what you're using is called 0:09:54.640 --> 0:09:58.719 a high high groscopic solution, which attracts water create rain 0:09:58.800 --> 0:10:02.520 drops which fall through the cloud, becoming bigger and bigger 0:10:02.559 --> 0:10:04.880 on the way and then bam, you have a rain. 0:10:05.000 --> 0:10:07.600 You've just seated a cloud. That's amazing. So ge did 0:10:07.600 --> 0:10:11.240 have a plane UM in nine or at least the 0:10:11.320 --> 0:10:13.760 articles as they rented an airplane because it did ano 0:10:13.800 --> 0:10:16.200 their own and they said we should try this out, 0:10:16.280 --> 0:10:18.480 and they released dry ice into these clouds for four 0:10:18.559 --> 0:10:23.199 days UH in November December, and on the last day 0:10:23.240 --> 0:10:26.800 they received the heaviest snowfall of that winter. UM and 0:10:26.960 --> 0:10:32.480 the Arab New York's Schenectady, New York. But there's been 0:10:32.480 --> 0:10:34.280 a lot of well, we'll get to whether or not 0:10:34.320 --> 0:10:36.199 the stuff works at the very end. But it seems 0:10:36.200 --> 0:10:38.920 like every time it happens, people are saying, I think 0:10:38.960 --> 0:10:41.160 we might have caused that, and other people think, yeah, 0:10:41.200 --> 0:10:44.280 but did we really? Were you guys just cloud seating 0:10:44.400 --> 0:10:47.200 enough so that over enough days that it was bound 0:10:47.600 --> 0:10:50.040 rain anyway, like the government Georgia praying for rain the 0:10:50.120 --> 0:10:53.079 night before it's supposed to rain exactly. Um. So GE 0:10:53.400 --> 0:10:56.600 was convinced enough that this was working that it's it 0:10:56.720 --> 0:11:00.440 was like, we can't do this anymore. And the Army said, hey, 0:11:00.600 --> 0:11:02.160 we have a bunch of money on don't you let 0:11:02.200 --> 0:11:03.840 us in on this. And we have a bunch of 0:11:03.840 --> 0:11:06.960 money and low scruples because we're about to start testing 0:11:06.960 --> 0:11:09.480 acid on people whether they like it or not. So 0:11:09.600 --> 0:11:11.920 cloud seating is like nothing to us. And GE said, Okay, 0:11:12.040 --> 0:11:14.640 as long as you guys are totally liable, sure we'll 0:11:14.640 --> 0:11:16.640 do it with you. So they partnered up for Project 0:11:16.679 --> 0:11:22.880 syrus Um and seven. In October forty seven, they dumped 0:11:22.880 --> 0:11:25.120 a hundred and eighty pounds of dry eyes into a 0:11:25.200 --> 0:11:30.520 hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean and possibly changed the direction 0:11:30.559 --> 0:11:33.400 of that hurricane to make landfall right here in Georgia 0:11:34.040 --> 0:11:37.320 UH and end up killing several people. So that was 0:11:37.320 --> 0:11:39.560 sort of an oops. Although again they're like, did we 0:11:39.600 --> 0:11:43.199 really cause that? Well, the guy who was Bernard vonne 0:11:43.200 --> 0:11:47.120 gets boss Irving Langmuir, he's a Nobel winning chemist. He 0:11:47.200 --> 0:11:52.200 was totally convinced. According to him, there's a probability that 0:11:52.240 --> 0:11:56.000 they had caused this hurricane to change um direction. I 0:11:56.040 --> 0:11:59.120 think he felt a lot about himself, didn't he He did. 0:11:58.640 --> 0:12:01.080 He was always like, no, that was us, and he 0:12:01.120 --> 0:12:03.360 would publish papers like that and the government would step 0:12:03.400 --> 0:12:06.040 in and be like, you, this paper doesn't exist anymore. 0:12:06.080 --> 0:12:08.280 Do you want us to like grease you? Are you 0:12:08.320 --> 0:12:11.319 trying to push our buttons? Um? But there was another 0:12:11.360 --> 0:12:15.080 scientists who pointed out that that same that a hurricane 0:12:15.120 --> 0:12:18.200 followed the exact same path caused about the same amount 0:12:18.200 --> 0:12:21.120 of damage in nineteen o six. So was it the 0:12:21.200 --> 0:12:23.280 dry ice? Was it not? Who knows? So he just 0:12:23.280 --> 0:12:25.120 compared it to an older hurricane, said this could have 0:12:25.160 --> 0:12:30.400 happened naturally. They did the same thing in UH in Albuquerque, 0:12:30.480 --> 0:12:35.680 New Mexico, in nineteen forty eight. In July nineteen and 0:12:35.760 --> 0:12:38.120 apparently it rained all over the state of New Mexico 0:12:38.320 --> 0:12:43.600 and as far away as Kansas, causing oh actually that 0:12:43.679 --> 0:12:48.360 was later, but the same deal from New Mexico. They 0:12:48.360 --> 0:12:50.000 think they made it rain in Kansas to the point 0:12:50.280 --> 0:12:53.320 where like the great floods of Kansas in adjacent states 0:12:53.360 --> 0:12:57.120 they thought, man, could it have traveled that far? Well, 0:12:57.160 --> 0:13:00.839 that was another things Langmuir was convinced about that, like 0:13:00.880 --> 0:13:05.199 they had impregnated clouds that traveled the thousand kilometers away. Yeah, 0:13:05.600 --> 0:13:07.360 and enough that he was like, we have to stop 0:13:07.400 --> 0:13:10.280 doing this. And Bernard vonne Get testified to Congress like 0:13:10.760 --> 0:13:14.839 nobody should be doing this except maybe a federal government. Right. 0:13:14.880 --> 0:13:17.199 But then other expert medialogist came out and said, you 0:13:17.280 --> 0:13:19.400 know what, this whole thing in Kansas, if there was 0:13:19.440 --> 0:13:21.720 any effect at all, it might have been just slightly enhanced. 0:13:21.840 --> 0:13:24.200 So it's really not all your fault. So the the U. 0:13:24.280 --> 0:13:26.480 S Government is is very much interested in this. They're 0:13:26.559 --> 0:13:30.520 very much entrenched in this, even as there not sure 0:13:30.559 --> 0:13:33.920 whether or not it's working, or the scientific community is 0:13:34.000 --> 0:13:36.640 at odds over whether or not it was working. But 0:13:36.880 --> 0:13:39.720 the US government was convinced enough that they were basically 0:13:39.760 --> 0:13:42.080 weaponizing the weather. They're doing all this to figure out 0:13:42.160 --> 0:13:46.200 how to screw with other countries, troops, economies, the whole shebang, 0:13:46.920 --> 0:13:49.000 and as the US for carrying out tests. So were 0:13:49.000 --> 0:13:51.800 the Brits right, yeah, the Royal Air Force of course, 0:13:52.679 --> 0:13:56.240 if we had our project serious, they had operational cumulus. 0:13:57.120 --> 0:14:00.280 Very clever to think of all these cloud names. Uh. 0:14:00.320 --> 0:14:03.360 And this was going on recently in two thousand one, 0:14:03.400 --> 0:14:08.600 the BBC investigated these rumors and um apparently or actually 0:14:09.160 --> 0:14:11.840 were they investigating the old rumors? Yeah? Okay, well I 0:14:11.840 --> 0:14:13.400 guess that makes more sense. I thought they did it 0:14:13.440 --> 0:14:18.520 recently too, though No, I don't know the Brits alright, 0:14:18.640 --> 0:14:22.320 Uh soo the the Royal Air Force did fly above 0:14:22.360 --> 0:14:24.600 the cloud line, dropped a bunch of this stuff and 0:14:24.640 --> 0:14:27.880 thirty minutes later it started to rain, and it rained 0:14:28.040 --> 0:14:30.600 and rained and rained, and by the end of the 0:14:30.600 --> 0:14:36.320 month North Devon and North of England was um basically 0:14:36.840 --> 0:14:39.720 got two fifty times the amount of rain they ever get, 0:14:40.000 --> 0:14:44.120 which is a pretty spectacularly convincing two d and fifty times. Yeah, 0:14:44.320 --> 0:14:46.800 it's like a flood time. And there there was actually 0:14:46.880 --> 0:14:53.320 huge flood too, um in a village Lynmouth, UM where 0:14:53.400 --> 0:14:59.400 basically ninety million tons of water converged on the village 0:14:59.440 --> 0:15:02.440 at once. Unbelievable. On the day that they started seating, 0:15:02.440 --> 0:15:05.640 when it started raining, um and thirty five people lost 0:15:05.680 --> 0:15:07.600 their lives. They were carried out to sea, they were 0:15:07.600 --> 0:15:10.600 crushed by bowlders. Entire houses were taken out by bowlers 0:15:10.600 --> 0:15:13.480 that were brought down by the water. Um. But of 0:15:13.480 --> 0:15:16.840 course they said this wasn't US, and the Royal Air 0:15:16.840 --> 0:15:20.160 Force pretended it never happened, So who knows. We did 0:15:20.160 --> 0:15:23.680 our own little experiments here in the US and uh, 0:15:23.720 --> 0:15:26.760 as far as weaponization goes. In Vietnam, we tried to 0:15:26.800 --> 0:15:29.440 extend the monsoon season on the Ho Chi Minh trail 0:15:30.120 --> 0:15:33.640 and apparently it worked by like thirty to forty five days. 0:15:33.680 --> 0:15:37.360 Supposedly we extended monsoon season that year in nine at 0:15:37.360 --> 0:15:41.080 a cost of like twenty one million dollars and um 0:15:41.120 --> 0:15:44.400 over the course of missions. And they said it like 0:15:44.520 --> 0:15:47.840 it's they look at it now as a semi successful mission, 0:15:48.760 --> 0:15:52.880 whatever that means. It was it was good enough. Yeah, 0:15:53.080 --> 0:15:56.680 they're like things were slippery um. And that was actually 0:15:56.680 --> 0:16:00.000 called Operation Popeye, no cloud names. And the whole reason 0:16:00.040 --> 0:16:03.160 and we have an awareness of Operation Popeye is because 0:16:03.240 --> 0:16:09.680 a reporter named Jack Anderson uh he uh, he got 0:16:09.680 --> 0:16:12.040 his hands on a secret memo from the Joints Chiefs 0:16:12.040 --> 0:16:15.800 of Staff to President Johnson that made reference to weather 0:16:15.880 --> 0:16:19.640 modification techniques in Laos, And he started digging around and 0:16:19.640 --> 0:16:22.160 found out that the government had done that, and he 0:16:22.440 --> 0:16:24.240 when this article came out, I was had a really 0:16:24.280 --> 0:16:28.120 good time because the US government was or Congress was 0:16:28.160 --> 0:16:32.440 not in a mood to uh weaponized weather, and so 0:16:32.480 --> 0:16:35.160 they kind of took this article. They took the publicity 0:16:35.200 --> 0:16:38.720 from it. They took a Senate Committees recommendation that like, 0:16:39.200 --> 0:16:41.320 this is way too big for us to be messing with, 0:16:41.880 --> 0:16:44.440 and went and had a summit with the Soviets about 0:16:44.480 --> 0:16:49.360 banning weather modification. Yeah, they said it was a laussy idea. 0:16:49.960 --> 0:16:52.640 Did you practice that well? I thought too much time 0:16:52.640 --> 0:16:53.680 had gone by it. I was like, you know what, 0:16:53.760 --> 0:16:55.320 I'm gonna say it anyway, it was a good time. 0:16:55.400 --> 0:16:57.840 It doesn't matter when you throw the pun down, it's 0:16:57.840 --> 0:17:01.880 always bad. Was a lossy idea, and they did. They 0:17:01.880 --> 0:17:05.560 got together with the Soviets and they said the big 0:17:06.560 --> 0:17:08.560 deal breaker I guess between them making a deal right 0:17:08.560 --> 0:17:12.879 then was they couldn't decide between the distinctions of tactical 0:17:13.240 --> 0:17:16.160 versus strategic. They thought, hey, if it's tactical. That's cool, 0:17:16.480 --> 0:17:20.280 because we're just trying to benefit from the weather, um 0:17:20.320 --> 0:17:23.080 and make stuff harder on you to get around. UM. 0:17:23.119 --> 0:17:27.720 Strategic uses would like try and like flood a major city, 0:17:28.040 --> 0:17:33.040 ruined crops, ruined crops, destroy the economy. Yeah. Um. And 0:17:33.119 --> 0:17:37.560 so the summit dissolved. But um, the fact that they 0:17:37.560 --> 0:17:42.480 were even talking about the strategic ones suggests that the 0:17:42.480 --> 0:17:45.919 the US and the Soviets both thought that one or 0:17:45.960 --> 0:17:47.679 both were on the verge of being able to do 0:17:48.040 --> 0:17:52.320 weather modification at that level. UM. So the the talks 0:17:52.320 --> 0:17:55.639 fell apart. But UM, the U N basically stepped in 0:17:55.680 --> 0:17:57.880 and said, hey, we'll take over from here, and they 0:17:57.920 --> 0:18:03.600 created UM and MAUD, which is the Environmental Environmental Modification Convention, 0:18:03.840 --> 0:18:06.760 which basically bands weaponizing weather, and the US and the 0:18:06.800 --> 0:18:10.000 Soviets ratified it came into effect the night. So you 0:18:10.040 --> 0:18:15.720 can't weaponize weather, but you can still do like weather 0:18:15.800 --> 0:18:19.000 modification as long as it's not what's called geophysical warfare, 0:18:19.480 --> 0:18:22.280 like you're trying to dissipate a storm or change the 0:18:22.280 --> 0:18:24.960 course of a hurricane for good for good and that 0:18:25.040 --> 0:18:28.280 kind of stuff. Uh. For instance, China, they've been at 0:18:28.280 --> 0:18:31.880 this for a long time. Uh, since the late nineteen fifties, 0:18:31.920 --> 0:18:35.280 and they have a program that employs between thirty and 0:18:35.320 --> 0:18:41.000 thirty people called the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, and 0:18:41.440 --> 0:18:44.320 that is they have a department, the Weather Modification Department, 0:18:44.760 --> 0:18:47.479 and they use that. And you probably remember in the 0:18:47.480 --> 0:18:51.320 news even seeing this at the Beijing Olympics, they busted 0:18:51.320 --> 0:18:54.800 clouds to try and prevent rain from happening because they 0:18:54.800 --> 0:18:56.960 didn't want to rain out their their opening ceremony in 0:18:56.960 --> 0:18:59.159 their games. Yes, so any cloud that they saw, they 0:18:59.160 --> 0:19:03.760 would shoot rocket propelled grenades filled with silver eyed eye 0:19:04.520 --> 0:19:09.520 um or anti aircraft artillery phil with silver eyed die. 0:19:09.520 --> 0:19:12.680 They were just shooting clouds. And there's like thirty thousand people. 0:19:12.680 --> 0:19:14.399 A lot of them are farmers who are armed with 0:19:14.520 --> 0:19:18.720 government issue rocket launchers. Yeah, because they're on the right place. Yeah, 0:19:18.840 --> 0:19:22.400 to shoot at clouds. Get that cloud. Yeah, I did 0:19:22.440 --> 0:19:25.320 that like a Southern redneck. That was weird. Get that cloud. 0:19:25.359 --> 0:19:30.440 Mant's they sound like China. Jerry just left it that. 0:19:31.720 --> 0:19:35.440 Uh So. Then hale is the next thing that we've 0:19:35.480 --> 0:19:41.080 tried to conquer. N the National Hail Research Experiment was 0:19:41.119 --> 0:19:46.000 started and basically to suppress hail along what's known as 0:19:46.040 --> 0:19:51.000 Hale Alley in Colorado, h some state called Kansas, Northwest Kansas, 0:19:51.400 --> 0:19:56.399 Southeast Wyoming in northwest Nebraska, and UM. It was scheduled 0:19:56.440 --> 0:19:59.080 the last five years, but it did not. I think 0:19:59.119 --> 0:20:03.040 it was shut down in yeah, two years ahead of 0:20:03.080 --> 0:20:05.200 time and not necessarily through any fault of its own. 0:20:05.200 --> 0:20:07.399 The seventies turn out to be like the driest decade 0:20:07.440 --> 0:20:11.639 ever in Hale Alley. UM. But their their whole goal 0:20:11.880 --> 0:20:16.280 was to seed clouds to basically hurry up the process 0:20:16.359 --> 0:20:18.960 of them precipitating so that it wouldn't have a chance 0:20:19.000 --> 0:20:22.680 to become hal to keep them warm clouds to UM, 0:20:22.800 --> 0:20:25.159 and just to if it is going to hail, they 0:20:25.160 --> 0:20:27.600 would be smaller pieces of hail and it would just 0:20:27.640 --> 0:20:31.320 accelerate the process. UM. But there was some funny things 0:20:31.320 --> 0:20:33.560 that came out of it, like we learned that farmers 0:20:33.560 --> 0:20:36.320 don't like clouds eating. Yeah, and they tried in Maryland 0:20:36.320 --> 0:20:38.920 and Virginia, and there were farmers like shooting at the aircraft. 0:20:39.400 --> 0:20:42.719 And then in the San Luis Valley, Uh, there were 0:20:43.119 --> 0:20:47.320 somebody blew up with dynamite a radar truck for a 0:20:47.359 --> 0:20:51.520 private weather modification company. All in the seventies. So the seventies, 0:20:51.720 --> 0:20:54.800 weather mood was not very popular, and in some states 0:20:54.880 --> 0:21:00.840 now because of farmers concerns, um weather modification is banned. Yeah. Yeah, 0:21:00.840 --> 0:21:02.960 people are afraid that you're gonna take the cloud that 0:21:03.040 --> 0:21:07.199 was destined for their field and use it over your field. 0:21:07.840 --> 0:21:10.480 That was my cloud. Well that's we might as well 0:21:10.480 --> 0:21:12.959 talk about it. Then that's a big issue. Um. As 0:21:13.040 --> 0:21:16.119 far as our next topic, thwarting hurricanes, it seems like 0:21:16.119 --> 0:21:20.960 a great idea, but one leading scientist, what's his name, 0:21:22.359 --> 0:21:27.280 Moche Alamorrow, He's from m i t. He says, you know, 0:21:28.840 --> 0:21:31.240 only a handful of hurricanes ever developed out of like 0:21:31.280 --> 0:21:34.280 a hundred tropical storms, let's say, and very few of 0:21:34.280 --> 0:21:37.360 those hurricanes calls landfall that do like lots of damage. 0:21:37.960 --> 0:21:42.239 So this rainfall is vital to South America. And what 0:21:42.280 --> 0:21:45.320 are we gonna start just trying to thwart every tropical 0:21:45.320 --> 0:21:47.720 storm we see? Like we're playing god here a little 0:21:47.760 --> 0:21:50.920 too much. That's stuff happens for a reason, right exactly, 0:21:51.040 --> 0:21:53.480 despite the fact that hurricanes can be very dangerous and 0:21:53.680 --> 0:21:57.600 costly take lives. I get the feeling he's like, you know, 0:21:57.640 --> 0:21:59.680 we might just want to live with that every couple 0:21:59.720 --> 0:22:02.640 of years rather than try to mess with the thermodynamics 0:22:02.680 --> 0:22:05.719 of an ocean current exactly. Well, and that's kind of 0:22:05.760 --> 0:22:09.840 what some of the ideas for um dissipating or moving hurricanes. 0:22:09.880 --> 0:22:13.199 A couple of ideas are shooting dropping hydrogen bombs on 0:22:13.240 --> 0:22:17.040 a hurricane to dissipated, which I don't know what the 0:22:17.160 --> 0:22:19.760 fact they would happen, um, But Bill Gates is in 0:22:19.880 --> 0:22:25.200 on a patent for um dissipating hurricanes, which apparently uses 0:22:25.200 --> 0:22:29.359 fleets of vehicles to pump cold water from lower depths 0:22:29.359 --> 0:22:31.840 of the ocean to the surface to mix with the 0:22:31.880 --> 0:22:36.000 warm surface temperatures are comparatively warmer surface temperatures, so that 0:22:36.119 --> 0:22:40.200 the convective currents that those warm surface temperatures creating hurricanes 0:22:40.520 --> 0:22:43.440 that make them more and more powerful are dissipated, so 0:22:43.520 --> 0:22:47.400 the hurricanes forces reduced because hurricanes draw their strength from 0:22:47.400 --> 0:22:50.280 that heat, and uh, you can cool it down. The 0:22:50.359 --> 0:22:54.080 idea is that you might then dissipated again, messing with 0:22:54.119 --> 0:22:57.880 the thermodynamics. Is that a good thing? And then there's 0:22:57.920 --> 0:23:02.080 one that's really routined. Um, you've probably looked right past 0:23:02.080 --> 0:23:06.360 it at your local airport, which is fog dissipation. Yeah, 0:23:06.400 --> 0:23:11.040 they do this regularly with below freezing temperature fog R 0:23:11.240 --> 0:23:13.480 not too hard. They can do it from the ground. Yeah, 0:23:13.480 --> 0:23:15.640