Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hello, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast
Speaker 1: that looks at the future and says, I never meant
Speaker 1: to cause you any sorrow. I never meant to cause
Speaker 1: you any pain. I only wanted to pump you full
Speaker 1: of silver. Eyah died in Microwaves. I'm Joe McCormick, I'm
Speaker 1: Lauren Bulck Obama, and our regular host Jonathan Strickland is
Speaker 1: not with us today since he is currently in the
Speaker 1: middle of the Pacific Ocean attempting to circumnavigate the globe
Speaker 1: in an old timey wooden bathtub, but in his stead,
Speaker 1: joining us today is our absolutely fantastic coworker, uh, former
Speaker 1: co host of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, and the
Speaker 1: new host of Stuff of Life, which you're all very
Speaker 1: excited about, Julie Douglas. Howdy, Thanks for having me. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks for being here. How you doing, Julie, Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty good, pretty good. I'm excited about today's topic because,
Speaker 1: you know, one of my one of my flags in
Speaker 1: my back pocket is a bit of a futurist flag,
Speaker 1: is a bit of a what futurist flag that's not
Speaker 1: one that just rolls off the tongue, is it. It's
Speaker 1: kind of a inturist flag, futurist flag, futurist flag, futurist flag. No,
Speaker 1: I can't tell her you're talking about a literal flag
Speaker 1: or you're just saying that you enjoy futurism topics. I
Speaker 1: enjoy futurist topics, and I do have a flag. You
Speaker 1: don't have flags in your back pocket proclaiming your interests.
Speaker 1: Only my interest in the Soviet Union. I suppose if
Speaker 1: by flags you mean cell phones, then yes, hey, we
Speaker 1: should get on topic. No, today we're going to be
Speaker 1: talking about weather control. Uh, the issue that has come
Speaker 1: up on the video series before. Jonathan has done a
Speaker 1: video about it back in January and he's blogged about
Speaker 1: it a little. But I realized we've never done a
Speaker 1: full podcast episode on weather control. And just so you
Speaker 1: know in advance, this is going to be part one
Speaker 1: of a two part episode we're going to be doing
Speaker 1: on today's topic. So please after this one is over,
Speaker 1: join us next time for for the exciting conclusion of
Speaker 1: the future of weather control. Yeah. Also, when we came
Speaker 1: to Julian said, hey, would you like to guess on
Speaker 1: our show while Jonathan is out she said, she said yes,
Speaker 1: and we were like, well, do you want to talk
Speaker 1: about a thing? Is there a thing that you would
Speaker 1: be interested in talking about? And you said weather control?
Speaker 1: And do you want to talk about why that is? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm reading a book by Lauren Redness. It's called Thunder
Speaker 1: and Lightning Weather, Past, Present and Future. And um, some
Speaker 1: of your listeners may be familiar with her past project.
Speaker 1: It's called Radioactive Marie and Pierre Cure, A Tale of
Speaker 1: Love and Fallout, Yes, which is a bit like that.
Speaker 1: But it's it's amazing the way that she goes after
Speaker 1: a topic because she really overlays a massive amount of
Speaker 1: reportage and research, um. And then she kind of takes
Speaker 1: these illustrations and storytelling and history weaves them all together.
Speaker 1: And she has done the very same for this book
Speaker 1: about whether. Yeah, and it's it's a gorgeous book. I
Speaker 1: mean it looks it looks like an art piece, not
Speaker 1: a nonfiction title. Um. And and there's no reason why
Speaker 1: those two things can't exist at the same time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of I was thinking about this. It's like
Speaker 1: in a adult picture book, but in the very best ways.
Speaker 1: You know, somebody can take that the wrong way. Absolutely
Speaker 1: could take it the wrong way, But I don't mean
Speaker 1: it that way. What I mean to say is that
Speaker 1: she she does exhaustive research and in reporting, like I said,
Speaker 1: but she also kind of slips in all of the
Speaker 1: scientific understanding there and then takes it to another level
Speaker 1: by illustrating the concepts. Yeah, Julie photocopied several pages for us,
Speaker 1: and I thought it was a blaster read. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And one of the things she covers is this idea
Speaker 1: of weather control and the implications of that, and for her,
Speaker 1: this came up as a kind of uh side issue
Speaker 1: or complication and discussion about what we could do to
Speaker 1: counteract climate change, right right. And one of the examples
Speaker 1: that she covers is a technology called the strato shield. Now,
Speaker 1: strato shield, doesn't it I mean it just sounds great, right,
Speaker 1: You got the shot the strato shield up in the sky,
Speaker 1: no worries. Yeah, But it also sounds like it could
Speaker 1: be a medical device, do you think, Yeah, like you
Speaker 1: got your pacemaker, you got your strate shield. I'm not
Speaker 1: quite sure what it does, the strato shield or the
Speaker 1: pacemaker that the internal strata shield. I like I like
Speaker 1: to think that it like Colins anxiety. What would this
Speaker 1: proposal do for for weather system? Well? This let me
Speaker 1: I should mention that this is UM. This is from
Speaker 1: Nathan Mervold's company called I believe it's called Intellectual Ventures,
Speaker 1: and some of the listeners may be familiar with him.
Speaker 1: UH is known for sort of what people have called,
Speaker 1: you know, patent trolling. We've talked about Mervold on the
Speaker 1: podcast before. He's he does kind of eye catching technology proposals.
Speaker 1: Did Mirvold have something to do with the mosquito laser? Oh?
Speaker 1: So I'm glad that we could return to this topic
Speaker 1: to get today. Even though we're not talking directly about insects,
Speaker 1: we still managed to tweak it in there. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you want to hear about the mosquito laser, we did
Speaker 1: a podcast about that a while ago, something about our
Speaker 1: war against mosquitoes. You can look it up on the website. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I mean, and that's not surprising, right because the
Speaker 1: company holds patents, so probability was you know, a couple
Speaker 1: of them are going to be great ideas and possibly
Speaker 1: pan out, and you know, obviously they're in it for that. UM,
Speaker 1: but what they're interested in terms of global warming and
Speaker 1: climate change is solar radiation management to try to counter
Speaker 1: the effects of global warming. So essentially what we're talking
Speaker 1: about is bouncy some of the sunlight back into space
Speaker 1: to prevent it from entering the atmosphere and then warming
Speaker 1: the atmosphere globally. So this would fall under the category
Speaker 1: of things we would call geoengineering solutions to global warming
Speaker 1: that say like, Okay, look, we're just not going to
Speaker 1: get people to stop polluting. Everybody's going to keep putting
Speaker 1: carbon in the atmosphere. There's nothing we can do about it.
Speaker 1: So instead, we've just got to find a way to
Speaker 1: counteract the warming with some kind of massive engineering projects.
Speaker 1: It's saying that essentially it's easier to stop the sun
Speaker 1: than it is to get people to not drive as much. Yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: which is why geo engineering has gained in popularity as
Speaker 1: a field right over over the last couple of decades.
Speaker 1: But it's kind of a scary concept, didn't it. It
Speaker 1: is um because what you're essentially talking about is an
Speaker 1: eighteen mile high host to the sky held up by
Speaker 1: balloons like a string of pearls, pumps oud aerosolized sulfur dioxide.
Speaker 1: So these particles would then act as a shield and
Speaker 1: reflect back the sunlight back into space and then help
Speaker 1: ameliorate some of the warming. Okay, it's a Mr. Burns
Speaker 1: kind of idea. It's putting an umbrella over the Earth
Speaker 1: to kind of help protect and block out some of
Speaker 1: that hated sunlight. Exactly. I can even hear him saying,
Speaker 1: like that sunlight, Well, what does he say? He's like,
Speaker 1: for years men has dreamed of destroying the sun, and
Speaker 1: I have the perfect technology strata shield. So I mean,
Speaker 1: if you think about it, it actually is a very
Speaker 1: elegant solution, Okay, because we are talking about something that
Speaker 1: wid wise is like it's no bigger than a garden hose,
Speaker 1: and it's really cheap um. So you've got some pros there.
Speaker 1: My Myra Bold also claims that the amount of particles
Speaker 1: up there would not obscure or change anything measurably in
Speaker 1: terms of our perception of the skuys. He's still have
Speaker 1: a sparkling blue sky. Um, And you could argue that
Speaker 1: this kind of device is just management of weather in earnest.
Speaker 1: In other words, we're changing the chemical composition of Earth's atmosphere,
Speaker 1: so why not just you know, take hold of it
Speaker 1: and take responsibility for it. So this would be the
Speaker 1: pros right. But of course, anything that has the power
Speaker 1: to affect the climate on a large scale also probably
Speaker 1: has the power to have some pretty devastating specific weather effects.
Speaker 1: And we've talked about the difference between climate and weather
Speaker 1: on the podcast before. I like to use the analogy
Speaker 1: that climate is like a person's personality. Weather is like
Speaker 1: their mood today. That's a perfect analogy. So you essentially
Speaker 1: would be creating a kind of I don't want to
Speaker 1: call it prozac, but some sort of mood altering drugs
Speaker 1: for the atmosphere that you would have turned on forever,
Speaker 1: right or definitely, because as soon as you change their circumstances, um,
Speaker 1: you would have to make sure that it would continue
Speaker 1: to run. Yeah. Yeah, And we don't know what effects
Speaker 1: that could have on on weather patterns and you know,
Speaker 1: and and the climate in general over a long period
Speaker 1: of time, and whether whether it would be devastating or
Speaker 1: helpful or more or less harmless. That there's so many
Speaker 1: variables involved in the weather, yeah, which is in a
Speaker 1: way like the problems with this are kind of a
Speaker 1: microcosm of the whole topic. The problems with the whole topic, right, like,
Speaker 1: how do you control something that's so wild? But the
Speaker 1: biggie is that it could be used as a weapon, oh,
Speaker 1: weaponized weather. Mr burns again, Well it is, yeah, weather
Speaker 1: control and weaponized. Since is the classic uh mustache twirling
Speaker 1: mega villain plot. You know, it's in the superhero the
Speaker 1: old superhero cartoons. What is the mad scientist always build?
Speaker 1: It's a weather control machine, of course it is, because why,
Speaker 1: I don't know, he hates earth and he's like, yes,
Speaker 1: I'll send tornadoes against you. Well, and I think it's
Speaker 1: one of those things too, where it's like, well, well
Speaker 1: you have that technology. I would like to have that
Speaker 1: technology too. And I'm speaking as countries right, Like Canada
Speaker 1: is all of a sudden like whoa us so close?
Speaker 1: How about we have that too, just to ensure that,
Speaker 1: you know, we could control our own weather and then
Speaker 1: you know, certainly you could begin to really break some
Speaker 1: havoc with that. And we do have some examples of
Speaker 1: this type of warfare in history. Yeah, And I think
Speaker 1: that's going to bring us to our central topic today.
Speaker 1: So so throughout the podcast, we're gonna be asking essentially
Speaker 1: how feasible is real technological weather control, like can we
Speaker 1: cajole the skies to bring rain to regions of drought
Speaker 1: or or dissipate tornadoes or throw tornadoes and hurricanes and
Speaker 1: lightning at our enemies, uh, and and just generally play
Speaker 1: gods over the weather and fur the work. Can we
Speaker 1: do that without massively screwing up something somewhere else unintentionally? Yes?
Speaker 1: And that that is a very good point, because I
Speaker 1: think first we should start by looking at why exactly
Speaker 1: it is we're at the mercy of the weather, Like,
Speaker 1: why it's been so difficult to control the weather despite
Speaker 1: the fact that we've got all this great technological power
Speaker 1: that we can use to do other things with, you know,
Speaker 1: big difficult projects. Why can't we just uh send a
Speaker 1: hurricane going the other way or do things like that.
Speaker 1: And I think there are two main answers to this problem.
Speaker 1: One of them is that weather events involve colossal amounts
Speaker 1: of energy, more energy than we realize. Because you know,
Speaker 1: you getta you getta some wind and some rain. You're like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, like a truck can hit me harder than
Speaker 1: the wind pushes me, so feasibly our technology should be
Speaker 1: more powerful than the wind. Right, Well, but there's there's
Speaker 1: a lot more wind than there is truck. I think
Speaker 1: that's a very good way of doing it. I found
Speaker 1: a really good answer to this question in a piece
Speaker 1: written by the American meteorologist Chris Lancy. And he wrote
Speaker 1: this piece for the in O. A a s. Hurricane
Speaker 1: Research Division website, answering a question they apparently get a lot.
Speaker 1: People are always asking why don't we just nuke the
Speaker 1: tropical cyclones? You know there's a hurricane coming our way,
Speaker 1: Why can't we just nuke it? We got nukes. Strangely enough,
Speaker 1: that was one proposed use of nuclear technology that we
Speaker 1: did not explore in our in our episode about Operation Plowshare.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they they you know we're gonna dig tunnels
Speaker 1: with nukes. Why can't we knw hurricanes? Lancy explains several
Speaker 1: reasons why this is not a good idea. We we
Speaker 1: will put aside for now the fact of of nuclear fallout,
Speaker 1: and there's kind of obvious problems there. But but Lancy
Speaker 1: also points out that you've just got an energy problem.
Speaker 1: For example, he writes, a fully developed hurricane can release
Speaker 1: heat energy at a rate of five to twenty times
Speaker 1: ten to the thirteen watts and converts less than ten
Speaker 1: percent of the heat into mechanical energy of the wind.
Speaker 1: The heat release is equivalent to a ten megaton nuclear
Speaker 1: bomb exploding every twenty minutes. According to the nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: three World Almanac, the entire human race used energy at
Speaker 1: a rate of ten to the thirteen watts in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety a rate less than twenty of the power of
Speaker 1: a hurricane. Oh, that's there's like a lot more wind
Speaker 1: than truck. Say, there's a lot more wind than truck.
Speaker 1: And furthermore so, it's not it's also not just a
Speaker 1: question of how much energy you can create, because we
Speaker 1: could just detonate a whole bunch of nuclear bombs and
Speaker 1: that would in truth create a lot of energy. But
Speaker 1: you kind of need to use your energy in a
Speaker 1: particular way if you definitely want to stop a storm.
Speaker 1: For example, Lancy says, for normal atmospheric pressure, there are
Speaker 1: about ten metric tons of air bearing down on each
Speaker 1: square meter of surface. He's talking about in the ocean
Speaker 1: when tropical cyclones develop. Um, he says, in the strongest
Speaker 1: hurricanes there are nine as opposed to ten. To change
Speaker 1: a Category five hurricane into a category to hurricane, you
Speaker 1: would have to add about half a ton of air
Speaker 1: for each square meter inside the eye, or a total
Speaker 1: of a bit more than half a billion tons for
Speaker 1: a twenty kilometer radius. I it's difficult to envision a
Speaker 1: practical way of moving that much air around. So there
Speaker 1: he's talking about there are specific problems of pressure that
Speaker 1: affect the formation of hurricanes tropical cyclones that turn into
Speaker 1: the hurricanes that we would want to deflect, and and
Speaker 1: we just don't have a way of putting the pressure
Speaker 1: where it needs to be. Well, not's assuming a constant
Speaker 1: for that, right, Like it's like each hurricane is going
Speaker 1: to behave that way as a category five and assuming
Speaker 1: that whatever conditions that were arrived at were which were
Speaker 1: an average to be present. Um. And so as you know,
Speaker 1: I mean there's variables all the time. Yeah, And that
Speaker 1: leads us to the other things. So number one, there's
Speaker 1: there's a ton of energy. There's way more wind than truck.
Speaker 1: And number two, weather is really complex and complex in
Speaker 1: the mathematical sense because if you ever wonder why the
Speaker 1: weather forecast for today and tomorrow is, you know, it
Speaker 1: can be wrong, but it's reasonably accurate but the ten
Speaker 1: day forecast just gets less and less accurate as it
Speaker 1: goes on and farther into the future. It's just a
Speaker 1: you know, it's a dice roll pretty much. And this
Speaker 1: is because weather is chaotic and mathematically complex. Weather patterns
Speaker 1: are subject to tiny variations and perturbations and things like
Speaker 1: heat and pressure, which gets amplified over time, kind of
Speaker 1: like a swelling feedback loop and an amplifier. Uh yeah.
Speaker 1: Forecasts work or or don't work, as the case may be,
Speaker 1: by creating digital simulations of the current state of the
Speaker 1: weather in a given location and then adding in data
Speaker 1: from surrounding locations and and just kind of seeing how
Speaker 1: that MUCKs everything up and making a good statistical, educated
Speaker 1: guess of which muck up is the most likely based
Speaker 1: on based on what we know about what has previously
Speaker 1: happened under those kind of conditions. Um. So, you know,
Speaker 1: satellite and ground data can give us a pretty good
Speaker 1: idea of what's going on in a particular location at
Speaker 1: a given moment, but at our current state of technology,
Speaker 1: having all of that data almost hurts more than it helps,
Speaker 1: because there's just so many variables interacting with each other,
Speaker 1: so so basically You've got two factors that are making
Speaker 1: prediction difficult. You've got that the number of variables and
Speaker 1: the sophistication and or accuracy of the simulation software. So
Speaker 1: more data is better, but it makes it harder on
Speaker 1: the software. Yeah, And to revisit Landsy again from from
Speaker 1: the same piece I was talking about earlier, he also
Speaker 1: talks about how it's it's difficult to predict the emergence
Speaker 1: of extreme weather events like hurricanes, because he says, for example, quote,
Speaker 1: attacking weak tropical waves or depressions before they have a
Speaker 1: chance to grow into hurricanes isn't promising either. About eighty
Speaker 1: of these disturbances form every year in the Atlantic basin,
Speaker 1: but only five become hurricanes in a typical year. And
Speaker 1: so the problem is, I mean, so you can see
Speaker 1: a depression start developing, but you just don't know which
Speaker 1: ones are going to be the problem ones because of
Speaker 1: these unstable effects, tiny variations get amplified over time, and
Speaker 1: that turns into a big storm or a big, big,
Speaker 1: big box of nothing. And either way, it's hard to
Speaker 1: know in advance which it's going to be right. And
Speaker 1: you can try to manipure that. You can spend tons
Speaker 1: of energy and time and financial resources to do that,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't guarantee that it's going to create an
Speaker 1: outer eyewall, which it might do naturally. So it's kind
Speaker 1: of like the coin. Yeah. But despite the fact that
Speaker 1: whether is both very energetic and takes a lot of
Speaker 1: effort to control and very unpredictable, there have been plenty
Speaker 1: of ways throughout the past and up into the present
Speaker 1: that people have tried to control the weather. I would
Speaker 1: say all of them kind of strange and iffy, some
Speaker 1: of them complete rubbish. Yeah. Lauren Redness has some illustrations
Speaker 1: of them actually in her book, and uh, they vary
Speaker 1: in nuttiness and effectiveness. Yeah. Yeah. One of the ones
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about is hale cannons. If you'll
Speaker 1: ever seen these, I have not seen a hail cannon.
Speaker 1: So this is generally considered complete pseudo scientific garbage. But
Speaker 1: the meteorological community they don't think that there's anything to
Speaker 1: this at all. But they are a supposed weather control
Speaker 1: device that's been used for a long time, more than
Speaker 1: a hundred years, maybe a couple hundred years, goes back
Speaker 1: into the you know, I found a report about it
Speaker 1: from nineteen o nine, used by whom, Who's who's running
Speaker 1: around with hail cannons. So let's say you've got a
Speaker 1: vineyard or something, and you are afraid of hailstones damaging
Speaker 1: your grapes, and so you want to keep the grape safe,
Speaker 1: so you employ a grapes security guard. That's a terrible
Speaker 1: metaphor going nowhere. No, what you do is you get
Speaker 1: this thing that looks like a giant upturned megaphone, and
Speaker 1: you aim it up at the sky when there's an
Speaker 1: oncoming storm that you fear may bring destructive hailstones, and
Speaker 1: then you set this thing a squawk in. I want
Speaker 1: to read a quote from one hail cannon manufacturer's website
Speaker 1: that I found. Yes, there are manufacturers today who will
Speaker 1: sell you these things, they say, quote. An explosive charge
Speaker 1: of a setylene gas and air is fired in the
Speaker 1: lower chamber of the machine. As the resulting energy passes
Speaker 1: through the neck and into the cone, it develops into
Speaker 1: a force that becomes a shock wave. The shock wave
Speaker 1: clearly audible as a large whistling sound. It's got to
Speaker 1: be great to be one of these People's name rus
Speaker 1: by the way, then travels at the speed of sound.
Speaker 1: I like that it's a sound that travels at the
Speaker 1: speed of sound into and through the cloud formations above,
Speaker 1: disrupting the growth phase of the hailstones. The device is
Speaker 1: repeatedly fired every four seconds over the period when the
Speaker 1: storm is approaching and until it is passed through the area.
Speaker 1: What would otherwise have fallen as hailstones then falls as
Speaker 1: slush or rain. From everything I've read, scientists think there's
Speaker 1: absolutely no good evidence that these things work. But it
Speaker 1: also works via the tiger repellent method, right, because like
Speaker 1: every time you see a cloud and use it and
Speaker 1: then it doesn't hail wo who proof that it works?
Speaker 1: A little confirmation bias? Yeah, yeah, And I think that
Speaker 1: a lot of these methods uh prove out in that
Speaker 1: in that way, in that well, it didn't happen, So
Speaker 1: either it was never gonna happen anyway, or this totally worked. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's always a little bit of uncertainty. Now there's a
Speaker 1: differ technology that's been used to control weather that I
Speaker 1: do think that there it's also uncertain, but there's a
Speaker 1: little bit more to it, and that's cloud seating, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there's evidence that it works to what extent,
Speaker 1: though is still sort of the big question mark, right,
Speaker 1: because again, the cloud formations sort of happen on their own,
Speaker 1: and so people spend a tremendous amount of time and
Speaker 1: effort to try to seed clouds. Now, I think most
Speaker 1: people are probably familiar with cloud seating from the Beijing
Speaker 1: Olympics um, which the Chinese government used to try to
Speaker 1: clear the skies before the big event. Yeah, they claimed
Speaker 1: that they had perfect weather for the opening ceremony of
Speaker 1: the Beijing Olympics because they had they had drained the
Speaker 1: clouds of all their rain and sent it on unsuspecting
Speaker 1: cities nearby, right, and cleared out all the pollution as well.
Speaker 1: But it actually historically has its roots as a practical
Speaker 1: application in Vietnam. And you mean in the Vietnam War, Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: excuse me, the Vietnam War um. But more specifically, in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three, there were some c i A and
Speaker 1: beds in Vietnam, and they were kind of worried about
Speaker 1: Buddhist monks who were protesting the South Vietnamese president, who
Speaker 1: was an anti communist outlet of the United States. And
Speaker 1: so while they were keeping tabs on the monks, they
Speaker 1: noticed that the monks could withstand pretty much anything including
Speaker 1: like tear tear gas and other aggressive acts toward them,
Speaker 1: but as soon as the rain would fall, they would disperse.
Speaker 1: That that kind of makes sense if you're doing a
Speaker 1: whole passive resistance thing, like if somebody is being cruel
Speaker 1: and aggressive to you, you can hang out and withstand
Speaker 1: what they're doing to you as an active you know,
Speaker 1: as an active resistance. But if it rains, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's not the enemy doing to you. Yeah, if and
Speaker 1: if you're underpants are damp, like, man, it's just time
Speaker 1: to go home. That's one of my Yeah, that's one
Speaker 1: of the creeds I lived by. So unless the sky
Speaker 1: is your oppressor, which maybe, and that's a whole other thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's another episode right there. That is so what So
Speaker 1: what happened with these with these months? The ci I
Speaker 1: was like always got something to report to you there.
Speaker 1: Bill uh sons out that if you could just make
Speaker 1: it rain, we could well we could do some stuff
Speaker 1: with this. And so the CIA said, okay, well let's
Speaker 1: let's look into this whole rainmaking endeavor. And they found
Speaker 1: out you know, Nix, Kurt Bonnegut's brother Bernard, a physical chemist,
Speaker 1: figured out you could make a sacrifice to Jupiter. Yes, no,
Speaker 1: that's not it. Uh, well that too, but more specifically
Speaker 1: for cloud seating. He found out while working for g
Speaker 1: E at the time that silver dot iodide was the
Speaker 1: perfect cloud seating agent to really actually create precipitation. And
Speaker 1: so the military wasn't the story before that They tried
Speaker 1: to use dry ice. Yeah, they tried a bunch of
Speaker 1: different stuff, and you know, and that's a big moment,
Speaker 1: right like you're like, no, it's silveriety, this is this
Speaker 1: is the thing, we are God's We're making rain. Um.
Speaker 1: So you know that the people in the government were
Speaker 1: probably like when can we use this? And so did
Speaker 1: they actually use it on the monks? Yes, they used
Speaker 1: it on the monks. They made it rain on the monks,
Speaker 1: and so they said, okay, maybe this actually has some
Speaker 1: sort of military application. Okay, So what meteorologists think about that,
Speaker 1: I mean, do they do they say yes, they were
Speaker 1: definitely able to make it rain on the monks or
Speaker 1: or is it just kind of like, well maybe it worked,
Speaker 1: maybe it didn't. Again, maybe this is confirmation bias, right,
Speaker 1: like oh, if they're just happy to be a weather
Speaker 1: pattern that was supportive of these conditions, and it happened,
Speaker 1: but as far as I could tell, it looked like
Speaker 1: it was working. And so and the Monk thing wasn't
Speaker 1: the only time during during the conflict in Vietnam that
Speaker 1: this was put into use. So that's just the taste, right,
Speaker 1: that was just like a proof of concept, right, And
Speaker 1: so they created Operation Popeye. Right. So the North Vietnamese
Speaker 1: government that this was famous. Have you ever heard about
Speaker 1: the Ho Chi Minh Trail? And in the Vietnam War,
Speaker 1: the North Vietnamese government was able to move troops and
Speaker 1: weapons and supplies up and down the length of Vietnam
Speaker 1: via the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which was this network
Speaker 1: of roads and tracks and tunnels that went all all
Speaker 1: up and down to Vietnam and then across its border
Speaker 1: from Laos and Cambodia. And of course a rule of
Speaker 1: war is that if you can disrupt your enemies supply lines,
Speaker 1: you can often defeat them without having to outright destroy
Speaker 1: their fighting force. But this was a massive system of
Speaker 1: roads and stuff, and and they tried bombing parts of it,
Speaker 1: but that wasn't effective at completely shutting it down. So
Speaker 1: another strategy that was tried by by the South Vietnamese
Speaker 1: and the in the America and troops was well, what
Speaker 1: if we could just kind of make it really hard
Speaker 1: to drive on exactly right like that, there was like
Speaker 1: this four part I guess walk onto I mean there's
Speaker 1: a lot of like there's a lot of hand and
Speaker 1: bicycle delivery, I think. But so this this clandestine weather
Speaker 1: control operation to to basically flood out the Ho Chi
Speaker 1: Minh Trail and make it difficult or impossible to use
Speaker 1: via weather control was known as Operation Popeye YEP from
Speaker 1: March nine seven until July. They aim to quote increase
Speaker 1: rainfall sufficiently and carefully selected areas to deny the enemy
Speaker 1: use of road surfaces. And this is according to the
Speaker 1: Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but they also looked at different
Speaker 1: areas and for instance, the Mujah Pass bridge used by
Speaker 1: North Vietnam for supply transport was bombed over and over
Speaker 1: again to no avail. But according to Ben Livingston, who's
Speaker 1: one of the pilots, it was easily washed out from
Speaker 1: cloud seating. In fact, the entire valley flooded in and
Speaker 1: there are lives lost in that um. So essentially what
Speaker 1: this was doing, or the aim of it, was to
Speaker 1: extend the monsoon season over North Vietnam and viet Cong
Speaker 1: supply routes. Yeah, and that is assuming that the cloud
Speaker 1: seating actually worked, which it looked the people involved with
Speaker 1: it think that it did, right. Um, Yes and no.
Speaker 1: So Redness actually talks about this in the book, and
Speaker 1: she talks about in nineteen Senate hearing, and there's a
Speaker 1: hearing with Dennis Jay Dolan who is a Deputy Assistant
Speaker 1: Secretary of Defense, and Lieutenant Colonel Ed Soyster. And I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna read their quotes here because I don't think
Speaker 1: anything is more illuminating than this. Um. According to Colonel
Speaker 1: Ed's uh Soyster quote, it was one of the most
Speaker 1: difficult parts of the project to try and quantify how
Speaker 1: well we were doing. And then Dulan says, in my
Speaker 1: own mind, on the basis of the material that I
Speaker 1: have seen, I'm not convinced that it had anything more
Speaker 1: than marginal effect. But that is something that even the
Speaker 1: experts disagree on. And Dealing. Dealing goes on to say,
Speaker 1: Um that you know that thing said he would rather
Speaker 1: be stopped by a ringstorm than by bombs, so he
Speaker 1: felt like this was the more humane way to go
Speaker 1: about it. Yeah, there, there did seem to be that
Speaker 1: strain of thinking. But it's weird to me because, I mean,
Speaker 1: more people get killed by weather events than by bombs,
Speaker 1: and if you can make extreme weather events happen, that
Speaker 1: is in some ways sort of equivalent to dropping bombs.
Speaker 1: You're causing large amounts of force to be applied to
Speaker 1: an area in a way that they wouldn't usually be applied,
Speaker 1: and probably a lot of people are going to die. Right,
Speaker 1: It's still with the truck wind thing, right, it can
Speaker 1: be catastrophic. Sure, it's like saying that sending a hurricane
Speaker 1: against somebody is more humane than sending a lot of
Speaker 1: trucks to run them over. Yeah. Yeah, there's a little
Speaker 1: bit of justification in the air perhaps. Okay, So hypothetically,
Speaker 1: if this does work, how how does it work? Oh? Well, so,
Speaker 1: the basic ideas that clouds form naturally in the atmosphere
Speaker 1: out of water vapor and in order to induce rain
Speaker 1: or snow, you add a huge mass of tiny particles
Speaker 1: to the cloud. And what this does is it gives
Speaker 1: water droplets something to coalesce around. This is what happens
Speaker 1: in clouds often, you know, tiny particles that are suspended
Speaker 1: in the air will become the nuclei around which snow
Speaker 1: crystals or water droplets form and then it rains. And
Speaker 1: so you can scatter them above or through the cloud
Speaker 1: from an airplane, or you can do the much cooler
Speaker 1: thing which China does and blast them into clouds with rockets.
Speaker 1: So you name an anti aircraft gun full of silver
Speaker 1: eyedide particles at a cloud, fire away, you murder the
Speaker 1: cloud with these tiny particles and then rains on your
Speaker 1: on your farmlands. Yeah, well, as long as they're still
Speaker 1: explosions involved, I think that's really the important thing. If
Speaker 1: you're if you're not exploding people, then you still I mean,
Speaker 1: you've got to explode something, and it might as well
Speaker 1: be a cloud. Well, I find that it's fascinating that
Speaker 1: cloud seating. It's this thing that's been done for decades
Speaker 1: and it has this huge pedigree. It's been used as
Speaker 1: a weapon of war, it's been used for maybe kind
Speaker 1: of frivolous sometimes, but at least peaceful purposes in in uh,
Speaker 1: you know, having some nice weather for your Olympic ceremony.
Speaker 1: But that's not the only time China has claimed to
Speaker 1: do weather modification. That the Chinese government has a whole
Speaker 1: weather modification program. It's officially part of their government. There's
Speaker 1: a Beijing Weather Modification Office. I know. Also, uh, there
Speaker 1: were a few years ago Abu Dhabi claimed that they
Speaker 1: were causing a bunch of rain storms in the desert
Speaker 1: by by some ionization technique that I think was met
Speaker 1: with a bunch of skepticism from the scientific community whether
Speaker 1: this was really working or not. I find it's strange
Speaker 1: that despite all of these programs, we still don't have
Speaker 1: a very clear answer on exactly how effective cloud seating is.
Speaker 1: Seems like it's probably sort of effective, but maybe not.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I wish there was a clearer answer. Well,
Speaker 1: and it might be the kind of thing where it
Speaker 1: has been effective in certain situations and not in others,
Speaker 1: and it just happened to have the desired effect. But
Speaker 1: but but but but again, we're getting back into that
Speaker 1: concept of they're just being too many variables to really
Speaker 1: be able to tell and and not the ability to
Speaker 1: to measure every single molecule right right, right, which might
Speaker 1: complicate things. I mean, and we give you a clearer
Speaker 1: picture of that areas weather pattern, Yeah, if we if
Speaker 1: we could get some like nano drones with with cameras
Speaker 1: in them up up into the cloud area, broadcasting back
Speaker 1: to us exactly what was going on. You know what
Speaker 1: you're describing describing the plot of Twister? Don't you remember that?
Speaker 1: All all that I remember about Twisters? Cow, that's it Twister.
Speaker 1: They're they're trying to get some all these little tiny
Speaker 1: robots to get sucked up into a tornado so they
Speaker 1: can see what's going on inside the tornado. That did happen? Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I remember there's a scene where the opposing scientists gets
Speaker 1: murdered by the storm, and they're all like, yeah, the
Speaker 1: evil scientists dealt the death blow the evil rival scientist
Speaker 1: who gets his come up. And but that being said,
Speaker 1: I think it's worth mentioning that there are forty countries
Speaker 1: that have weather modification systems. Now, whether or not that's
Speaker 1: keeping up with the Joneses, I don't know, but certainly
Speaker 1: there is potential there in cloud seating. We just don't
Speaker 1: know to what extent. Moreover, when cloud seating was used
Speaker 1: in Vietnam and and it was brought to the public's attention,
Speaker 1: there was quite a reaction to it. And again there
Speaker 1: was another Senate hearing about at it and um this
Speaker 1: led to the Convention on the Prohibition of Military or
Speaker 1: any other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques or and
Speaker 1: MAUD and MAD and MAD. So the treaty went into
Speaker 1: effect in nineteen seventy eight. And so this is the
Speaker 1: United Nations Treaty. Yeah, in in nineteen seventy six, I
Speaker 1: believe the United Nations adopted it, and then I believe
Speaker 1: a year two later Carter ratified it for and said, yes,
Speaker 1: we we agree to this. But it bans aggressive environmental
Speaker 1: modification activity on the scale of several hundred square miles.
Speaker 1: Oh good, So there's a little bit of wiggle room
Speaker 1: under the word aggressive. Oh wait, it gets better, and
Speaker 1: it says that last for a period of months. Uh so,
Speaker 1: again that's a little bit general, and that involves quote
Speaker 1: serious or significant disruption or harm to human life, natural
Speaker 1: and economic resources, and other assets. So, as you can see,
Speaker 1: as you've already pointed out, there's a little bit of
Speaker 1: a loophole here, and it has been criticized for that.
Speaker 1: So if you only smite a few people with lightning
Speaker 1: for a short amount of time right right for you know,
Speaker 1: over a period of days, not months, then you're then
Speaker 1: you might be in the clear. Yes, okay, yeah, not
Speaker 1: asking for any specific reason, guys, just just just like
Speaker 1: to have everything laid out. I understand, Uh, you need
Speaker 1: a strategy there for your rockets. I also need a
Speaker 1: mustache to twirl right now. Um. But okay. So the
Speaker 1: question of whether or not cloud seating is effective ties
Speaker 1: back into that that question of whether or not we
Speaker 1: can truly predict what the weather is going to do anyway,
Speaker 1: because because of all those variables that are involved, and
Speaker 1: and predictive modeling is another form of proposed control over
Speaker 1: the weather. Yes, I would say that despite the fact
Speaker 1: that you're not actually literally controlling the weather, there are
Speaker 1: our best line of defense to get today against the
Speaker 1: cruel whim of the weather gods is knowing what's going
Speaker 1: to happen in the near future. Yeah. And it's and
Speaker 1: it's that big data problem of of the interaction between
Speaker 1: having you know, increasingly more data about this sort of
Speaker 1: stuff and uh needing to create increasingly more sophisticated computer
Speaker 1: software to handle that, for instance, supercomputers. Yes. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: whether or not it seems like it, it is true
Speaker 1: that our weather modeling has gotten steadily more accurate over time,
Speaker 1: you can track the progression of of predictive weather forecasting
Speaker 1: as opposed to what actually ended up happening with the
Speaker 1: weather from the nineteen eighties until now, and we have
Speaker 1: gotten better and supercomputers might push that even further in
Speaker 1: the relatively near future. Um I took a look into
Speaker 1: a project that was run in fifteen in Japan with
Speaker 1: the k supercomputer which okay UM which which is the
Speaker 1: fourth fastest supercomputer in the world, or was at least
Speaker 1: as of November. The rankings are put out once every
Speaker 1: six months. It lives at the Rickan or Reken probably
Speaker 1: depending on your accent. Advanced Institute for Computational Science and
Speaker 1: researchers there created a model of Earth's atmosphere from November one. UH.
Speaker 1: They plugged in data from satellites and ground radar stations
Speaker 1: all over the world and and to sort of keep
Speaker 1: it all organized, they divided the global atmosphere up into
Speaker 1: a hundred and twelve kilometer sectors and then took that
Speaker 1: and ran over ten thousands simulations and and statistically computed
Speaker 1: the most likely model outcome which happened, I mean didn't happen,
Speaker 1: which UH radically UM matched up in the teenage mutant
Speaker 1: in turtle sense of the word radically matched up really
Speaker 1: well with what actually happened from November one through November eight,
Speaker 1: So really a good number crunching is what they did.
Speaker 1: And uh and their main finding that that the most
Speaker 1: interesting part about it was that that the butterfly effect
Speaker 1: is real. Basically that that data from like around the
Speaker 1: Great Lakes in North America had a clear impact on
Speaker 1: the weather in Europe a few days later. And I mean, like,
Speaker 1: of course it does, right, It's common sense that the weather,
Speaker 1: the atmosphere is all one giant thing. Weather systems are connected,
Speaker 1: but it's really terrific to have this research to back
Speaker 1: that up. And they're saying that they're they're going to
Speaker 1: work on creating tools for weather forecasters to start better
Speaker 1: incorporating global data in making their local forecasts. So exciting times,
Speaker 1: absolutely they are. But one of the things that occurs
Speaker 1: to me about that is, you know, no matter how
Speaker 1: accurate our predictive models get, one thing I noticed when
Speaker 1: there are extreme weather events in this country is that
Speaker 1: often even when we have for warning at a time,
Speaker 1: people do not take the proper steps that they need
Speaker 1: to take in order to prevent that disaster from happening,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like we can we can
Speaker 1: even have a pretty good idea that the weather is
Speaker 1: about to get really scary, and some people just are like, Nope,
Speaker 1: I've got this canned corn over here, I'm fine, or
Speaker 1: or we like you know, mob a grocery store and
Speaker 1: say give me all your food right now and then
Speaker 1: and then you know, they're fourteen car crashes in the
Speaker 1: parking lot and I don't know, we're just not good
Speaker 1: at managing disasters. Is there any way we could get
Speaker 1: one of these supercomputers to do that for us too? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Because it turns out there's a market for this. There's
Speaker 1: a market for inability to really assess a threat. Um,
Speaker 1: and it's called disaster economics. Like that. Yeah, and your
Speaker 1: major I hope, so right? I mean that would like
Speaker 1: look great on your resume. Um. But Planalytics is a
Speaker 1: company that is profiled in Redness Book, and they actually
Speaker 1: have a bunch of clients who are concerned with weather
Speaker 1: and how it affects their bottom line. And a really
Speaker 1: good example is this grocery store chain in Florida that's
Speaker 1: one of their clients. Um that wants to know way
Speaker 1: in advance, like Wayne advance of the weather channel, if
Speaker 1: there's going to be a hurricane, because it gives them
Speaker 1: a leg up on the ability to get the product.
Speaker 1: The number one product that sells out in Florida when
Speaker 1: a hurricane is predicted. Okay, I mean, I I know
Speaker 1: here in Georgia, whenever there's like a like a snow warning,
Speaker 1: we we run out of bread and milk and eggs. Yes,
Speaker 1: but people don't even eat those things. They just think
Speaker 1: they need them. It's true. I have done this before,
Speaker 1: by the way, Like I'll face up. I've been like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: snow m Ageddon, Let's get a loaf of bread, and
Speaker 1: then I pizza. I don't have ducks in my house.
Speaker 1: I'm not making grilled cheese, and you know, like and
Speaker 1: so yeah, right, so we don't always react in a
Speaker 1: way that kind of squares with what's actually happening. And
Speaker 1: it turns out that this is regional, by the way,
Speaker 1: And so in Florida, if a hurricane is predicted, the
Speaker 1: number one thing they sell out of it is fried chicken.
Speaker 1: Fried chicken. People just get a hanker in for chicken
Speaker 1: when it's hurricane Seas it's a comfort food, I guess.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, like like a storm's bruin, like
Speaker 1: you're worried about it. You don't have time to prepare
Speaker 1: a meal, and you want something comforting and stick to
Speaker 1: your ribs. So fried chicken, okay, Yeah, I think I
Speaker 1: think something there. Yeah, I think it is a comfort
Speaker 1: food thing. And so that grocery store chain has to
Speaker 1: then secure a batload of chickens, and you need to
Speaker 1: contact the chicken houses in Georgia in South Carolina and
Speaker 1: put their orders in just to make sure that they
Speaker 1: can take it manage of this swell fried chicken impending
Speaker 1: disaster and swell. Yeah, it's almost like we see this
Speaker 1: complex system of cascading dynamic effects in the human side
Speaker 1: of the storm, just like we see in the chaotic
Speaker 1: uh developments of weather patterns. Yeah, because I mean essentially
Speaker 1: like weather is emotional, right, Like you look up at
Speaker 1: the sky and you can't help but to you know,
Speaker 1: project your own feelings and fears and all of that
Speaker 1: stuff on it. And I feel like it's just sort
Speaker 1: of like these ancient tropes within us and see it's
Speaker 1: like survival weather fried chicken. I know, I look up
Speaker 1: at clouds and say, why can't I control you with lasers? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've overheard you say that before. Actually it's yeah, the
Speaker 1: office is really I mean it's an open office, so
Speaker 1: we can all hear you. That's my greasy face mudge
Speaker 1: on all the windows when I'm bare early in the morning,
Speaker 1: staring at the sky with anger in my heart. And Joe,
Speaker 1: you mentioned lasers and you're not just being purely ridiculous.
Speaker 1: That is a proposed future way of controlling the weather.
Speaker 1: But we have just about run out of time for
Speaker 1: this episode, so so if you would please join us
Speaker 1: in our part two of this weather extravaganza, we will
Speaker 1: pick back up with these with these future proposal of
Speaker 1: how we may soon be controlling weather across the globe totally.
Speaker 1: So join us next time where Julie will be back
Speaker 1: with us. And I really want to thank Julie Douglas
Speaker 1: for joining us on this episode today. It has been
Speaker 1: so much fun. Julie. And hey, why while you're here,
Speaker 1: why don't you tell us about your new podcast. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's the Stuff of Life. It's just this podcast that
Speaker 1: just came out. I think we're two episodes in. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure when this one will air, but so far
Speaker 1: we've got the power of fear and glossophobia, which is
Speaker 1: the fear of public speaking. And Joe you are on
Speaker 1: the power of fear, and Lauren you are on classophobia.
Speaker 1: And UM so happy to have you guys's voices and
Speaker 1: your insights on the Stuff of Life. Um, I am insights, yes, insights.
Speaker 1: So it was so much fun. I had a really
Speaker 1: good it was a really good conversation. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: guys are great and it's it's awesome that you showed
Speaker 1: up and um hung out with us. So the Stuff
Speaker 1: of Life does have, um, you know, a little bit
Speaker 1: of a different format and that it has some interview
Speaker 1: with experts and then it has some folks from house
Speaker 1: to forks and some lovely soundscaping. Uh. You've been working with,
Speaker 1: of course, our terrific producer nol To to create some
Speaker 1: original music for it and stuff like that, sound effects,
Speaker 1: lovely things. So if you are a fan of this show,
Speaker 1: I bet you would be also a big fan of
Speaker 1: Stuff of Life. You should definitely check it out. Julie,
Speaker 1: where can they find it? They can find it every
Speaker 1: Wednesday at iTunes of course, or you know, whichever your
Speaker 1: favorite podcast pervey areas. I know it's on the stitcher
Speaker 1: and Spotify as well, and they can find you on
Speaker 1: so will media. I'm sure, Oh yeah, they can. You
Speaker 1: can find us on Facebook and Twitter. I believe it's
Speaker 1: Stuff of Life show. If you would like to find
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking on social media, you can. You should, You
Speaker 1: should get in touch let us know what you think
Speaker 1: about this. If you have any other questions for us,
Speaker 1: you can find us on Twitter at f W thinking,
Speaker 1: search that thing on Facebook. You can also email us
Speaker 1: at f W Thinking at how Stuff Works dot com.
Speaker 1: We hope to hear from you, and you will hear
Speaker 1: from us again really soon. For more on this topic
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