quote:

Originally posted by bald1:
No doubt this Iranian dude is a bit crazed from sniffing too many camel butts!

It's the only way to avoid catching a disease. Love in a caliphate is never easy.

I was part of a weather modification program in Saudi Arabia some years ago. It was a scientific program encapsulated in a request from the Kingdom; make it rain. We worked a cell west of Riyadh that turned into a massive storm, causing the worst flooding in 20 years, and a fair amount of damage. It made the papers, and we began getting death threats.

The gist of it was that the King wanted to show that he had a hand in league with god in making rain, and the ultra conservatives in the kingdom saw it as interfering in the work of god, and an offense against islam.

The folks at the minestry of environment were excited to show me pictures that proved the existence of god. Vertical stratification in cloud layers represented "cloud stacking" as told by Mohammed. The pictures they showed me were cartoons. In a scientific facility (that smelled like an outhouse).

The people with whom I worked directly were an international consortium of well recognized scientists, many doing work well over my head. We were doing it in a land where people still come out to bark at the moon and complain about cloud stealing.

And of course where people still ride around in trucks with camels in the back.

What do you expect from a country where the alternative export to the oil (that Westerners found) is ten trillion tons of sand?

tac

I do remember decades ago there were discussion in Popular Science about weather manipulation by governments.

I know now such talk is simply attributed to conspiracy theorists.

quote:

Originally posted by Rey HRH:
I do remember decades ago there were discussion in Popular Science about weather manipulation by governments.

I know now such talk is simply attributed to conspiracy theorists.

Actually, it's not. It can be done successfully, and I've been involved in double-blind studies to successfully establish as much.

It cannot be done on a mesoscale. That is, weather patterns and large weather systems, by direct intervention.

Single cells can be manipulated from the air. Storm acticity and output can be controlled, without question.

I have also been involved in fog-clearing operations, successfully raising visibility at an international airport, to allow operations that would otherwise have had to divert.

No conspiracy, no theory, all science, and all very well established.

"Cloud stealing" is another matter; one of faciful, wild thought and no scientific basis whatsoever.

quote:

Originally posted by sns3guppy:

quote:

Originally posted by Rey HRH:
I do remember decades ago there were discussion in Popular Science about weather manipulation by governments.

I know now such talk is simply attributed to conspiracy theorists.

Actually, it's not. It can be done successfully, and I've been involved in double-blind studies to successfully establish as much.

The article was more in line with what the thread is about - manipulation of another country's weather.

I decided to google "popular science weather manipulation by military" and the link showed up in the search results about a Popular Science article in 1958. The ones I remember reading would have been a couple of decades at least after 1958, so it has been a recurrent topic.

Weather as a Weapon