weather

[dunlop]

i was just wondering of all the crazy projects that some scientists are working on, does anyone know of any actually working on a weather controlling device that could potentially stop natural disasters etc?

[Storm Chaser]

Was a documentary on five Monday night, about severe storms, which touched on an idea to seed rain clouds with a polymer which soaks up water very rapidly. Apparently they tried it out on a small shower cloud with some success. They claim it could be used on hurricanes in future.
But this is all very dubious, the Americans tried cloud and hurricane seeding as long ago as the 1960s.
Meddline with weather systems also raises a big ethical issue. Stop rains in one place, they fall in another. Nature produces occasional disasters, but on the whole we live under a system which is globally benign. As a planet, we need sun and rain and wind and so on to keep on doing their bit. And we mess around with it at our peril.

[delboy3]

Might be an urban legend but apparently some guy made a "rain machine" in the USA, probably in the 1930s in the dustbowl midwest. It made rain clouds appear out of nowhere but it was too successful and produced localised floods instead. This I think was the inspiration behind the video for Kate Bush's "Cloudbusting".