Originally Posted by enorbet

Rainmakers and Dowsers are like Astrology charts and Psychic Crime Solvers - if you believe then you ignore or conveniently forget the failures and only tout the coincidental "successes". So please do name one company, Mom 'n Pop or full corporation that is getting rich providing reliable weather modification... just one. I won't even mind if you find that one through a (remaining) newspaper, The Almanac, The Library of Congress or through Duck Duck Go... just as long as it can be cross-checked.

Originally Posted by ondoho

...apparently it is achieved by spraying silver salts into the sky...

Originally Posted by enorbet

Since the foundation of that "evidence" is records that are kept bt the Chinese, please address how and why they now accept that the Science is not a scam but a true picture of the effects of billions of industrialized humans.



While I disagree that Communism and Fascism are essentially identical, for the sake of discussion let's call that "nomenclature", a mere symbolic representation of the thing itself and move on to why the acceptance of the, in your words, human caused global climate change "justifies a political endgame". Please do include how and why this is any different from any other technological achievement. Is the Electrical Power Grid Network also such a scam? or the automobile and telephone industries? How about the "scam" insisting we need instantaneous access to data globally? How about "round" Earth or the multiplicity of galaxies? Just when and how does one determine that scientific discovery is a scam? Well by cross-checking, right? After all, anyone can visit the places photographed and studied that are solid evidence for rapid and increasing gains in Global Average Temperature. It might be somewhat costly to visit the Ross Ice Shelf but how can any one group control ALL of the time-stamped photos of that area?



It really doesn't matter that Marx, Hitler and whatever Boogie Men you care to exemplify "praised environmentalism" (and just what the hell is "environmentalism? everyone knows it isn't wise to defecate in the kitchen) since they also praised Motherhood, loved food and presumably shelter and sex as well. That Michaelangelo was apparently homosexual doesn't make The Sistene Chapel of any less magnitude as a glorious achievement in both technology and Art.

Capitalists also realize that it is not wise to "kill the goose that lays the golden eggs" or allow their environments to be polluted. There is no direct connection between care for environment and any one political philosophy with the possible exception of crazies whose just want to see the world in flames... or convince others that enemies are everywhere.

Originally Posted by enorbet

Yes cloud seeding has been going on for nearly a century even though it's success rate is barely above coincidence seeing that the "right kind of clouds" must be present. It is entirely possible that given moisture filled clouds that seeding may push it over the edge so to speak but even that cannot be proven since there can be no "control" ie the exact same conditions though not seeded for comparison. This hasn't changed much in all that time and that's exactly the point - deliberate short term localized weather mod has barely advanced beyond The Rain Dance. Incidental long term, global modification however can and apparently does occur because of the sheer number of contributors that essentially never shuts down. I don't know how one could or would quantify it but I'm willing to wager that the sum total of all of cloud seeding everywhere likely adds up to less than 1000 tons in 100 years. CO2 emissions OTOH in that same period has been recorded and is measured in over a hundred billion tons, that's 100,000,000,000 tons. The former is a wild guess but the latter is established fact.

FWIW I wish deliberate weather mod was a well-developed science since then we would be in considerably less peril in many ways but sadly we are largely flailing in the dark.

Originally Posted by ondoho

i don't know how y'all ended up discussing weather modification technologies, but i just wanted to throw in this piece of information from a person who lived & ran a business in Beijing for a few years:
Everybody knows that _before_ the biggest national holiday, they make it rain so that
a) everything is clean and shiny
b) the sun shines on a cloudless sky
on the day itself
apparently it is achieved by spraying silver salts into the sky.
i think that friend also had something to say about adverse effects on flora, fauna and humans, but i don't remember the details.

not trying to prove anything here, it just seemed like a useful factoid.

my opinion about the topic at hand aligns with the xkcd comic quoted a few times in this thread, let's see... ah, here: https://xkcd.com/1732/

Originally Posted by hazel

Most of you will know what a baobab looks like. They are African trees that look as if they were planted upside-down with the branches at the top of the enormously tall trunk looking like a tangle of roots. Some of them are incredibly old, thousands of years. And now they are dying.

A recent study found that 8 of the 13 most ancient known baobabs and 5 of the 6 largest are either dying or dead.

Another effect of climate change.

Originally Posted by jsbjsb001

Yeah, I think it's called "cloud salting" or "cloud seeding", I tried looking it up before but I couldn't find much that was useful on it.

Originally Posted by jsbjsb001

...I remember seeing something on TV where the Russians tried concrete and well, it didn't work out, cuz it rained big lumps of concrete instead. ...

Originally Posted by ChuangTzu

Never asked, what was the outcome of the study, corrective measures/recommendations etc...?

Originally Posted by hazel

According to the article (New Scientist, 1918, 16th June, p.19), the best answer is to plant more baobabs. They grow fast, but apparently there are not a lot of young trees growing up to replace these old-timers. In the wild, they depend on elephants to disperse their seeds and there are fewer elephants nowadays. If planted by man, they might make a come-back.

One suggestion is to buy foods made from baobab fruits, to give local people an economic incentive to plant more trees.

Originally Posted by ChuangTzu

PS: We can always use/preserve more trees, its one reason why I advocate making paper out of bamboo or hemp, even wood flooring in homes could be bamboo.