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How Weather Modification Works · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
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Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome
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Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W. Chuff Bryant,
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Speaker 1: and it's You Should Know Rainy Edition is the Rainy
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Speaker 1: How appropriate that we're doing this one today because it
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Speaker 1: has been raining in Atlanta for forty days and forty nights.
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Speaker 1: It seems like it really has been. I've been breaking
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Speaker 1: up the duck boots. Man, it's almost never wear those
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Speaker 1: because it's not that rain. But well, yeah, sure it
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Speaker 1: is as well, dude, we're in the midst of like
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Speaker 1: a ten year drought. You know, we're still in drought
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Speaker 1: level conditions. Yeah, and then tomorrow it says maybe even
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Speaker 1: snow in the northern suburbs. That would be nice chance
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Speaker 1: of rain or snow. Um. You know, despite all this rame,
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Speaker 1: we still learn a drought condition and we haven't for
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Speaker 1: a while. You remember we're back in two thousand seven, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: when Sonny Purdue was the governor. They held in an
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Speaker 1: official state prayer for rain, where Governor Purdue led a
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Speaker 1: prayer for rain, saying like God, please rain, for the
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Speaker 1: love of God, for the love of you please make
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Speaker 1: your rain. Yeah, and it rained. Um. I think a
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Speaker 1: lot of that had to do with the fact that
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Speaker 1: he held that prayer on the night before it was
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Speaker 1: calling for chance of rain. I don't remember it raining
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Speaker 1: the next day. Yeah, rain the next day, and people
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Speaker 1: were said, Oh, my goodness, God made it rain, Sonny
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Speaker 1: produce the magic rain. Yeah, Mother Nature at work. So, um,
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Speaker 1: you've got people praying for rain. You have the rain dance, um. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: which is really hard to find any information on these days,
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Speaker 1: but apparently the Pueblo had a pretty cool rain dance
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Speaker 1: because you know, they lived in the southwest for it
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Speaker 1: was very dry, so they knew what they were doing. Um.
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Speaker 1: And then there's something that I discovered today called the
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Speaker 1: Papa ruta, which is from um Romania, and basically, a
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Speaker 1: girl from a village would run around wearing like a
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Speaker 1: skirt with um made of like vines and branches, and
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Speaker 1: she would go um dancing through the streets of the
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Speaker 1: village and then go house to house and then when
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Speaker 1: she was greeted at the door of each house, people
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Speaker 1: would pour water on her and she would just continue
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Speaker 1: dancing and people would be playing music and um. Eventually
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Speaker 1: it would hopefully rain. Eventually that would evolve into the
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Speaker 1: wet t shirt contest at the Animal City Beach. I
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Speaker 1: guess that's probably where it came from. Who knew. Yeah, which,
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Speaker 1: of course you referenced the fact that Panama City Beach
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Speaker 1: was settled by Romanian settlers. Uh so Yeah, for a change,
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Speaker 1: we're talking about the weather and it's not uh, some
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Speaker 1: little boring chit chat. You know what I'm saying. You
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Speaker 1: don't think this was boring chit chat. It's legit is.
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Speaker 1: You know, usually when you're like, oh, you know, it's
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Speaker 1: raining here, it's just a very boring way to say.
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Speaker 1: I have not much to say what I'm saying. Let's
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Speaker 1: see what this is actual. Yeah, it is. Uh, we're
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Speaker 1: saying that. Um. Because we're talking about weather modification. You
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Speaker 1: could say that rain dance was an early attempt at
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Speaker 1: it um and then in the early twentieth century people
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Speaker 1: started to try to apply science to it. And there
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Speaker 1: were some pretty cool attempts early on by very smart
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Speaker 1: guys from like Harvard and M I. T. And a
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Speaker 1: Dutch guy um to basically either make it rain, to
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Speaker 1: make it stop raining, or to deter some other kind
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Speaker 1: of weather phenomenon like fog or hurricanes were tornadoes. Actually
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Speaker 1: those came along a little later. But fog, I think
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Speaker 1: you have down in They were trying to dispad fog. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: a guy named Professor Henry G. Houghton of m I
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Speaker 1: T Yeah. I think my favorite is the Harvard guy,
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Speaker 1: Professor Emory Leon Chaffe. It sounds like he's be from
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Speaker 1: the University of the South. Yeah. Well, he was flying
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Speaker 1: around in a plane in nine um with charge sand
4:07
Speaker 1: whatever the heck that is. Well, I think it's saying
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Speaker 1: that you apply an electrical current too. Ye, you'd do
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Speaker 1: something through its eons, right, And he was dumping into
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Speaker 1: the clouds and actually he was definitely onto something. I
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Speaker 1: don't know where he figured that out, but he um was.
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Speaker 1: I guess you could say the grandfather of cloud seating then, yeah,
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Speaker 1: grand Grandpa Chaffee, all right, And things were kind of
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Speaker 1: humming along a little bit until um, Kurt Vonnie gets
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Speaker 1: older brother Bernie Bernard, Doctor Bernard really took it by
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Speaker 1: the horns and made some headway as far as cloud
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Speaker 1: seating and actually controlling the weather in the mid nine right.
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Speaker 1: I guess he was researching that for ge and he
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Speaker 1: figured out that silver iodide has virtually the same distance
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Speaker 1: between um points and its crystal lattice structure as ice.
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Speaker 1: So he said, you know what, all bet, this would
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Speaker 1: be a really good stand in for ice formation. So
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Speaker 1: if you put it into clouds, maybe it would make
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Speaker 1: ice form. Yeah, and he even figured out how to
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Speaker 1: generate it, right, yeah, Yeah, He's like, not only that,
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Speaker 1: this is an all theoretical I'm a Vonn again, So
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Speaker 1: I'm gonna just go the extra mile. You don't know,
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Speaker 1: my little brother yet dreaming knocked out by his book
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Speaker 1: and people are going to try to band t shirts
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Speaker 1: with his quotes on it during Bamned Books Week. The
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Speaker 1: irony is going to be lousing. So what's what's the process. Uh.
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Speaker 1: While the process of creating it, he dissolves a mixture
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Speaker 1: of or we're gonna call it a g I. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: of a g I um an acetone, which is also
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Speaker 1: id out is that right? Oh? Another with acetone? Yeah,
5:47
Speaker 1: the acetone is flammable. You can spray that through a nozzle,
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Speaker 1: make the tiny little droplets. They burn those droplets up,
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Speaker 1: and then that really makes it more efficient. One gram
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Speaker 1: of a g I can then produce one hundred quadrillion
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Speaker 1: nuclei for the ice crystals. So you take that stuff,
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Speaker 1: you put it up in the clouds, it goes up.
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Speaker 1: That's right. And it actually, according to Vonnegut's theories, um
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Speaker 1: has a number of effects. Uh, and here's how it works. Yeah,
6:15
Speaker 1: this is regular confuse. Okay, this is what the segments
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Speaker 1: we like to call Josh teaches Chuck in addition to
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Speaker 1: the world Okay, you're ready. So you think that zero
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Speaker 1: degrees celsius or thirty two degrees fahrenheit is where ice freezes.
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Speaker 1: It is, That's what they always say. This is actually
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Speaker 1: the melting point of ice. So ice ice um freezes
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Speaker 1: between zero and negative thirty nine degrees celsius um. And
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Speaker 1: it depends on the number of impurities, which will call nuclei.
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Speaker 1: And when we're talking nuclei, when you're talking about cloud seating,
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Speaker 1: you're talking about any particle that can attract water to
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Speaker 1: become a rain drop, that can attract water, vapor and
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Speaker 1: turning into ice through sublimation um and become snow or
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Speaker 1: leat or anything like that. So a nuclei is anything
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Speaker 1: that you introduced into a cloud that becomes the center
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Speaker 1: of this precipitation right, See that already makes more sense. Okay,
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Speaker 1: So with there's two types of clouds as far as
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Speaker 1: Vonne Gets concerned, um or as technique is concerned, there
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Speaker 1: is a super cool cloud which has water um that
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Speaker 1: is less than zero degrees celsius present, and that's the
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Speaker 1: ideal cloud for cloud seating, correct for one type of
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Speaker 1: cloud seating for using silver iodide, Because what you're trying
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Speaker 1: to do there is create ice. And if you're using
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Speaker 1: silver idide, which has a similar structure to ice crystals, UM,
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Speaker 1: you're going to use that in the super cool one,
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Speaker 1: because if you use it in the other type, the
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Speaker 1: warm cloud, it's not going to do anything because it's
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Speaker 1: not going to form ice no matter what. The temperature
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Speaker 1: is too high. But you can still see the warm
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Speaker 1: cloud Correctly, you can't. So you use a silver iodide
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Speaker 1: vonne Gets method is still in use today UM. Where
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Speaker 1: you're burning silver eyedide mixed an acid tone. You create
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Speaker 1: quadrillions of nuclei that float up into the cloud, create
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Speaker 1: um an updraft. Because check this out, this is even
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Speaker 1: more beautiful. When the silver iodide nuclei enter the cloud,
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Speaker 1: they start to attract the water vapor and as the
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Speaker 1: water vapor converts from vapor, not turning back into liquid
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Speaker 1: because it's sublimation, that's right. Converts from liquid or vapor
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Speaker 1: into ice. It creates heat energy as a result. It
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Speaker 1: doesn't create it. It heat energy. It comes about right. Uh.
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Speaker 1: And as that happens, that creates a convective current going
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Speaker 1: up in the cloud, which creates a swirl and updraft,
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Speaker 1: which makes the cloud bigger, which means that the stuff,
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Speaker 1: the particles that happened at the top have longer to
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Speaker 1: fall through to create more ice, accumulate more ice, and
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Speaker 1: have a better chance of becoming snow. So that's the
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Speaker 1: super cool cloud using silver iodide, so the cloud is
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Speaker 1: literally pregnant with precipitation. Yeah, that not only creates snow
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Speaker 1: and ice, but actually makes a cloud bigger to increase
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Speaker 1: the likelihood that it will produce snow and ice. Just
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Speaker 1: by introducing silver iodide bonding. It was a genius. The
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Speaker 1: other way is to do to use a warm cloud,
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Speaker 1: which is a cloud where the water temperature the air
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Speaker 1: temperature is over zero decreased celsius. That's right, And then
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Speaker 1: that is pretty simple. Is use table salt really or
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Speaker 1: sand charge otherwise, but you want to dump that into
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Speaker 1: the top of the cloud, right, and it requires dumping
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Speaker 1: a lot of it too. Is that one of the
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Speaker 1: problems with it. Yeah, I mean, it's just there's more
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Speaker 1: to it. If you're doing UM, if you're using bonning
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Speaker 1: its method, you can use the seating station on the ground.
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Speaker 1: If you're if you're using static cloud seating where you're
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Speaker 1: flying overhead and dropping stuff into the clouds. UM, you
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Speaker 1: have to have a plane, you have to have a
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Speaker 1: lot more of it. But what you're using is called
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Speaker 1: a high high groscopic solution, which attracts water create rain
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Speaker 1: drops which fall through the cloud, becoming bigger and bigger
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Speaker 1: on the way and then bam, you have a rain.
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Speaker 1: You've just seated a cloud. That's amazing. So ge did
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Speaker 1: have a plane UM in nine or at least the
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Speaker 1: articles as they rented an airplane because it did ano
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Speaker 1: their own and they said we should try this out,
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Speaker 1: and they released dry ice into these clouds for four
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Speaker 1: days UH in November December, and on the last day
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Speaker 1: they received the heaviest snowfall of that winter. UM and
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Speaker 1: the Arab New York's Schenectady, New York. But there's been
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Speaker 1: a lot of well, we'll get to whether or not
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Speaker 1: the stuff works at the very end. But it seems
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Speaker 1: like every time it happens, people are saying, I think
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Speaker 1: we might have caused that, and other people think, yeah,
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Speaker 1: but did we really? Were you guys just cloud seating
10:44
Speaker 1: enough so that over enough days that it was bound
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Speaker 1: rain anyway, like the government Georgia praying for rain the
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Speaker 1: night before it's supposed to rain exactly. Um. So GE
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Speaker 1: was convinced enough that this was working that it's it
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Speaker 1: was like, we can't do this anymore. And the Army said, hey,
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Speaker 1: we have a bunch of money on don't you let
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Speaker 1: us in on this. And we have a bunch of
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Speaker 1: money and low scruples because we're about to start testing
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Speaker 1: acid on people whether they like it or not. So
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Speaker 1: cloud seating is like nothing to us. And GE said, Okay,
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Speaker 1: as long as you guys are totally liable, sure we'll
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Speaker 1: do it with you. So they partnered up for Project
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Speaker 1: syrus Um and seven. In October forty seven, they dumped
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Speaker 1: a hundred and eighty pounds of dry eyes into a
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Speaker 1: hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean and possibly changed the direction
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Speaker 1: of that hurricane to make landfall right here in Georgia
11:34
Speaker 1: UH and end up killing several people. So that was
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Speaker 1: sort of an oops. Although again they're like, did we
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Speaker 1: really cause that? Well, the guy who was Bernard vonne
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Speaker 1: gets boss Irving Langmuir, he's a Nobel winning chemist. He
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Speaker 1: was totally convinced. According to him, there's a probability that
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Speaker 1: they had caused this hurricane to change um direction. I
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Speaker 1: think he felt a lot about himself, didn't he He did.
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Speaker 1: He was always like, no, that was us, and he
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Speaker 1: would publish papers like that and the government would step
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Speaker 1: in and be like, you, this paper doesn't exist anymore.
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Speaker 1: Do you want us to like grease you? Are you
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Speaker 1: trying to push our buttons? Um? But there was another
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Speaker 1: scientists who pointed out that that same that a hurricane
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Speaker 1: followed the exact same path caused about the same amount
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Speaker 1: of damage in nineteen o six. So was it the
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Speaker 1: dry ice? Was it not? Who knows? So he just
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Speaker 1: compared it to an older hurricane, said this could have
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Speaker 1: happened naturally. They did the same thing in UH in Albuquerque,
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Speaker 1: New Mexico, in nineteen forty eight. In July nineteen and
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Speaker 1: apparently it rained all over the state of New Mexico
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Speaker 1: and as far away as Kansas, causing oh actually that
12:43
Speaker 1: was later, but the same deal from New Mexico. They
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Speaker 1: think they made it rain in Kansas to the point
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Speaker 1: where like the great floods of Kansas in adjacent states
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Speaker 1: they thought, man, could it have traveled that far? Well,
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Speaker 1: that was another things Langmuir was convinced about that, like
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Speaker 1: they had impregnated clouds that traveled the thousand kilometers away. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: and enough that he was like, we have to stop
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Speaker 1: doing this. And Bernard vonne Get testified to Congress like
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Speaker 1: nobody should be doing this except maybe a federal government. Right.
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Speaker 1: But then other expert medialogist came out and said, you
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Speaker 1: know what, this whole thing in Kansas, if there was
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Speaker 1: any effect at all, it might have been just slightly enhanced.
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Speaker 1: So it's really not all your fault. So the the U.
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Speaker 1: S Government is is very much interested in this. They're
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Speaker 1: very much entrenched in this, even as there not sure
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Speaker 1: whether or not it's working, or the scientific community is
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Speaker 1: at odds over whether or not it was working. But
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Speaker 1: the US government was convinced enough that they were basically
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Speaker 1: weaponizing the weather. They're doing all this to figure out
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Speaker 1: how to screw with other countries, troops, economies, the whole shebang,
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Speaker 1: and as the US for carrying out tests. So were
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Speaker 1: the Brits right, yeah, the Royal Air Force of course,
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Speaker 1: if we had our project serious, they had operational cumulus.
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Speaker 1: Very clever to think of all these cloud names. Uh.
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Speaker 1: And this was going on recently in two thousand one,
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Speaker 1: the BBC investigated these rumors and um apparently or actually
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Speaker 1: were they investigating the old rumors? Yeah? Okay, well I
14:11
Speaker 1: guess that makes more sense. I thought they did it
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Speaker 1: recently too, though No, I don't know the Brits alright,
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Speaker 1: Uh soo the the Royal Air Force did fly above
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Speaker 1: the cloud line, dropped a bunch of this stuff and
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Speaker 1: thirty minutes later it started to rain, and it rained
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Speaker 1: and rained and rained, and by the end of the
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Speaker 1: month North Devon and North of England was um basically
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Speaker 1: got two fifty times the amount of rain they ever get,
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Speaker 1: which is a pretty spectacularly convincing two d and fifty times. Yeah,
14:44
Speaker 1: it's like a flood time. And there there was actually
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Speaker 1: huge flood too, um in a village Lynmouth, UM where
14:53
Speaker 1: basically ninety million tons of water converged on the village
14:59
Speaker 1: at once. Unbelievable. On the day that they started seating,
15:02
Speaker 1: when it started raining, um and thirty five people lost
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Speaker 1: their lives. They were carried out to sea, they were
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Speaker 1: crushed by bowlders. Entire houses were taken out by bowlers
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Speaker 1: that were brought down by the water. Um. But of
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Speaker 1: course they said this wasn't US, and the Royal Air
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Speaker 1: Force pretended it never happened, So who knows. We did
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Speaker 1: our own little experiments here in the US and uh,
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Speaker 1: as far as weaponization goes. In Vietnam, we tried to
15:26
Speaker 1: extend the monsoon season on the Ho Chi Minh trail
15:30
Speaker 1: and apparently it worked by like thirty to forty five days.
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Speaker 1: Supposedly we extended monsoon season that year in nine at
15:37
Speaker 1: a cost of like twenty one million dollars and um
15:41
Speaker 1: over the course of missions. And they said it like
15:44
Speaker 1: it's they look at it now as a semi successful mission,
15:48
Speaker 1: whatever that means. It was it was good enough. Yeah,
15:53
Speaker 1: they're like things were slippery um. And that was actually
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Speaker 1: called Operation Popeye, no cloud names. And the whole reason
16:00
Speaker 1: and we have an awareness of Operation Popeye is because
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Speaker 1: a reporter named Jack Anderson uh he uh, he got
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Speaker 1: his hands on a secret memo from the Joints Chiefs
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Speaker 1: of Staff to President Johnson that made reference to weather
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Speaker 1: modification techniques in Laos, And he started digging around and
16:19
Speaker 1: found out that the government had done that, and he
16:22
Speaker 1: when this article came out, I was had a really
16:24
Speaker 1: good time because the US government was or Congress was
16:28
Speaker 1: not in a mood to uh weaponized weather, and so
16:32
Speaker 1: they kind of took this article. They took the publicity
16:35
Speaker 1: from it. They took a Senate Committees recommendation that like,
16:39
Speaker 1: this is way too big for us to be messing with,
16:41
Speaker 1: and went and had a summit with the Soviets about
16:44
Speaker 1: banning weather modification. Yeah, they said it was a laussy idea.
16:49
Speaker 1: Did you practice that well? I thought too much time
16:52
Speaker 1: had gone by it. I was like, you know what,
16:53
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say it anyway, it was a good time.
16:55
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter when you throw the pun down, it's
16:57
Speaker 1: always bad. Was a lossy idea, and they did. They
17:01
Speaker 1: got together with the Soviets and they said the big
17:06
Speaker 1: deal breaker I guess between them making a deal right
17:08
Speaker 1: then was they couldn't decide between the distinctions of tactical
17:13
Speaker 1: versus strategic. They thought, hey, if it's tactical. That's cool,
17:16
Speaker 1: because we're just trying to benefit from the weather, um
17:20
Speaker 1: and make stuff harder on you to get around. UM.
17:23
Speaker 1: Strategic uses would like try and like flood a major city,
17:28
Speaker 1: ruined crops, ruined crops, destroy the economy. Yeah. Um. And
17:33
Speaker 1: so the summit dissolved. But um, the fact that they
17:37
Speaker 1: were even talking about the strategic ones suggests that the
17:42
Speaker 1: the US and the Soviets both thought that one or
17:45
Speaker 1: both were on the verge of being able to do
17:48
Speaker 1: weather modification at that level. UM. So the the talks
17:52
Speaker 1: fell apart. But UM, the U N basically stepped in
17:55
Speaker 1: and said, hey, we'll take over from here, and they
17:57
Speaker 1: created UM and MAUD, which is the Environmental Environmental Modification Convention,
18:03
Speaker 1: which basically bands weaponizing weather, and the US and the
18:06
Speaker 1: Soviets ratified it came into effect the night. So you
18:10
Speaker 1: can't weaponize weather, but you can still do like weather
18:15
Speaker 1: modification as long as it's not what's called geophysical warfare,
18:19
Speaker 1: like you're trying to dissipate a storm or change the
18:22
Speaker 1: course of a hurricane for good for good and that
18:25
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. Uh. For instance, China, they've been at
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Speaker 1: this for a long time. Uh, since the late nineteen fifties,
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Speaker 1: and they have a program that employs between thirty and
18:35
Speaker 1: thirty people called the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, and
18:41
Speaker 1: that is they have a department, the Weather Modification Department,
18:44
Speaker 1: and they use that. And you probably remember in the
18:47
Speaker 1: news even seeing this at the Beijing Olympics, they busted
18:51
Speaker 1: clouds to try and prevent rain from happening because they
18:54
Speaker 1: didn't want to rain out their their opening ceremony in
18:56
Speaker 1: their games. Yes, so any cloud that they saw, they
18:59
Speaker 1: would shoot rocket propelled grenades filled with silver eyed eye
19:04
Speaker 1: um or anti aircraft artillery phil with silver eyed die.
19:09
Speaker 1: They were just shooting clouds. And there's like thirty thousand people.
19:12
Speaker 1: A lot of them are farmers who are armed with
19:14
Speaker 1: government issue rocket launchers. Yeah, because they're on the right place. Yeah,
19:18
Speaker 1: to shoot at clouds. Get that cloud. Yeah, I did
19:22
Speaker 1: that like a Southern redneck. That was weird. Get that cloud.
19:25
Speaker 1: Mant's they sound like China. Jerry just left it that.
19:31
Speaker 1: Uh So. Then hale is the next thing that we've
19:35
Speaker 1: tried to conquer. N the National Hail Research Experiment was
19:41
Speaker 1: started and basically to suppress hail along what's known as
19:46
Speaker 1: Hale Alley in Colorado, h some state called Kansas, Northwest Kansas,
19:51
Speaker 1: Southeast Wyoming in northwest Nebraska, and UM. It was scheduled
19:56
Speaker 1: the last five years, but it did not. I think
19:59
Speaker 1: it was shut down in yeah, two years ahead of
20:03
Speaker 1: time and not necessarily through any fault of its own.
20:05
Speaker 1: The seventies turn out to be like the driest decade
20:07
Speaker 1: ever in Hale Alley. UM. But their their whole goal
20:11
Speaker 1: was to seed clouds to basically hurry up the process
20:16
Speaker 1: of them precipitating so that it wouldn't have a chance
20:19
Speaker 1: to become hal to keep them warm clouds to UM,
20:22
Speaker 1: and just to if it is going to hail, they
20:25
Speaker 1: would be smaller pieces of hail and it would just
20:27
Speaker 1: accelerate the process. UM. But there was some funny things
20:31
Speaker 1: that came out of it, like we learned that farmers
20:33
Speaker 1: don't like clouds eating. Yeah, and they tried in Maryland
20:36
Speaker 1: and Virginia, and there were farmers like shooting at the aircraft.
20:39
Speaker 1: And then in the San Luis Valley, Uh, there were
20:43
Speaker 1: somebody blew up with dynamite a radar truck for a
20:47
Speaker 1: private weather modification company. All in the seventies. So the seventies,
20:51
Speaker 1: weather mood was not very popular, and in some states
20:54
Speaker 1: now because of farmers concerns, um weather modification is banned. Yeah. Yeah,
21:00
Speaker 1: people are afraid that you're gonna take the cloud that
21:03
Speaker 1: was destined for their field and use it over your field.
21:07
Speaker 1: That was my cloud. Well that's we might as well
21:10
Speaker 1: talk about it. Then that's a big issue. Um. As
21:13
Speaker 1: far as our next topic, thwarting hurricanes, it seems like
21:16
Speaker 1: a great idea, but one leading scientist, what's his name,
21:22
Speaker 1: Moche Alamorrow, He's from m i t. He says, you know,
21:28
Speaker 1: only a handful of hurricanes ever developed out of like
21:31
Speaker 1: a hundred tropical storms, let's say, and very few of
21:34
Speaker 1: those hurricanes calls landfall that do like lots of damage.
21:37
Speaker 1: So this rainfall is vital to South America. And what
21:42
Speaker 1: are we gonna start just trying to thwart every tropical
21:45
Speaker 1: storm we see? Like we're playing god here a little
21:47
Speaker 1: too much. That's stuff happens for a reason, right exactly,
21:51
Speaker 1: despite the fact that hurricanes can be very dangerous and
21:53
Speaker 1: costly take lives. I get the feeling he's like, you know,
21:57
Speaker 1: we might just want to live with that every couple
21:59
Speaker 1: of years rather than try to mess with the thermodynamics
22:02
Speaker 1: of an ocean current exactly. Well, and that's kind of
22:05
Speaker 1: what some of the ideas for um dissipating or moving hurricanes.
22:09
Speaker 1: A couple of ideas are shooting dropping hydrogen bombs on
22:13
Speaker 1: a hurricane to dissipated, which I don't know what the
22:17
Speaker 1: fact they would happen, um, But Bill Gates is in
22:19
Speaker 1: on a patent for um dissipating hurricanes, which apparently uses
22:25
Speaker 1: fleets of vehicles to pump cold water from lower depths
22:29
Speaker 1: of the ocean to the surface to mix with the
22:31
Speaker 1: warm surface temperatures are comparatively warmer surface temperatures, so that
22:36
Speaker 1: the convective currents that those warm surface temperatures creating hurricanes
22:40
Speaker 1: that make them more and more powerful are dissipated, so
22:43
Speaker 1: the hurricanes forces reduced because hurricanes draw their strength from
22:47
Speaker 1: that heat, and uh, you can cool it down. The
22:50
Speaker 1: idea is that you might then dissipated again, messing with
22:54
Speaker 1: the thermodynamics. Is that a good thing? And then there's
22:57
Speaker 1: one that's really routined. Um, you've probably looked right past
23:02
Speaker 1: it at your local airport, which is fog dissipation. Yeah,
23:06
Speaker 1: they do this regularly with below freezing temperature fog R
23:11
Speaker 1: not too hard. They can do it from the ground. Yeah,
23:13
Speaker 1: but aren't they trying to do it above temperature as well? Yeah,
23:15
Speaker 1: they try cloud seating to dissipate it as well. But
23:18
Speaker 1: they also um will heat the landing areas, which dissipates fog,
23:23
Speaker 1: but it is weather modification. Uh. And then they'll also
23:26
Speaker 1: um inject propane gas, which apparently dissipates below freezing fog
23:32
Speaker 1: as well. Airports. Have you ever been on a plane
23:34
Speaker 1: that had to be the ice before takeoff? That happened
23:37
Speaker 1: to me for the first time this Christmas and Akron.
23:39
Speaker 1: It takes a really long time. It took a long time,
23:41
Speaker 1: and I was right there by the window by the wing,
23:43
Speaker 1: and I was I watched the whole thing. It was
23:45
Speaker 1: fascinating but also a little bit terrifying. Um. I was
23:49
Speaker 1: just like, did you get it all? Yeah? Did you
23:52
Speaker 1: miss the spot? Did you see that whould go over
23:54
Speaker 1: it again? Yeah? I wish I knew exactly what they
23:56
Speaker 1: were doing. I'll have to look into that because I
23:58
Speaker 1: always like to know that stuff. Well, I'm sure we
24:00
Speaker 1: could just go ahead and suggested ourselves with the apologian
24:03
Speaker 1: d I think we should actually they're they were spraying
24:06
Speaker 1: the wings. I know that, but I don't think it
24:08
Speaker 1: was just like hot water. No, it's not. It's some
24:11
Speaker 1: sort of crazy solution. Yeah, that's what I think, crazy
24:14
Speaker 1: cucku solution de icing. Yeah. Uh so does this stuff work, Josh,
24:19
Speaker 1: that is a great question, Chucker's Um, No one really knows.
24:23
Speaker 1: There's actually you know, we said Irving Langmuir and Bernard
24:26
Speaker 1: Vonnegut were definite true believers, but then there's plenty of
24:29
Speaker 1: other people who are like, you don't know that that happened.
24:32
Speaker 1: It could have just been coincidence. Um. And there's actually
24:35
Speaker 1: a split among American um scientific groups over whether it
24:41
Speaker 1: has any effect or not. Here's what I think. Okay,
24:44
Speaker 1: here's my immature opinion. I think it possibly works, but
24:48
Speaker 1: it's such a haphazard result and so not easily so
24:52
Speaker 1: difficult to control that does that really work? Like, you
24:56
Speaker 1: may have an effect, but unless you can really pinpoint
24:59
Speaker 1: control it, I don't know if you can say that works.
25:01
Speaker 1: And part of the problem is carrying out rigorous scientific experiments, right,
25:05
Speaker 1: Like if you you can't control where the wind is
25:08
Speaker 1: going to take the silver iodide, So if you're trying
25:10
Speaker 1: to impregnant one cloud and keep another as a control cloud.
25:15
Speaker 1: How do you know that the control clouds not infected
25:17
Speaker 1: with with UM silver iodide and that it's going to
25:21
Speaker 1: rain as well as a result of your experiment. So
25:24
Speaker 1: it's a very tough thing to experiment on. Well, and
25:26
Speaker 1: didn't they find out when they tried to do the
25:28
Speaker 1: UM ice crystals in the hurricane? Didn't they find out
25:31
Speaker 1: that there are already ice crystals there? Yeah, that didn't
25:34
Speaker 1: have much an effect, right, noah, UM National Oceanic Atmospheric
25:39
Speaker 1: Administration UM. They carried something out which was pretty cool.
25:43
Speaker 1: It's called Project storm Fury for like thirty years trying
25:47
Speaker 1: to seed hurricanes, and yeah, they found that, oh there's ice.
25:50
Speaker 1: They're all right, this isn't gonna have an effect. Well,
25:51
Speaker 1: they learned more about hurricanes, so that way, at least
25:53
Speaker 1: they did by being crazy and flying into it. UM.
25:57
Speaker 1: And then so the National Academy of Sciences said, thirty
26:00
Speaker 1: years of study has produced no solid evidence that the
26:03
Speaker 1: stuff works. The American Meteorological Society said, you know, we
26:07
Speaker 1: think there's probably about a ten percent effect that this has.
26:10
Speaker 1: It increases precipitation by ten percent, and uh, everybody else's
26:15
Speaker 1: who knows? Does it hurt this cloud seating? I can
26:19
Speaker 1: understand trying to mess with a hurricane, but I mean
26:22
Speaker 1: just shooting silver Eye died in the air. If the
26:25
Speaker 1: Chinese want to do that with the rocket propelled grenades, girl,
26:28
Speaker 1: I don't have their fun. I think you and I should.
26:30
Speaker 1: They got these biplanes here in Atlanta. I think we
26:33
Speaker 1: should get some dry ice. We should chop it up,
26:36
Speaker 1: and we should go take on these biplane rides on
26:39
Speaker 1: a cloudy day, dump it out and see what happens.
26:41
Speaker 1: That's a great idea. Let's do it, Okay, let's try.
26:44
Speaker 1: Can we charge that on the on the company guard?
26:46
Speaker 1: We probably could go as long as we documented it somehow.
26:50
Speaker 1: That's right. If you want to know more about things
26:53
Speaker 1: like dry ice by planes, weather modification, um, flying into
26:59
Speaker 1: hurricane people have actually done that. I wrote a cool
27:02
Speaker 1: article on it, Bill Gates, Bill Gates, Um. You can
27:05
Speaker 1: type all those things into the search bar how stuff
27:07
Speaker 1: works dot com and it will bring up some pretty
27:09
Speaker 1: cool articles. And we also worked off with some need
27:12
Speaker 1: articles that we found online all over the place. So
27:16
Speaker 1: just search weather modification and have a great time with him. Uh.
27:21
Speaker 1: Since I said have a great time, and I mean
27:23
Speaker 1: it's time for the listening. Then. Uh, before we do
27:28
Speaker 1: listener mail, a couple of quick shoutouts. One, we want
27:31
Speaker 1: to shout out our Kiva team with a new goal. Yes. Uh,
27:34
Speaker 1: if you don't know, if you go to k I
27:37
Speaker 1: v a dot org slash teams slash stuff, you should know.
27:41
Speaker 1: We set up a microblout lending team. How long ago now,
27:45
Speaker 1: October two thousand eight, Yes, and it took thousand nine.
27:50
Speaker 1: It began with little Stephen Colbert challenge, but we quickly
27:52
Speaker 1: dusted him. Two. Yeah, we wanted to see who could
27:56
Speaker 1: get to a hundred thousand first. I'm not sure as
27:58
Speaker 1: teams even there yet. Darl Uh they didn't pay attention
28:01
Speaker 1: to us, but it doesn't matter. Um. The plant is
28:04
Speaker 1: our team is doing great and we have a new goal.
28:06
Speaker 1: Thanks to our our de facto captains, glinted Sonia. They
28:09
Speaker 1: put together the numbers for us and our goal as
28:13
Speaker 1: of June twenty one this year is two million dollars loan. Yes,
28:18
Speaker 1: by the summer solstice. Summer Solstice, two million bucks is
28:21
Speaker 1: our goal for our team. We're well on our way
28:24
Speaker 1: and uh, jump on board. It's a lot of fun. Yeah,
28:27
Speaker 1: and loan twenty five bucks and if it gets paid
28:30
Speaker 1: back and he said, you know what, that's the only
28:32
Speaker 1: loan ever want to make. You can actually get that
28:34
Speaker 1: money back. Yeah, if it feels dirty to you, just
28:36
Speaker 1: wait like about a month, maybe a little longer, I
28:39
Speaker 1: don't know. And once he's paid back, you can take
28:41
Speaker 1: it out. Yeah. And Josh has written some great blog
28:43
Speaker 1: post on micro lending and the controversies around it and
28:45
Speaker 1: why we still support it. Yeah, so we're well aware. Uh,
28:48
Speaker 1: and we also want to shout out our buddy Bill Wadman. Yeah.
28:52
Speaker 1: We met Bill in Brooklyn and he's a very talented
28:54
Speaker 1: portrait photographer and he said, you know, I'd love to
28:58
Speaker 1: shoot you guys here on my list of people I'd
29:00
Speaker 1: like to work with. Came out to the Bellhouse, took
29:03
Speaker 1: some great pictures. One of them is now our avatar
29:05
Speaker 1: on our Facebook page, and uh, it was it was
29:09
Speaker 1: a good experience for us, for two guys who really
29:10
Speaker 1: don't like having your pictures made. Yeah, he was very gentle.
29:13
Speaker 1: He was very gentle and they turned out great. And uh,
29:15
Speaker 1: you can see his work at Bill Wadman dot com
29:18
Speaker 1: or he has a podcast about photography that is not
29:22
Speaker 1: about This is what lends you should get. It's about
29:25
Speaker 1: it's called on taking pictures, and it's more about the
29:27
Speaker 1: philosophy and science. So they're taking pictures. Did you see
29:29
Speaker 1: the post on us? He was like, I think it
29:31
Speaker 1: was titled like look at these two schmows. I got
29:33
Speaker 1: to sit for me. He didn't find that on at
29:36
Speaker 1: www dot on taking pictures dot com and imagine a iTunes.
29:42
Speaker 1: I didn't look. But if it's a podcast, it's probably
29:45
Speaker 1: on iTunes right anyway, Thanks Bill Wadman and good luck
29:49
Speaker 1: to you, sir. We'll see you as soon. Yeah, thanks everybody,
29:52
Speaker 1: all right, and now on the listener mail. This is
29:54
Speaker 1: a nice little Christmas homeless shout out to our good
29:57
Speaker 1: friend Martin. Love this email. We love our Scottish friends. Guys,
30:02
Speaker 1: you asked for a Christmas story while I was listening
30:05
Speaker 1: to your homelessness podcast. Anyway, last year a friend of
30:07
Speaker 1: mine was going to catch a bus and saw a
30:09
Speaker 1: homeless man outside the bus station a freezing night, and
30:12
Speaker 1: in Scotland you know that it's gold, so he decided
30:15
Speaker 1: to give the guy twenty pounds. The homeless man began
30:18
Speaker 1: to cry, thanked my friends and explained that he was
30:21
Speaker 1: on the street doing a drug problem and after running
30:24
Speaker 1: away from his family. Um. However, that day he had
30:28
Speaker 1: been thinking of going home to his family for Christmas
30:31
Speaker 1: and cleaning up his life. Now that he had the money,
30:33
Speaker 1: he was going to do just that. He took my
30:35
Speaker 1: friends address, so he insisted on paying him back. So
30:39
Speaker 1: my family gave him the address and caught a bus.
30:42
Speaker 1: This summer he received a letter from the man explaining
30:45
Speaker 1: that he did in fact go home. He went to
30:47
Speaker 1: rehab and he is now working for his father. The
30:51
Speaker 1: family is extremely happy and he not only included the
30:54
Speaker 1: twenty pounds as payback, but a picture of him and
30:57
Speaker 1: his dad's workshop with his dad and his two brothers.
31:00
Speaker 1: This just goes to show what a little can do
31:02
Speaker 1: for some people, especially around the holidays. Love the show, guys,
31:06
Speaker 1: how about a show on the Scottish Wars Independence and
31:10
Speaker 1: that has funden? Oh that's pretty good. And then an
31:14
Speaker 1: awesome letter. Yeah that was great. I just love that one. Um,
31:18
Speaker 1: thanks a lot, Martin, Thanks a lot to all of
31:20
Speaker 1: our people in Scotland. How's it going. I didn't see
31:24
Speaker 1: it right. It gets worse with already truck. You sound
31:26
Speaker 1: like Truman, Componi and the last years you could do
31:28
Speaker 1: a bit of a Scottish accent. It left me. Don't
31:30
Speaker 1: do Scottish accent? Do Sean Connery trying Sean connedy often
31:35
Speaker 1: see there it is right there. Uh. If you want
31:39
Speaker 1: to hear Chuck to a certain kind of accent, send
31:42
Speaker 1: us a suggestion. He takes all comers, right, Chuck. Uh.
31:46
Speaker 1: You can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast.
31:49
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31:51
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32:00
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