High Point Rocket Raid

We have tried to change the weather for years! American Indians tried to produce rain if necessary, and for many centuries, people believed that the people of Finland have been able to control the weather. The Vikings refused to take Finnish seamen on their raids, lest they whip up a storm on the ocean. And the Finns are often denied the passage of ships in the 20th century for the same reasons superstitious.

Probably the oldest and most widely used method of controlling the weather is the lightning rod (or lightning rod for my American friends). These conductors are usually copper or aluminum and are placed strategically on the strengths of trees, buildings and other structures in a network to channel lightning strikes can safely land. And very successful they have been too.

In the 1950s, Wilhelm Reich attempted to influence the flow of cosmic rays with a device called Cloudbuster "which he believed would cause rain and then the clouds dissipate. And all the fans of Kate Bush there know that the idea of his hit "Cloudbusting '

A technique commonly used to induce rain cloud seeding. This involves the release of silver iodide or dry ice into clouds by plane or by small rockets or a generator to the ground, and cloud condensation increasingly on particles to increase the precipitation overall. And if there are companies dedicated exclusively to the practice of cloud seeding, quantifiable results are somewhat limited. There have been experiments that show that seeding clouds alter cloud structure and size, but there is little evidence that this actually converted to precipitation at ground level. The use of alternative substances, like salt, are tested as they provide more promising results.

Between 1962 and 1983, the U.S. government has Stormfury project. It was an attempt to mitigate the devastating effects of tropical cyclones and hurricanes in an aircraft in them and releasing silver iodide. The idea was that this would disrupt the internal structure of the storm and thus reduce its impact. However during the 20 years of experimentation no conclusive evidence was found that the hurricanes that does not go away, could not dispel their own volition. Although the final draft Stormfury flight was made in 1971 it was not until 1983 that the project was officially closed.

There are already plans for the future control of our weather systems. For example, an idea has been proposed to heat gently parts of a hurricane with microwave space to help them stay away from possible harmful land fall. The implications are enormous. How does this effect the natural ecosystem? Does a country have the right to reduce or modify the precipitation of another? And the idea of microwave fire deep into a hurricane from space fills me with a certain amount of anxiety.

Whatever he remains to be seen, but in the here and now, Chinese authorities have 30 aircraft, 4,000 rocket launchers and 7,000 antiaircraft guns ready and waiting to take various chemicals into the clouds to reduce precipitation for the 2008 Olympics. And good luck with that!