If we could control the weather, would that help the environment?

Human attempts to control or influence the weather have a long history. Some American Indian tribes performed ceremonies that they believed would encourage rainfall. In Europe the Finns were believed to be able to control the weather and it was long believed that witches were capable of conjuring up storms. All of these are of course simply superstitions and any change in the weather that may have occurred would have been purely coincidental. Our desire to control the weather is perhaps a reflection of our desire to control our own destinies. Hurricanes and violent storms frequently cause much damage and loss of life in some of the poorest areas of the world. Droughts have the ability to devastate whole regions, turning once self-sufficient people into starving refugees. These kinds of disasters are likely to become more frequent and worse as global warming proceeds.

As global warming keeps increasing, water is going to become more scarce

The first person to seriously consider weather control was John von Neumann, a computer scientist. Although he never conducted any experiments he did theorise that if the Earth were to enter another Ice Age, dumping dirt or spraying soot on the surface of the planet’s glaciers would increase the amount of solar energy the earth would retain and thus warm it.  Repeated applications would be necessary as storms would cover the soot with new snowfall. Cloudbusting experiments were carried out in the 1950s and 1960s by Wilhelm Reich although the results of these remain shrouded in controversy and have never been widely accepted. Nowadays cloud seeding is commonly used to enhance snowpack and as the demand for water grows resources have been devoted to cloud seeding in countries prone to droughts. A number of countries such as China, India, USA and Russia use this technique. Critics of the technique are unimpressed and claim that if rain does occur then it does so merely because it was going to rain anyway. Cloud seeding may work if the air is already humid and close to raining, but in a dry atmosphere nothing will produce rain.

Is cloud seeding safe? Ask China what they think!

Other suggestions for controlling the weather have been to try to alter the path of hurricanes so that they do not make landfall over densely populated areas. The theory is simple, lower the temperature of the clouds and the hurricane would be weakened or its path would be altered. Airplanes could be used to spray a layer of soot into the icy clouds at the top of the storm system which would cool further and slow the winds. Of course there is the question of where the hurricane would be directed and despite the negative associations some countries such as Mexico actually rely on hurricanes for a significant part of their annual rainfall. A particularly thorny question is who would be held responsible if something went wrong.

Some have even more ambitious plans. The INDRA project conceived by the New York company Gravitational Systems, aims to control the environment by creating a network of evaporation channels that would move sea water into desert areas. Approximately one third of the world’s land is desert and desertification is an increasing problem. According to the theory water moving along the channels would evaporate creating rain clouds which would lower temperatures and generate rainfall. The once arid desert would be transformed into fertile land suitable for growing a range of crops. They also hope to end violent storms and heat waves, giving people control over the weather and thus improving the lives of billions. Large rivers could be turned on or off within hours and salt marshes and reservoirs could be drained or replenished within days. This sounds impressive, but large rivers generally run through more than one country and diverting or switching off a river in one country could have devastating effects in another. When China wanted to dam the Nu River in 2004 the proposal was met with stiff opposition from Thailand and Burma whose local fishermen’s livelihoods were threatened.

INDRA - it sounds sinister!

Some scientists argue that humans are not going to be able to reduce CO2 emissions fast enough to save the planet from global warming. Rather they claim that we should be looking at more radical ideas. Iron seeding is one example of an approach that is being considered and the German government has done some small scale tests. Iron seeding involves dumping iron into the oceans which will lead to an increase in phytoplankton. The phytoplankton will consume CO2 thus reducing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. However, critics have pointed out that the ocean removes the iron fairly quickly so massive amounts of iron would have to be used to maintain the bloom. Other innovative ideas which have been suggested are mirrors in space to reflect the Sun’s rays or pumping sulphur particles into the atmosphere. Sulphur particles would also reflect the Sun’s rays and thus have a cooling effect and the scientist who suggested it said that he expected the reduction in temperature could last for up to two years. Others have suggested creating modified microbes that will consume methane, another potent greenhouse gas or pumping sea water particles into the clouds to make them thicker so that they reflect more of the Sun’s rays.

All of these suggestions could have a profound effect on the world’s weather system. Would they have a positive or a negative effect? The problem is that no-one is really sure if they will actually work let alone whether they will do more harm than good. All of the measures are designed primarily to buy some time whilst countries strive to bring their carbon emissions down, but in the worst case scenario we might make global warming worse or accelerate the destruction of the marine environment. The sulphur sunshade as it was dubbed is meant to cool the earth by mimicking the effects of a volcanic eruption which may be the case, but other scientists have warned that it could also create a drought by triggering sudden warming if the effect was badly deployed or inadequately maintained. Sulphur also has many harmful effects it has killed thousands of people through respiratory disease, produced acid rain and had devastating effects on animals and plants so to avoid such problems the sulphur would have to be injected into the atmosphere at high altitude. Even given these precautions it could still damage the ozone layer or increase acid rain.

But the bottom line is that we don’t know what this will do!

If we were to be able to control the weather it would raise a number of issues. Would there be unintended consequences, given the chaotic nature of the weather system? Could the techniques be used as a weapon by hostile governments? Would it damage existing ecosystems? Would it pose health risks to humans and would it cause accidents and equipment malfunction? Many people are deeply concerned by the American system HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research program). The system was designed to investigate the ionosphere for the purposes of communication and surveillance and to do this it fires particles into the ionosphere. Various websites have claimed that the system has more sinister uses including altering weather conditions over vast tracts of land. Of course many of these claims are exaggerated, but nevertheless it does the raise the question of whether we would be happy for some countries to have that kind of power.

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