For centuries, man has grappled with Earth's most inconvenient necessity; weather. Well efforts are underway all over the world to take the reins and control our own outdoor destiny.
Two gents, Don Griffith and Mark Solak for example, run North American Weather Consultants, America's oldest weather modification company. Since the 50s, they've undertaken initiatives all over the globe to stop, change, or enact certain events in the atmosphere.
One of their biggest and most ongoing projects is a cloud-seeding effort in the mountainous regions of Utah, where higher snowfall numbers can mean millions of dollars to tourism and agriculture.
The tech behind it is relatively simple; A tank of gaseous silver iodide gets heated and shoots a plume of gas into the wind which gets carried into the mountains. Each silver iodide crystal forms the nucleus of what will become a raindrop once the vapor attaches to it. Boom, you've got precipitation.
Other initiatives around the world have designs on weakening hurricanes, stopping the rainfall in Beijing for the Olympics, and ending the Australian drought.
Hmmm. Does anyone else think this is a really cool idea that can only end in a very bad way?
discovermagazine.com: Harnessing the Weather
Speaking of dominating the weather...
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