As I'm sure most of you know, there were severe floods in many parts of Texas over the last week/week in a half. I live in Kerrville where we've received about 30 inches of rain officially (more than 35 unofficially). At least twelve people died around Texas because of the floods. The day that the rains began I remember a weather guy in San Antonio saying that the precip was due to cloud seeding. Could the floods also be a result of cloud seeding? If it were possible that cloud seeding caused the floods, could someone be responsible for the loss of life and property? In general, how ethical is weather modification when we all "live by it" as the Weather Channel proclaims?
I thought Cloud seeding only sped up the process. Also their has to be that amount of rain present. would be an interesting case to see litigated. Rocket River I wonder what the precedents would be.
RR, I'm not talking about ligitation in particular. I'm only wondering what the ramifications would be (both to us and the scientific community) if it could be proven that cloud seeding could cause catostrophic flooding like what we've seen. Or any other scientific processes that might have a negative impact on each of us and/or the environment we live in. Sure, ligitation would be the public's reaction (not saying that it would be right or not). In defense of the scientists, we were suffering through a drought and really needed the rain. In defense of the flood victims, we didn't need THAT much rain. Or is the question whether or not scientists have control over these processes? Perhaps they could seed the clouds to kickstart the rainmaking process, but lose control once that process begins. Is that acceptable? Hey, I'm just rambling out aloud.
There was no cloud seeding during the recent storms-- there was an incredible amount of moisture in the air it would not have made any difference --- the rain had to come down. Cloud seeding only works in small clouds that are holding moisture. The planes they use are fairly small- and simply can't place enough of the material (I think its some sort of sulfur compound) to cause heavy rains. If it works at all you get a small shower- which takes rain away from someone else. --- Recently uses weather sats. they realized that jet contrails were causes storms to form--they start over LAX and by the time they reached Texas they were 800 mile long storm fronts. Weird stuff
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Texas suffering from one of its usual long droughts? I don't know how effective cloud seeding has proven to cause rain every time they do it, but usually when there's a drought, the rain that breaks it isn't going to be one of the average variety. When I read the title, I thought you were going to go into bioethics, human and animal experimentation, or profit driven motives in the private sector. This is kind of different because weather modification is happening every day with the use of greenhouse gases, environmental modification like dams and man made lakes, and the pollution we produce daily. Not all might to be our benefit, but we do it to continue on our daily lives and routines. On the grand scheme of ethics (mine, at least) unless you're an environmentalist, it might not be a high priority. Which might or might not be bad news for our future generations...
