Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum viability of artificial rains as an option to ...

i ve been toying this idea fr quite smtime... ours is a hot country....scorching sun, dusty noons, loads of power consumption to stay cool (also that of water used in coolers) and that is when thr is loads of power cuts too, dependecy on rains for a good harvest etc...

if clouds are seeded artificially (as n whn required...may be a roster is made by local authorities), mercury will drop, thr wd b less need fr ACs (energy guzzlers), better harvest fr farmers, plants n trees wd b dusted off...n many other pluses...(like better moods!)

hw feasible is the whole exercise?
cost factor???
possibility of any chemical pollution?

***************************************
whenever i find key to success, some one changes the lock

Feasability: 0
Cost: Not outrageous
Pollution Risk: Moderate

Chance of doing more good than harm: 0

We don't know enough about the impact of this to do it safely.

Consider instead the cost of a plane ticket.

G'day peace,

So you live in India . Without checking on your member details no one would know that by the way.

Getting it to rain is not as simple as seeding clouds. You need the clouds there in the first place and they need to have sufficient volume of water vapour to achieve the desired result ie rain.

The chemicals are not completely benign. Nothing in the world really is. But the biggest problem with the idea is that man made rain just has no reliability to it, even where there is good potential rain producing cloud available.

India's climate is a mix of many different types. Much of it is monsoonal. During the dry periods there is little moisture available in the air to create artificial rain and during the monsoon period there is generally too much rain to be fully utilised.

There is also the problem of if you were successful in drawing rain out of the available moisture in the sky relatively frequently then some other part of India or another country or ocean area would miss out .

If one country could control weather to the extent where they could make rain often then they could easily use that control as a weapon against a neighbouring country to promote drought. Imagine Pakistan having the tools to do this. I'm not being prejudiced against the Pakistanis here. It is just that there has been significant anomosity between your two countries for a long time and so it makes an easily understandable example.

The idea of medling with weather is also often discussed as a "solution" to global warming. But since humans have almost no ability to control weather or even understand the mechanisms that interconnect, I often wonder just how much worse humans could make a situation by medling with weather in an attempt to avoid say the potential problems of global warming.

Hurricanes are the most destructive of weather patterns and I'm sure a great many people would be very happy to hear that scientists could stop them. But hurricanes are also incredibly important in heat distribution on the planet. If they were stopped regularly the consequences could truly be devistating.

So imho, making it rain where it does not do so reliably is both not something that technology is currently at the point where it could be done with the exception of inducing rain in conditions that are very favourable for rain anyway and is fraught with the danger of causing much more harm than the lack of rain in one particular area currently causes.

I expect that eventually weather and climate will be understood to the extent where medling will be technically feasible and safety systems are also available to ensure that other problems are not then caused. But I also think that time is a long way away.


Regards


Richard

thanks Morgan and Richard fr the response to my query

i m glad the question reached a climatologist (no wonder an australian has sch indepth knowledge of our weather conditions)...

ofcourse i didn't knw the technical feasbility of a rather desperate idea in these summer months...

may be difficult as of nw but if it wrks (ever!), it wl be WOW

actually last month, fr abt 10-11 consecutive nights, we had showers n thunder showers in delhi (oops, this info isnt there in my details!) at nights.....following mornings the trees n plants wore 'fresh frm workshop' greens n we didnt have to water them too (saved lots of water, i m very paranoid abt its consumption)

hence thought of y nt make rains artificial and....

may be smday.... it may b a viable n safe option.

thanks very much again

peace

Sorry for asking Peace, but how much time do you save by not typing vowels?

I fnd wht u tpd a ltl hrd 2 rd.

Blacknad.

Hi Blacknad:

U hv jst dicld te lngug of the futr.

jjw

G'day,

Interesting that you have too much rain in Delhi (is the New part of the name gone by the way, don't keep up on events in your part of the world very well, I'm afraid). With too much rain you are talking about water conservation.

I find the subject of water "conservation" fascinating beceause it seems that society ends up with some really idiotic ideas all in the quest for water conservation.

Often lack of water for society has nothing to do with the availability of water but rather the lack of storage of water. At its simplest, man could not spread out into areas of this planet without reliable water for a very long time. Then came the concept of storage. Whether it was a hollow gourd or a dam, it amounts to the same thing. You are no longer tied to a permanent creek or other water source.

So society develops with no thought to water "conservation" at all, only to ensuring that there was sufficient water for the needs of whatever grouping was then desirable. Whether it was Rome and aquaducts or a farmer who bulldozes a dozen dams and sinks bores so that he can farm land that otherwise would not be useful.

I went to an Agricultural high school but grew up in the fringes of the city. What I found most amazing was just how little land is useful for grazing. Cattle and sheep stay within a couple of hours walk from water. No matter how big the property, if there are areas that are outside that boundary, then almost no grazing will occur.

To round up sheep does not require moving through every square inch of a property. Rather, you simply wait for the time of the day that the sheep gather to drink.

Amazingly, in the last few decades we seem to have forgotten the basic principals of water - you need more of it than you use and instead have attempted to reduce the use of water.

Water really cannot be conserved. It is never really destroyed unless you break it down at the molecular level. Water used for sewerage disposal still flows to the sea and evaporates, just by a slightly longer route. Same thing with washing cars, watering lawns, etc, etc.

Now I'm not saying that a poor society without any means of sufficient storage for the grouping they have allowed or desire (whether that be a village, large town or mega city), should waste water when they do not have the means of storage but that is still not water conservation. It is water rationing.

peace, says that they had about ten or eleven nights of thunderstorms yet that water was not retained, hence his mania about water consumption and even the question about making it rain. Here's a thought, how about storing the water more efficiently and in sufficient quantities so that when it does rain it is not lost. It is truly amazing just how much water actually falls in a typical city in comparison to usage. The reason why the city first grew up in the first place (assuming it is not an artificial construct due to modern imperatives such as economic trade zones etc) is that there was more water available in the location than was needed for a settlement to establish. As the settlement gets bigger, the area it covers enlarges and so does the water collection area.

Where the whole thing falls down is where water is no longer collected in the same increasing quantities as the enlargement of the settlement.

In very poor places, the cost of storage may be prohibitive but this is not true for most places. Now we have cities where each and every house is required to store water. The actual cost of these systems is enormous compared to a collective storage device, not to mention, the pollution, the materials needed, the wastage of power, etc, etc. That is not water conservation by the way, that is collective water storage where the governing entity abrogates its responsibility to perform its required function.

I live in Sydney, which has very significant water restrictions. Not because Sydney has low rainfall nor because the population (about 5 million including all the outlying areas) is too large for the practically available water. No, our problem is that conservationists have managed to object to any water storage increase and nothing significant has been done for around 40 years despite an annual growth rate I believe to be around 2%.

We have reached the absolutely ludicrous position where our major storage area has a fault that means that in the event of prolonged heavy rain when already full, it could fail. Now the risk is small but much larger than most engineers would be prepared to build in to such a construction. The solution was to add 7 or 8 metres to the top of the retaining wall substantially increasing the overall strength of the structure. This also had the side benefit of hugely increasing primary storage so that even in drought years (which because of El Nina and other periodic patterns can last several years occasionally) there was more than enough water for the city.

There is always a negative to such activities. In this case, a great deal of natural, relatively unspoiled bushland would go under water. That really is regretable but trade offs are inevitable in all cities unless the occupants are willing to live in substandard conditions.

So what was the alternative decided upon, a ocean desalination plant. Bugger the fact that this would require copious amounts of energy produced by burning coal at significant cost plus a great deal of other problems including the enormous cost of production overall compared to other storage solutions. It was thought by the politicians to be the least likely to upset various groups such as conservationists. It didn't work because they became upset anyway, as did a bunch of other people that really didn't want to pay five or six times as much for water as was needed. The plan was shelved.

So, instead of thinking about controlling the rain, peace, how about thinking of things that really are currently practical and can be done with some political will. Imagine being a politician and trying to ram through legislation to allow harvesting of water vapour through artificial rain for starters. And then there is the cost. How would they compare to actually just building better and larger storage for the water that is already available and transport devices for water that is available in one area but not in sufficient quantities in another.

But what is really absurd is peace has indicated that rain that falls is already useless. What would be the point of creating more rain without some method of storage. Unless the plan was to make it rain by a consistent amount daily only above storage areas and areas that required rainfall for vegetation.

OK, end of rant. It is interesting how science is often looked upon however. Rather than looking at science as a way of obtaining practical solutions for real problems often it is looked upon as a saviour for stuff ups humans have made in developing society for which they are no longer willing to pay the maintaining that society (not in money terms but in negatives such as air pollution, water pipes, dams, loss of land to transport corridors, noise pollution).


Richard

LOL. I fear you're right - it will be the language of the future. It will be interesting to watch the impact that text language will eventually have on spoken language.

Blacknad.

hi Blackand

its rather d othrway, v ve strtd writing wht v speak...bt ths frm of writing r cnfined to sms or less frmal communication....whn u wnt o write in less time wo compromising on the meaning...

peace (cant b shortened)!

Peace,

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae.

The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

Blacknad

Dear Peace,

Your desire can indeed be fulfilled as it is filled with great love for humanity... but since your wisdom reflects in your quote "whenever i find key to success, some one changes the lock" ..
We need to understand the totality of the problem..a fix here and a fix there can not avoid the D-Day.. it can delay it..
Energy requirements to maintain an such artificial environemnt will explode exponentially.An old problem will get replaced by a new one..
And the cycle will continue till one day someone or some event with slightest of intentional or unintentional error will destablise the entire system...and suddenly our fears will come true.
Thats not what we wanted...
Hai ki nahin?
Cut down the emission ... thats the only way out.

Rose ... Rose ... Rose ... I thought you used to carry a 12 guage.

This time I agree with dvk ... how about cutting down on his emissions.

true blackand, tht ws n interestng peace of txt... infact i remember having competed wth my friends on who cd read sch jumbled text fastest n guess who won...well no one...all of us took same time to finish reading n time taken to finsh ws same as it took to read d correctly written one!

dear dkv n morgan... it may nt be (artificial rains)the best option to exercise... jst fr ur info...while surfing abt it i chanced upon a news article frm china... they do it smtimes..recently they did to wash trees after a sand storm..

regards
peace

DKV
please stick to Science and related topics. This kind of metaphysical rambling contributes nothing to the conversation here and only serves to derail the topic at hand. Take this as a warning.

Amaranth Rose
Moderator

Sorry, Dan, I have to follow procedures. Please accept my apology for not acting on this sooner, I left town for four days to go to my oldest brother's memorial service. He died of lung cancer; he was only 56. I urge those of you who smoke to quit immediately. The life you save may be your own.

Just goes to show what happens when you leave town for a few days, the forum goes to heck.

Amaranth

Sorry, Dan, I have to follow procedures. Please accept my apology for not acting on this sooner, I left town for four days to go to my oldest brother's memorial service. He died of lung cancer; he was only 56. I urge those of you who smoke to quit immediately. The life you save may be your own.

Just goes to show what happens when you leave town for a few days, the forum goes to heck.

Amaranth

Glad to have you back.

And my condolences with respect to your brother. Hopefully he made up in quality what he didn't have in quantity.

my concolences as well, Amaranth Rose. im sure that you notice that da and i dont agree with much, but this time i second his wish for your brother.

Thanks for your kind thoughts. My brother was a computer geek extraordinaire, and well liked and respected in his field of endeavor. He worked for the cooperative extension service at Texas A & M for many years as their computer consultant. He lived every day to its fullest, and did not suffer unduly or for very long.

He touched many lives, and made a difference. The world is a better place for his having been in it. A bright star is lost in the heavens.

Amaranth

G'day Amaranth Rose,

All life is transient but the measure of one's life, imho, is whether those that were touched by the life were the better for it. It sounds very much like your brother was one whose's measure would be very high indeed.

Condolences for his loss. Considering personal experience has taught the destructive force of long suffering it is good that your brother's passing was without prolonged suffering.

Kindest regards


Richard