Scientifically manipulating the weather for any purpose is not only morally but ethically wrong. There is a strong purpose for science in our world of today, but it has developed into the ability to go too far without first investigating into the future, looking at all areas of consequences upon humanity. This can have devastating effects on the planet and its inhabitants-seen already by the destruction of the rain forest and global warming which scientists are still fighting over with the “who is responsible” scenario. Unfortunately, scientific vision is seen only to the end of the scientist’s nose and no further.
Weather manipulation is not a new thing, going back in history to the original principle of “cloud seeding” by Vincent Schaefer in July of 1946, co-working with Nobel Laureate Irving Langmuir. From then on it grew to a United States military operation-Operation Popeye-from March of 1967 to July of 1972 in North Vietnam. The purpose was to seed silver iodide into clouds in order to extend the monsoon season over North Vietnam, in particular the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Successful in the fact it extended the season 30 to 45 days, in 2001 the United States spent $400-million dollars to rebuild the Trail into a new road building effort to connect Hanoi to Saigon, presently called Ho Chi Minh City.
Unfortunately, the World Wildlife Fund has estimated that the forest cover dropped from 43% in 1943 to only 19% when the road efforts began. Only 4.9 million acres of the natural primary forests are still there, with a reduction of 250,000 to 500,000 acres a year. Further investigation into the future would have shown-as the earlier critics proclaimed-this could have all been but using unknown factors of weather manipulation was much more important in order to win a war.
There have been several weather modification projects since then, supported by the United States Federal Government in the early 1960s: the United States Bureau of Reclamation (Department of the Interior); and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-Project Skywater from 1964-1988, and the Atmospheric Modification Program from 1979-1993. Just recently, a project called the Weather Damage Modification Project from 2002-2006 was carried out.
Plans were in the making for the 2008 Olympic Games to prevent pollution by cloud seeding. They were also are known to fire silver silver iodide rockets into the sky were the rain is desired or needed, the only area of the world where “stealing rain” by cloud seeding can cause accusations and strife with neighboring countries. This is one of the major reasons why scientists should not be allowed to divert a hurricane away from a major city, as someone will be the loser and someone will be the winner-by choosing who lays the responsibility to the scientists.
