Can we control the weather?

[walterick]

A Discovery channel special coming up on August 5th. Should help provide scientific evidence to the Global Warming debate. Strangely, can't find anything on the web or discovery.com for it? Maybe too early?

[mjs1973]

You should come to work with me sometime Rick. My boss, and another one of my coworkers are big conspirecy theorists. They told me a year ago that NASA has been controling the weather for years.

I would say that they suck it if they can, since the shuttle launch always seems to get delayed because of the weather. The landings seem to be getting rerouted due to the weather also. But maybe that's all part of the conspirecy. They change the weather where they are scheduled to land, then quick reroute and land someplace else before the news cameras show up. That way they can off-load the alieans without the press snapping pics of their frozen bodies. Then they can ship them to Area 51 for testing and experiments.

Ok, back to the show. It does sound very interesting, and worth while to see. I love the Discovery Channel!

[another view]

Can we control it? Sure, cloud seeding. Of course it doesn't work that well...

Rick, you may be too early but thanks for the info. I'd like to see it, and 8/5 being a Sunday that might work. Mike, working in an office can be entertaining, can't it!? The movie and TV series really aren't that far off the mark, as much as that surprises non-office workers!

[mwfanelli]

A Discovery channel special coming up on August 5th. Should help provide scientific evidence to the Global Warming debate. Strangely, can't find anything on the web or discovery.com for it? Maybe too early?

There was an early morning feature on NPR a few weeks ago about the efforts that China is making trying to control the weather. A few studies were cited (which I have forgotten!) that pointed out that current methods don't make a difference. For example, you can't make rain if the atmosphere is dry. If the atmosphere is humid, it will rain anyway, especially in heavily polluted China.

I hope this Discovery Channel special fixes some of the crazy myths that political interests have been spreading. Rather than a historic cycle, for example, global temperatures are at a 400 year high (easily measurable) and still rising. Although cycles of warming and cooling are evident in ice cores, the concentration of carbon dioxide, a large greenhouse gas, is magnitudes higher than at any other time in history. I wonder why...

There is also nothing anyone can do to stop the effect now. All the efforts to reduce our "carbon footprint", from hybrid cars to lots of singing, is nice. But none of this will change much, other than adding a placebo cure for some people's feeling of guilt. The best we can hope for is to mitigate the effects as much as possible.

[MJS]

My SCUBA club would say that I can to a degree. I scheduled 10 dives last year for the group and we got mother natured 10 times in a row. 20-30 knot winds and 6-8 foot minnimum seas every time. The dive operators won't even let me call in a reservation anymore, they claim that I'm jinxed.

[walterick]

Oh, the aliens have been here for years But, as far as I know they are not tampering with our weather yet.

The science supporting the theory of human-caused global temperature increase has been in for a long time. How people are still denying it I don't know...?... Discovery might skirt the issue of global warming per se and just address storms and rainfall, etc. I am curious about the conclusions this special will make. Unfortunately, somehow, the science behind global warming has become partisan. I will be curious to see how the Discovery channel walks the line, as they had to with the Jesus Tomb a few months ago. Yes, I love the Discovery channel too. I was watching Man Vs Wild when I saw the promo for the weather program.

[Skyman]

at the moment i wish they would throw some global warming this way, we are having the coldest day in 20years!

[walterick]

This Sunday at 8!

Can we control the weather?

Followed by "Superstorm" a fictional account of scientists attempting to reroute a hurricane using current technologies.

[mn shutterbug]

Thanks Walter. I'm going to program my VCR in advance, just in case I miss it.

Only God can control the weather.

Here is an interesting link that actually shows the warming of the earth in real time, among many other interesting things. http://www.poodwaddle.com/worldclock.htm

[walterick]

Wow, that clock is very cool.

[SmartWombat]

From what I see in recent PhD work, neither natural or technological models fit.
But combining them does.
Even without industrial contributions, temperatures are on an upswing.
But human contributions increase that trend

[mn shutterbug]

Interesting hour special and one awesome movie. Fantastic. Thanks Walter.

[walterick]

Amazing. A dust devil in Africa can become a hurricane clobbering Florida.

Whoa.

A pretty cool show, not as revealing as I would have liked though. I kinda wish they would have taken the language "playing god" out of the show. In this instance I think people are using the word "god" to describe laws of physics they just don't understand yet.

[mwfanelli]

I kinda wish they would have taken the language "playing god" out of the show. In this instance I think people are using the word "god" to describe laws of physics they just don't understand yet.

Actually, this type of language is finding its way into many science-based show. It is a crude and silly attempt to assure the "faithful" that scientists are not human manifestations of demons. OK, maybe not that bad (!) but certainly close.

It is a human trait to defer to the supernatural when faced with the unknown or the complicated. Those who resist that feeling are always suspect.

[masdog]

The science supporting the theory of human-caused global temperature increase has been in for a long time. How people are still denying it I don't know...?

Cause not everyone believes the science. Honestly, there is a lot to the system that we don't understand, and we're fooling ourselves if we believe we can predict how such a dynamic system will react based on the data we have.

I'm not saying that the Earth isn't warming or that we aren't contributing to climate change, but we don't know all the facts.

[Greg McCary]

We had a football Coach in High School that was so mean, If it was raining before a game he would go outside and stare at the sky and it would quit raining. Or at least that's what the players would say.LOL

[mwfanelli2]

Cause not everyone believes the science. Honestly, there is a lot to the system that we don't understand, and we're fooling ourselves if we believe we can predict how such a dynamic system will react based on the data we have.

I'm not saying that the Earth isn't warming or that we aren't contributing to climate change, but we don't know all the facts.

There is a lot we can't be sure of but much more that we do. Those who discard the science never provide a scientific explanation of their objections. It is always based on politics, economics, emotions, or just not understanding the science in the first place. This is much like the fools who claim that we never landed on the moon: silly arguments that show a disappointing understanding of freshman physics.

No, we can not predict the exact details of a complex dynamical system. But we certainly can predict the trends. Those predictions are unfortunately coming true. We can make measurements and compare them to historical data. There is a lot more data than most people believe, the models are much more accurate than most people believe.

[Frog]

I've wondered whether the global warming thing took the mini ice age into account but been to busy or lazy to do much research. So I just did a google and found the chart in Wikipedia quite interesting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age

I thought the discovery program was below their usual standards.

[mwfanelli2]

I've wondered whether the global warming thing took the mini ice age into account but been to busy or lazy to do much research. So I just did a google and found the chart in Wikipedia quite interesting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age

I thought the discovery program was below their usual standards.

Atmospheric models go well beyond the relatively recent mini-ice age. Ice cores can take us back before the last big ice age. Yes, there are cycles of warm and cold as well as cycles of higher and lower carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses.

However, the temperature changes being recorded, actually measured, now are much higher and accelerating faster than at any time before. Carbon dioxide concentrations, a greenhouse gas, is grossly higher than at any other time in climate history. Worse yet, as the permafrost continues to melt, trapped methane will be released in big amounts. Methane is a much worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Yes, we may (or may not) be in another natural cycle. But human activity is modifying that cycle in a huge way. As I've said before, the damage is already done. Nothing we do can stop the changes now. If those "crazy enviromentalists" of the 70s and 80s had been listened to we would have had a chance. Now, it will cost hundreds of billions of dollars to cope with the result of this typical human ignorance. Pay now or pay magnitudes more later.

[fishfool]

yeah you can control the weather, in an aquarium like we do heh... or you can just pray real hard. In any case.. the EPA tells people that we can control the weather by when our activities release greenhouse gases... one of these greenhouse gases are methane, as Mr. Fanelli mentioned. Isn't methane used as fuel? sooooo why can't they capture this methane somehow and offset the high oil costs? -Fishfool

[SmartWombat]

Can we control it? Sure, cloud seeding. Of course it doesn't work that well...

Particularly when they're using cement dust as the condensation nuclei and they drop a bag of cement out without unwrapping it first.
Straight through someone's roof ... oops

[Medley]

Particularly when they're using cement dust as the condensation nuclei and they drop a bag of cement out without unwrapping it first.
Straight through someone's roof ... oops

Reminds me of a commercial years ago where they pushed an MG (if I recall correctly) out of a cargo plane. The commercial rambled on about something or other as the car parachuted safely to the ground.

That was the second take, and the second car. In the first take, the chute failed to operate properly. The director reportedly commented that if you chromed the car and put a piece of glass over it, it would have made a cool coffee table.

Another oops.

- Joe U.

[walterick]

Amazing how all these old threads keep popping up This one's almost a year old!

[SmartWombat]

All the efforts to reduce our "carbon footprint", from hybrid cars to lots of singing, is nice. But none of this will change much

Methane is a far more active greenhouse gas.
Go vegetarian, kill the cows !
Or breed cows that don't fart