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Iran begins cloud seeding operations as drought bites

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101–110 of 224 posts

Re: Iran begins cloud seeding operations as drought bites

#101

Its obviously not as dire (yet) but I think Texas will face something like this in the coming decades. Its the kind of problem that requires people at all levels of society to cooperate and sacrifice - farmers & businesses need to draw less, people need to use less and government needs intelligent and actionable policy, plus big investment into unsexy and invisble infrastructure upgrades - so basically we're screwed.

Texas is either desert or desert adjacent. We have always gotten our water by having torrential rains inconsistently. This doesn't mean don't conserve, be intelligent, etc. But this does mean that your water won't "balance out" year to year, you need to look at big 25-30 year intervals. Right now the single biggest waste of water in Austin is leaky pipes. Like infrastructure pipes owned by the city. Meanwhile our wat…

Wouldn’t leaks from underground pipes end up back in the aquifer and not really be a net water loss in the long term?

Re: Iran begins cloud seeding operations as drought bites

#102
And now we wait for the headlines about the unprecedented, record-breaking floods and the harm those bring, too, before global media bends over backwards to label anyone noticing the obvious causal relationship to be a wacky tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorist.

Re: Iran begins cloud seeding operations as drought bites

#103
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t imagine the various legislatures in several “highly skeptical” states that are either considering or have already implemented “no chemtrails” and fluoride laws are going to find it easy to convince people to allow cloud seeding. Pretty sure Tennessee already preemptively banned it.

Nothing a golf course ban couldn't reverse

Ahh yes, the old “let’s outlaw those things I don’t like, but others do that has billion dollar industries supporting it” approach. That always goes over well.

Re: Iran begins cloud seeding operations as drought bites

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

who owns the rain? what if it was just going to fall in the oceans?

Less rain than you'd imagine falls on the oceans, due to the land having varying elevation and temperature, whilst the oceans have far more constant elevation and temperature so the conditions needed for rain happen less.

That's just...wrong.

"78% of global precipitation occurs over the ocean" [1]

[1] https://gpm.nasa.gov/education/articles/nasa-earth-science-w...

Re: Iran begins cloud seeding operations as drought bites

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if you’re selling the water at rates that aren’t below cost farms will remove themselves. Desalination is cheap enough for humans to live and do most work things, it’s hard to imagine it ever being cheap enough for farming.

Dubai has farms fed on desalinated water and the food they produce is still cheaper than imported equivalents.

Dubai is paying ~$2,450 per acre-foot of desalinated water. You generally need around 2 acre feet of water per acre of farmland assuming near zero rain, it varies by crop type but goes up with temperature and down with humidity.

Farms growing food crops don’t produce ~5,000$ in profits per acre, even 1/10th that is an extreme outlier. On top of this desalinated water still has significantly more salt than rainwater which eventually causes issues. Subsides can always make things look cheaper when you ignore the subsidy.

Re: Iran begins cloud seeding operations as drought bites

#107
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chinese pretty blatantly used it to tailor things for their Olympics. I’m a little surprised how this has gone under the radar, considering the black box “effing with the weather cycles” truly is.

Considering it is done for many years all over the world no reason that particular should be on anyone's radar.

No, the concept - not the “China” detail.

It’s being discussed here (and elsewhere) like the US company talking about it is broaching a new concept.

Re: Iran begins cloud seeding operations as drought bites

#108

Its obviously not as dire (yet) but I think Texas will face something like this in the coming decades. Its the kind of problem that requires people at all levels of society to cooperate and sacrifice - farmers & businesses need to draw less, people need to use less and government needs intelligent and actionable policy, plus big investment into unsexy and invisble infrastructure upgrades - so basically we're screwed.

The American Southwest needs to get started on desalination. It’s the only long term answer we have now, know works, and is at least within shooting distance of cost-feasible.

The hard part is getting all that water to parts inland and uphill

Re: Iran begins cloud seeding operations as drought bites

#109

It's about time to start preparing for global geoengineering. Spraying our atmosphere with stuff that reflects light would buy us time to get emissions under control, and help avoiding the worst scenarios. Best of all, we know it works, thanks to emissions from maritime traffic and the spike in temperature rise after they got cleaner.

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Re: Iran begins cloud seeding operations as drought bites

#110
post #94

It's about time to start preparing for global geoengineering. Spraying our atmosphere with stuff that reflects light would buy us time to get emissions under control, and help avoiding the worst scenarios. Best of all, we know it works, thanks to emissions from maritime traffic and the spike in temperature rise after they got cleaner.

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