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Iran begins cloud seeding operations as drought bites

arabnews.com

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Re: Iran begins cloud seeding operations as drought bites

#131
post #69

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.

People use very little water. Most of what is drawn is returned back to the system. By that I mean if you use 20 gallons for a shower 19 is going into the drain to be reused. The only real usage of water is evaporation and that's stuff like growing plants and cooling towers.

Most places get freshwater from rivers or acquifers, sometimes lakes, use it for whatever, some large amount of that used water is collected as sewage, treat the sewage and discharge it downstream/into large bodies of water/the ocean.

Many systems also output reclaimed water; it's clean, but not up to environmental standards for discharge or drinking; typically excess clorination. This is often used for municipal irrigation sometimes toliet flushing, etc; uses where water below drinking standards is fine.

A handful of systems discharge treated water into their reservoirs or into acquifer recharge ponds. But there's an ick factor, even when discharge water is often held to higher standards than drinking water, so it's only done when the situation outweighs the ick.

Re: Iran begins cloud seeding operations as drought bites

#132

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.

Is that just because imported Dubai food is insanely expensive? I don't believe the math on anything but maybe indoor farming here is going to work out if the water costs anything at all.

Indoor farming can be extremely water-efficient, often at the cost of energy inefficiency, but with low solar prices and the level of sun they have in the Southwest perhaps that can become economical?

I don't know, I just do know that water shortages are a problem, are going to continue to become more of a problem, and there's currently just one technology that's affordable enough that some nations currently use it at scale. So let's get started.

Re: Iran begins cloud seeding operations as drought bites

#133
post #7

Earlier today I watched a video[0] that helped contextualize the water situation in Iran. The key takeaway for me was that Iran has been rapidly depleting their water reserves and they don't have any ways to quickly refill them, nor do they have treaties with neighboring countries to guarantee water. That video doesn't mention cloud seeding at all. How should we think about cloud seeding? Does this technology actuall…

I assume marketing. I’m wondering what will happen when they force the afghan refugees back over the border into Afghanistan since they don’t have the water to give them. Climate change and bad decisions from the last 50 years are starting to bite now. It’ll just get worse. Expect migrations and countries collapsing as millions of people are pushed to migrate for survival.

> bad decisions from the last 50

Some of these "bad decisions" are ignoring the old systems, and ways. The hubris of "modernization" as better.

The water systems of old Iran are fascinating, and well covered if you hunt around for the info. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qanat

Re: Iran begins cloud seeding operations as drought bites

#134
Why are we using "arabnews.com" as a source? It's owned by the Saudi government isn't it? This topic is hitting the front-page of more reputable news sources.

BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj4172yl0l1o

Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/pictures/iranians-pray-rain-drought-...

EDIT: yeah, let's not use arabnews as a news source please: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_News

Re: Iran begins cloud seeding operations as drought bites

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weather modification has been a well understood, but not particularly effective program that has been run in various places across the US for decades. The main difference with chemtrails is that those are a bunch of nonsense conspiracy theories that assume that the government is trying to do widespread mind control. Weather modification is just trying to get it rain to rain a tiny bit more, with limited success. http…

Really? All this time the chemtrail people I know have been talking about weather control, I hadn't heard of mind control being part of it. My take has been yeah I know cloud seeding and solar geoenhineering is real, ergo some amount of chemtrails are "real" in that they are deliberate particulate being sprayed and not just water. While the thing the chemtrail people claim that seems dubious is the scale and other nu…

The chemtrail conspiracies have always been a catch all for any idea except "it's a contrail or non-hidden spraying of some sort". To quote the 20 year old snapshot of the Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chemtrail_conspir...:

> The term "chemtrail" should not be confused with other forms of aerial dumping (e.g. crop dusting, cloud seeding, aerial firefighting, although the principle is much the same. It specifically refers to covert, systematic, high-altitude dumping of unknown substances generally for some illicit purpose, be it that of Governments, terrorists, private corporations, or all of the above.

> Among the theories proposed for the purpose of the alleged "chemtrails": atmospheric and weather modification, biological warfare, mind control, occult purposes, or other functions associated with a New World Order.

Re: Iran begins cloud seeding operations as drought bites

#137
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iran can of course build a nuke in a relatively short timespan if they want to, but for a range of reason they have made the decision not to. Perhaps they should have built a nuke, if they had one Israel and the US wouldn't have bombed them.

It's really amazing how a bunch of politicians in the US including can just repeat a claim and Trump can just prime a statement like "the JCPOA was a terrible deal" and people that should be smart will gradually start believing it without ever reading a single word of the JCPOA document. No they can't. Canada can. Japan can, SK can. But Iran poured concrete into the rods of its only, then completed heavy water reacto…

Honestly I don't see why any country would ever enter a long-term agreement with the US. The Constitution says that the president negotiates international agreements but that Congress must ratify them. Due to procedural rules basically making it impossible for Congress to pass legislature, any agreements that don't go through Congress are simply executive agreements that can be terminated with a stroke of a pen by a future president. This means that any remotely controversial agreements can't be expected to last beyond the current president's term.

Re: Iran begins cloud seeding operations as drought bites

#138
post #17

[flagged]

Iran's military spending (as percentage of GDP) is fairly similar to that of the U.S. and European countries. The most recent numbers I could find (from 2024) indicate that they spent 2.0% compared to 3.4% in the U.S. [1], although there have been reports that military spending has increased significantly in the most recent budget.

I agree with the sentiment that the humanity should focus on producing something more useful than bombs, but bringing it up specifically when talking about Iran comes off as a bit disingenuous, especially when they have been recently bombed by both the U.S. and Israel. [2] Imagine the roles were reversed: How would we react to an Iranian or Russian citizen suggesting that the U.S. or an European country should focus on infrastructure instead of building an army?

[1] https://milex.sipri.org/sipri

[2] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/22/satellite-images-sh...

Re: Iran begins cloud seeding operations as drought bites

#139

Why are we using "arabnews.com" as a source? It's owned by the Saudi government isn't it? This topic is hitting the front-page of more reputable news sources. BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj4172yl0l1o Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/pictures/iranians-pray-rain-drought-... EDIT: yeah, let's not use arabnews as a news source please: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_News

BBC == OK Arab News == Not OK

What is your opinion on Al Jazeera then?

Re: Iran begins cloud seeding operations as drought bites

#140
post #17

[flagged]

Iran's military spending (as percentage of GDP) is fairly similar to that of the U.S. and European countries. The most recent numbers I could find (from 2024) indicate that they spent 2.0% compared to 3.4% in the U.S. [1], although there have been reports that military spending has increased significantly in the most recent budget. I agree with the sentiment that the humanity should focus on producing something more…

What are talking about? Iran attacked Israel with ballistic missiles ( before the 12 day war) , not to mention funding the proxies ( ring of fire). If it invested the money in water infrastructure instead of nuclear weapons or Hizbollah they would not be in such dire situation.
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