Who knew there was a Texas Weather Modification Act (1967?)

[shance]

Guess these guys have been at it for some time.....

"In addition, in administering the Texas Weather Modification Act (enacted by the Texas Legislature in 1967), the program issues licenses and permits to organizations and individuals responsible for carrying out both cloud seeding and other weather modification operations. The aim of the regulatory function is to ensure that various methods of modifying the weather do not dissipate clouds nor inhibit their ability to produce rainfall to the detriment of people or property in the affected areas.

The program also sponsors and provides administrative and technical oversight for ongoing weather modification research and development activities. This includes the use of federal grants for exploratory, and confirmatory, cloud seeding experiments. TDLR issues reports on the results of cloud seeding research work and shares information on technological advances with other State agencies, governmental organizations, and interested individuals.

The TDLR staff also works with political subdivisions, other organizations, and individuals in the design or rain enhancement projects as well as the implementation of seeding strategies for augmenting rainfall over targeted watersheds.

Weather Modification Regulation

All individuals and organizations intending to conduct weather modification activities are required to obtain a weather modification license and permit from the TDLR. George Bomar is the contact person at TDLR for information on, and assistance with, the licensing and permitting of weather modification operations.

The Department relies on the Weather Modification Advisory Committee for recommendations on applications for weather modification licenses and permits. The Committee, consisting of at atmospheric scientist, engineer, businessman, attorney at law, and agricultural producer, meets quarterly, usually in Austin, to review applications for licenses and permits.

Cloud Seeding Projects

All weather modification funding allocated to TDLR has been contractually committed to existing rain enhancement projects. Funds for new projects are currently unavailable. For questions about the use of funds for rain enhancement operations, contact George Bomar at the TDLR.

For more information about the weather modification program, e-mail TDLR at [e-mail].

http://www.license.state.tx.us/weather/weathermod.htm

[The_Warmth]

1. Chemtrails anyone?

There goes my sunshine too =(

[shance]

4. I was surprised at the year. 1968?

That's a while back.

[jobycom]

12. That was around the time they tried to seed a hurricane to dry it out

I think it was Betsy in 65, though a lot of people shift it to Camille in 69. Didn't work, and some people claimed it made the hurricane worse, so it was never (IIRC) tried again.

I don't believe the chemtrail stuff. Cloud seeding's been around for decades, though.

[jobycom]

15. To follow up my own post, apparently not Betsy

Several hurricanes were seeded, but not Betsy. No evidence that they were made stronger, but there was a concern they could be made more erratic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Stormfury

[Lisa]

24. Lyall Watson discusses this in his book "Heaven's Breath", too (n/t)

[greyl]

5. Hell no. nt

[blogslut]

2. There's a lot of drought

at least in the Panhandle. Is cloud seeding bad?

[shance]

3. I was wondering why they haven't been cloud seeding instead of

letting everything die.

Oh wait, that's right. We're dealing with the Republican leaders of Texas.

[blogslut]

6. I don't know

I'm not sure that we need seeding so much at the moment. Our particular patch of Texas sits on top of the Oglala Aquifer. Then again, T. Boone Pickens is trying to buy rights to that water so he can lease it elsewhere.

I would imagine the law made sure people didn't seed areas based on favoritism n stuff. I can't say I see that sort of thing around here. Crop dusters, yeah, but not cloud seeding.

[shance]

8. You know I was just thinking of someone being able to buy water rights.

When did something so potentially abusive and unjust like being able to buy water rights ever come into existence?

Seems to me that should be outlawed right there.

[blogslut]

9. Well, we are trying to fight it

We kicked T. Boone and his crony mayor out ten years ago and he's had it in for us ever since. You know, he helped fund the Swiftboat Liars.

[jobycom]

11. Did he? He used to hate Bush, when did he change?

I remember during the first Gulf War, T. made a lot of enemies by accusing Bush of being a "slave" of the Kuwaitis. Then again, I guess he sides with whomever his business interests lie with at any given time. Seems like the Iraqi war upset some of Pickens oil holdings, somehow.

Pickens isn't all bad. He was hilarious in Dr Strangelove. :smoke:

[blogslut]

13. Pickens follows the power

cause he's already got the money. If Dems were in power, he'd give to Dems.

However, a read-through of his campaign donations shows him to be one of the largest individual contributors in America -approximately six million over the last 26 years:

http://www.newsmeat.com/billionaire_political_donations/T_Boone_Pickens.php

[jobycom]

19. Mostly Republican, but some oddities

He did give to Bush in 91, despite his criticism of Bush's war. The two Dems I noticed were John Kerry and Harry Reid. He gave to Ben L Campbell, but only after he became Republican, it looks like.

Hm. I wonder what made him attack Bush in 90 and support him in 91? Maybe I misunderstood what he was attacking over the war.

[blogslut]

22. Yeah, his contributions to Reid and Kerry

are puzzling. My personal theory is Boone wanted some kind of back-door access to their respective mailing lists...but that's just a theory.

[shance]

20. You go blog. Why are these bullys so obsessed with controlling

everything and having the power to harm and/or totally dominate others lives?

I can't imagine they get satisfaction from it. Maybe temporarily.

[blogslut]

23. Ashamed to say

the election to rid our town of Boone's crooked mayor was the first time I ever voted. My mother dragged me to the polls because exits indicated Picken's candidate was losing. After they lost, old T. Boone packed up his petroleum company and moved to Dallas in a huff. Left behind his cat too. :)

[TechBear_Seattle]

10. Cloud seeding is expensive and very unreliable

Experiments were done in the late 60s in to the mid 70s that showed cloud seeding did not work.

Each rain drop starts as a bit of dust, pollen or some other solid matter up in the atmosphere. Under the right conditions, water vapor will condense on the nucleus, which provides more surface area where more water vapor can condense, etc. Usually, this is self limiting; the result is clouds, ie bodies of condensed water vapor (as droplets of liquid water or crystals of ice) small and light enough to remain aloft. Precipitation occurs when the droplets or crystals become heavy enough to fall to the ground.

The theory behind cloud seeding was to spread a layer of nuclei in the air, around which water vapor could condense. Silver iodide was a common seed material, as it is hydrophilic (attracts water) and has thermal properties that encourage condensation. Other material was tried as well.

The early experiments like the ones mentioned in your article were to prompt cloud formation in a clear sky. These experiments failed miserably. First off, the mass of air you are seeding has to be relatively cold: clouds won't form when the air pressure and temperature are above the point where water turns in to vapor. Second, you need enough water in the air to begin condensation. Third, there must be a mass of relatively warm, wet air feeding in to the area you are seeding, otherwise you use up the water in the air mass and the condensation chain stops with nothing more than a light haze. And if all of those conditions are present, you already have clouds forming.

Latter cloud seeding experiments tried to get existing clouds to drop their moisture here rather than waiting for it to drop over there. Those were a bit more successful, but the method of scattering the seeding material and the inherently chaotic nature of weather processes made the procedure very unreliable and just too expensive to use.

[shance]

14. They've been doing it for over forty years.

Its vastly improved, however the question like everything else is, why is someone allowed to manipulate the weather that will affect so many others? As we have seen, it has not stopped with cloud seeding. The modifications have become much more sophisticated and not in a positive sense.

The methods of weather modification have drastically been modified and manipulated.

There is the work of scalar electromagnetics, which people need to learn more about.


"For our very survival, it is absolutely imperative that informed citizens be aware of this dramatic change, which is just now starting. The powerful new science and engineering must be controlled and used for humanity's benefit, not its detriment. Else it will eventually be let loose unrestrainedly, to destroy all life on earth - a possibility indicated by Nikita Khrushchev in 1960." - Bearden

[TX-RAT]

21. Sure have

Not sure they can prove it works yet.

[shance]

7. Here's a link to the actual Texas Weather Modification law.

Its HUGH!

That's a lot of law there.

(Reminds me of the good ole Patriot Act.)

http://www.license.state.tx.us/weather/weatherlaw.htm#251

[jobycom]

16. Blame Kurt Vonnegat's brother!

"One scientist associated with the invention of cloud seeding is Irving Langmuir. The first attempt at cloud seeding was in the Massachusetts in 1946. A plane "seeded" a cloud with crushed dry ice and snow began falling out of that cloud. Noted atmospheric scientist Bernard Vonnegut (brother of novelist Kurt Vonnegut) is credited with discovering the potential of silver iodide for use in cloud seeding. This property is related to a good match in lattice constant between the two types of crystal (the crystallography of ice later played a role in Kurt Vonnegut's novel Cat's Cradle). It is important to mention that silver iodide is mostly used for hail suppression while the new technique called hygroscopic seeding is used for the enhancement of rainfall in warm clouds."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_seeding

[rucky]

17. WTF???? n/t

[1956]

18. It was either on the Science, Discovery or History channel

that seeding the clouds was used extensively in Vietnam in the Ho cho minh(sp?) trail, to make it so wet and miserable that the enemy couldn't get thru. When I saw it, I couldn't believe it!

[Lisa]

25. UN treaty banning "hostile modification of the environment", 1977

What I find striking is that the US government pushed hard for this agreement, in the 1970s. Just a reminder that there was a time when one could say "White House" and "international environmental treaty", and people wouldn't either weep or fall over laughing.


"Both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives held hearings, beginning in 1972, and the Senate adopted a resolution in 1973 calling for an international agreement "prohibiting the use of any environmental or geophysical modification activity as a weapon of war...." In response to this resolution, the President ordered the Department of Defense to undertake an in-depth review of the military aspects of weather and other environmental modification techniques. The results of this study and a subsequent interagency study led to the U.S. Governments decision to seek agreement with the Soviet Union to explore the possibilities of an international agreement."

"The Convention defines environmental modification techniques as changing -- through the deliberate manipulation of natural processes -- the dynamics, composition or structure of the earth, including its biota, lithosphere, hydro-sphere, and atmosphere, or of outer space. Changes in weather or climate patterns, in ocean currents, or in the state of the ozone layer or ionosphere, or an upset in the ecological balance of a region are some of the effects which might result from the use of environmental modification techniques."




http://www.state.gov/t/ac/trt/4783.htm

[shance]

26. Yep. I'm amazed how environmental groups aren't educating more on this

issue.

This issue has been around for over thirty plus years.