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Just watched an interesting programme about hurricanes and how scientists have been working on ways of affecting the strength and direction through cloud-seeding.

The idea is that silver iodide is sprayed into the clouds from aeroplanes. The tiny particles are then sucked up and form condensation nucleii that give rain. (Or in the case of hurricanes, reducing heat within the eye-wall clouds).

The Soviets used this technique to avert rainfall over their May Day parades in Moscow as well as avoiding rainfall during the Olympic Summer Games opening ceremony in 1980.

It was also used to "avoid" disaster after the Chernobyl power station explosion. Heavy moisture-laden clouds drifted westwards over the disaster site and on towards St Petersburg and Moscow. The soviets seeded clouds over Belorussia causing heavy rain to fall there.

Unfortunately, the authorities didn't tell the civilians on the ground what was going on, so many people have been affected by high doses of radiation since then. It's still in the ground...

Someone made an awful decision to sacrifice the health of the public in Belorussia for the health and well being of the population of Moscow.

/Shudders.

The chief pilot of the mission to seed the radiactive rainclouds was interviewed. Alexei Grushyin is still proud of what he and his crews did to save the major cities within the Soviet nation from a major disaster.

But what cost!





With or without radiation, a major hurricane making landfall in any heavily-populated area poses a serious ethical proplem for the powers that be. Seeding can change the course of a storm. Does one do that to save a city... and wipe out a nearby town that wouldn't have been damaged?

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only if that city's neighbor was a desert, like Dubai.

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