Cloud Seeding; The Confirmed Weather Modification Program
There’s an undeniable human desire to manipulate every aspect of our world and the weather is no different. In our attempt to achieve this, the prospect of geoengineering has become a very real and very contentious reality. And while debates over chemtrails continue to rage, discussion of cloud seeding receives less attention, despite its recognized use.
For decades, millions of dollars have been spent implementing cloud seeding technology near ski resorts, bodies of water, and areas experiencing drought, yet scientific institutions studying the practice often describe its actual efficacy as unproven or highly conflicted. So, why do they keep doing it and is it safe?
What is Cloud Seeding?
Discovered by Vincent Shaefer, before it was refined by Kurt Vonnegut’s brother Bernard, the most common cloud seeding technology involves the dispersion of silver iodide in cloud water. Vonnegut and colleagues discovered the reaction while working for GE in Schenectady, NY in 1946.
Those familiar with Kurt Vonnegut’s seminal novel, Cat’s Cradle, might not be surprised to learn his brother’s cloud seeding discovery became the impetus for the notorious Ice-nine – the water polymorph developed to solidify mud for soldiers’ convenience, but which turned out to kill them upon contact with bodily tissue.
In reality, silver iodide isn’t the deadly compound Vonnegut imagined, but it’s use in manipulating weather has certainly sparked conspiracy and skepticism; particularly when it comes to weaponizing the weather.
And the U.S. government did, in fact, attempt to use cloud seeding to weaponize the weather during the Vietnam war. The once-classified Operation Popeye invoked rainfall in north Vietnam with cloud seeding missions conducted over a five-year period. According to documents later declassified, the operation was credited with increasing rainfall by 35 inches – more than four times the average annual rainfall in certain parts of the American southwest.
Contrary to the intention of Vonnegut’s imagined Ice-nine, the military anticipated cloud seeding technology to create mud and flooding in Vietnam, making it difficult for enemy troops to move efficiently.
Though the operation was claimed a success, it was eventually discontinued, possibly due to ambiguities in how that success was measured, as well as a Geneva treaty prohibiting weather weaponization. Since then, the military hasn’t admitted to any further cloud seeding, though it has been accused of it.
Is Cloud Seeding Safe?
Cloud seeding with silver iodide is allegedly safe as the amount of the compound used in a single session is pretty minuscule – typically 10 to 50 grams. The only reactions to the compound are listed as discoloration of the skin, but only after years of exposure. Pilots who have worked extensively with the compound have reported it turning their hands temporarily yellow.
Environmentally there seems to be little risk of contamination in water sources or crops, though some of the secondary effects have led to catastrophe in the past.
In 1952, a cloud seeding experiment dubbed Operation Cumulus, caused torrential downpours in Lynmouth, a small village in Devon, England – 35 people were subsequently killed after flooding destroyed homes, businesses, and local infrastructure.
More recently in 2009, flooding in the Saudi capital of Jeddah led to the deaths of 122 people after 2.76 inches of rain fell in just four hours – this was double the average annual rainfall and was believed to have been caused by cloud seeding. Similar incidents have occurred in other middle eastern countries that have attempted to use the technology to fight drought and arid climate.
Meanwhile, other countries have accused those with cloud seeding practices of stealing rain and precipitation from them. Something one might perceive to be a harbinger of weather modification warfare in the future. When everyone tries to control the weather, there will inevitably be disproportionate accumulations favoring those with more resources that can influence Mother Nature.
Cloud Seeding Conspiracy
There are also larger overarching concerns with weather manipulation technology when it comes to those polluting and degrading the environment. Though maybe less of a case with cloud seeding, weather manipulation could dissuade corporations and major polluters from cleaning up their act. Why switch practices that negatively impact the weather, when you could just pay to control it?
That pay for precipitation problem could become even more exacerbated and convoluted when the über wealthy start paying $100,000 to have clouds “overseeded” in order to prevent rain on their wedding day – but wait, this is actually a service one could currently purchase today. In fact, a large percentage of cloud seeding technology is used to benefit wealthy parts of the world where people want more precipitation for recreational activities or unsustainable farming and water use habits. Instead of curbing wasteful practices and reversing long-term detrimental trends, our solution is to engineer temporary or short-term solutions by essentially trying to hack the system.
And this has become the case with certain solutions to climate change, including Harvard scientist David Keith, who proposed spraying aerosols into the atmosphere to increase the planet’s albedo (its reflectivity). Keith says he believes injecting sulfuric acid into the upper reaches of the atmosphere could reflect enough sunlight to counter act rising global temperatures caused by climate change.
His proposal includes the use of hundreds and eventually thousands of annual flights with the sole purpose of spraying chemicals into the atmosphere to manipulate the weather. The only problem, which he admits himself, is that once this process was underway, it might have to continue indefinitely, eventually dumping millions of tons of chemicals into air.
Is it any surprise people are convinced that something like this is already underway?
For more on weather modification watch this episode of Open Minds with Dane Wigington:
About the Author
Did the Philadelphia Experiment Really Happen?
The World War II-era is notorious for mysterious Nazi experiments involving weapons and strange esoteric technology. But the U.S. also conducted its fair share of tests on new and nefarious weaponry and wartime tactics. Some of the most famous minds of the time, including Nikola Tesla and Albert Einstein, were even employed to execute the military complex’s will, occasionally leading to some perplexing stories.
One of the more bizarre accounts involves the supposed attempt of the Navy to develop a technology that could make an entire ship invisible to the naked eye. But these experiments had some unintended consequences that led to the project being shut down and buried until a man who claimed to have worked on the project blew the whistle on its cover-up. The stories that ensued became the inspiration for a 1980s, sci-fi movie and the Netflix series, Stranger Things, but could these stories actually have some validity to them?
The Philadelphia Teleportation Experiment
A man named Al Bielek is a central figure in these stories and his account has been ridiculed as simply being contrived nonsense, but the historical context and his detailed narrative are intriguing and possibly part of a true story, shedding light on clandestine government operations, one of which was known as the Philadelphia Experiment.
According to Bielek, in the late 1930s, the Navy was working on a project using electromagnetism to essentially develop an invisibility cloak for its warships. Around that time, Bielek said that Einstein was directing a program of degaussing ships by wrapping them in electromagnetic coils, to protect against magnetic mines planted by the Nazis. Tesla purportedly took this technology and parlayed it into the cloaking experiment, having some initial success with a small boat. After failed attempts with larger ships, Tesla gave up and the project was handed over to Dr. John von Neumann, who also worked on the Manhattan Project.
Von Neumann eventually succeeded in making the U.S.S. Eldridge, a Cannon-class destroyer escort, invisible for a short period of time on the first occasion. According to Bielek, one of Tesla’s inventions, a Zero Time Reference Generator, lent itself to this success. This device supposedly locks the Earth’s magnetic fields and acts as a cosmological reference with the electromagnetic fields at the center of the galaxy.
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The USS Eldridge, involved in the Philadelphia Experiment
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Bielek said that Tesla gave von Neumann a cryptic warning about a “personnel problem” that might occur in their experiment, but he continued anyway and the Navy trained a crew specifically for the operation. Then on August 12, 1943, they ran a second test. After being shrouded in a “green, ozone-laden haze” the ship purportedly disappeared for several hours, during which it traveled through time and then rematerialized. Upon its return, sailors were reported to be violently ill, some engulfed in flames, and others molecularly bonded with the ship. Bielek, however, said he and his brother, who was aboard the ship at the time, jumped off during the time warp and remained in 1983 on Montauk, Long Island at another secretive government facility also experimenting with time travel, known as the Montauk Project.
Bielek gives an intriguing explanation for how his time travel was possible, relating to Tesla’s Zero Time Generator. He said that Tesla’s device was the key for the ship to return back to its original location. According to Bielek, we live in a five-dimensional reality, with time being the fourth and fifth dimensions. He said that every human is given a set of locks that lock them in a point of time from which they came, but that the experiment ruptured those time references, upon returning to Philadelphia.
