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It's COLD in Atlanta! The polar vortex has resulted in record-low temperatures across the US. In the future, will we be able to control and manipulate extreme weather? In this episode, Jonathan explores the scientific and ethical consequences of weather modification technology.
What piece of science fiction gadgetry that doesn't exist yet do you want in YOUR possession? Let us know in the comments below!
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[TRANSCRIPT]:
If the weather outside is frightful just hit Control Alt Delete!
Hey guys, it's Jonathan Strickland with Fw:Thinking and holy cow is it cold! It's ten degrees Fahrenheit here in Atlanta today. This is a city where we don't like to see ice unless it's in our tea! And it got me to thinking, when is someone finally going to fulfill the ambitions of Cobra Commander and build a working weather control device?
Here's the hard part. Weather systems are full of energy. NASA estimates that your average hurricane during its lifespan expends the equivalent energy of 10,000 nuclear bombs. With a system that complex and that energetic, we have trouble predicting it, much less controlling it. But that doesn't mean we haven't tried other ways to manipulate the weather.
Take cloud seeding for example. Now this is a method we've been using for decades to try and make it rain, and the idea is pretty simple. You've got a cloud full of moisture, so then you introduce millions of tiny particles so that water droplets can glom onto them and grow and grow until they're heavy enough to fall as rain or snow.
So, does it work? Maybe?
Here's the hard part, we can't really be sure when it rains if it rained because we seeded the cloud or if it was just going to rain anyway. But that hasn't stopped countries like China from putting hundreds of millions of dollars into research. In fact, they say that the reason we had such a sunny opening ceremony at the Beijing Olympics is because farmers in the surrounding area had been seeding the clouds and draining them of moisture so they wouldn't hit the city. Jury's still out on that one.
Meanwhile, some scientists are suggesting some pretty extreme ways to affect the weather. Including beaming microwaves either from the ground or from space in order to dismantle a tornado or steer a hurricane. But here's the thing, we don't know for sure that either of these methods would actually work, and the law of unintended consequences suggests that there's a possibility we could make things worse, rather than make them better.
There's also an ethical question. If you can steer a hurricane and deflect it from one area, what happens if it hits a different populated area? I would be shocked if we see weather control technology come into existence before I shuffle off this mortal coil. But what wouldn't surprise me is to see better and better prediction models. Because organizations like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have some of the world's most powerful supercomputers running on thousands of processor cores, and using some of the most sophisticated algorithms in existence to predict weather. So every year we're getting better and better at predicting weather.
So maybe we are never able to stop a polar vortex from turning me into an icicle. But we might be able to warn me enough so I can prepare for it.
Meanwhile, I'm gonna go find a way to thaw out!
