History and problems with Weather Modification

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https://www.rbs2.com/w2.htm
Excerpts
This essay is a companion to my earlier essay, Weather Modification Law in the USA, which concentrates on a discussion and analysis of court cases in the USA involving weather modification, and contains a detailed review of tort law in the USA that applies to weather modification.

It is commonly stated that cloud seeding was invented in 1946 by employees of the General Electric Research Laboratory. This "fact" is wrong. There were at least three earlier scientific attempts to modify weather:

1. Prof. Emory Leon Chaffee at Harvard University dispensed charged sand from an airplane during 1924, to attempt to modify weather. (McDonald, 1961)
2. W. Veraart in 1930 dropped dry ice into clouds, in an attempt to modify weather. His technique and results were apparently published only in his book, which was in the Dutch language. (Byers, 1974, pp. 5-6)
3. Prof. Henry G. Houghton of MIT sprayed hygroscopic solutions into fogs in 1938 to dissipate the fog.

None of these early scientists had adequate financial support for their research, so society was unable to benefit from their ideas. Looking back in time, it is clear that it is not enough to have a good idea or theoretical scientific insight into a problem.

One must also have the financial resources to pay both salaries and expenses of scientists with ideas and insight. General Electric provided such resources to Langmuir and Vonnegut, and General Electric management was able to quickly arrange contracts with the U.S. Military.

On 27 December 1950, the General Electric Company announced that it would no longer enforce its patents on weather modification methods. (Havens, Jiusto, Vonnegut, 1978, p. 53) By effectively putting its weather modification patents into the public domain, General Electric further isolated itself from tort liability for harm that might arise from weather modification technology that was developed by employees of General Electric. (Rosenfeld, p. 205)

Dr. Vonnegut, appearing in 1952 before a U.S. Senate committee that was considering legislation on weather modification, said:

Theory has predicted and experiments are confirming the fact that a few pounds of silver iodide released into the atmosphere in the form of fine particles can exercise a profound influence over the weather hundreds of miles away from the point of release. Clearly no private individual or group can be permitted to carry on operations over thousands or hundreds of thousands of square miles.

The potentialities, both for good and bad, which attend silver-iodide seeding are so large that the development and use of this technique must be placed in the hands of the Federal Government.

(Havens, Jiusto, Vonnegut, 1978, p. 53)

Despite Dr. Vonnegut's clear insight into the nature of the problem, the U.S. Congress never passed a statute regulating weather modification.