# controlling weather **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 26, 2000, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controlling-weather/23610 "2000-06-26T19:34:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![lunapark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/278dde/32.png) [@lunapark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lunapark)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2000, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controlling-weather/23610/1 "2000-06-26T19:34:34Z")
Why haven’t we figured out how to control the weather yet? We are still pretty shotty at predicting it. Will it be possible in the future to control the weather? ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2000, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controlling-weather/23610/2 "2000-06-26T19:40:08Z")
Read James Gleick’s book “Chaos” on the difficulties of predicting weather, and on the ideas some people had back in the 1950s about controlling it. Aside from some minor local control (seeding clouds with dry ice or iodide crystals to start precipitation) there doesn’t seem to be a lot we can do – those grand hopes of half a century ago were apparently based on an incorrect model of the way things worked. And consider the fact that you wouldn’t WANT someone who couldn’t Predict the weather to Control it. How do they know that they’re changing it for the better? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2000, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controlling-weather/23610/3 "2000-06-26T19:43:00Z")
I think that the biggest problem with weather control, is that there’s a whole lot of weather in the world. We can, for instance, regulate temperature, pressure, humidity, and wind velocity on a small scale, such as a house, but that’s a very small, relatively isolated system. If one wanted to regulate the weather of, say, the entire United States, I imagine that it’d take a pretty big AC unit. Even at that, if we could build an air conditioner the size of the entire country, there’d still be cold air coming in from Canada and warm air from Mexico screwing everything up, so we’d have to either wall off the borders, or control the weather there, too. Of course, then we’d have to do the same their, and so on, until eventually, we’re talking about doing this on a global scale. I think you get the idea. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2000, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controlling-weather/23610/4 "2000-06-27T02:52:54Z")
Those damn butterflies won’t stop their incessant flapping!