Will we ever be able to control the weather, and if we will, how will we do it?

Great Debates
1

I run a booth at the county fair in the summer and after sitting in ungodly heat and humidity all day, I was thinking, what would it take to control the weather? I’m picturing 75 degrees Fahrenheit with 50% humidity and a 10 MPH cool breeze?

What future mechanisms could we possibly employ to facilitate these conditions? Giant space based sunshades and mirrors? Mecha-AC units? Atmospheric nanobots?

A secondary question, if we could, would we want to?

2

Walls, a roof, and air conditioning?

We already have the ability to control the weather to a degree. Cities are hotter than their surroundings due to the preponderance of asphalt absorbing sunlight, and they’re windier due to buildings channeling the wind. We can seed clouds to increase the chance of it raining. And of course, the carbon dioxide we’ve produced is having all sorts of effects.

3

Dove-tailing what Chronos stated, are you talking micro-climates or macro-climates?

Having just written the above, we’re already making a mess with macro-climates with climate change.:smack:

4

Both.

Always look on the bright side, at least the plants will grow faster.

5

We can to a degree. Spraying silver iodide into the upper atmosphere causes it to rain. Using devices to pull cold water from a few hundred feet below the surface of the ocean to the top (basically mechanical buckets) lowers the surface temp and makes hurricanes weaker. We can lower the planet’s temp by creating clouds, breeding algae, painting our roofs white, etc.

I’m sure there are dozens of other things we can do. But it seems we already kindof have the ability.

However who knows what the side effects are. I have heard that the large amounts of sulfur that industry used to dump into the atmosphere shifted how rainfall falls with latitude, and the Ethiopian famine was an effect of that.

6

If you recall there were studies in the 60s about how to break up hurricanes and such. The bottom line was even if they did it, someone would wind up suing.

The potential for liability was too great, and science left “acts of God” to God, so to speak :slight_smile: