Photo by Kenrick Mills on Unsplash.
One thing we have, in southwestern Colorado, is weather. So we talk about it.
A well-informed person could suggest that, although we talk about the weather, no one does anything about it. In fact, a person did suggest exactly that, back in 1897. It might have been Mark Twain. Or maybe Charles Dudley Warner.
Those of us in the journalism business sometimes write about the weather, but once again, we don’t do anything about it.
However, there are a few people who are actually trying to do something about the weather. Here in southwest Colorado, some of those people work for Western Weather Consultants, a small family of weather scientists who get paid thousands of dollars to “do something about the weather.”
Hundreds of thousands of dollars, actually. Like, half a million per year.
The Durango-based Hjermstad family, owners of Western Weather Consultants, have built their company around the idea that you can insert a chemical called silver iodide into a “weather generating machine” and send the chemical up, up, up — in a plume of hot air — and if the clouds are just right and if the wind is just right, the silver iodide crystals will be carried up into the sky and fool the clouds into making snow. Or rather, into making more snow that the clouds would naturally produce, left to their own devices.
Of course, certain types of clouds want to make snow, when the temperature and wind direction are just right.
Other types of clouds are happy just being clouds. Or else, they are lazy.
Clouds don’t need silver iodide to make snow. But the Hjermstad family believes they can fool the clouds — if they are the right kind of clouds, that can be tricked into making more snow than they wanted to make. In that sense, clouds are a lot like people.
Scientists in other U.S. states have produced believable evidence that silver iodide, inserted into the right kind of cloud, can make additional snow. But the evidence is based on flying an airplane into a storm cloud, and releasing silver iodide inside the cloud, with your fingers crossed that you and the airplane can make it out of the storm cloud in one piece.
No one (that I’ve come across) has actually seen the ground-based “weather generating machines” operated by Western Weather Consultants produce any snow. But people who are desperate for snow want to believe that it works, and that belief is apparently worth $500,000 a year.
There are indeed people desperate for snow. Ski areas, for example. And farmers in Arizona and California, after the snow melts. Supposedly, silver iodide is flavorless. And maybe harmless as well.
While I can report that I’ve not seen evidence that “ground-based silver iodide machines” actually work as claimed, I’ve also never come across any evidence that they don’t work. When your company is earning half a million a year, you probably want to stress the the idea that your generators might very well be making snow, because there’s no proof that they don’t.
That is to say, you want to make use of the type of arguments commonly used by politicians.
I’ve been reading a lot about Artificial Intelligence lately. (You too?) When I asked Google’s AI, ‘Bard”, what it thought about cloud seeding, it told me we should be careful about embracing cloud seeding.
Addressing environmental concerns, ensuring responsible governance, and prioritizing robust scientific research are necessary steps before we can confidently dance in the rain it creates. Until then, alternative solutions such as water conservation and sustainable resource management should remain the cornerstone of our efforts to combat water scarcity.
Based on that answer — which mentions “rain” but nothing about snow — it’s obvious that ‘Bard’ is not responsible for shoveling the driveway.
But sympathetic to those of us who do.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.