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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rod Snell" data-source="post: 2643342" data-attributes="member: 796">This is a valid question, and in fact I was a small part of weather modification studies that provided some answers to it.  I was on duty in data collection for tests of hurricane modification, an observer to the operation system test of USAF cold fog modification in Alaska, and provided some technical analysis to the issue of acid rain from coal fired plants and acid rain damage in New England.To put the summary first,THE EFFECTS ARE MUCH MORE LOCAL AND LIMITED IN EFFECT THAN ANYONE SUPPOSED.  THE ATMOSPHERE IS VERY DYNAMIC AND RESILIENT, AND THE INFLUENCE OF OUR POLLUTION GETS FACTORED INTO THE BALANCE, OFTEN BEING OVERSHADOWED OR BUFFERED BY NATURAL PROCESSES.First, the attempted "rain out" of hurricanes was a failure, with the hurricanes becoming only somewhat weaker, but also becoming much more long-lived and more erratic in their track. In 1971, a hurricane was heavily seeded after it had passed east of Hatteras, but lasted 2 weeks longer than expected and eventually wandered back enough to influence the US east coast again. I was stationed at Andrews at the time.Anecdotally, I then spent a year in Greenland as lead forecaster for the 4 Dew Line sites, and saw that it was in a major cold spell in the 70s, with the glaciers advancing rapidly, and some islands covered in ice for the first time in living memory.  I saw a writeup in the 90s that the re-emergence of one of these islands was hailed as the "smoking gun of global warming," and claimed the island had been ice covered "for millennia."  I had a map made in the 40s which not only showed the island ice free, but listed the Innuit name for it.Now, the cold fog modification system. It is in place and still being used at Elmendorf AFB, and uses propane generators to change the frequent cold water drops  to ice, causing it to snow. I still remember looking like frosty the snowman from being downwind of the generator at the ops test.  Despite dire predictions about the danger to the environment and widespread weather modification, the system works today to temporarily clear visibility on runways to land planes and save lives.  Within less than an hour of turning it off, the only remaining sign it exists is extra snowfall on the base.ACID RAIN.  In New England, acid rain is a real problem, and it is partly man caused by pollution from combustion.  New Englanders KNEW it was caused by midwestern coal fired electric generation plants, and you can still find some sources quoting that now.BUT a multiagency cooperative study using harmless isotope tracers in pollution sources found that well over 90% of New England acid rain pollution came from sources within 50 miles of the lake.  New England acid rain comes mostly from New England oil-fired electric plants and home heating!!! Now the EPA and New England residents are at odds because the EPA says the pollution from wood-fired stoves must be reduced, and are a major problem.  Guess it was OK to want to shut down the Midwest, but don't mess with New England traditions??!?I am a graduate degree observational atmospheric physicist, and my greatest concern about pollution is that it can do great damage LOCALLY, and we can sure enough mess in our own nest.  Dumping it in our neighbors yard is not the solution, nor is claiming the Japanese are polluting the US either.  Visit the central Pacific ocean and look at the hundreds of square miles of plastic crap floating there and see what ocean dumping does when the ocean currents concentrate the floating mess.However, the politically motivated drive to make CARBON a universal bad guy, justified mostly by suspiciously unreliable computer models and cherry-picked anecdotal data (always a red flag in any study I read) is shakey at best and the predictions for the last 18 years are contrary to the data.If you go back to the Journal of Applied Meteorology and read the first article I co-authored in 1979, we were looking at the comparative value of computer modeling and data in rainfall analysis and prediction for flood control, agriculture, and water use regulation.  One of the key points was that while data collection techniques have their problems, computer output MUST in the end be reconciled with observational data.THE WEATHER IS NEVER WRONG.  COMPUTER MODELS AND FORECASTS OFTEN ARE.I'd like to add a pitch for money to be spent in better quality collection of observational weather data in North America and our neighboring oceans.  Although not as visible in the press as the wholesale budget cuts in DOD, the budgets for weather support in the US are being cut dangerously low. With each new computer, or improvement in the software, sensor systems and people are being cut.  Upper air soundings, so critical to severe weather forecasts right here in Oklahoma, are now only taken at 200 mile spacing, and further cuts will come if the budget is cut.  Ocean bouys provide critical real data to calibrate the satellite Vertical Temperature Profile Radiometers, which are the NASA temperature data.  No bouys, crappy satellite data. And so on.While programs like the NEXRAD Doppler radar (my pet project; I was deputy director for 5 years) greatly improved severe weather data, it is aging, and other good systems remained undeployed.  Vertical sounders using Doppler microwave to supplement the balloon sounders were developed at Boulder, but languish because of funding.  The phased-array antenna for the NEXRAD awaits production and deployment.  Automated weather observation systems could be put at every general aviation airport, but who will pay?  If the full cuts projected happen, expect forecasts to degrade.The worse the data, the worse the forecast.  And weather observations are like an electric clock.  You can't just plug in the clock only when you want to know the time. The weather observation system has to run all the time to be effective.</blockquote>

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