Playing God: Can We Control the Weather? 8/05 discovery ch.

[wxmann_91]

There have been reports that the Chinese will control the weather during the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Yes, I've noticed that several STY's have originated from one spark of convection. (Xangsane in 2006 being a noticable past example) The big lumbering gyres in the monsoonal trough usually never turn into anything unless they are given a long time like Man-yi was.

[Hybridstorm_November2001]

The most absurd part of the show, IMO, was the scientist claiming that hurricanes are stronger now due to global warming based on data dating back to ONLY 1970! lol. It almost seemed like a joke. How can you draw such conclusions with only 30-40 years of data...especially when most of that time was during a quiet period in the Atlantic?

Gee so I wasn't the only one that noticed that. I almost blew a gasket when they used the roughly 30 years worth of data to justify this argument. My family members were like chill, until I explained to them all the problems with doing this.

I wonder how many people with little if any knowledge of the climate fell for this? That is what is truly frightening in my mind, junk science being used to hood wink an unsuspecting public.

[artist]

This has been my fear for some time now. (the standards on which they are basing their supposed research the general public never hears about)

[x-y-no]

The most absurd part of the show, IMO, was the scientist claiming that hurricanes are stronger now due to global warming based on data dating back to ONLY 1970! lol. It almost seemed like a joke. How can you draw such conclusions with only 30-40 years of data...especially when most of that time was during a quiet period in the Atlantic?

Gee so I wasn't the only one that noticed that. I almost blew a gasket when they used the roughly 30 years worth of data to justify this argument. My family members were like chill, until I explained to them all the problems with doing this.

I wonder how many people with little if any knowledge of the climate fell for this? That is what is truly frightening in my mind, junk science being used to hood wink an unsuspecting public.

Well, given the reliability issue regarding older (pre-sattelite) data, what are they supposed to do? There have been other studies which attempt to look at a longer timeline (finding a similar correlation of average SSTs to more intense storms) and they've been heavily criticized on the basis of inadequate data.

And note that the study was on all basins, not just the Atlantic.

[x-y-no]

The notion of inducing an east coast trough by laying down black carbon contrails in the west to build a ridge was intriguing ...

Wonder how much it would cost to try this experiment (preferably not when a major hurricane is bearing down on the coast, at least until we know what we're doing.)

[DESTRUCTION5]

I watched this and just laughed..Messing with mother nature in not something god intended us to do..Period..I think IMO it can only make for some catastrophic consequences..

[x-y-no]

Oh and one other interesting thing from the program which I had somehow managed to remain ignorant of - the Soviet cloud-seeding program after Chernobyl.

[Hybridstorm_November2001]

Lack of good data is no excuse for misleading the public. In such a case scientists should say sometime like this:

"Our findings point towards this possibility, yet due to the lack of a sufficient amount of data we can not be certain of said conclusion."

[Steve]

>>I wonder how many people with little if any knowledge of the climate fell for this? That is what is truly frightening in my mind, junk science being used to hood wink an unsuspecting public.

Yeah, that's like the guy that used the 1970-1994 data a while back. Not a representative sampling of the last several million years (or at least in the time that North America has looked liked North America and the rest of the basins have looked relatively like the rest of the basins).

At the same time as the perpetration of junk science on the unsuspecting public, we have junk political leaders doing the same thing with political issues (being careful not to get the post deleted ).

So what are you gonna do? Get educated and stay as informed as you can IMHO.

Steve

[x-y-no]

Lack of good data is no excuse for misleading the public. In such a case scientists should say sometime like this:

"Our findings point towards this possibility, yet due to the lack of a sufficient amount of data we can not be certain of said conclusion."

Huh ... I didn't record the program, so I can't supply quotes, but my recollection is that section was liberally sprinkled with phrases like "some scientists believe" and qualifying words like "may."

I think I would have reacted to an excessively high level of confidence, but I didn't get that impression.

[chadtm80]

I watched Jan, and found it very un-profesional and irresponsible to give the GW stuff based on a 30 year window of the Tropics.. We all KNOW you cant draw any kind of conclusions on the tropics from just a 30 year span.

[x-y-no]

I watched Jan, and found it very un-profesional and irresponsible to give the GW stuff based on a 30 year window of the Tropics.. We all KNOW you cant draw any kind of conclusions on the tropics from just a 30 year span.

Do we know that? If we were talking about the Atlantic basin alone, I'd say yes. But all basins?

[RL3AO]

There have been reports that the Chinese will control the weather during the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

I believe that they Chinese are planning to cloud seed to produce rain over Beijing to cleanse the air. Very bad pollution there.

As for the show Superstorm...what a joke. Since when does a hurricane have a 15 mile wide wallcloud yet sunny skies when the storm in 3 miles off the coast?

[Sanibel]

How can you take any program seriously that shows a big 5 mile wide dark tornado as a hurricane? It's a joke! They treat the general public like morons.

[cpdaman]

first there are some things that would be used for Military operations such as "weather as a force multiplier"

this would be top secret, the public nor the producers of the show would be privvy to this information, if it exists it will be treated as "secret" knowledge or as a National Security Issue. If the weather could be controlled, it would never be spelled out to the public, no reason to

[x-y-no]

How can you take any program seriously that shows a big 5 mile wide dark tornado as a hurricane? It's a joke! They treat the general public like morons.

Was that in the first program (on controlling the weather) or in the "Superstorm" movie on that theme?

[Sanibel]

Superstorm

[x-y-no]

Superstorm

OK ... I switched away from that after the first few minutes. It looked like the usual hokey disaster flick ...

[RL3AO]

Another thing that made me scratch my head was in Superstorm, they said the NHC had the storm hitting Louisiana in 5 days while the other guys have it hitting Miami in 4. Now if the system is north of Puerto Rico, how is that possible?

[Weatherfreak14]

I think both programs was way stupid and very "unsafe" to show the public misinformation. Plus how can we talk about controlling the weather, when we cant even accuratly know where the storm would go. If i was the goverment i would put the funding into forcasting instead of controlling the weather. Maybe controlng the weather maybe. possible in the futture, but still unatural, and im totally against it 110%.