Usually IF you find me on CNN I'm attempting to understand and keep up the latest news on political debates and what's happening over in Iraq and Afghanistan. This time, however, I was looking up topics on environmental health to share with you guys! The topic I found is about a French physicist named Jerome Kasparian, who is testing a method on making rain with lasers. If you are like me the first thing you will be asking is "Is this even healthy, for us and/or for the environment?!"This method is called Cloud Seeding. From what I understand and according to the article, the old method (chemical seeding) consisted of shooting particles of dry ice or silver iodide into the atmosphere. The water molecules would then cling onto the particles and form rain. Cons to this method is it is expensive, doesn't always work, and the chemicals in the atmosphere are easily spread by winds. With the laser method, they are sending short light pulses containing watts of energy into the atmosphere, verses chemicals. The pluses would knock off electrons creating charged atmospheric particles which would then make it easy for water molecules to cling to. Using lasers is more accurate, can be aimed more easily, and can be turned off and on at any given time. This process can not occur in dry climates.
In my opinion, what's the point? I suppose it would help in areas that are low on water but as stated in the beginning of the article places like Texas, who have been hit by dust storms due severe drought, it seems pointless because it doesn't work in dry climates anyways. I also feel that messing with nature brings on other consequences that we haven't even thought about yet that could be worse than just having dry climates. I feel that even though the articled never mentioned any hazardous effects of using lasers, there are still effects that could happen.
What do you think?
Woah that is crazy what people come up with. Creating rain sounds very tricky and probably not the best idea. I understand that it would probably help out a lot of crops and plants when there is drought, but still, nature is nature. People should not have control over it. It is super cool to think about though, and know how far technology has come!
ReplyDeleteThat's kind of cool to think that they're using lasers in such ways these days. Though it's pretty ironic that the intended purpose of it in the first place might not work because of the climate in the intended locations.
ReplyDeleteI think it's very exciting the advances that they are making in technology but I agree that we shouldn't be messing around with mother nature so much. If it could be used in dry climates it would be much more beneficial.
ReplyDelete