It is not a secret that a state like California, which rarely gets a drop of rain, is in a major drought. California has been slowly digging its own grave into the dry dirt year after year by continuing to senselessly use their water supply. The intensity of this drought has been record setting and although people did not believe the intensity of it before, they are certainly seeing the consequences of it now.
Being a Californian myself I have seen these effects first hand. California has begun to limit the amount of water per household. Watering the front yard is allowed every other day and your day is assigned to you depending on your house number. If you go over the allowed amount of water for the month or if you water on a day, which is not assigned to your household you risk getting fined. I imagined this was the end of the drought talk and that we would soon figure out a way to transport more water into our sunny and hot state. Then I heard of something called “cloud-seeding”.
“Cloud-seeding” has according to the LA Times , been used in California since the 1950’s. It is an incredible phenomenon that many of us, myself included, did not even know was possible. Basically, the LA Times explain that clouds are injected with silver iodide, which in turn forms ice particles in the clouds. These ice particles then weigh clouds down and help produce rain. The LA Times as well states that a process like this costs approximately $550,000 yearly, therefore this is clearly not a cheap and easy to do process.
Not only is “cloud-seeding” expensive and difficult to do but it is also affecting our environment. Rain is not being produced in a natural manner. The rain falling from the skies in the middle of summer was a rare situation, which people were not used to seeing. As stated by Reynard Loki, this phenomenon of “cloud seeding” is a very scientific process. It involves the manipulation of chemicals to produce an otherwise natural reaction of rain. This consequently leading us to think of what side effects this process could have, both negative and positive. Positively it brings us much needed water that we need, that’s an obvious statement. Negatively however, people have become very skeptical about what else could be injected into our clouds or our environment as a whole without providing knowledge of it happening to the general public. Much skepticism has been going around about whether the attempt to bring water in a more natural manner rather than through the physical transportation of water could have future negative side effects on the population that is exposed to it. Research of course must be done in a longitudinal and experimental manner. Years from now, researchers can take people who were in the exposed areas of “cloud-seeding” and compare their psychical and mental health to those who were not exposed to such environments. Only then will we be certain of the presence or absence of these effects. We will better be able to understand whether it is a positive thing to invest in or if it, like most things, has negative side effects as well.