[dangero]

It’s important to note that rainfall in CA is not 100% natural. The state actively funds cloud seeding.

https://www.grants.ca.gov/grants/gfo-23-311-advancing-precip...

Example of a recent $2.5M grant.

This information is often buried in budgets under applied research grants. I suspect they obscure this information because it could create liabilities, for example, if gov funded rain seeding creates flooding and human death are they partially responsible for this?

[kevinwang]

From the link alone, it looks like the state actively funds cloud seeding research, not active practical cloud seeding?

[dangero]

Applied research is active cloud seeding

[stevenhubertron]

This doesn’t seem important to note at all.

[dangero]

It can affect current rainfall numbers, future rainfall, and future projections

[Animats]

Santa Clara County had an active cloud-seeding program from 1954 through 1994.[1] Santa Clara County used to be a major agricultural area. The goal is not to create rain, but to move it. Get the clouds to dump over the agricultural areas instead of the inland mountains. It worked, a little. But there was a concern that it was making wildfires worse, by doing what it was intended to do and thus making the inland forests more dry.

[1] https://s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/valleywater.org.us-west-1...

[dangero]

To my point, liability concerns are listed on that pdf as a reason why Santa Clara County stopped.

Cloud seeding can definitely increase rain over California even by your logic. Clouds don't respect state boundaries.

[avree]

That's a grant, to research them, which is important. There are programs that are shut down, since they learned from them: https://sawpa.gov/santa-ana-river-watershed-cloud-seeding/

[dangero]

Applied research is active cloud seeding

[spiderfarmer]

If you’re truly interested in the subject, contact the organizations actually doing research in the subject. Leave your tinfoil hat at home.

[Dig1t]

There are companies that do cloud seeding:

https://www.rainmaker.com/

>Though cloud seeding has been in use around the world for 80 years, we recognize that people have valid questions about how the technology works.

Nothing tinfoil about it.

[mattmaroon]

That’s silly. If you know about it, so do the lawyers who would come out of the woodwork to take these cases.

[dangero]

Here’s a research report relating to weather modification. It references even a prior California case where a flood happened in an area utilizing cloud seeding.

https://digitalcommons.pace.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...