Controlling the Weather

I have a family member who believes that the government controls the weather. She's not alone. It's difficult to estimate, but at least 10% of the U.S. population believes that our government has the ability to literally turn the tides.

So, what would it take to pull off?

Controlling the weather is one of those sci-fi elements that seems reasonably within reach, but is on the same technological level as terraforming, which is altering a planet to match Earth-like conditions. That's altering atmospheric pressure, water levels, oxygens, temperature, etc. If we could terraform a planet, we'd have done some version of it to the Moon or Mars by now.

But let's say we're not talking about global conditions like El Niño, we just mean rain in a small town.

Influencing humidity or rain in a localized region through cloud seeding isn't impossible, but it is dependent on a few factors. For starters, there needs to be clouds already. If it's a sunny day with clear skies, then you're out of luck.

Next, you need a seeding agent. The silver iodide that's sprayed into the air or dropped down by pilots encourages the existing water droplets in the clouds to fall, therefor creating rain. The effectiveness differs from spot to spot, and some people question if it's really doing anything at all, but there are reports from Nevada, Wyoming and Australia that have seen an increase in precipitation. However, even in those places it's estimated that less than 10% of the total water budget is even impacted by cloud seeding.

But hey, every little bit helps farmers.

We may be able to influence rain to an extent, but controlling a hurricane is a whole other thing entirely. The issue is scale. It's just too many moving factors spread across too far.

A hurricane gets its fuel from the ocean. So, you'd have to control those temperatures if you wanted to snuff out the fuel supply. That's not only difficult, but dangerous. Even a 2C shift can damage wildlife and have unforeseen effects on the currents. If we could control the ocean's temperature, then we'd have done that decades ago to prevent coastal disasters that, guess what, effect the ultra rich too.

A hurricane releases more energy than a nuclear explosion.

For reference, most of the U.S. electrical grid is powered by fossil fuels. Next is renewables, things like wind, solar and hydropower. And of course you have nuclear power plants, and those have a significantly higher energy density than fossil fuels. That is the upper limit of the energy humanity can harness right now: nuclear.

So, what do people think we're doing, dropping nuclear bombs on hurricanes? Not to mention that destroying a thing is not the same as controlling it. Even if we could nuke a hurricane, that doesn't mean we could steer it. We have very little say over what happens after a bomb detonates, let alone a hurricane the size of a nation.

That's really the main problem: energy.

We lack the energy to control these things. Whether we're talking about manipulating the wind, moisture or heat, we would need to run Earth like a machine. Reaching that would have a profound effect on humanity and while theoretically possible, the math and science to hash it out isn't there yet.

Yes, we could try microwaves, lasers or even a bomb, but those are small-scale attempts that don't match the level of the energy required to steer a hurricane.

If we had that technology, we would be harnessing equal to or greater than the power of the Sun, and we could terraform other planets and moons and do there what we did here.

It would be the beginning of human dominion over the entire cosmos.