There was never much followup on this story about the results of the National Resource Council study. Perhaps it’s because proponents did not like the results it yielded?

The study concluded “…there is NO scientifically credible evidence hail can be suppressed.” (National Research Council. 2003. Critical Issues in Weather Modification Research. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.)

Who does the program look out for? Certainly not your MILLIONS of tax dollars! The beneficiaries are solely those who make money from this program.

Research program might settle cloud-seeding debate
BLAKE NICHOLSON, Associated Press Writer Oct 24, 2003

The debate has been going on for decades, in legislatures, in county board rooms and in farm fields: Can the clouds be changed to make rain?

Hans Ahlness says yes. Dan Flor says no.

The National Research Council says it’s time to find out.

The council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, said in a recent report that while clouds across the globe have been seeded for 60 years to increase rainfall and reduce hail, there is no convincing evidence it works.

The council is calling for a national research effort into weather modification – cloud seeding now done in some form in 24 countries and 10 states, including North Dakota.

Ahlness, vice president of operations for Fargo-based Weather Modification Inc., which seeds clouds in a number of states and countries, doubts more research will ever end the debate, but he thinks it’s a good start.

Storm clouds are seeded by sprinkling them with tiny crystals of silver iodide to promote moisture circulating in the tops of the clouds. The theory is that the developing ice crystals melt as they fall, producing rain.

A Denver cloud-seeding operation was credited last year with increasing the amount of snow in one county with four ski areas.

Flor, who ranches near Marmarth in southwestern North Dakota’s Slope County, sees no proof of it.

“There’s no proof that it’s ever produced any more rainfall. The hail insurance premiums don’t reflect that it decreases hail,” he said.

Five North Dakota counties – McKenzie, Mountrail, Ward, Williams, Bowman – and part of Slope County take part in the Cloud Modification Project, which is operated and partially funded by the state Atmospheric Resource Board.

This past summer, cloud-seeing planes spent about 675 hours in the air over those counties, board director Darin Langerud said. The total cost of the program was about $600,000, with the board paying about one-third of the cost and the counties the rest.

Langerud said the cost prevents other counties from signing up, but a lack of hard evidence that cloud seeding works also is a factor.

“If you hold it to … scientifically credible proof, it is true that a lot of aspects of cloud seeding have not met that standard,” he said. The government, he said, has not adequately funded research to help states meet that standard.

In the early 1990s, Montana farmers worried that North Dakota cloud-seeding operations over eastern Montana were stealing their rain. The Montana Legislature passed a law requiring an expensive environmental study and a $10 million bond before any cloud seeding could take place, effectively putting a stop to cloud seeding in 1993.

Even years of drought have not changed the minds of some Montana farmers.

“We’re way better off right now than we were in the 1980s, when (cloud seeders) were in here,” said Bernard Pease, who farms near Lambert, Mont., to the west of North Dakota’s McKenzie County.

“Those people – we don’t ever want to see them in here again on the east side of Montana. Ninety percent of people here don’t want to see them again, ever,” Pease said.

“They’re bad news, and once they get in, you can’t get rid of them,” he said. “If these guys are so great, there would be people knocking on the door to bring them in.”

Langerud said cloud seeding often is not the answer to ending a drought because the clouds have to be there to seed.

“You can’t make it rain out of a clear, blue sky,” he said.

Better research programs and communication might help convince people of the benefits of cloud seeding, Ahlness said.

“People tend to be pretty polarized on the issue,” he said. “When things are going badly in farming … you’re always looking for something that’s causing your misfortune. The weather is always a lightning rod for that … and we’re out there fiddling around with it.”

The National Research Council said the United States invested more than $20 million a year in weather modification research in the late 1970s, but now spends less than $500,000 a year. It said only a handful of research programs exist worldwide.

“The more proof there is that convinces people of the efficacy of the (cloud-seeding) programs, the more programs there will be – and that’s more business for us,” Ahlness said.

States have been pushing the federal government for years to help settle the debate over cloud seeding, Langerud said.

“We hope the report that the academy has published will help us in that goal,” he said.

The federal Bureau of Reclamation has helped states with some research in recent years, he said. The North Dakota Atmospheric Resource Board received nearly $300,000 in fiscal 2002 and 2003 for research, with results expected sometime next year.

Peter Soeth, a bureau spokesman in Denver, said President Bush’s budget for fiscal 2004 did not include funding for cloud-seeding research. Congress has not yet acted on the agency’s budget, he said.

Flor said cloud seeding is “a waste of taxpayer money that causes a lot of bad feelings.”

In Slope County, it led to a battle of petitions in the mid-1990s. Eventually, only part of the county approved cloud seeding. Flor lives in the other part, but he says the planes still fly overhead.

“The people around here would be more than happy to get rid of them,” he said, “if they knew how to do it.”