Iran begins cloud seeding operations as drought bites

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Effectiveness and mechanisms of cloud seeding

  • Strong disagreement on whether it “works” in a practically useful way.
  • Some argue it’s unproven or marginal, with highly conditional success rates (e.g., cited estimates like 0–20% increase in some tests).
  • Others say it’s clearly real but modest: a way to modulate existing weather, not create rain from nothing.
  • Mechanism discussed: turning supercooled droplets into ice crystals (via silver iodide, salt, etc.), which then grow and fall as precipitation. Recent experimental work was cited as confirming this microphysical chain, while not proving large-scale efficacy.

Use cases and limitations

  • Reported uses include:
    • Ski resorts and western US programs to enhance snowfall.
    • Hail suppression (breaking large hail into smaller, less damaging pellets).
    • Historical military use (Vietnam) and large programs in China and UAE.
  • Consensus: you can only redirect or trigger moisture already in the air, not solve structural water deficits.

Ethical, legal, and “stealing rain” concerns

  • One view: seeding is effectively “taking someone else’s rain.”
  • Counterpoint: under current international law, a country controls its own airspace and thus its clouds.
  • Some worry about large, under-scrutinized, commercially driven weather-modification programs and unknown externalities.

Iran’s drought and policy failures

  • Multiple comments frame Iran’s crisis as largely self‑inflicted through decades of mismanagement, over-extraction, and export‑oriented agriculture benefiting powerful interests.
  • Cloud seeding is widely seen as PR or a marginal tool that cannot fix depleted aquifers or lack of water treaties.
  • Broader fears about forced deportations, humanitarian disaster, and echoes of past climate-linked civilizational collapses.

Global parallels and future pressures

  • Comparisons drawn to Texas and the US Southwest: aquifer depletion, leaking infrastructure, political resistance to regulation, and debates over desalination and water rights.
  • Cloud seeding and other geoengineering efforts (like solar reflection) are seen by some as necessary stopgaps, by others as ominous signals in a slow slide toward a climate-damaged, possibly dystopian future.

Chemtrails, media, and presentation

  • Cloud seeding is contrasted with “chemtrail” conspiracy theories; overlap is mainly about method (spraying particulates) and secrecy.
  • Debate over reliability of Arab News vs. BBC and other outlets, and over imagery that overemphasizes religiosity in Iran.