💰 The Business Of Making It Rain

🍀 The Business Of Making It Rain

What if I told you there is a way to manipulate the clouds to extract rain from them?

This technique is known as Cloud Seeding.

How Does It Work?

The idea is not to create clouds out of thin air but to squeeze every last drop of rain from naturally occurring clouds.

Small aircraft or drones are used to spray clouds with particles such as silver iodide, which causes the moisture in the rain to condense, into water droplets until they are heavy enough to fall as rain.

Flares with Salt Chemicals are attached to the back of the wings

The air already contains water vapor, but cloud seeding can encourage the water to condense until it falls from the sky.

Normally, when air rises into the atmosphere, it cools and forms particles called ice nuclei, which clump together to form clouds.

When enough of these cloud droplets combine, they grow bigger until they are heavy enough that they fall to the ground in some form of precipitation, determined by the temperature and other conditions.

Adding a "seed" gives clouds a boost by creating ice nuclei that grow faster and bigger than normal.

Why Is It Needed?

Cloud seeding can help in areas that don't have a big enough supply of natural water. Today there are about a billion people living in water-scarce places.

Who Uses Cloud Seeding:

• Farmers: Usually state water boards hire cloud seeding companies to help local cotton farmers in Texas.

• Ski Resorts: Vail Resorts in Colorado has one of the oldest cloud seeding contracts running for 44 years to increase snowfall for its ski runs.

• Chinese Government: China uses cloud seeding to fight heat waves with weather-modifying drones. They also used this to keep rainfall out of the Beijing Olympics. In 2016, the Chinese government announced it had allocated 199 million yuan ($29.76 million) to spend on its weather modification program to combat drought and reduce the impact of natural disasters.

• UAE government: In 2016, the UAE carried out 177 cloud seeding operations — primarily hygroscopic seeding in the mountains to add water to aquifers and reservoirs.

Note:

• It’s a relatively tiny industry as it can be incredibly challenging to convince lawmakers, ski resorts, or farmers to opt in.

• The Cloud Seeding industry is expanding more in countries abroad as they lack the comprehensive infrastructure of the US and the know-how.

For example; the company Weather Modification Inc has multimillion-dollar contracts with the Saudi government.

Who invented Cloud Seeding? 

During World War II, two scientists charged with keeping America’s planes from icing up in the far north became obsessed with clouds:

How did some clouds drop snow while others, despite freezing temperatures, did not?

To test this question, General Electric scientists Vincent Schaefer and Irving Langmuir modified a freezer so they could observe the inside. Schaefer then exhaled into the freezer, effectively creating a vaporous cloud, and put different substances into the freezer.

When he plopped dry ice inside, ice crystals immediately formed. Schaefer was delighted: He’d made it snow.

Vincent Schaefer

Bernard Vonnegut — older brother of Kurt Vonnegut — became a collaborator and discovered that silver iodide, a compound structurally similar to ice crystals, was even more successful at coaxing snow and rain out of clouds.

In November 1946, a GE pilot took Schaefer to create history’s first man-made snowstorm. Subsequent flights and research showed that, like in Schaefer’s “cold box,” silver iodide worked even better, making it the go-to material for manipulating the weather.

“A few pounds of silver iodide would be enough to nucleate all the air of the United States at one time,” Vonnegut wrote in 1947.

It wasn’t just effective; it was relatively cheap.

It only works if there is moisture in the clouds, it’s like a steroid kick to the clouds.

Pro’s:

• Makes dry places like Dubai more livable.

• It cannot prevent droughts but it can help reduce the impact.

Con’s:

• It’s not a foolproof solution like Desalination. It requires rainclouds, it cannot work on any cloud formation.

• Seeded clouds may travel to a distant location. Increased precipitation in one area leads to reduced moisture downstream.

• It costs a lot for poverty-stricken areas. The chemicals have to be delivered by planes, which are hard to come by in places like Africa.

• It requires highly skilled labor which is hard to come by.

• Lots of regulatory hurdles to getting into this business

• Lack of public support due to concerns about its effects.

• There have been concerns that high levels of silver over a long period of time can result in gray or blue-gray discoloration of the skin.

• Introducing salt or other chemicals into the rain could alter microclimates and possibly interfere with nearby crop growth, which would defeat the whole purpose.

Also, it is a controversial business for the following reasons:

1. Public accusations to stop playing god with the weather

2. Some argue that you are stealing rain from the cloud as it’s moving to other locations.

3. Some argue that it can only increase precipitation by 5-15% which is not enough to end draughts.

Opportunities:

• Drones will seed clouds in the future in low-income areas.

• Prevent or reduce damaging weather, such as hail, hurricanes, and tornadoes.

Useful Links:

• Super: Create Websites with Notion (Link)

• Unsettled: Travel & Work like a Digital Nomad (Link)

• Dribbble: Find a web designer that you like (Link)

• Spellbound: Write Interactive Emails (Link)

The Power of Doing Nothing.

Pause, Reflect, and Re-access.

Lately, I’ve felt life was repetitive, getting used to the daily rhythms of life.

I had to remind myself to take days where I do nothing and just spend time thinking and reflecting on which direction I’m headed.

On decisions and events, that have led me to where I am today.

I realized, I always wanted to do something creative.

This led me down a unique path of life and business failures that led to the discovery and cultivation of various skills.

Web design, growth marketing, sales, writing newsletters, video editing, e-commerce, hosting events, growing a community and so much more.

I have pretty much tried everything you can think of.

Some successes and lots of failures. But that’s how life is.

I’m also aware that I feel the most present when I do hard things.

If you’re feeling stuck or bored, take a day off from your devices. Go out in the sun, take a yoga class, go play a sport, do some exploration and you'll find your thoughts becoming sharper and more lucid.

This existing culture of overstimulation is rotting people’s minds and limiting our society from original thinkers.

If writing content is hard for you, here are some topics to explore in depth:

• Confirmation Bias

• Desire

• Types of risks

• Focus

• Leverage

• Purpose

• Action

• Recovery

• Boredom

• Vision

• Compound Interest

• Relationships

• Freedom

• Money

• Luck

• Beliefs

• Happiness

• Health

• Wealth

• Wisdom

• Culture

• Creativity

• Dopamine

• Serotonin

• Addiction

• Caffeine

• Sugar

• Ownership

• Cognitive Biases

MEMES 😂