How should we think about cloud seeding? Does this technology actually move the needle at all on Iran's water needs or is this just some dubious marketing campaign?
Climate change and bad decisions from the last 50 years are starting to bite now. It’ll just get worse. Expect migrations and countries collapsing as millions of people are pushed to migrate for survival.
Water for farming and power stations are the things that will be hit first.
And it’s not just water going away—it’s impingement by salt as well.
A lot of water infrastructure needs minimum levels to function. Drinking water may be a small fraction of use. But if the big users deplete a reservoir below its minimum operational level, the fact that the dead water is enough to keep Tehran alive is more trivia than solace.
For those unfamiliar, climate change and drought are believed to be one of the major causes of the bronze age civilization collapse
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse#Droug...
That said, we never had the climate change that strongly on history.
But you have to admit it would be very funny if a theocracy was forced to abandon it's capital by forces of nature.
Some of these "bad decisions" are ignoring the old systems, and ways. The hubris of "modernization" as better.
The water systems of old Iran are fascinating, and well covered if you hunt around for the info. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qanat
Look, I know they didn’t fare well against Israeli F-35s and American B-2s, but the tech disparity isn’t quite as bad as them using Super Soakers for air defense.
Ten million civilians are about to deeply suffer. A multi-year drought is a key contributor.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1716995115
> Despite numerous experiments spanning several decades, no direct observations of this process exist. Here, measurements from radars and aircraft-mounted cloud physics probes are presented that together show the initiation, growth, and fallout to the mountain surface of ice crystals resulting from glaciogenic seeding. These data, by themselves, do not address the question of cloud seeding efficacy, but rather form a critical set of observations necessary for such investigations. These observations are unambiguous and provide details of the physical chain of events following the introduction of glaciogenic cloud seeding aerosol into supercooled liquid orographic clouds.
Apparently the goal is to turn supercooled water droplets into ice crystals. This makes a more physical sense than what was my first guess, seeding condensation nuclei. But seeding condensation would release a lot of heat, since the heat of condensation is pretty big, while the heat of fusion is quite a bit smaller.
It's a way to take someone else's rain.
Iran isn’t operating under the protections nor restrictions of international law. Neither is its relevant neighbor. (Practically.)
What they choose to do and how the other chooses to interpret it is very much…up in the air.
"78% of global precipitation occurs over the ocean" [1]
[1] https://gpm.nasa.gov/education/articles/nasa-earth-science-w...
It's hidden in plain sight, and the only people who ever seem to talk about it are total wingnuts who also believe things like climate change is real but manufactured by the US and other world power militaries (using secret technology) for geopolitical purposes, often conflating real cloud seeding with variations on the classic chemtrails conspiracy theory.
It's a largely unregulated continent scale weather and climate modification experiment. I haven't booked too deep into the research on it, but because powerful agricultural interests are involved, I'm sure nobody is looking too closely at externalities and would prefer to keep it that way.
The dubious part is the coditions to rain are chaotic patameters and unpredictable.
Right, the chance of it working is 0-20% in some tests and found to be highy conditional. I’m in support of them trying something to help, but it’s not a silver bullet (though it is silver iodide).
In these kind of societies it's hard to think of the controlling powers as oligarchs as although they get rich off corruption, their power did not come from money but vice versa
One particularly depressing example from the recent past is what happened in Hays County. The groundwater situation in Hays County is bad, to the point that springs are going dry.
Hays County managed to push something through the state legislature that'd give the Hays Trinity Water Conservation District more power to manage groundwater use (it passed overwhelmingly), but then Greg Abbot vetoed it - likely at the behest of Aqua Texas, a big water utility company that pumps a TON of water and has been pretty blatant about ignoring pumping caps and generally acted in bad faith.
Source: https://archive.is/b1bp1
So desalination only makes economic sense after removing all farms from an area.
Farms growing food crops don’t produce ~5,000$ in profits per acre, even 1/10th that is an extreme outlier. On top of this desalinated water still has significantly more salt than rainwater which eventually causes issues. Subsides can always make things look cheaper when you ignore the subsidy.
Indoor farming can be extremely water-efficient, often at the cost of energy inefficiency, but with low solar prices and the level of sun they have in the Southwest perhaps that can become economical?
I don't know, I just do know that water shortages are a problem, are going to continue to become more of a problem, and there's currently just one technology that's affordable enough that some nations currently use it at scale. So let's get started.
Nobody wants to vote for water rationing, and the state can’t even enforce consumption limits against corporations and the wealthy.
It seems like a problem those in the area will just have to deal with given that they're knowingly walking down that path. If you can't fund desalinization or other options, won't take federal funding, and choose not to region or conserve water then you collectively made your own bed.
It isn't common, but states have absolutely forwent federal funding to stand their ground, and in my opinion they should do it more often. Its a huge weakness in our federal system that states are so dependent on federal funding for long lived programs.
But I have property in Arizona and I have a real hard time imagining this state saying no thank you if offered water. It’s sort of a big deal out there these days.
My main concern there is that states can and should turn down federal funding if it comes with strings the state isn't interested in accepting. Our federal system becomes fairly useless if states are so dependent on federal funding that we can no longer have 50 different experiments running to try out different legislative approaches.
https://www.texaswater.org/prop-4
Texas has also recently started building new reservoirs after a long time of not building any. Bois d'Arc and Arbuckle have recently been finished, others are in progress, and a few more are in planning phases.
There's a lot to hate on about Texas politics but there are some competent people trying to address water concerns. Not saying Texas is doing everything perfectly, we're still drawing on aquifers at an unsustainable rate and need to change that.
This doesn't mean don't conserve, be intelligent, etc.
But this does mean that your water won't "balance out" year to year, you need to look at big 25-30 year intervals.
Right now the single biggest waste of water in Austin is leaky pipes. Like infrastructure pipes owned by the city. Meanwhile our water conservation budget is going to billboards telling people to rush in the shower. The entire population could stop bathing and not reduce enough to make up for the leaks happening in the crumbling water infra.
I think OP is talking more about groundwater depletion:
https://abc7amarillo.com/news/local/panhandle-runs-on-water-...
The only real usage of water is evaporation and that's stuff like growing plants and cooling towers.
Many systems also output reclaimed water; it's clean, but not up to environmental standards for discharge or drinking; typically excess clorination. This is often used for municipal irrigation sometimes toliet flushing, etc; uses where water below drinking standards is fine.
A handful of systems discharge treated water into their reservoirs or into acquifer recharge ponds. But there's an ick factor, even when discharge water is often held to higher standards than drinking water, so it's only done when the situation outweighs the ick.
You have seperate drainage for shower water and effluent?
That’s certainly not the case here in Australia.
Here, typically storm water and household waste water are carried over a common system. Usually if it rains more than 3mm in 24hrs the treatment systems are overwhelmed and untreated waste is sent out to sea. Coastal areas anyways.
I hope to see this legislation in TN changed to allow cloudseeding.
Just because it may not be “your thing”…doesn’t mean it’s not worth having.
I think folks get caught up on golf course water usage, but every course around me uses reclaimed water. If houses were built there, that would no longer be reclaimed water, but potable water. Also I am convinced that landscape chemical usage would go up as well.
I have close family and friends in the business, I guarantee that huge efforts go into making sure not a single drop of irrigation isn’t used unless it’s needed. I can tell you that my neighbors don’t pay that much attention to their exact irrigation needs—simply watering for as long as they can, when they can. I doubt seriously that replacing a golf course with more homes would net much water savings…at least around me.
I think the folks who try this ecological impact argument and want to push homes into that space just don’t think through all the consequences or assume there is a greater landscape effort than it actually takes. It’s a lot of work, but is it less that the combined work of 200 homes? Probably not. A couple of tractors vs 200 mowers? Landscape chemicals on perhaps 20 acres of the 150-200 (tees and greens, spot treat everywhere else) vs 3 homes per acre treating their whole lawn? 300-400 more vehicles driving in and out of the area everyday?
You want to outlaw them and let them go wild, I can accept that argument and can’t counter it but for “golf is fun and people enjoy it.” However if the concept that houses are better ecologically…I think that is a huge stretch.
Also, pretty sure you will be hard pressed in 2025 to find courses actively discriminating anyone who has the $$ to spend to play a round. Every course I have played in the last 40 years seems to have all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds, ethnicities, and income.
For more people across a broader socio-economic background. I mean come on let’s just acknowledge the elephant in the room: golf is a rich sport for upper-income/rich people that requires a massive amount of space that then often has a deleterious effect on surrounding real estate (i.e. inflates it and prices people out).
Yeah, not gonna attract the lower income folks because it’s not a zero dollar hobby, but from experience I know the middle class is well represented.
For example, the aquifer situation in the Central Valley of California is in some ways similar to Ogallala aquifer in Texas. "If we don't want to end up like Texas, we need to get a handle on this." Enact laws and conservation measures which make it difficult for those coming from out of state to bring their ecologically irresponsible practices with them. Ideally, reduce the ecological impact wrought by well-established California interests as well, but if necessary grandfather them in in order to prepare.
[0] https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU01/20250122/117827/HHRG...
BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj4172yl0l1o
Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/pictures/iranians-pray-rain-drought-...
EDIT: yeah, let's not use arabnews as a news source please: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_News
Re Saudi Arabia “journalist” you do realize he was from a famous intelligence community family. Hardly a simple “journalist.” On balance what MBS has done in terms of freedom and modernization of his country should be appreciated not put down simplistically. Statecraft is not always clean.
The world isn’t that simple as presented to western audiences.
Hacker News guidelines[1] recommend posting the original source, not BBC over Arab News.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter."
The newspaper has been described as "a mouthpiece for the Saudi regime" by Qatari-owned The New Arab,[24] and regarded as "reflecting official Saudi Arabian government position" by the Associated Press and Haaretz.[5]
This is much different than the BBC which attempts to maintain independence.
Independence? That's just your opinion. They are clearly better at marketing than the Saudis.
The corporate governance is significantly different as well.
But as far I can see, authoritarian states tend to have a direct path from their governments' sacred opinion to the eyes and ears of the people, there are levers of direct influence within their media industries that let them directly dictate what the journalists will pretend to report on. One can debate back and forth about how the BBC may suffer from the biases of its British writers, implicit pressure from their government, individual cases of bias and even attempts at government overreach, but despite all of it, none of these infractions would rival even 1/10th of what countries like Saudi Arabia or Russia do with their media. Despite all of their countless issues, the UK still values independence far more than what the Saudis could even dream of. Moreover, the BBC is implicitly checked by having neighboring media outlets with no government ownership, while the countries I listed exercise degrees of total control over the entire industry.
The BBC may in individual instances be biased towards the current sitting government or pro-British views or whatever, but it is not a blind mouthpiece like these other countries. It's not simply a difference in preferring one ruthless government narrative over another.
What I posit is absolutely symmetric, so you are just making this up.
I don't understand why the way the government body is elected (or not) is material in any shape or form here. If you are British, sure, perhaps you get a say. I am not and I don't really care what the majority of UK (or rather whoever counts the votes) thinks. As far as I am concerned, it's just another foreign entity who has their interests that are at times unaligned with me. Heck, the bigger and more perceived to be legitimate, they have more power, to the degree they had the audacity and effectiveness to interfere with my country's elections. I don't think ArabNews has such capacity.
FWIW, BBC runs a World Service targeting people abroad in their languages. Is that just out of goodness of their hearts? Gimmie a break. A state funded media is always propaganda by charter, sometimes with an ancillary news division. Propaganda does not equate to lies all the time. The best form or propaganda, and the most effective, would in fact not obviously lie most of the times, but be biased when it matters. UK is hardly alone in this. US also has similar apparatus under VOA or NPR or PBS.
P.S. I think we are getting out of the core topic. I am not debating reliability of the media per se. What I objected to is the advocacy to always link to someone's preferred media, as opposed to preferred story (either due to the quality of that particular story, website, or original sourcing).
What I said was followed by three paragraphs of me discussing why exactly I posited what I did.
> I don't understand why the way the government body is elected
Who talked about elections? I certainly never brought elections up. What I did bring up, though, is that the Saudi Arabian government dictates directly what is allowed to be a media outlet and who is allowed to be a journalist. They have ways of influencing national discourse that the UK just never had. It's not about how they're ruled (though it is also a side factor), it's that they're a far more overbearing and authoritarian state. This is what the "structure of the government" referred to - now that I read it back, I realize it could've been confused for something else.
Running international services of course has a national interest for the government (in addition to a business interest for the company). I never said that the BBC's existence wasn't good for the UK or that it was completely unbiased and independent, in fact I made sure to not paint them as unequivocally good anywhere - merely far better than what they do in Saudi Arabia. Ultimately I never was arguing about the start of the conversation (choosing preferred media vs. preferred story), but the framing of different national media outlets as completely equivalent things, just with different flavors of which party line they follow.
The BBC is independent in so far as an institution of unelected officials effectively run the country: bureaucrats.
> But I must make one thing absolutely clear: there can be no question of the BBC ever giving in to government pressure.
The UK is run by tyrannical bureaucrats, not the Government.
Compared to whatever tf the UK thinks it’s doing.
Why should UK citizens want their government to invest in infrastructure and defence capabilities if they’re just handing same to radical Islamists.
Yes, it would have been better if they had not spliced the clips so closely together, but that does show a commitment to taking its role seriously.
What is your opinion on Al Jazeera then?
But it obviously can't create more moisture than already is in the air.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/18/united-arab-emirates-is-usin...
First I'd heard of it... though Salt Lake City did just have its rainiest October on record.
It’s more of a modulator on top of weather, not a switch you can flip to induce as much rain as you want on demand.
Come on now. It's not nowhere, there's 24 people living on that island, of course that's worth building a $45 million bridge for them[1].
(just the latest silly bridge project here in Norway)
[1]: https://www.nrk.no/nordland/nordland-fylkesrad-vil-bygge-bro...
> However, there are only 24 permanent residents and five active farms on Hamnøya. Therefore, there is regular transport of tankers, concentrate feed and livestock trucks.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamn%C3%B8ya,_Vevelstad
> Hamnøya is an island in Vevelstad Municipality in Nordland county, Norway. The 16.6-square-kilometre (6.4 sq mi) island lies about 500 to 700 metres (0.3 to 0.4 mi) off shore from the mainland of the municipality, separated by the Vevelstadsundet strait. The island is only accessible by boat and in 2021 it had 35 permanent residents living on the island.
I'm not sure if it's cheaper to upgrade both posts, but a bridge doesn't look so silly.
I’m a little surprised how this has gone under the radar,
considering the black box “effing with the weather cycles” truly is.
It’s being discussed here (and elsewhere) like the US company talking about it is broaching a new concept.
No need to point the finger at the nasty Chinese.
Religions
Muslim (official) 98.5%, Christian 0.7%, Baha'i 0.3%, agnostic 0.3%, other (includes Zoroastrian, Jewish, Hindu) 0.2% (2020 est.)
Compared to the United Kingdom; https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/united-king...
Religions
Christian (includes Anglican, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist) 59.5%, Muslim 4.4%, Hindu 1.3%, other 2%, unspecified 7.2%, none 25.7% (2011 est.)
Here is a short video to tell you all you need to know about what sort of people are now running Iran, and just what they think of the average captive Iranian over whom they misrule, while you wait for the books.
What you're describing would, by contrast, would kill hundreds of millions of not billions of people in a few years or more realistically, cause extreme levels of violence to undo it.
Indeed, I imagine anyone who actually managed to do such a thing would be violently murdered by the public and their death celebrated for centuries.
Iran is in a bad predicament. Largely self inflicted but that in no way diminishes from the horror of a looming humanitarian disaster.
Careful with this statement, it might generalize more than you think over the next few years.
I agree with the sentiment that the humanity should focus on producing something more useful than bombs, but bringing it up specifically when talking about Iran comes off as a bit disingenuous, especially when they have been recently bombed by both the U.S. and Israel. [2] Imagine the roles were reversed: How would we react to an Iranian or Russian citizen suggesting that the U.S. or an European country should focus on infrastructure instead of building an army?
[1] https://milex.sipri.org/sipri
[2] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/22/satellite-images-sh...
Regardless the budget you are quoting does not include the billions that are invested yearly on Hezbollah, Hamas, PMF and Houthis which are strategically considered and used as an extension of their armed forces
The drones are produced by Russia btw. You know, kinda how you guys keep saying that you'll punish China for supplying components for them. Meanwhile every single drone that Ukraine uses is built with either Chinese components or is a modded Chinese drone to begin with.
[1] https://www.upi.com/Archives/1984/04/24/Ayatollah-bomb-in-pr...
People dismissed North Korea’s ability to do so for a long time. They thought they were too poor and isolated.
https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2003-01/news/north-korea-qui...
They started the Korean War by launching an unprovoked invasion of the South (after securing Stalin's reluctant blessing), and continued to wage a campaign of terror against them in the decades after:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimpo_International_Airport_bo...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rangoon_bombing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_858
And they got caught digging infiltration tunnels under the DMZ, in violation of the 1953 armistice:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Demilitarized_Zone#Incu...
And they're known to have kidnapped thousands of South Koreans, and scores of other foreign nations, including Japanese citizens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_abductions_of_Sou...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_abductions_of_Jap...
Yet it's the US that's untrustworthy? And why do they supposedly even care what the US thinks, considering that China already intervened militarily once (during the Korean War) to preserve their independence and has been pretty clear that it will do so again if needed?
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/iaea-report-says-iran-ha...
Yes. They want to build nukes. I'll never understand how the Iranian bot campaign[1] managed to convince so many people.
They are also deployed domestic production of them in Russia but a substantial amount of components (foremost motors) still delivered from Iran. If you look at the chart of Russian Shahed launches you can see a lagging dip in early August after Israel's bombing of Iran in June.
The silver lining is that we don't have to suffer the internet commentators saying "Pakistan has been weeks away from nukes for fifty years!"
You can choose to put your head in the sand about a theocracy that enriches uranium to 60%, holds up mushroom clouds in their protests, and repeatedly violated the NPT with clandestine facilities. Others won't be so naive.
If Iran had one nuke we’d bomb them relentlessly.
Their delivery mechanisms and ground infrastructure aren’t advanced enough to guarantee launch, and a single Fisher Price nuke is not game over. Iran with the capacity to build a bomb can be dealt with now or later. Iran with an actual nuke has to be dealt with now, or else be accepted as a regional nuclear power. (Which would mean a Saudi nuke. Which would mean a Qatari nuke, and probably also Emirati nuke.)
No they can't. Canada can. Japan can, SK can. But Iran poured concrete into the rods of its only, then completed heavy water reactor that would have been able to produce the plutonium needed right after they signed the JCPOA before actually receiving any of the concessions they were supposed to get which would have actually given them leverage.This was also detailed in Wendy Sherman's book.
The entire airspace around Iran is controlled by the US's allies and Iran's enemies. Iran would never be able to fly a bomb anywhere close to Israel. They would need a ballistic missile delivery mechanism which's research was confirmed by the US to have been stopped in 2003.
Either way, if you are threatening to annihilate another country, I wouldn't gamble on the latter.
you mean what Israel is doing and saying every single day? Doesn't seem to bother anyone.
Anyway, I cant comprehend why anyone would try to defend the actions of the Iranian regime, it's just a horrible regime.
But it's more than a little lopsided, and there's only one aggressor in the war – one who could choose to end it at any time.
Desalination technology can solve their problems completely, but they armed proxies that attacked the two countries in the region (Saudi Arabia and Israel) that can help them.
They also imprisoned the one qualified guy in their country who blew the whistle on their water mismanagement (e.g. farming water intensive crops in a desert), Dr. Madani.
You could read the Wikipedia page to learn the other man-made reasons behind this crisis. That's preferable than coming here to play defense for a corrupt theocracy. Not that I doubt that climate change is one of the causes.
Iran has desalination facilities(75 in 2022 to be exact). But not enough and obviously only by the water. Iran has way less energy production than Saudi Arabia, which per capita would put it at a 4th or so. That's with the fact that Iran is a massively industrialized economy which none of the states in the area are. A lot of the UAE and especially the modern desalination plants are built in collaboration with France, Spain, China and Japan. Desalination technology transfer and construction by third parties in Iran is specifically restricted by the US.
One of the things that would have helped Iran's energy problems is nuclear energy and we all know how that goes. It's kinda cute how you don't think that every single one of these facilities is a target for the US and Israel if Iran does not have any weapons deterrent. Iraq's civil infrastructure was leveled by the US in the beginning of the war in 2003.
Tehran is far from the ocean for desalination. They are closer to Caspian Sea. But that comes crossing mountains.
Tehran itself is very dry.
And comparing spending on military exercises to infrastructure tells me you have a political agenda to support the dismantling of Iran. These are not friendly motives.
Iran has tried to make agreements with the western world for a long time. But the west has snaked Iran into isolation. Isolation has led Iran to exercise military excursions to develop influence in the region.
ETA: China imports 40% of Iranian oil production followed by Iraq, UAE, and Turkey.
The governing mullahs' interests are brutally divergent from those of the people in whose name they pretend to govern.
Hence, the nuclear weapons program and all the cozying up to Russia.
https://library.noaa.gov/weather-climate/weather-modificatio...
China also had a big program. They tried to create rain for the Beijing olympics
All this time the chemtrail people I know have been talking about weather control, I hadn't heard of mind control being part of it.
My take has been yeah I know cloud seeding and solar geoenhineering is real, ergo some amount of chemtrails are "real" in that they are deliberate particulate being sprayed and not just water. While the thing the chemtrail people claim that seems dubious is the scale and other nuances - claiming that all contrails are chemtrails. It's the scale that we don't know and that I assume it's pretty small because it seems expensive and pointless to do it constantly. But I don't know how I could ascertain the scale at which it's done either.
> The term "chemtrail" should not be confused with other forms of aerial dumping (e.g. crop dusting, cloud seeding, aerial firefighting, although the principle is much the same. It specifically refers to covert, systematic, high-altitude dumping of unknown substances generally for some illicit purpose, be it that of Governments, terrorists, private corporations, or all of the above.
> Among the theories proposed for the purpose of the alleged "chemtrails": atmospheric and weather modification, biological warfare, mind control, occult purposes, or other functions associated with a New World Order.
Language sure is interesting.
I guess there's also a spectrum of what covert means. If a government does this but only announces it in places where only a few people hear about it from the official source, I guess that still counts as public and so not chemtrails.
> Any idea except "it's a contrail or non-hidden spraying of some sort"
Meaning the chemtrail conspiracy is "contrails are actually cover ups for chemical spraying that isn't otherwise known", not just "if chemical spraying is covert, then people made a language rule saying it should be referred to as a chemtrail instead".
I.e. chemtrails refers specifically to the conspiracy about a contrail based cover up for covert chemical spraying by world powers, not just a term for a claim that someone somewhere has sprayed chemicals covertly.