Speculative Fact #348: Weather Control

Major storms like hurricanes can be devastating and costly, both in terms of lives and damage to our infrastructure. Although futurists and speculative fiction writers have long dreamed about controlling weather, its unpredictability and sheer power and practically metaphors for the uncontrollable. With recent advancements and new data, scientists are again asking if weather control is in the realm of the achievable.
            Hurricanes are a complicated arrangement of factors like humidity and temperature. Based on simulations, a small change at the center of a storm can dramatically alter how fast, powerful a storm will become - and where they will ultimately hit. More ambitious and farfetched plans envision everything from massive dumps of cooled pumped water, patches of biodegradable oil slicks, and microwave beam satellites to create obstacles in the path of the storms (thus robbing them of their energy).
            In the future, averting storms could be as easy as monitoring a control panel and hitting a cancel button. Agricultural communities depend on weather, but would they benefit from the advancements or get left behind? Could a weather control system be used as a weapon? Could the manipulation of weather lead to an unforeseen chain of events or uncontrolled feedback loop as nature attempts to correct itself? The manipulation of weather could be an answer to many of our needs or the quickening of our ends.
 
Jonathan Hernandez

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