Global Bob Show
Global Bob who is a cyber security expert and political science hobbyist brings you a show that fuses these topics together to explain in simple terms the interaction between the two. He uses his years of experience in both the government, commercial and private sector to give a unique perspective on these topics.
Global Bob Show
Episode 28 - Weather Wizards: The Science and Controversy of Climate Manipulation
Weather manipulation has long been a fascinating intersection of science, politics, and controversy. From the ambitious Project Storm Fury of the 1960s, which attempted to weaken hurricanes by seeding them with silver iodide, to modern cloud seeding operations across the American West, humans have persistently sought ways to control the skies above.
We dive deep into the science behind these weather modification technologies, exploring how Project Storm Fury spent $250 million before researchers concluded that their hurricane weakening attempts couldn't be distinguished from natural storm fluctuations. The concept was tantalizing – imagine reducing a Category 5 hurricane to a Category 3 – but nature proved more complex than anticipated.
Amidst our technical exploration, we pause to honor Coast Guard Petty Officer Scott Ruskan, whose heroic actions during the recent Camp Mystic flooding tragedy in Texas saved over 165 lives. His selfless courage reminds us that while we may attempt to control weather, we must always be prepared for its devastating potential.
Lightning rod networks offer another glimpse into weather manipulation, using tethered rockets to safely discharge lightning away from populated areas. Meanwhile, cloud seeding – practiced since 1947 in Australia and now common across Idaho, Texas, and California – continues despite studies showing its effectiveness ranges from zero to just 20% increased precipitation.
The ethics of weather modification loom large throughout our discussion. If we extract rain in California, what happens to Nevada's water supply? Are we wise to interfere with natural systems when our understanding remains limited? As hurricane season approaches, perhaps the most practical takeaway isn't about controlling weather but being prepared for it. Don't wait until storms are named – by then, it's already too late to gather supplies and make evacuation plans.
Have thoughts on weather manipulation? Share your perspective at GlobalBobShow.com or text us directly. If you enjoyed the episode, tell your friends – and keep an eye out for our upcoming merchandise!
All right, all right, here we go. It is that time of the week for the Global Bob Show. The Global Bob Show. We are the crossroad of technology and politics. I'm back again this week with my co-host, hello Shelly.
Speaker 1:Hello.
Speaker 2:All right, so this is what number three for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And you have a few more. Two more, I think, is what we said until you get your official co-host badge. Yay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all right. Do we get jackets too?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're going to get Letterman jackets. That'd be really cool, right? And then every time we talk about a topic, maybe we'll put another one on there, like a little lightning bolt for this one, since we want to talk about weather, and so maybe, yeah, maybe, get your lightning bolt. So each genre that we talk about, or each subject, maybe you'll get one. And then that way, whenever I get my other co-host because I'm very confident, the show is just going to blow up and it's going to be syndicated worldwide, probably on Fox News, xm Radio and all of that you never know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you can say that you were the first co-host of the Global Bop Show, that you were the first co-host of the Global Bop Show.
Speaker 2:Well, as I alluded to, this week we're going to talk about a topic that we've had on the docket, that we wanted to do, and it's around weather and weather manipulation. Yeah, weather manipulation, and I know that you're a weather bug yourself, and we thought that this would be a great time to do this show. We already had this planned out, naturally, you and I, a few weeks ago, that we were going to talk about it, because we're here in Polk County, florida, right here at the crossroads of the state of Florida Actually, a lot of people don't realize this, but the geodesic center of Florida is only a couple miles away from us and that's really neat. So when we are here in central Florida, one of the things that are very keen to us is hurricanes, and so we were going to do this show about weather manipulation. Just talk about hurricanes and stuff. But unfortunately, the tragedy that happened in West Central Texas at the camp there- Camp Mystic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, camp Mystic, that happened, I believe it was last week, and so we were kind of on the fence. Do we do the show about the weather or do we not? But you know, as they say, the show must go on and the event that happened is very, very tragic, very sad. More sad about that is that people are trying to politicize this already.
Speaker 2:And it doesn't matter what side of the aisle that you're on, there are folks that will use anything as a political lightning rod. No pun intended, but we did talk to you about scams last week on episode 27. And this is something that you should really think of, because all of us are wanting to donate to the folks out in West central Texas, and it's not just camp mystic, I mean that whole area, the Guadalupe river that flooded, and you're already seeing scammers. Like we predicted and talked about the last show, there's already folks that are setting up fake sites and stuff. So we really really want to encourage everybody that wants to donate and we are in no way affiliated with the Red Cross and other very reputable organizations and make sure that if you do donate to the tragedy that happened out in West Central Texas or any tragedy, just make sure that you're sending your donations to the Red Cross and other organizations that are reputable. I think the last I heard is that the death toll is up to 96.
Speaker 2:That's so sad, and there's still approximately 161 people missing, but man just tragic.
Speaker 1:What is one of the most tragic things that you've heard so far about that? So I heard that they found two young girls from Camp Mystic deceased and they were still holding hands.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:They found them, yeah, and I believe they were holding the rosary beads as well. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:Now, for those that aren't familiar with Camp Mystic, it's a non-denominational Christian camp for girls and to me, I'm just amazed of just how many people have been affected by it. A lot of celebrities and politicians and prominent figures have been sending their kids there for years and years and years. And so one thing that you do learn you're a native Floridian, been through hurricanes, oh yeah Is that these tragedies they do not discriminate and everybody is pretty much in it for themselves, that it doesn't matter rich, poor, creed, skin color, that when these things strike, everybody is just as vulnerable as the next Right. But I will tell you that something that is coming out of this, just like with a lot of these tragedies, that there's always these unsung heroes and even heroes that are out in the spotlight, and one such hero out there that I really think needs to be decorated. This person needs to be brought in front of Congress that they do like at the State of the Union and really shine a light on him, and he probably doesn't want the limelight and that is Petty Officer Scott Ruskin limelight.
Speaker 2:And that is a petty officer, scott Ruskin. Petty officer Scott Ruskin is a rescue swimmer for the U S coast guard and if you look at yeah, if you look at where camp mystic is located in that Guadalupe river, then you can see that it's not near an ocean. You know, close by an ocean, but these coast guard swimmers, they aren't just out in the ocean. He came in on a helicopter one of the Coast Guard helicopters and selfishly put his life out there. He probably wasn't even thinking about his own life and he is credited with saving over 165 people.
Speaker 1:Wow. Now is that total or is that from a specific area like Camp Mystic?
Speaker 2:From what I understand, it was totally around Camp Mystic area. Wow, and some of the reports that I saw, that I guess it's practice, common practice, when you're a Coast Guard swimmer to ride up with the basket and stay with the folks. But he sent the people up the basket and then he stayed behind.
Speaker 2:So, you know he stayed behind and he got the girls and other people to higher ground. Some of the folks actually went to the second story. You know, they left their camp and they went up to the second story of their dwelling and the river continued to rise. I think it was like 27 feet.
Speaker 1:So quick too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, very quickly, like in matter of like, less than an hour, so in the middle of the night, and what they said they did was is that they sang songs and they held hands, just like the two that were found tragically holding hands 15 miles away. Those two, those two girls, were 15 miles away and you know, thank God, that petty officer, that Petty Officer Scott Ruskin, was there to help facilitate that. Now, having a brother who was a captain in the fire rescue here in Polk County, I can tell you that these heroes are people too. Even though they go out and they do all these heroic deeds and acts day in and day out, they're still people too. So everybody, I feel, needs to thank Scott Ruskin, thank the United States Coast Guard, and just know that these service members, they operate all over. Whether you're in the army, they can be operating in the ocean. If you're a Coast Guard, you can be operating on land. They can be operating in the ocean. If you're a Coast Guard, you can be operating on land.
Speaker 2:Those guys go through a heck of a program. I mean my dad, actually, who was in the Coast Guard, and he's a hero himself, just like everybody else in the military. But my dad's job in the Coast Guard was to be a ship inspector during the Cold War. So his job at the Port of Tampa was to keep us safe from nuclear material being brought in. So he would get down into the bowels of the ship at all hours of the night with a Geiger counter. So so I just want to show and display to everybody that you know these folks are heroes. And my dad says that the rescue swimmers are like the Navy seals. Uh, they go through a 22 week program and these heroes are just amazing people.
Speaker 1:Wow yeah.
Speaker 2:So now we will go on to what we wanted to talk about today, and this is really cool topic, and it is where technology and politics meet. Really, technology and controversies meet as well, and some of these that we're going to talk about today they're highly controversial and everything that we tell you is based off of some research that we did and just you know from our past of looking through weather, because you know we're all a bunch of weather nerds here and especially if you're not a weather nerd, you are during hurricane season, that's true.
Speaker 2:In Florida right now is a great public service announcement. When they name a storm out in the Atlantic or the Gulf, that means that you're too late getting prepared. So if you don't get anything out of this broadcast today, just please make sure that you're prepared and that you have your minimum supplies that you need and know where to evacuate, just like in West Central Texas. That's something that's probably going to come out of. This is evacuation drills, just like in Florida, when we all know people that's been heavily affected by hurricanes. I know one person in particular that the water got in their house so high that they were sitting on their washer or dryer and they had to swim out and everything, and they were in a community. So, yes, please, everybody get, get ready. So, without further ado, let's talk about what was the first one you said you wanted to talk about.
Speaker 1:I think project storm theory project storm theory.
Speaker 2:This one's one that my dad actually talked to me about whenever I was little, and I don't know how we got on the subject, but as soon as we started talking about putting together the podcast, I knew that we needed to talk about Project Storm Fury, and what my dad said was back before I was born, the US was involved with weather manipulation and Fidel Castro, who was the dictator of Cuba, actually blamed the United States for steering a hurricane into Cuba.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess if you're a dictator you can just say whatever, yeah, and if somebody doesn't like it, well then you just off with their head. But Project Storm Fury, basically what it was, it started around 1962. And it was a joint government program that attempted to weaken hurricanes by flying aircraft into storms and seeding them. And this is how a lot of this works, right? The weather manipulation that we're talking about is that they seed or they put stuff in the hurricane. It could be anything from dry ice to salt to silver oxide, and we'll talk more about cloud seeding but basically they would put the silver iodide inside the hurricane and what would happen was that the super cold water would freeze around it and it would disrupt the structure and potentially reduce the hurricane by like 30 percent.
Speaker 2:Wow, so you know, for easy math, if you got a hundred mile an hour wind and you can knock it down to say 70 miles an hour, well, that's, that's a big difference, right? Because we know, just with tornadoes and hurricanes, it seems like every mile an hour faster does more destruction. You know more and more, more destruction. But but basically it's a way to artificially take the eye wall and with the silver oxide, yeah, it would weaken it, and we've all seen those eye form. What is it called? Eye wall replacement?
Speaker 1:Yes, is that it? Yeah, we've all seen that it's like when it weakens and then it strengthens again.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It goes through that process, yeah, and we see it all the time Like, hey, the eye wall is weakening, and people that are non-Floridians are like, hey, look, it's weakening Us Floridians are like, okay, it's getting ready for the big show at that point. But also too, when that eye wall weakens, the hurricane spreads out. Remember when Hurricane?
Speaker 1:Charlie came through.
Speaker 2:It wasn't a very big hurricane, but the winds were so impactful it was like a buzzsaw. So to me, whenever I look at them, the bigger the hurricane kind of the weaker it is. Don't take my word for it. I'm not a meteorologist, I just pretend one From our experience.
Speaker 1:Yeah, from our experience.
Speaker 2:So what what happened is is that the silver oxide in this case when they start experimenting, they were seeing about 20% weaknesses through that, but they just didn't go out and do it to every hurricane, and that's something I want to stress, even though this weather manipulation is highly controversial. There were a lot of parameters that it had to meet because they didn't want bad things to happen, and one of those had to be 10% chance of approaching inhabited land, so if it was coming right from Florida, they wouldn't go seed it because they didn't know what would happen. It had to be a well-formed eye and there was a lot of stuff that made it a good target that those parameters weren't active very long, and so what they would do is that this was a joint operation, and so the US Air Force would fly in these AWACS planes, the WC-120s and the WB-47s, and they would fly over and then drop them. They did this on a couple different hurricanes, one of which was in 1969, which that's probably the one that Castro is talking about. I don't know. I don't know what the storm track was, but it was Hurricane Debbie in 1969, and it met all the criteria.
Speaker 2:So with Project Storm Fury they sent you know they've done a little bit of testing before that, but that was really the one that they did the first seeding on, and they claimed that that one had about a 20% reduction, which is still a lot right, they did a lot of this trying to wait for the right time, but, as you know, the hurricane season is kind of finite, and so they only had a few hurricanes they can do this in, but it was later determined that most hurricanes didn't contain enough super cold water for cloud seeding to be effective.
Speaker 2:Also, researchers found that unseeded hurricanes often undergo the same structural changes that cloud seeding did. Right, and that's what you talked about, that eyewall replacement. Also, too, there's a lot of controversy that came around this, and so they wanted to move it out to the Pacific ocean, where it's bigger, and do it with typhoons and stuff. But basically in 1971, the Navy stopped doing this, and after they blew through $250 million million dollars. That's a lot, yeah, that's a lot even today. But you can imagine what $250 million in 1971 would be today. That's just a lot of money.
Speaker 1:It sounds like they just didn't see any reason to continue doing the project.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that was us and our attempt to steer hurricanes, which is really cool, really controversial, and we don't do that anymore. Now out west we've heard of some of the misinformation about the cloud seeding and possibly the storm over at Camp Mystic was one of the ones that they had seeded. But right now I've done some light research and I don't see anything that would suggest that the one out in west it wasn't a hurricane, the big storm out there that it needed any cloud seeding. Nor would they do it. I promise we're going to talk about cloud seeding, but what other weather manipulation do you want to talk?
Speaker 1:about Lightning rod networks, lightning rod networks, Lightning rod networks.
Speaker 2:This is actually really cool Now. You have worked for an ISP. Before that was in the used radios and microwaves.
Speaker 1:Is that it yes? Microwave radios.
Speaker 2:Right. And so you know, during the summer months, those are the busy months.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, and why is that? Lots of storms, especially here in Central Florida, and a lot of lightning hits those radios yeah.
Speaker 2:And I guess we probably should look this up. Maybe one of my listeners can look this up and send it to us. But I've always heard that Florida is the lightning capital of the world, but I think there's a place down in Brazil or in the Amazon or something like that, that technically has the lightning capital of the world, and that's a really neat one too not to get off on a side subject here, but that one there's methane gas that comes up from a lake and so when this lightning strikes it makes these big booms. But wow, I digress.
Speaker 2:So the lightning rod network. I believe that was being done up in Ocala, probably probably in coordination with one of the universities. But but the thought is is that we know that lightning opposites attract. So you have positive electrons that build up and then, once it builds up so much, it actually makes a spark down to the ground and there is ground-to-cloud lightning, along with ground to cloud, cloud to ground lightning, so it goes both ways, even cloud to cloud. But what this tries to do is they launch little rockets with a tether on it, a little piece of say like piano wire, and so what they try to do is is that as the lightning cloud moves over, if it's in a safe area, say like in the middle of a pasture, they can launch one of these rockets up and the discharge hits the piano wire and it goes to ground that way. So that's one way that they do manipulate.
Speaker 2:But you can imagine if this was going to be done at scale. Now we need a bunch of rockets, we need a bunch of rockets going up, and these are little rockets. I used to play around with these whenever I was a kid, but that's pretty cool and you could imagine that if you had these all around the city as the storm cloud moved over. You could shoot a rocket up so that cloud is discharged before it moves over and it hits the towers. But that's the reason why lightning hits towers and trees is because the path to ground is from the top of the structure and so it can hit that and make a better, better path to ground instead of just hitting out in an open field. I'll tell you a quick little story. I had an uncle that was in the tower business and his house was at the base of one of his towers.
Speaker 2:Maybe a hundred yards, couple hundred yards from the base of the tower and he would actually let us kids swim in the pool. I mean, he was very eccentric, very eccentric man. And he would let us kids swim in the pool and my aunt would come out and say my God, it's lightning, get them out of the pool. And he would explain the science behind it and would actually say that we were okay to swim in the pool because the chances of lightning hitting the pool was next to nothing, because it would hit the tower before it hit the pool.
Speaker 1:Now.
Speaker 2:I know you don't have children, but if and when would you let your kids swim in a pool?
Speaker 1:at the base of it. No.
Speaker 2:Wow, I didn't even get the whole thing out. She's like Nope, shut it down, so so that's. That's pretty cool.
Speaker 1:I mean you hear like people out in the ocean and stuff and they get hit by lightning, and I mean the lightning came, I mean far away like 20 miles.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's what a lot of a lot of folks don't understand that the, the, the lightning can jump, you know, 20 miles out and my dad used to take us fishing all the time out in the ocean. He had a fishing boat and it was made out of aluminum and I didn't realize, but you were actually safer in that aluminum boat because of the electrolysis on the aluminum which you would be in a fiberglass boat. So I don't quite understand a lot of the science where I can talk about it enough, but just know that that's a common knowledge to maritime folks that you're actually safer in that aluminum boat or that metal boat than what you are in.
Speaker 1:That's interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, speaking of lightning, though, I've seen some of the reports here in Florida throughout the years where fishing fishermen would be on the shore fishing and their rod would get hit by lightning, because that just a few feet closer to the reports here in Florida throughout the years where fishermen would be on the shore fishing and their rod would get hit by lightning because just a few feet closer to the cloud was enough for it to hit the rod. I guess, technically that would be a lightning rod.
Speaker 2:That's fun. So what other ones would you like to talk about?
Speaker 1:I heard about urban heat island mitigation.
Speaker 2:What is urban heat island mitigation? What is urban heat island? That's what I haven't heard of. Do you have any examples of it?
Speaker 1:or like disney would be a good example the mouse house yeah, okay, because they they have so much vegetation around like the parks, right that it's. It's like, hmm, does it ever rain? Right?
Speaker 2:So if you think about it.
Speaker 1:So, basically what it is, it's large urban planning projects and surface modifications can alter local temperature and precipitation patterns.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if I think about that, it's probably around that it's warmer, and so with that being warmer, you get these convection currents and I can tell you, being a pilot myself, you're flying along inside of an airplane at low altitudes, right. I mean, this is a single engine plane and it would get quite bumpy during the summer months and yeah, kind of like when you get close to cities and stuff like that. But I never remember that in the pilot training. But that does make sense and maybe that's those can convections, with the mitigating of the heat that makes it to where it doesn't rain, cause don't people say that it doesn't rain that much at dizzy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they say that a lot.
Speaker 2:They say, like the storm goes around the park.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I don't know if that's a urban, would you say that was called?
Speaker 1:Urban heat island mitigation. So I don't know if that's what it is or if just the mouse house has like a ray gun or something like that. Yeah, some kind of dome that they just Did something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, now isn't there something around the? What's that radar technology that they were using to heat up clouds? There was something that we were reading about that Was it like HAARP or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it was.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, it was. It was the HAARP, and that's where they're blasting microwaves into clouds to heat them up and and get them to do stuff. But they, you know there's a lot of stuff around heart. We should actually do a whole podcast on on heart because of all. I mean, that's got a lot of controversy around it. So it really seems like with the cloud manipulation whether it's with the fog or or if it's with harp or any of them it's it's like they're putting things in there, either hot or cold, or to get things attracted to, like salt or even dry ice that we've heard of. But I guess, without further ado, we should get to actually talking about the cloud seeding.
Speaker 2:So what is it that you want to know about cloud seeding?
Speaker 1:So I'm curious, like what it's all about. It's been very popular in the news as of recently.
Speaker 2:A lot of people are talking about it on social medias and blaming some of these you know disasters and weather patterns on cloud seeding yeah, well, we talked a little bit about the cloud seeding, back uh project storm fury a few minutes ago and basically what the cloud seeding is that you know they can do use dry ice or they can use salt, or they can use this uh silver iodide and what it is. If you look at the molecular structure of salt, they're very close to water and so the cloud seeding, the whole idea, is that they drop it into a cloud, either by airplane or some of the ones I've seen now, if they know the weather pattern is going over a mountain they can put these flares up on the mountain and, when the conditions are perfectly right, that it seeds into the cloud the silver iodide or whatever it is.
Speaker 2:But one of the key takeaways I want folks to understand is is that it's not like they throw it into the air and here comes the rain. I think there's a song here comes the rain. Yeah okay well, I'm glad that we're podcasters and not singers not singers, because we would probably be more broke than what we already are, but so, as it comes over, it takes 45 minutes to an hour and then they monitor it and you know things have to be exactly right.
Speaker 2:But they've been doing this for over 60 years it's a long time and in some places they've said that it's increased the amount of rainfall by about 10%. So you know, being a southern boy here makes you wonder if the juice is worth the squeeze on that. But there are companies I think NWWX is a company or something like that but there are people that have commercial companies that do cloud seeding.
Speaker 2:And there's some controversy that if you get the rain to start falling earlier over California, how does that affect Nevada? But yes, there are very active cloud seeding operations going on in Idaho and the rest. There's actually ones in Texas like we talked about with Camp Mystic, and it's been going on since about 1997 in Texas and there's other ones in California around the Santa Ana River watershed. It's a program out there where they have about four or five mountain regions and they have about 15 to 20 ground seeding locations that come over. But, like I said, everything has to be extremely perfect for that to happen.
Speaker 1:But it's not a new technology. Yeah, See. I didn't really know what it was until you know seeing it in the news and social media and people talking about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it's been going on since 1947 out in Australia. Believe it or not, there's cloud seeding going on there, but you know. So what's the effectiveness of it? Some of the studies say that it's from zero, which that sucks if you're a cloud seeding company? Yeah, absolutely, and you're invested in it and it's zero, but it can be up to 20% and you can see that 20% more rainfall can be detrimental.
Speaker 1:Right, exactly, but it's all about… Floods and all of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's all about getting the rain to drop where it needs to drop at, but they also do it say like in the Reno area, and they do some winter cloud seeding.
Speaker 1:That's interesting.
Speaker 2:And they claim that they do enough seeding out there in the Reno watershed area. I guess that it's enough for about 40,000 homes a year, wow yeah. So with all these technologies so right now I think that they're proven their hypothesis right that can we put stuff in the weather to manipulate it, and we've seen during this podcast, or heard during this podcast, they can do it via lightning rods to attract lightning. We learned about manipulating hurricanes and we've also heard about cloud seeding, and while I think it's something that can be done that, is it really worth it? I mean, what are your thoughts on cloud seeding, whether manipulation should.
Speaker 1:I mean from the studies, from what they're saying, it's a very low percentage if it does anything. So I just don't see any value to it.
Speaker 2:Yeah it's not like it's enough right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:If they could send something up and say it's a even 60%, actually 51% would be better than this like zero to 20, zero to 20. So that means, if it's half that, zero to 10%, I just don't think it's worth it.
Speaker 2:I don't I think at some point, just like we talk about in a lot of our shows, some things we should probably just leave up to God whether it's my God or somebody else's God or somebody else's supreme being that I think we should probably just leave the weather manipulation alone, all right? Well, we're at the bottom of the half hour and you've been riding along with the Global Bob Show with my co-host, hello Shelly.
Speaker 1:Hello.
Speaker 2:And we hope that we've given you some information for you to go out and do your own research, and I'd be very interested to have folks leave us some comments via email, or I guess they can go to GlobalBobShowcom, find the show and text us a message, right?
Speaker 1:Yes, text us a message.
Speaker 2:And tell us if we're way off base or if we're right online and what are your thoughts on cloud seeding and weather manipulation and all of that? One of the things we always put out there is if you like the show, then share the show, and I know Shelly is working on some show merchandise both shirts, hats, lunchboxes, thermoses.
Speaker 1:We'll do it all, whatever y'all want.
Speaker 2:Y'all let us know. We'll put the logo on there, both for the Global Bob Broadcast Network and also the Global Bob Show. With that, we will see everybody next week. Well, actually we won't see them. They will hear us all next week if they want to. But if you like what you hear comments, suggestions are always welcome and with that, everybody, stay safe, get your hurricane preps going and we will talk to you next week. Thank you.