“—give him complete power to cause rains, wherever he desires, on deserts

or meadows and to dissipate cyclones while forming.”

– Dr. Walter Bowman Russell

The history of weather modification is a story of pseudo-science turned science, of censorship turned diligence, and a dream turned reality. We’ve long sought to manipulate our skies in the hopes of creating something short of utopia – to reverse that which we, inadvertently, had caused. Today, that dream is close within our grasp, thanks largely in part to Swiss physicist Jean-Pierre Wolf, who now stands on the shoulders of both giants and conmen.

It starts with the introduction of what was known as “cloudbusting.” Cloudbusting was a pseudo-scientific practice of supposed weather modification, of which was engineered by Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich.

Reich was quite adamant that he could produce rain by manipulating an esoteric energy in our atmosphere known as Deadly Orgone Radiation (DOR). This led to dozens of experiments using the cloudbuster – or as Reich referred to his research as “cosmic orgone engineering” – from 1951 to his eventual imprisonment in 1957. In between this timeline, despite the FDA seeing no evidence of either “orgone energy” or of the effectiveness of Reich’s cloudbusters, Reich’s increasing mental instability prevented him from accepting their conclusions.

Injunctions were made, resulting in the destruction of Reich’s cloudbusters and the burning of any written material which references cloudbusting or orgone energy. In November 3, 1957, just days before he believed he would be released from Federal prison, Reich’s body was found in his bed, having died from heart failure.

Wilhelm Reich passed away believing that he had already changed the world – in particular, our means of controlling the weather. He was wrong, but his dream failed to die alongside his body.

Around this same time, another weather modification method was starting to grow in popularity. This method was known as “cloud seeding,” and remains being used in certain countries throughout the world today. What this method entails is the use of planes to release specific chemicals – from silver iodide to dry ice – into our atmosphere in order to manipulate the amount or type of precipitation that falls from the clouds.

Unlike Wilhelm Reich’s cloudbusting experiments, cloud seeding does adhere to legitimate science. In fact, the largest cloud seeding system in the world is located in the People’s Republic of China. In 2008, just before the Olympic Games, the Chinese government had ordered rockets to be flown over Beijing and commence in cloud seeding to ensure a dry Olympic season.

And despite what seemingly appeared to be successful results, scientists to this day are still somewhat skeptical of just how effective cloud seeding really is. According to a 2003 report by the US National Research Council (NRC):

“...science is unable to say with assurance which, if any, seeding techniques produce positive effects. In the 55 years following the first cloud-seeding demonstrations, substantial progress has been made in understanding the natural processes that account for our daily weather. Yet scientifically acceptable proof for significant seeding effects has not been achieved, and the scientific challenges have proved to be significantly more formidable and complex than perceived initially.”

Which isn’t to say that there are no effects; rather, the effects of which we’ve seen thus far are unsubstantial to be considered worth investing in to any significant degree. As for whether these cloud-seeding techniques have been shown to negatively affect our atmosphere, given the amount of silver iodide released over the years, the international Weather Modification Association has since concluded that “published scientific literature clearly shows no environmentally harmful effects arising from cloud seeding with silver iodide aerosols.”

Thus now bringing us to the Swiss physicist Jean-Pierre Wolf: