I’d never want to suggest that Nikolai Tesla isn’t awesome – he’s a badass – but I have serious doubts anyone could use his ideas for an ionisation machine to create 52 rainstorms in the Middle East, like these guys claim.
The Abu Dhabi-based Meteo Systems says that when air humidity is above 30 per cent, you can use their Tesla-inspired ioniser to send charged particles up into the air, which attracts dust, which in turn attracts water particles, and then – BOOMSHAKALAKA – you have a rainstorm.
According to the Daily Mail, Meteo Systems aren’t revealing any data for these claims, or any sort of high level explanation of their technology. But they claim 52 rainstorms that happened between July 2010 and August 2010 in five different areas around the Abu Dhabi area was a direct result of their machines. They have a lot of people disagreeing with them.
Most sceptics point out that the entire Middle East had an unusually moist rainy season last year, which happened to coincide with the same time frame Meteo Systems is claiming. Even weather experts are emphatically dismissing this claim, with the best, most fantastically nerdy quote coming from former NOAA department chairman Joseph Golden:
“That’s garbage, that’s absolute garbage,” Joseph Golden, a former senior meteorologist at the Forecast Systems Lab of the National Weather Service, told Fox News. “I don’t believe that for a nanosecond. You aren’t going to get anything out of clear skies. I don’t want to sound like Tom Cruise here, but show me the data.”
I’m not trying to say weather manipulation is impossible (not until Haitian weatherman weighs in, at least), but much like achieving dominion over gravity and time, I think it’s going to take more than rehashing old hypothesis to accomplish it. However, I have no doubt that with all the money circulating through out the region, they could make it rain in other ways. [Daily Mail via AOL via Dvice]