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Subject: Re: Cloud Busting - Fri, 8 Mar 1996 11:03:33 -0500
Date: Fri, 8 Mar 1996 11:03:33 -0500
From: ccaruso@sas.upenn.edu (Christopher G Caruso)
Message-Id: <199603081529.KAA19529@mail2.sas.upenn.edu>
Subject: Re: Cloud Busting
To: orgonomy@jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
Sender: owner-orgonomy@jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
Shawn P. Wilbur wrote:
[edited]
>
> Wouldn't it be nice if we could just not do things that are dangerous, as
> if by avoiding those sins of commission we could remain guiltless? But
> what about the sins of omission, and the ways in which we are already
> implicated in environmental degradation, global weather change, emotional
> desertification? Can we really stand around, pretending the hands we're
> ringing are lilly-white? I suspect that that's a luxury we no longer have.
>
> -shawn
Certainly, we humans have been wantonly destroying the environment since
we have had the ability to (i.e. since the Industrial Revolution). We
bear responsibility for that, and we must stop it. However, I'm not sure
that the Earth needs any more "fixing" from us. If the Earth is a
self-organizing system, as scientist James Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis
suggests, the Earth will be able to adapt and respond to the recent
attacks to her integrity. Perhaps the best thing we can do is stop
mucking her up.
That question aside, I don't follow your setting up cloudbusting as an
example of an active step we can make to oppose pollution and the damage
we have caused so far. In what way can cloudbusting reverse the
environmental carnage we have wrought? The only practical things that
have been mentioned are "greening the deserts" and "ending droughts".
While ending droughts has very important short-term results for the
humans suffering under them, I don't see how an argument can be made for
ending droughts as a long-term environmental solution. If anything, it
can do harm. As Carlinsky has accurately pointed out, droughts can be part of
natural cycles of things, such as traveling African sands bringing
nutrients to other parts of the world where they are crucial to the life
process. As for "greening the deserts," I'm not sure that this is a good
idea at all. Fragile desert eco-systems and the abundant life they
support would be destroyed to make them more human-friendly
environments. I don't see that as a real environmental solution either,
even if it were possible.
Further, even if the claims of cloudbusters are true, cloudbusting, at
best, operates on the level of weather. That is pretty small potatoes in the
whole scheme of things. The amount of CFCs, carbon monoxide, and
other chemical poisons released on a daily basis by our society have effects
exponentially greater than any cloudbuster. Our consumption-driven form of
life is changing the _climate,_ not only something as transient as the
weather.
So, I agree with you Shawn, we can't stand around ringing our hands about
the state the environment. We have to actively oppose the practices that
are destroying it. I just don't see what that has to do with cloudbusters.
On the whole Carlinsky vs DeMeo debate, I'd like to make a few points:
1) If we are really concerned with the environment (and not just carrying
out some personal vendetta), spending all of our energy worrying about one
person who performs cloudbusting operations once every few years is really
misplaced. As I have said, the environmental destruction that occurs in one
day as a result of our life-styles (such as the squanderous waste of personal
fossil-fuel burning machines to drive around in) is of a far greater magnitude
than anything any ignorant or malicious cloudbuster could ever hope to do in
their lifetime.
2) It seems possible that critics like Carlinsky realize that they can
make whatever slanderous claims they want about DeMeo in full knowledge
that DeMeo, because of the "fringe" status of cloudbusting, does not
really have recourse to legal forms of protection. (In other words, if I
walk into court wanting to sue you for slander because you have claimed
that I killed people with my cloudbusting, the court would say, "what the
hell in cloudbusting?" and laugh us out of court.) I think that it is
possible that Carlinsky takes advantage of this in his attacks. I don't
think that this is fair.
3) It seems strange to me that advocates of cloud-busting on this list
tend to minimize the other factors at play in determining the weather when
they want to prove that cloudbusting works, and maximize other factors when
they want to deny responsibility for the consequences. In other words,
the Israel report is supposed to show us that cloudbusting is really
effective, despite massive cloud-seeding efforts of the government. At the
same time, we are supposed to blame the government cloud-seeding for any
damage, and not the cloudbusting. Well, you can't have it both ways.
The more this little shuffle goes on, the less credible cloud-busting seems.
--
Chris Caruso Check out: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~ccaruso/
ccaruso@sas.upenn.edu http://www.igc.org/fair/
Philadelphia, PA USA http://www.mcs.com/~jdav/league.html
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