Desperately wanted to do a West Papua post this morning, but a critical Wired deadline beckons. In my absence, please marvel at the UNIVAC promotional film above, in which the early computer is touted as the instrument capable of liberating our species from meteorological uncertainty. Ah, to think there was a time when the phrase […]
Tags:computers·meteorology·UNIVAC
Our species ability to control avalanches remains more art than science, which makes sense given the challenges involved. A thousand different variables play into each situation, ranging from the constitution of the snow to incremental changes in air temperature. On top of that, the means by which we knock away threatening snow—namely, by pelting it […]
India’s making a big, expensive stab at determining once-and-for-all whether man can make it rain. (No, not in the figurative sense.) Color us a little skeptical; we’ve always thought that positive cloud-seeding results were often due more to luck than the effects of sprinkled silver iodide. (For the umpteenth time, people, correlation is not causation.) […]
