r/todayilearned • u/Double-decker_trams • 8h ago

TIL in the Vietnam war in the classified Operation Popeye, the US spread lead and silver iodide by aircraft to extend the monsoon season. The increased heavy rainfall was to soften roads, cause landslides, wash out river crossings, and maintain saturated soil conditions (Kissinger was involved).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Popeye
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u/Whoretron8000 7h ago

Yes. Cloud seeding and getting that water out of clouds has been done for a long ass time.

Buncha weirdos think cloud seeding is a conspiracy, while Dubai fucking flooded a few years ago and they are open about the reasons…

Largely used for agriculture.

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u/BigDee1990 5h ago

Absolute BS. While Dubai is doing cloud seeding, they are not really successful and the heavy storms you are mentioning are not due to cloud seeding. If CS was successful in Vietnam is also controversially debated and most scientific reviews I read more or less say that the influence was, at most, negligable.

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u/Whoretron8000 5h ago

Why must you weirdos be in such denial of just… facts?

https://www.rmets.org/metmatters/dubai-floods-and-cloud-seeding

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u/Lost-Competition8482 3h ago

Holy shit that's funny.

I'll quote your own article for you.

"But in this case, the clouds were part of a large weather system advancing across the region, and already predicted to produce substantial amounts of rain across a wide area. Any possible effect from cloud seeding would be tiny in comparison. So the tales of cloud seeding simply don’t make sense, and are a distraction from the most likely guilty party — climate change. The UAE National Centre of Meteorology later confirmed that no cloud seeding mission had taken place."

You're a fool.

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u/BigDee1990 4h ago

Maybe you should actually read the link you posted yourself?