Revealed: The Australian companies manipulating our weather

Yesterday I covered Dr. Naomi Wolf’s reporting on cloud seeding and geoengineering. She made reference to Australia as one of the countries that has been cloudseeding.

It seems that, in Tasmania at least the Tasmania Hydro’s program has been suspended after it was demonstrated that major floods were preceded by several days of cloud seeding.

Here is some background.

But first there is this. The poisoning of the atmosphere is turned into a cute human interest story

“The technology, which was used by the Chinese government to prevent a downpour during the 2008 Beijing Olympics, is becoming more mainstream.”

Company guarantees a rain-free wedding day with cloud-seeding service

Stuff,

10 March, 2015

Mid-1990s songstress Alanis Morissette sang that rain on your wedding day was Ironic.

While "ironic" might not have been the word Morissette was after, rain on a couple's big day is certainly annoying, particularly if an outdoor ceremony is involved.

But, for just £150,000 ($NZ308,000), one company is willing to guarantee blue skies while you tie the knot.

London-based Oliver's Travels, a luxury travel company that specialises in destination weddings, is now offering a cloud-bursting service for its clients.

"Here at Oliver's Travels, we've helped countless happy couples arrange the destination wedding of their dreams by pairing them with a perfect venue and making sure the food, drinks and entertainment are exactly what they've always wanted," the company says on its website.

"But one thing always bugged us – we can help plan everything down to the last detail, but there was one thing we could never really change: the weather. So we decided to do something about that."

The service uses silver iodide particles to essentially "pop" the clouds before they are due to produce rain.

The company employs a meteorologist, who studies the wedding venue's weather patterns for a week before the big day.

The day before the event, a pilot flies over the site of any identified rainclouds, spraying silver iodide into the air, which attracts moisture in the cloud, turning the cloud's condensation into ice crystals, delaying the rain.

Natasja Rasmussen, head of customer experience at Oliver's Travels, told Discover that the technology, which was used by the Chinese government to prevent a downpour during the 2008 Beijing Olympics, is becoming more mainstream.

"Cloud seeding is now considered a mainstream tool," she said. "New technology provides much more reliable results, meaning we can guarantee the perfect day."

Despite this, Oliver's Travels are yet to sign up a client since debuting the service earlier this year.

And here is some background written on the topic.

Revealed: The Australian companies manipulating our weather

TOTT,

25 June, 2018

Cloud seeding is a method of artificially generating additional rainfall from clouds through technology. It may involve attempting to produce rain when none would normally fall or it may be working to increase precipitation over a particular area.

For over five decades in Australia, the study of clouds, rain and the atmosphere has been largely hidden from the public, as a secretive network of private business interests and faceless corporate entities continue to manipulate the weather around us to their benefit.

CSIRO & CLOUD SEEDING:

Experiments of the cloud seeding theory began in Australia shortly following the world’s first laboratory trials, after new research papers published by USA researchers I Langmuir and V Schaefer stated that rain could be induced by seeding clouds with dry ice.

After a series of experiments in New York, the two researchers managed to make it rain using silver iodide bullets. They got a patent for their technique, referred to as cloud-seeding, soon after.

As a result of the international study, cloud seeding was first trialed in Australia in 1947 when the CSIRO used Royal Australian Air Force aircrafts to drop dry ice into the tops of cumulus clouds.

According to CSIRO history, the method worked reliably with clouds that were very cold, producing rain that would not have otherwise fallen, leading to more subsequent trials.

The first documented date of this success was in 1947. Described by CSIRO:

“This is believed to be the first documented case anywhere in the world of an appreciable man-made rainfall reaching the ground and the first time that dynamic cloud growth had followed seeding.”

Following the success of initial trials, CSIRO scientists would continue this work until 1952, soon expanding to include theoretical, laboratory and airborne investigations of cloud structure and reaction.

CSIRO carried out similar trials from 1953 to 1956 in South Australia, Queensland and other states, however this time covering a large area instead of singular clouds as before.

Experiments used both ground-based and airborne silver iodide generators to gain results. Each experiment covered a target area of 2,000 to 8,000 square kilometres and a neighbouring control area of the same size which was not seeded.

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, CSIRO performed cloud seeding in the Snowy Mountains, on the York Peninsular in South Australia, in the New England district of New South Wales, and in the Warragamba catchment area west of Sydney.

CSIRO’s activities in Tasmania in the 1960s were also successful, with seeding over the Hydro Electricity Commission catchment area on the Central Plateau achieved documented rainfall increases as high as 30% in autumn.

The Tasmanian experiments were so successful that the Commission has regularly undertaken seeding ever since in mountainous parts of the state.

Furthermore, striking results documented across Australia held such promise at the time that new systematic programs of cloud seeding were set up as a result for the next fifty-years.

This work is done today by the CSIRO Division of Cloud Physics under the ‘Marine and Atmospheric Research’ division.

THE PLAYERS:

Cloud seeding continues across Australia in 2018 – and is more advanced than ever.

Today, while some government-run projects exist, the most popular type of project involves coordination between the government and a private company.

A key example of a modern operation currently bringing these experiments to the modern era – one of two of the largest in Australia – is weather and water experimental company, Snowy Hydro, based out of the Snowy Mountains in NSW.

Following initial trials in 2004 in the region, Snowy found that the “exceptional scientific merit of the trial”, “positive results of the evaluation”, and “absence of adverse environmental impacts” were sufficiently ‘compelling’ for the government to pass legislation for an ongoing, operational cloud seeding program.

James Pirozzi, manager at Snowy Hydro, explained how their technology works and has developed in the 21stcentury:

“We’ve got a series of ground-based generators on the western side of the Great Dividing Range in the Kosciusko National Park, and we use the natural terrain features in the wind to give us uplift to get that material from the ground up into the clouds,” Mr Pirozzi said.

Those generators, the burners themselves [are] essentially a big propane flame.”

The cloud seeding activities undertaken by Snowy Hydro are authorised by the Snowy Mountains Cloud Seeding Act 2004 (Act), which prescribes a number of mandatory requirements for cloud seeding programs in NSW.

A 2009 paper looking into cloud seeding found “overall rainfall over targets was somewhere between 5 per cent and 13 per cent greater than over a nearby control region”.

Another recent peer reviewed paper suggested an average 14 per cent increase in rainfall due to recent Snowy Mountain cloud seeding trials.

A company by the name of Hydro Tasmania conducted were also recently under fire for cloud seeding in the lead-up to deadly flooding in north-western Tasmania that resulted in a coronial inquest.

It was later found in a DPAC review that the seeding from Hydro “had no measurable impact on precipitation” — despite the flight lasting for an hour and 34 minutes over the Upper Derwent catchment, targeting Lake Echo.

The review found the cloud seeding flight did not contribute to subsequent flooding of 2016.

Hydro Tasmania’s cloud seeding operation has been on hold since the incident.

Weather Modification, Inc. also supported the Queensland Environmental Protection Agency during their 2008 ‘Feasibility Study for the Augmentation of Rain & Air Chemistry Monitoring’ – providing an instrumented aircraft and crew for cloud seeding.

In December 2006, the Queensland government announced $7.6 million in funding for “warm cloud” seeding research to be conducted jointly by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and the United States National Center for Atmospheric Research.

These are only a few examples!

THE MURDOCH CONNECTION:

Current Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced in 2007 that $10 million from the Australian Government Water Fund will be given to the investigation of an ‘untried technology’ that aims to trigger rainfall from the atmosphere, even when there are no clouds.

The money bankrolls research into mysterious ionisation technology promoted by the secretive Australian Rain Corporation (now Australian Rain Technologies), in hopes of using forthcoming trials to show the technology can bring increased rain.

In a sense, the company will be taking methods previously discussed above, and adding electrification of the ionosphere to create clouds out of thin air, even when there is no rain.

Mr. Turnbull’s office says there was no breach of caretaker protocol because the project was actually approved before the election was announced.

Malcolm Turnbull’s fundraising group, the Wentworth Forum, includes a long list of generous donors responsible for this move, including Frank Lowy, Ros Packer, John Simons, and Matt Handbury – chairman and part-owner of the Australian Rain Corporation!

It has been revealed that Mr. Handbury is the wealthy nephew of Rupert Murdoch and chairman and proprietor of Murdoch Books, which is the headquarters for Australian Rain Corporation!

All starting to make sense now?

Malcolm Turnbull was asked the following question in relation to the connection by the ABC in  2007: Has Matt Handbury’s contribution to your fundraising Wentworth Forum helped in securing funding for the Australian Rain Corporation?

“There is absolutely no connection,” he said.

“That is an outrageous suggestion”.

Requests for interviews with Mr. Turnbull, the head of the Australian Rain Corporation, the head of the center contracted to test the device were declined.

RELATED CONTENT:

Guidelines for the utilisation of cloud seeding as a tool for water management in Australia: cmar.csiro.au

Cloud seeding stimulates rainfall, but what is it and how does it work?: abc.net.au

Turnbull pumps $10m into rainmaking gamble: abc.net.au

ATLANT™ Technology: australianrain.com.au

Clouds form over rain-making technology: abc.net.au

TOTTNews is Australia’s fastest growing source of independent, alternative multimedia news, dedicated to bringing the people of Australia hard-hitting, investigative journalism, through a range of exclusive domestic and international news stories, feature reports, opinion pieces, video coverage and much more.

Founded in 2011, TOTT News has transformed throughout the decade to become a cross-platform, multimedia content publisher, and a primary source of alternative media in Australia and around the world.

And some confirmation from mainstream media. The connections between the Tasmanian floods and cloud-seeding got quite a lot of coverage across Australian media.

Climate control gone wrong: Tasmanian Hydro seeded clouds before disastrous floods

11 June, 2016

Greedy Green Hubris gone wrong? It took months of bad choices to achieve this Gold-Star Moment in Bad Management:

Tasmania’s state-owned Hydro-electric power generator could face legal action for damages after admitting it cloud-seeded in or near water catchments the day ­before disastrous flooding, although heavy rain was forecast.

Tasmania  shut their only fossil fuel power plant in August last year, and relied on renewable energy and one sole Basslink electricity cable to mainland Australia. The cable was supposed to be a back up supply but was bringing in 40% of Tasmania’s electricity, and it broke in December. But a green and greedy approach in Tasmania meant that the state had already run its dams down to 26% levels by selling too much electricity to the mainland at high “renewable” subsidized prices. That was a low level at the start of summer, normally a drier season in Tasmania. After the Basslink cable broke, the dam levels fell to a precipitous 13%, so fast that the green state had to bring in diesel generators just to keep the lights on. They also switched back on the Tamar Gas plant in late January. So much for being the “100% renewable” state.

When rain was forecast in June the hydro managers must have been delighted, but even faced with the forecasts  they seeded clouds on June 5th as well. (Rivers were rising on June 4 and flood warnings were valid for many areas of Tasmania.) This was the same storm system that hit Sydney on its way to Tasmania, causing deaths and threatened houses. Flood damage and losses from that same system in Tasmania now amount to around $100 million. One man is still missing, feared drowned....

Hydro Tasmania's website is HERE

It's raining ideas on cloud seeding

November 1, 2003

In August 1952, the RAF in Britain conducted Operation Cumulus, which involved gliders spraying clouds with dry ice, salt or silver iodide. Within days North Devon received 250 times its normal August rainfall. The town of Lynmouth was virtually washed away and 35 people were killed.

The link between the experiments and the flood has not been proved and cloud seeding over mainland Australia has also been inconclusive, according to the CSIRO.

But artificial rainmaking has its supporters, and a House of Representatives inquiry into water supplies has reignited their dispute with the CSIRO.

Only Tasmania conducts cloud seeding, although in August, Snowy Hydro announced it would undertake a six-year $5 million trial in the Snowy Mountains, spraying clouds with silver iodide from generators on the ground.

Snowy Hydro predicts that snowfall could increase by 10 per cent and could deliver improved environmental flows to the Murray River.

The federal member for Mallee, the National Party's John Forrest, is Canberra's main advocate of cloud seeding.

A Melbourne weather research company, Australian Management Consolidated - which advocates the research of Israeli meteorologist Danny Rosenfeld - has also given evidence to the inquiry, which expects to finish its report early next year. AMC and Professor Rosenfeld say pollution from the Latrobe Valley and Melbourne has caused drought in Gippsland and the Alps by hindering the way clouds release rain. Cloud seeding would rectify the problem, they say.

The head of cloud seeding at Hydro Tasmania from 1990 to 2002, Ian Searle, said the process boosted rainfall in Tasmania's catchment areas by about 87 millimetres a year.

"In my view, the current CSIRO view is based on some rather unhappy experience they had and I think it's flawed," Mr Searle told The Age.

Monthly rainfall varies greatly from year to year. Trying to prove rain was caused by cloud seeding would require a long, expensive experiment. The CSIRO says the trials it conducted in Victoria in the 1970s and 1990s were unable to prove that cloud seeding worked.

Mr Searle disagrees. He said a trial in Tamworth in 1994 was inconclusive, but farmers found it useful. "In my view . . . it was an outstanding success," he said. "People would call up and say they got so much rain. They were very happy."

John Forrest - who says 40 countries, including South Africa, the United States and China practise weather modification - visited Texas last year, where cloud seeding is practised over a third of the state. Like AMC, he says pollution is hampering rainfall, but cloud seeding with salt will fix it.

"The (clouds) are full of aerosols and dust and industrial pollutants which impairs the rain-producing capabilities of the cloud . . . $5 million would give us a good (cloud seeding) program over six or seven years," he said.

The CSIRO says the money could be better spent elsewhere.

"Over Victoria, there is absolutely no reason at all, no evidence, that pollution has an effect on rainfall," the CSIRO's climate modelling team leader, Brian Ryan said, before adding that the climate "is so complex we can't rule anything out".

Dr Ryan said the decline in the state's rainfall was more likely the result of natural variability and the greenhouse effect.

While he agreed that the Snowy Hydro trial would be a good test of cloud-seeding technology, he said the US National Academy of Sciences this month found there was no evidence that cloud seeding worked.

Hydro Tasmania asked to explain cloud seeding in catchment day before flooding

Tasmania's government-owned energy company has been asked to explain why it conducted cloud seeding over the Derwent River catchment the day before flooding began this week.

The catchment flooded on Monday near use in southern Tasmania, where the search continues for a missing farmer.

In the state's north, one person was killed and another remains missing.

Concerns persist over long-term impact of cloud seeding in Kosciuszko

For centuries mankind has dreamed of changing the weather at will, to reverse drought, stave off destructive storms or to water crops.

Climate change aside, most of those attempts have been little more than wishful thinking. But when the snow begins to fall in Kosciuszko National Park in a few short months time, it will be getting a helping hand – from a utilities company.

Officials with electricity generator Snowy Hydro are installing a series of burners along the western edge of Kosciusko national park. Those burners are part of a large network of equipment and expertise the company plans to use to increase the amount of snow falling in the NSW alps this winter.

With more than 10 years of scientific trials complete, the company has been given the green light by the NSW Government to conduct regular cloud seeding operations, a move that has some environmentalists worried, despite the strict operating restrictions placed on the program

Hydro Tasmania to conduct a review of its cloud seeding operation

August 1, 2016

THE future of cloud seeding in Tasmania is unclear, as Hydro Tasmania embarks on a review of the controversial practice.

Hydro released a report on Friday on a cloud seeding flight over the Upper Derwent catchment on June 5, the day before deadly floods hit the region. The report said the cloud seeding did not have a measurable impact on the floods.

But cloud seeding in general will now be subject to a review – and there is no word on when it may resume.