A Warning From Dr. Irving Langmuir, the High Priest of Rainmaking

Dr. Irving Langmuir was considered the "high priest of rainmaking"

Dr. Irving Langmuir yielded discoveries as varied as the gas-filled incandescent light bulb, submarine sonar, octet atomic theory, surface films, smoke screens, rain making, and weather control. Langmuir, the 1932 Nobel laureate in Chemistry, thrived in the atmosphere of creative freedom cultivated at General Electric's research lab in Schenectady, NY.

www.createspace.com...

In 1950, he issued this warning.

Dr. Irving Langmuir, high priest of scientific rainmaking, sounded a solemn warning last week: those who sow too many rainstorms may reap nothing but droughts. Speaking at the School of Mines in drought-threatened New Mexico, Langmuir denounced the commercial rainmakers, many of them woefully ignorant of the art, who are seeding the atmosphere with silver iodide throughout the dry Southwest. "Some of them," he said, "are using hundreds of thousands of times too much. No more than one milligram [.000035 oz] of silver iodide should be used for every cubic mile of air."

Notice, the "high priest of rainmaking" says it takes only one milligram of silver iodide for every square mile! Do the math. If they only used 1 gram of silver iodide in a run, that's enough to seed 1000 square miles

I found this on Wikipedia.

The crystalline structure of AgI is similar to that of ice, allowing it to induce freezing (heterogeneous nucleation) in cloud seeding for the purpose of rainmaking. Approximately 50,000 kg/year are used for this purpose, each seeding experiment consuming 10-50 grams.

en.wikipedia.org...

And here is a pilot from WMI (Weather Modification Inc) recorded by a patriot citizen, admitting the chemical (silver iodide) is used, who funds it (local gov, cities, hydrodams, water districts, foreign governments, state embassies, etc.), and then he goes on to say, we have projects in Sacramento, Redding and other areas in the Northwest US.



Now, we know that silver iodide is harmful to humans.

Target Organs: Thyroid.


Potential Health Effects

Eye: May cause eye irritation.

Skin: May cause skin irritation. Can cause eczema and rash.

Ingestion: May cause irritation of the digestive tract. The toxicological properties of this substance have not been fully investigated. Chronic ingestion of iodides during pregnancy has resulted in fetal death, severe goiter, and cretinoid appearance of the newborn.

Inhalation: May cause respiratory tract irritation. May cause effects similar to those described for ingestion. The toxicological properties of this substance have not been fully investigated.

Chronic: Chronic ingestion of iodides during pregnancy has resulted in fetal death, severe goiter, and cretinoid appearance of the newborn.

fscimage.fishersci.com...

Note: Silver Iodide is the only silver compound that does not cause Argyria.

But most don't know, that the EPA has classified silver iodide as Toxic to the Aquatic Environment, because it removes oxygen from the water, or causes hypoxia.

Well, the atmosphere has water vapor, and the silver iodide acts like a dust, and the water adheres to the silver iodide particle, creating a ice crystal, these eventually sink to warmer levels and turn into raindrops.

The raindrops fall into the streams, rivers and oceans. The accumulate in the snowpack in and run off into the oceans. So, you would think that stories like this

WASHINGTON — Lower levels of oxygen in the Earth's oceans, particularly off the United States United States' Pacific Northwest coast

news.yahoo.com...

would be cause for alarm.

Novelist Kurt Vonnegut tells of Langmuir's eccentricities and also of how Vonnegut based his novel Cat's Cradle on Langmuir and his work

transitmedia.net...

[edit on 9-3-2010 by 911stinks]

What? Cretinoid appearance? Is that a real term? I'm also wondering if this had anything to do with the coughing fit I had three years ago that lasted for three months and made me temporarily lose my voice?

Good Find! Like one of my favorite sites always writes:
There are always signs beforehand, we just have to look for them.
Or something like that.

Langmuir's warning was made in 1950 and based on rainmaking methodologies of earlier decades.

None of those early rainmaking techniques proved to be reliable or cost effective. Our understanding of how these things work is better and and among other things pollution has changed the atmosphere.

Originally posted by mmiichael

Langmuir's warning was made in 1950 and based on rainmaking methodologies of earlier decades.

None of those early rainmaking techniques proved to be reliable or cost effective. Our understanding of how these things work is better and and among other things pollution has changed the atmosphere.

Yes, and they are STILL using silver iodide.

Too much of anything is bad but the concentrations of silver iodide when used in cloud seeding applications is pretty slight. Using iodized table salt would seem to be more of a risk.

Using silver iodide (the most common seeding material) as an example, the typical concentration of silver in rainwater or snow from seeded cloud systems is less than 0.1 micrograms per liter. This is much below the U.S. Public Health Service's stated acceptable concentration of 50 micrograms per liter. As another example, the concentration of iodine in rainwater from seeded clouds is far below the concentration found in common iodized table salt.

www.nawcinc.com...

Granted, the source is a commercial cloud seeding enterprise but their sources for these figures are independent. I suppose if a given area is seeded repeatedly the concentrations would build up but I think there are probably much worse polluters than these guys.

Originally posted by Phage
Too much of anything is bad but the concentrations of silver iodide when used in cloud seeding applications is pretty slight. Using iodized table salt would seem to be more of a risk.

Using silver iodide (the most common seeding material) as an example, the typical concentration of silver in rainwater or snow from seeded cloud systems is less than 0.1 micrograms per liter. This is much below the U.S. Public Health Service's stated acceptable concentration of 50 micrograms per liter. As another example, the concentration of iodine in rainwater from seeded clouds is far below the concentration found in common iodized table salt.

www.nawcinc.com...

Granted, the source is a commercial cloud seeding enterprise but their sources for these figures are independent. I suppose if a given area is seeded repeatedly the concentrations would build up but I think there are probably much worse polluters than these guys.

One microgram per liter. One microgram of silver iodide is enough to seed a square mile, according to the guy that invented it.

I think you are downplaying the chemical toxicity of this substance.

reply to post by 911stinks

I think you are confused about the units you are using.

Langmuir said 1 milligram (1 one thousandth of a gram) is enough for 1 cubic mile of air. But you can't really compare that to the silver iodide levels found in the rain produced.

The rainwater concentration of silver iodide is .1 microgram per liter. 1 ten millionth of a gram. That's 1/500th of water quality standards limits.

As far as accumulation goes, it doesn't seem to be a problem:

More than 100 Sierra Nevada lakes and rivers have been studied since the 1980’s (e.g., Stone 1986); no detectable silver above the natural background was found in seeded target area water bodies, precipitation and lake sediment samples, nor any evidence of silver accumulation after more than fifty years of continuous seeding operations (Stone 1995; Stone 2006). Many of these alpine lakes have virtually no buffering capacity, making them extremely susceptible to the effects of acidification and sensitive to changes in trace metal chemistry. Therefore studies were conducted as part of environmental monitoring efforts to determine if cloud seeding was impacting these lakes. No evidence was found that silver from seeding operations was detectable above the background level.

www.weathermodification.org...

The American Society of Civil Engineers says:

Exposure of the operator of a cloud seeding generator is compared with threshold limits for prolonged exposure established by the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists. For silver iodide and its complexes, iodine and carbon monoxide, maximum exposure was found to be greatly below hazardous levels. Concentrations of silver and iodine in precipitation from seeded storms were found to be greatly below permissible levels set by the U.S. Public Health Service for drinking water. The inoffensive nature of the effluent from a silver iodide generator is emphasized by contrasting its chemical content with that of automobile exhaust.

cedb.asce.org...



I think you are overplaying the toxicity. Your Fischer Science link says that exposure and ingestion may cause "irritation".

It says that chronic ingestion of iodides (not specifically silver iodide), can cause problems with pregnant women. Iodine as an essential nutrient. Iodized table salt contains higher concentrations of iodides than those produced by cloud seeding.

From your source:

Section 313
This material contains Silver Iodide (listed as Silver compounds), 99%, (CAS# 7783-96-2) which is subject to the reporting requirements of Section 313 of SARA Title III and 40 CFR Part 373.
Clean Air Act:
This material does not contain any hazardous air pollutants.
This material does not contain any Class 1 Ozone depletors.
This material does not contain any Class 2 Ozone depletors.
Clean Water Act:
None of the chemicals in this product are listed as Hazardous Substances under the CWA.
None of the chemicals in this product are listed as Priority Pollutants under the CWA. CAS# 7783-96-2 is listed as a Toxic Pollutant under the Clean Water Act.
OSHA:
None of the chemicals in this product are considered highly hazardous by OSHA.
STATE
CAS# 7783-96-2 can be found on the following state right to know lists: California, (listed as Silver compounds), New Jersey, (listed as Silver compounds), Pennsylvania, (listed as Silver compounds).

California Prop 65

California No Significant Risk Level: None of the chemicals in this product are listed.

fscimage.fishersci.com...

[edit on 3/9/2010 by Phage]