Monday, April 21, 2014

Controlling Weather

                      Researchers at the University of Central Florida are working on a laser that could possibly induce some rain and put to rest the idea that we cannot control the weather. At first this sounds like a great idea, and I think overall it would be. However I think there could be some downside to this kind of technology.
                      Predicting the weather is something that turns out to be nearly impossible. I think that this kind of technology can be a big weight off of many people's shoulders. Farmers for example would not need to worry about losing their crops to extended drought. Also right now they are working purely on rain and lightning. There is no telling what else they could produce or maybe even prevent with this kind of technology. If we could prevent major storms like tornadoes or hurricanes, we could prevent major devastation that these storms can produce. However along with all those positives, there are some possible negative I can think of.
                  Of course if you have the ability to produce all of these things , there is bound to be someone who wants to use the technology in a negative way. We could easily deal with someone who used it to terrorize a city or even an entire nation if it was on a large enough scale. Even if the technology managed only to produce rain, it could still be used to negatively effect a certain area through flooding. This is something that would also be hard to stop or keep track of, so it would be the major downside to this kind of technology.
                  Another downside to this might be the cost and the effectiveness. Of course if it can prevent major natural disasters it would be worth it, but if it can't it may be a huge loss in both time and money. Another thing to consider is whether or not we are supposed to experience these things from mother nature, this is a more philosophical question, but still one that deserves an answer. There is really no way to know all of this.
                 I guess we would just have to try to weigh both sides. Since we don't know exactly how it would work, there is no way to now if we would be able to prevent it. However we don't really know all of the good it could bring either. We would have to ultimately know all of this to determine if the benefits would outweigh to downside. We just have to wait for more research and advance further with the technology, hopefully we will find some of these answers along the way. 

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