this post was submitted on 20 May 2024
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It’s interesting that they don’t talk about seeding the clouds at all.
Where I live they (the insurance companies pay for it) seed the clouds with silver iodide to create more nucleation points for the hail. This will increase the amount of hail, but decreases to total possible size.
Probably because if you do that, you're on the hook for damage to properties your company didn't underwrite policies for.
Works here, I think all the insurance agencies pay into the program.
But what would you sue them for? The storm was happening and it also doesn’t always work, it mitigates their potential payouts for claims that are already going to happen.
Think golf ball sized instead of baseball, stuff is still getting damaged.
It is unclear if seeding actually has a large enough impact on hail formation.
Insurance companies aren’t known to just spend money for no reason, it’s adding nucleation points, with less nucleation points the hail can build up larger before it break out of the storm cloud.
Sure they can’t prove it’s doing anything, but more nucleation points can’t make things worse and they know more nucleation points mean smaller potential hail.
It’s usually politics at play or environmentalists screaming about chemicals in the clouds that are the hurdles for something like this.
One of the biggest problems in research is that there is no control: We don't know what would have happend without the seeding. So we can only compare random storms that are seeded and not. Here the differences are very small (i.e. statistically insignificant). But that doesn't mean it has no effect.
Also I think we should be careful when using such things at large scale, as we just don't know the outcome. In small quantities it is however no hazard at all.