SUNSHINE TO ORDER.

Northern Advocate, 15 February 1912, Page 3

SUNSHINE TO ORDER.

POSSIBILITY OF SCIENTIFIC WEATHER CONTROL.

There is a division of opinion

among experts as to the possibilities oi! controlling the weather, but, a considerable number of them support the claim, made some time ago by Mr S. Z. de Ferranti } at the Institution of Electrical Engineers, that the time is not far distant when it will be considered no more wonderful to control the weather than we think it now to control water after it has fallen from the clouds. By electrical means it might be possible to disperse clouds which do not allow the sunshine to come to earth, and to set up an electrical defence along our coasts which would cause the moisture in the clouds to fall in the form of rain, and so prevent these clouds drifting over the country. In a similar way rain when required inland could be so obtained. ' Opponents of this theory have pointed out that it might be possible to control the weather in a small degree leeally, but that it would be impossible to do so over large tracts of land; although it is still remembered that Sir Oliver Lodge proposed a scheme for London fogs. "The truth is/ said a well-known elc< trical expert recently, "that science has advanced so much of late years that it is difficult to know exactly where we are. Electricity is the predominating factor, and its application has made a revolution in human life. It is not like steam, and the variety of its application is infinite. For heating, lighting, or power it is a much greater force than the world ever knew in the old days, .xnd no one cfin limit its possibilities. That we may be able ti control the weather by electricity is not at all improbable, but we have yet to find-out a little more before such wonders will be everyday occurrences." I

It has long been suggestd that the i- habitants of Mars—if there are any —have found cut how to store up the summer heat for winter uj-e. The whole aim of science to-day is to increase man's lower over Nature, and U) do this he must utilise energies which now go to waste. The solar heat, for instance, comes to us without cost and in unlimited measure. It is estimated that the deck of a liner at sea receives enough energy from the sun to drive its engines. Twice every day the attraction of the sun ard the moon, combined with the rotation of the earth on its axis, causes an upswelling of the waters' of the sea to pass round the earth. The energy here going to waste is almost beyond calculation, and if man could capture it, or even an infinitesimal portion of it, he would have a reservoir of energy which could be utilised in numberless ways. Nobody knows whence comes all this force, but it. is the dream of science that somehow, some day, man will tap it, and will have within his grasp the power to make this old world new.