Is Seeding Hurricanes the Answer to Less Destruction?

Retired National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Project Director Dr. Waylon “Ben” Livingston recently confirmed in an article published on PrisonPlanet.com what Peter Cordani, founder of Dyn-O-Mat, has reportedly been saying for seven years: Seeding clouds, thunderstorms, hurricanes and fires will work

Since 1999, Cordani and his team of experts — including weather expert, professor and author Dr. Peter Ray — have been conducting in-house laboratory testing and field testing of Dyn-O-Mat’s Dyn-O-Gel polymer. All tests to date have reportedly proven the substance’s ability to lessen the impact of violent storms and fires through cloud-seeding. In fact, Dyn-O-Mat has been issued a patent by the U.S. patent office for seeding clouds with polymer.

What’s more, Livingston, a former naval physicist, stated that reducing a Category 4 storm would not be extremely difficult — a theory Cordani has held for years.

And Livingston is not the first expert to state that cloud seeding holds promise. In an interview aired July 7, 2000, on CBS News’s “The Early Show,” Dr. Hugh Willoughby, director of NOAA’s Hurricane Research Division, said Cordani’s proposal “has a chance. This man has hit upon something that’s within the realm of physical possibility.”

Since then, however, Willoughby has reportedly distanced himself from Dyn-O-Mat, speaking out in the media against Cordani and against the feasibility of seeding clouds to lessen a hurricane’s force, reportedly in spite of the fact that he has never been part of the Dyn-O-Mat project.

Neither has Livingston — but he has successfully seeded clouds and reportedly flown on more than 250 missions into the eyes of hurricanes. And in an article published on the Midland Reporter-Telegram’s Web site, Mywesttexas.com, on Sept. 25, 2005, Livingston went on record as saying Hurricane Katrina “could have been dramatically curtailed.”.

NOAA is no longer in the business of conducting weather modification since the agency’s Project Storm Fury was shut down in the 1980s. So why, Cordani asks, has Willoughby continued to — as Cordani sees it — discredit a company like Dyn-O-Mat that is interested in working with the government to lessen the damage wrought by natural disasters, particularly when he has never worked hands-on with Dyn-O-Mat’s products?

In fact, Cordani is reportedly concerned by what appears to be a discrepancy in Willoughby’s data. At one point, Willoughby reportedly estimated that Dyn-O-Mat would need 10 aircraft to seed a storm. He later reportedly revised that figure to more than 400, while Livingston’s research showed that two small aircraft per hour could do the job. Cordani wonders what can account for such a numbers gap.

“I also continue to be puzzled by government agencies’ quickness to offer criticism but not engage in serious discourse on the potential of cloud- seeding,” concluded Cordani. “If they don’t think it will work, then I want to be able to hear their rationale and offer my own. Third-party criticism is not helping us move closer to a solution. It’s time to air it out in public.”