WMOD00398

• Project Name: Project Skywater
• Title: Precipitation Management and the Environment - An Overview of the Skywater IX Conference
• Date: 9/1/1977
• Weather Modification - Doc Type: Report

Environmental Overview

Since the resources available for environmental researches of the general class to which ours
belong are narrowly limited, we need to ask, from the viewpoint of society as a whole, what part
of these resources should be taken from other needs and allocated to environmental impacts of
precipitation management? On what grounds should these allocations be made? Some have
speculated that precipitation management is a paramount threat to vast sections of the
environment and should command top priority for the use of scarce resources. As one speculative
impact after another has been checked out and found to be harmless, it becomes more and more
apparent that some of these speculations have been advanced by entities purporting to be
concerned for the environment but actually committed to a position of self-aggrandisement or
opposing weather modification.
We need a fresh look at these speculations. How should our researches be pursued in a
balanced relationship with other impact researches that treat of the same common family of
receptors? Where there are clear reasons for giving priority within this faimily to
precipitation-modification impacts, how do we command the appropriate resources? When there
are clear reasons for yielding priority to other impacts on the same receptors, how do we justify
our own inaction to those people who perceive in precipitation management a potential threat to
interests they hold dear? In the gray area between the imperative affirmatives and denials, how
should we order priorities?
So far we have considered the overview issue as seen from Skywater looking outward. We must
also consider issues that we see by looking inward. If we must achieve balance and harmony
between Skywater and other impactors of the same environment, we must also achieve balance
and harmony among the topics addressed, methods used, etc., within the family of Skywater
researches.
How an issue is stated governs how a hypothesis is framed, the testing of which contributes to
resolution of the issue. How the hypothesis is framed governs the experimental design by which it
may be tested. How the experiment is designed governs what conceptual models and what data
are required for execution of the experiment. What models and data are required governs the
logistics of data accumulation and reduction. At each step in this progression toward the
resolution of the issue, competent information about further steps is needed to make wise
choices. Looking inward on an environmental overview useful in informing future Skywater
researches, we need a body of participants who, collectively, can look both ways along the path
we are attempting to chart to assess the importance of resources that can be brought to the task.
We seek guidance in choosing wisely how we should spend what resources we have to work with,
what topics and methods we should emphasize, and which to abandon.
The issues of environmental overview for Project Skywater have to do with distinguishing
between environmental impacts that are pertinent to decisionmaking and those that are not, and
with assembling factual information in a way that fosters intelligent, responsible decisionmaking.
We wish neither to undervalue environmental impacts nor to overvalue them, whether they be
beneficial or detrimental.

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