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<br />II SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS <br /> <br />.. <br /> <br />Weather and climate are major factors in human activity. Even <br />where human communities have adapted themselves reasonably well to the <br />climate of a region, temporary deviations from the normal -- severe <br />storms, droughts, unseasonable frosts -- periodically cause acute mone- <br />tary loss and personal suffering. Weather modification is thus an <br />age-old dream. Research on atmospheric processes has apparently brclught <br />man to the threshold of realizing that dream, at leas t in part. <br /> <br />There is some evidence that within the next decade, prec:ipitatj.on <br />can be modestly increased or decreased over selected target are~s, <br />hail and lightning reduced, and severe storms moderated. None of <br />these are yet feasible on a broad scale, and they may never be. Pr.lc- <br />tical weather modification, however, is sufficiently probable that <br />substantial effort is 'justified to predict the potential social, <br />economic" and ecological consequences if the technology should be <br />fully developed. This report is inten~ed to evaluate th.e changE;s ill <br />the structure, organization, and behavior of natural plant and. <br />animal communities likely to result from the kinds of .deliberate <br />weather modification, at a scale ranging from an individual cloud tel <br />a storm system, that appear worth serious consideration in the fore-' <br />seeable future. <br /> <br />Weather modification provides. almost for. the first time, anop- <br />portunity t9 judge beforehand the benefits and costs of, an extensive <br />. deliberate alteration of the natural environment. A generation ago,.a new <br />technology such as weather modification would almos t certainly have been <br />applied ,as soon as, it, was. available if it promised substantial monetary <br />gains. Public attitudes toward man's environment are changing rapidly, <br />and monetary returns alone may no longer suffice as a reason for intro- <br />'. ductionoF'.:l technology that could have pervasive effects on that eo- <br />. vironment. <br /> <br />Weather modification will be desirable only if: (1) The weath,er <br />change results in a net economic gain to the communi ty as a whole, w:i th <br />adequate compensation to those who suffer economic loss. (2) The <br />weather change results in a net increase in psychological sat:lsfacti.:>ns <br />gained from the weather, and from those components of the physical wld <br />biological environment affected by the weather. These satisfactions <br />specifically include esthetic enjoyment by man of plant and animal cc)m- <br />munities affected by weather. How to equate psychic satisfactions al~ainst <br />economic gain (worthwhile only as it produces psychic satisfactions) is <br />no more solved today than it was in Jeremy Bentham's day. (3) Sign:lficant <br />options previously available are not lost. Such lost options includ.~ <br />extinction of plant and animal species, destruction of irreplaceable <br />ecosystems or scenic wonders, and loss of valuable genetic material. <br /> <br />1 <br />