A New "Space Race"

Here, "Sir" James Dyson, inventor of the Dyson series of vacuums, says what we hear every 6 months or so: we need engineers, more of them, and we need them now. He throws in the usual "Asia is catching us!" fear-mongering and even manages to reminisce longingly for the days of NASA engineers working to reach the moon (a concept that would have been very unimportant to him as a British citizen, the British have never shown much interest in space, and do not provide funding to the ISS).

In any case, he does manage one good point: we need another space race. Many people have argued this, scientists, engineers, and even politicians all have at certain times suggested what they believe should be the next "Space Race" for engineers, be it "green" technologies like renewable energy, a colony on Mars, or whatever is the hot issue at the time.
However, what they continue to miss is the face that a "race" is usually not run by one team. We can't band all the planet's engineers together for a race, because then there is no opponent. The reason the Space Race worked, and was so instrumental in the shaping of the future, was that we had a clear, dangerous opponent we feared might wipe us off this planet if we did not defeat.
So building safe fusion power is a worthy goal, but I do not see anyone rousing interest in a "Fusion Race" because the end result does not mean American doom.

So for the record, I suggest what should be the next technological race on this planet, complete with high-stakes, deadly opponents possibly bent on our destruction, and cool gadgets and lofty though realistic goals: weather control!

The potential benefits of large-scale weather control are obvious: irrigation of arid areas, decreased damage from thunderstorms and hurricanes, increased hours of sunlight over crops, increased snow on the polar ice caps to combat global warming...just to name a few.
But there is a danger too: what if the Chinese beat us to weather control and suck up all the rainclouds to irrigate their rice fields (which require a lot of rain)? What if the Russians get weather control and use it to warm up Siberia, opening up millions of acres of farmland and oil reserves, while plunging North America into a neverending drought?
The point here is that America can only trust itself to be safe shepherds of weather control, much like we only trust ourselves with nuclear weapons. We must be the first to control the weather, otherwise we cannot possibly legislate worldwide non-proliferation of weather control without the upperhand.
Weather control isn't just Star Trek mumbo jumbo either. Scientists have suggested that pumping water-vapor 80 feet into the air along coasts would blow enough moisture into the coast to dramatically effect the weather. India has admitted (as have other countries to certain degrees) to using cloud seeding to create rainclouds and increase rainfall in dry areas. Before the Beijing Olympics, China launched rockets into the sky to cause rainfall outside of the city, hoping it would both eliminate rain in the city and also knock down pollution. And these are technologies that already exist. Technologies have been suggested that could dissipate stormclouds as they form, preventing intense thunderstorms. Other technologies are being studied that would reduce temperatures over city-sized areas by inducing either wind or wind shifts.

With a rapidly growing world population, weather control methods to increase crop production aren't just a good idea, they are quickly becoming necessary! So I humbly submit that the next technological race this planet enters should be The Weather Race.


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