Why aren’t governments investing more in cloud seeding?

[iridescentrae]

I’ve heard about Dubai doing so, but it seems like the people who are against geoengineering because of the risks would be more willing to give cloud seeding some funding, not only locally but internationally. This, combined with the voters and government officials who support geoengineering research should mean that cloud seeding should have a pretty big budget at this point in the global warming crisis.

[erowind]

I'll be brief because I'm a broken record on this forum lol. But the answer is that government priorities are misaligned due to the capitalist economic system we have. Private profit, and increasingly short term private profit, is prioritized in policy making above all else and political corruption is rampant throughout the vast majority of nations including western "democracies."

That all said, cloud seeding does show promise. There are resource constraints to using something like silver iodide as silver is too scarce to be the primary driver of planetary geoengineering. But, there are other methods to control the weather we could potentially use. With further research one of the most potentially harmless geoengineering techniques is marine cloud brightening through the use of powerful shipborne watercannons that use seawater to brighten clouds. We could build nuclear powered ships or even repurpose oil platforms that monitor weather activity and brighten any clouds they encounter or chase down, thereby enhancing the Earth's albedo and reflecting heat back into space. Imagine that, imagine a world where we reuse oil platforms to save the world!

[R8Z]

The politicians just didn't find a way to profit massively like they are profiting from other "green" energy sources. As soon as they do and there's public interest (so they can leverage as being the "good guys") it will be implemented.

In short: lack of incentives.