Most people will say that yes, it might have some harmful impact. But surprisingly, all the studies done so far on cloud seeding have shown no lasting negative effects on the environment. One of the reasons behind this is that if you understand this process in depth, you will understand what this process is. We are speeding up the effect of condensation. We are not making clouds miraculously. We are forcing the existing clouds to rain instantly rather than later.
So if you think about it, you will see that this is not as useful technology as you might assume. We can prepone tomorrow’s rain today. Or we can change the location over a relatively short distance. But overall, we cannot add water vapour to the air. Only if there is water vapour in the air, will clouds form. If there is no water vapour, then how will clouds form? How will cloud seeding be useful?
This is the reason, why many studies say that cloud seeding is a technology that does not work. It is not possible to increase the total amount of rain. We do not have any concrete evidence for this, either in favour or against. In the beginning, people were also concerned that using silver iodide could cause injury to humans or other animals in case of high exposure to silver iodide. But only a little silver iodide is used in cloud seeding, so it does not have any ecological, environmental or health impact.
