Taming the hurricanes SCIENTIFIC WORLD

INSIDE HIS modern buildings, man has learned to fashion the atmosphere exactly to his liking. By setting dials he cools and de: humidifies the air in hot, damp seasons and heats and adds water vapour to it during cold, dry But outside his enclosures, man is just beginning to achieve the capability of predicting the 'whims' of the elements and is still a long way from exercising any decisive control over the weather.

Floods and droughts, hurricanes and tornadoes, hailstorms and tidal waves still destroy crops, tear up roads and bridges, disrupt communications and electrical power transmission lines and endanger human life.

Today as knowledge about the atmosphere grows through the use of rockets and satellites in particular, attempts to influence the weather are based on putting chemicals into the atmosphere at the right time and place.

Stormfury

In the United States, the Department of Commercethrough its Environmental Science Services Administration (ESSA)-is engaged in a number of field experiments designed to learn how and under what conditions rain can be increased or diminished, heavy snow dispersed to fall more lightly over a larger area, hail decreased, lightning suppressed and hurricanes weakened.

Project Stormfury is a joint ESSA and US Navy project which is seeking means of chemically taming the hurricane.

The power within a hurricane is too great to be countered by any source of energy yet controlled by man, SO Stormfury scientists are looking for a weak spot where slight human intervention might lead to a significant change.

They know that warm, moist air from tropical seas spirals upwards towards the hurricane centre and flows upward in a band of thunderstorm-like clouds circling the eye. The air gathers speed as it nears the centre, producing destrucStrategy and Tactics in the Imperialist Epoch by TECNITROTSKYR Ne tive winds before moving up and away from the storm's core.

In order to decrease the speed of the winds and spread the energy over a larger area to produce less damage, silver iodide particles are sprayed into the storm clouds from airplanes.

The particles convert very cold water droplets into ice crystals, releasing heat into the storm.

According to the theory, the added heat should cause pressure changes that result in lessening the wind speed.

This technique has been tried recently on three hurricanes which began in the Caribbean Sea — including 1969's Hurricane Debbie-and after careful study to isolate changes produced by 'seeding' rather than normal variations which occur, it has been tentatively concluded that the storms were weakened by as much as 30 per cent.

Man's attempts to alter natural patterns of precipitation are usually thought of as "rainmaking', for the purpose of alleviating droughts.

Since 1963, ESSA has been conducting research in seeding flufly, cumulus-type clouds to determine the conditions under which they can be made to grow or dissipate by seeding.

In many clouds, liquid water exists at temperatures well below freezing, but they will produce little or no rain if there are not enough freezing nuclei-particles which can start the growth of ice crystals.

When artificial nuclei-such as silver iodide particles—are added, much of the supercooled water changes to ice. In this process, a great deal of heat is released which, in some cases, causes the cloud to grow. Since large clouds usually rain more than small BEFORE the Britishmade racial Constitution on the basis of which lan Smith came to office, Britain attempted to place Nyasaland, N Rhodesia and S Rhodesia under British-controlled 'white domination' through the creation of the Central African Federation.

This attempt Price: 2s. 6d.

Park Publications Ltd, 186a Street, London, S.W.4. L -1: ---- dl_d annananl adonanan ta molo ito clouds, scientists Delleve inat this technique should encourage increased rainfall.

Experiments which have already been carried out suggest that seeding, increases rainfall from individual clouds by 100 to 150 per cent and further tests will be taking place this year.

Man has already, but unintentionally, interfered with the weather. It is at this point that meteorology and ecology meet.

The eradication of trees and other vegetation to make room for cities has sharply reduced water evanoration into the air. TaLLA UTUpULnHU enU sen mrs. Smoke emissions from homes, office buildings and factories have increased atmospheric dust particle accumulations.

As a consequence, an average city gets 30 per cent less sunlight and 10 per cent more rain than open country.

Until weather modification but, in doing so, it paved the way on the one hand for the fraudulent 'independence' of N Rhodesia which became Zambia and Nyasaland, which became Malawi, and, on the other hand, for a 'white' regime in S Rhodesia.

This regime would secure the northern borders guarding the precious mineral wealth of S Africa for imperialism. This Zambezi line drawn by Whitehall was, in fact, part of NATO strategy globally.

In terms of this strategy there was to be no 'independence' or 'majority rule' South of S Rhodesia and the Portuguese colonies, except for Botswana, Swaziland and Basutoland, the so-called Protectorates' The latter could safely have African governments, since the latter would be closely controlled by the apartheid regime and monopoly capital in S Africa. The Zambezi was to be the 'white line' South of which the colour bar would not be disturbed.

When the Central African Federation was breaking up, Lord Malvern was succeeded in 1957 by the Liberal Garfield Todd as Prime Minister of S Rhodesia.

Smith

researco aavances lu make 1s techniques widely operational, there still remain the latest methods of weather forecasting to minimize the effects of violent weather.

In this field the satellite and the computer have prepared the way for huge advances.

Models

Theoretically, the mathematical equations governing the motion of gases have been known for many years, but in the absence of adequate information on weather conditions (temperature, pressure, density, humidity, etc.) at a particular time and over large regions and because of the complexity of the equations, prediction had to be carried out with the crudest models which yielded inadequate results. CLASS STRUGGLES Garfield Todd has long had a reputation, encouraged by the African National Congress and other servants of the Liberals, for 'liberalism' and tor being "progressive' whatever that can mean when he was premier of a whitecontrolled government, based on a colour-bar franchise which shut the Africans out from all political rights.

Lord Malvern himself, formerly Sir Godfrey Huggins, was the first federal prime minister. He was duly knighted by the British government, as was the settler-leader, Coghlan, long before.

Coghlan presumably received his knighthood for his firm stand against the Africans in the 1920s. He had campaigned for lynch law against the Africans and when the Prince of Wales visited southern Africa in the 1920s, Coghlan received his knighthood.

Thus did Britain bless racialism and tyranny in S Rhodesia.

Malvern had the honesty to describe the Central African Federation, which was hailed by supporters of the Capricorn Society as 'partnership', by its loday, satellites such as th American ITOS and the Sovie METEOR can give ample in formation high-speer computers can rapidly deal with calculations based on fair v comprenensive and com- plex models fair modershens ta comsphere's movements. planned to provide Britain with a week-ahead accurate weather forecast within the next two years.

Meteorologists have already worked out plans for possible weather satellite systems to cover the entire globe.

One scheme suggests that only seven 'metsats' would be advanced computer system to coupled process the stream of data. The cost is likely to be large, but details will be known when the results of a £100,000 study being carried out Hawker Siddeley Dynamics is Satellites like the ITOS (Improved Tiros Operational Satellite) above are now being developed to give published in the near future. much more accurate information on the movement of the atmosphere. proper name : It was, he said, the 'partnership of rider and horse' This same Malvern, placed in power by the British government and parliament, continued the old British apartheid policy which, in turn, was taken further by the Todd regime.

Todd, an ex-missionary, and later opponent of Smith, came out with a 'liberal' proposal to raise the number of Africans on the racial common roll from 2 per cent to 20 per cent, making it clear that this 20 per cent was a fixed maximum figure.

Todd's liberalism meant that over 95 per cent of the population would have 20 per cent of the franchise-a racial discrimination which meant that 19/20ths of the people would have a fifth of the nominal vote. (In fact the high qualifications virtually excluded them from parliament, let alone office.)

It also meant 5 per cent of the population would have 4/5ths of the franchise —one which they could fully exercise.

AFRICA

in In fact it was racial discrimination of 76 to one in favour of the Europeans.

Todd's franchise was: designed, he said, to increase African collaboration with the settler-regime and would be, he claimed, perfectly safe for 'white' rule.

Even this, however, was too bitter for the European voters to swallow and he was replaced Before he left the premiership, however, Todd doubled the head-tax for Africans. He also backed the use of Federal troops to shoot down African strikers at the Wankie coalfields.

Malvern, Todd and Whitehead all presided over a policy of terror against the African workers and . Peasants. This terror was legitimized by the British 1950 Subversive Activities Act.

This Act, sanctioned by Whitehall and Westminster, was first used against Benjamin Burombe's African Voice Association, then against African National Congress, formed by Dunduza Chisiza of Nyasaland and by George Nyandere.

The same British law was later used by Smith and his colleagues, Harper and Field, against Nkomo and 126 other banned Zimbabwe African Peoples Union members.

This reign of British terror, continued by Smith, took place under the 1950 and associated laws made by Britain.

The same Subversive Activities Act was invoked to bring out the Rhodesian Royal Air STILL AVAILABLE The Moscoso Affair:

reply by Michael Banda International Marxist G Press pamphlet The class nature of the class nature Slaughter's reply to an attack on Labour League by the magaz 'International Press pamphlet Lies of both these pamp Clapham High S1 Force jet-bombers and rocketfiring Vampires against the Zimbabwe Liberation Army formed in 1963.

It was then that the British arrested 2,000 Africans in S Rhodesia alone. The same RAF and police terror was used by Britain against the workers and peasants of the future Malawi, when a guerrilla rebellion broke out there in 1959-1960, in which even a number of chiefs took part in the pre-'independence' Ice Price 1s lable fr

PAGE Thursday, May 7, 1970