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When Dubai got a year’s worth of rain in a single day last week, causing severe flooding, many early reports suggested humanmade “cloud seeding” was to blame. One of the world’s most artificial places, flooded by a rainstorm of its own creation?
The rain and the flooding was all too real. But the cloud seeding connection was not. Though Dubai has indeed dabbled in artificial rainmaking, it can’t do anything on this scale. That’s according to Richard Washington. He explains how rainmaking works and writes about his time flying a cloud-seeding Learjet through thunderclouds. He says a “perfect storm” converged over Dubai – and it was far too big to be artificial.
When cannabis legalisation began to sweep across the U.S. 10 years ago, few could have predicted the myriad forms that “weed” would take – and the unintended consequences that the wide availability of products could have on adolescents. Today’s cannabis products barely resemble the dried form of the cannabis plant that many adults associate with the drug.
These new cannabis products often possess concentrations of THC ranging from 40% to 80% or higher – compared with the average of 4% in the 1990s, explains Ty Schepis who studies the effects of substance use on adolescents and young adults. Higher levels of THC present serious risks for mental health conditions including psychosis, schizophrenia and cannabis use disorder.
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