Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Clouds

Episode Date: April 1, 2024

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why clouds are secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5

Clouds. Known for being fluffy. Famous for being puffy. Or shapes. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why clouds are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alexc Schmidt and I'm not alone because I'm joined by my co-host Katie Golden. Katie, what is your relationship to or opinion of clouds? They're nice. They're fluffy. I always want to eat them. You know, I remember in Aladdin how they go on a magic carpet ride and they're sitting on the carpet and Aladdin scoops up some cloud for Jasmine, like it's freaking cotton candy. You can't do that. They lied to me. So that frustrates me. Like I want to sit on a cloud. I want to eat a cloud like it's soft serve. And the fact you can't, that it's just like

water molecules in the sky is super annoying. Yeah, there's a story later in this where we'll talk about a fine art artistic representation of clouds in a general way. Actually, two stories. But we won't really talk about the many cartoon ones, which are probably the main way I think about them. Like the tiny little rain cloud above a sad or frustrated person is so iconic to me just from cartoons and it has never, ever happened. is so iconic to me just from cartoons and it has never, ever happened. It's cute. It's fun. The idea that the weather itself would have a vendetta against one guy and just make that guy's life miserable. I do like that. I like the sort of Greek God version of the weather where it's like a cloud has just decided to mess with one guy's day. And I agree.

We don't get to touch them like Aladdin. They feel very remote. I really like looking at them, and they're just there. And it is the kind of thing where when I notice it and I'm like, I guess you'd call it mindful about it. It feels good. When I actually look at a cloud, I'm like, that's amazing. I wish stuff besides Catholic church calendars really celebrated these clouds.

That would be good. Yeah, I do feel awe when I look at clouds. I think it's interesting because I'm somewhat bored, I think, by cloud paintings, paintings of clouds. But then when I see clouds that look like a painting, I'm like, wow, I like that. I like to see the real clouds. Also, I think my mom is a member of the cloud appreciationist society. I think there's something called the cloud appreciations. Oh, good, good.

Yeah. Because my mom is a proud member, a card carrying member. She had, I think she got like a little card. Oh, that's great. I just know that when I see a cloud, I'm like, that one looks good or that one, I don't know. It's nothing special. Yeah. Yeah.

And the other thing to say about the format today is we won't talk about the most basic meteorology and a science class stuff very much. Like we're not going to break down the water cycle that much. Like that's just textbook stuff. We'll get into the weirdest stuff and wildest stuff. So also cloud names might come up, but we're not being encyclopedic about it. Right. Clouds is made out of water molecules, water vapor. And it poops water back down at the Earth, and then the water evaporates and makes clouds again.

And then it poops it back down into Earth again, over and over. Water cycle, that's all you need to know. Yeah. That's it. over and over. Water cycle, that's all you need to know. That's it. And on every episode, our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. This week, that's in a segment called, Does Anybody Really Know What Stats It Is? Do Any Numbers Really Count for the Stats? I feel like I need to learn how to play the saxophone and contribute more to this podcast. That was the band Chicago. I think they have saxes. That makes sense. And thank you,

Ivan Jawowski, for that idea. We have a new name for this segment every week. Please make a massillion wacky and bad as possible. Submit through Discord or to civpod at gmail.com. And if you mail a saxophone to Turin, maybe that gets Katie going. That's also a thing you could do. I might just put a piece of wax paper on a comb and do... Because I think that's all I could probably manage. But yeah, so yeah, let's get into these cloud statistics. Yeah, and we'll start with something we've been talking about. The first number is the year 2003.

The year 2003, that is when a British magazine editor named Gavin Prater-Penney took a work sabbatical and moved to Rome. Okay. Why do we care about this guy? This life change led him to found the Cloud Appreciation Society. Oh, okay. What's this fellow's name again? His name's Gavin Preterpenny. And one source later in the show will be one of his books. It's called The Cloud Spotting Guide. Within the last, as you can tell, 20 years from that date, he's become a leading advocate of appreciating clouds in kind of a tongue-in-cheek way, but also a sincere way, because it really is nice. Yeah.

I'm not super passionate about clouds, but I am super passionate about birds. And I totally know the feeling of when you're just like, man, I just love looking at birds and hearing birdsong and trying to pick out like when I hear a bird and then I'm like, oh, what was that? And then like I mentioned it to my husband. He's like, I didn't notice anything. I'm not like locked in on birds like you are. And it's like, why aren't you? Everyone should be. Everyone should be always constantly aware of the birds around. And so I really do sympathize with the feeling of like, I think people should be aware of clouds more. Yeah, this has been written up a few places. My favorite is a piece by an amazing writer named John Mualem. It's in his essay collection titled Serious Face. He writes about Gavin Prederpenny is burned out from the pace of his work as a magazine editor

and publisher, so he trades his apartment in London for a place in Rome, and he starts hanging out in the art museums of Rome. And as he especially looked at religious art, he noticed there's amazing clouds in that stuff. They love a semi-illuminated cloud. I mean, I'm telling you, having a cloud that's semi-illuminated, oh, oof, that really gets those Jesus feelings going. Yeah, God is the ultimate, I think the Hollywood position is key grip. Whoever does the lighting, like just perfect angle that on that cloud. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't know. Boy, neither of us have done much lighting or sound. Neither of us does movies. Predator Penny described it as voluptuous clouds, like the sofas of the saints, which I really like. Voluptuous clouds. Yeah. It's kind of a sexy cloud at that point.

And that's fine. Yeah. You know what? Look, I can think of worse things to sexualize. So Prederpenny would step out of these art museums in Rome and say, oh, no, the Mediterranean, relatively clear skies. I miss the cloud cover of England and getting to see clouds a lot more. But at the end of his sabbatical, he goes back to England. The next year, he gets invited to speak at a literary conference just about whatever he wants.

And he says, I'm going to do a gimmick where I claim this is the inaugural lecture of the Cloud Appreciation Society. That doesn't exist. I'm just going to claim that's what's going on. He drew a huge audience, and people asked him how to join after the lecture. They were like, this club is great. Can I join? And he said, it doesn't exist. But so then he made it exist. He made a website, photo galleries of clouds, a manifesto about clouds, and he offered an annual membership with a physical mailed certificate and got 2000 signups in the first few months and then a lot more from there. Okay. Is this a cult? Is my mom in a cult?

It's such a pleasant club. It's just so good. And it's from like a pretty good era of the internet. Apparently the big spark for this was in 2005. It got featured on the front of Yahoo. You know, like it's that time online. There's not social media yet. It's people just passing this stuff around. When a cat having bad grammar and desiring cheeseburgers was the pinnacle of comedy. It's deeply cheeseburger. And then there's a sidebar of a bunch of slushy links and one of them is this. Yeah, it's that kind of time, for better or worse.

And more innocent time. Yeah. So yeah, Gavin Pred kind of time for good, for better or worse. And more innocent time. Yeah. So yeah, like Gavin Prederpenny runs that now professionally. And I'll link off to cloudappreciationsociety.org, which is fun. And the other number here is 2017, because in 2017, the Cloud Appreciation Society was able to convince the World's Cloud Atlas to add a new shape. It's not an official big shape, but it's like a subcategory supplementary sort of shape that they added based on their observations. A new cloud shape, a new type of cloud. Yeah, the name is Asperitas. And it's considered to be like a supplemental additional version of an existing cloud shape called Undulatus.

Yeah, I'm familiar. I'm not. I don't know what any of this is. And since we're audio, that's one reason we won't talk a lot about specific cloud shapes. Paint a picture. No, you're trying to get out of it too easy. Paint us a picture with your words, Alex. Paint a word painting. It's a big, rolling, dark storm-like cloud, very flat over the sky. But the asperitas shape, it tends to form and look a little threatening and rolling, but then just dissipate and not actually be a storm.

It's like a giant sky manta ray that dissolves. Yeah, it is. They should have called it Manta Reyes or something. That'd be really cool. It seems like clouds are not quite an obsession for most cultures. Like, they're just a nice thing. Like, if you're Christian, for example, you're worshiping things and then decorating them with clouds. The clouds are not a central focus for anybody. It's like

the grass under a figure on the ground. Since gods are in the sky, we dump some clouds under them and then they sit on it. Yeah. Clouds is God's lawn. sit on it. Yeah. Clouds is God's lawn. So the society is nice. It's just like, let's appreciate the art that the sky is giving us really often. Pivoting over into science. The next number here is back to God's. Next number this week is 43,000 feet, which is over 13,000 meters. 43,000 feet. That's tall. That's the usual maximum height of clouds on Earth.

It's not the absolute maximum, but most clouds are at 43,000 feet or lower. I see. What happens? Why can't they be higher than that? The thinness of the air. But it also means that when clouds are above that, they just form a different shape. And the next number is as high as 279,000 feet. That's even more feet. So not 43, 279,000 feet.

That's 53 miles or 85 kilometers. And that's the highest clouds, the maximum. It's a shape of cloud called noctilucent clouds. Noctilucent. Sounds cool. Paint a word painting, Alex. There's amazing photos. If you just Google it, we're linking the Royal Museum's Greenwich. Google it, we're linking the Royal Museum's Greenwich. This is a very, very wispy, thin, very, very high altitude cloud. And the main way people see it from the ground with their eyes is just after sunset. So like just after sunset, when the sun is just below the horizon, that's sort of blocking the rays coming straight at us, but there are still rays peeking over the horizon, illuminating the sky. And in that few minutes, that's when we tend to see noctilucent clouds the best because the lighting is hitting those clouds above us, but not at us. So it's easiest

for us to see. Wow. So they're usually like a bluish or silverish color because of that lighting and because of what they're made of. Hmm. Okay. So it's like kind of like the green flash or something where there's only a very specific period of time where you can see them. Yeah. Yeah. Like you might see these in other conditions, but the main way people see them and especially do wonderful photographs of them is that sort of slightly post sunset time. So also there's something to look at besides the sunset sometimes if you're looking at that. Like maybe stick around for the cloud show. Yeah.

You know? Yeah. Stick around, folks, for the cloud show. Double feature. Yeah. Double feature. After the kids go to bed, the noctilucents. Oh.

Rated NC-17 for noctilucent clouds. 17 of them. Really great. Yeah. That worked out. Anyway. Those voluptuous clouds. And the other thing about cloud altitude is that, you know, most of them are at or below 43,000 feet.

And so commercial airlines usually try to fly above them. Unless they're really reaching that upper limit, it's convenient for the planes that we build to go above clouds. And then they fly faster and farther. There's less air resistance. It's thinner air above the clouds. Right. And then we get to see God's lawn. Yeah. My other favorite cloud art is a huge Georgia O'Keeffe painting at the Art Institute of Chicago, which is just based on her experiences being in a plane above clouds. So it's just a huge painting of stylized clouds from above. And it's really cool. It's one of the more remarkable human experiences. And we usually just have a ginger ale and wait for the

flight to be over, you know? Yeah, yeah, it stinks, but it's amazing. Ginger ale is such a universal thing, I guess, to have on planes. But yeah, I mean, it's a... It's the drink of the sky, yeah. Yeah, I don't love flying because, like, turbulence gives me a tummy ache. And I am a delicate little flower who loves the ground. You're like a ground cloud, which is fog, by the way. Fog is clouds. Fog is heavy clouds that fell down. But yeah, I mean, I do really enjoy looking at clouds from

the plane. I mean, especially when you're in a plane kind of during sunset and then you get that kind of weird, like the pink clouds or sunrise you know it's really really pretty very cool but then there is like the the like part of my brain that is still essentially um there upon like a a just turned mammal uh reptile is going like no no we gotta go down oh we're not supposed to be here. Tongue flicking out in terror. Cleaning its eyes with its tongue like, no, get us down. This is how I soothe, just huge tongue sweeps.

But yeah, that is the danger and the beauty, you could say, of being in a plane. Because yeah, that is the danger and the beauty, you could say, of being in a plane. Because yeah, I hate turbulence. But once you're just cruising, it's suddenly very heavenly. You're above the clouds and you're like, you've defeated the clouds. Now you get to look down on them. It's good. I feel smug. Another number here. This is the most amazing to me cloud formation thing.

The number is one micrometer. That sounds little. Is that tiny? Yeah, that is a fraction of a meter. It's one millionth of one meter or one ten thousandth of a centimeter. If you're trying to understand it. So very tiny. Seems little.

Yeah, pretty small. One micrometer is the minimum radius of an object at the center of a cloud droplet. Which I think is a mini takeaway number one. Earth's clouds are essentially just water, but they cannot form without a second ingredient. in order for the water that is almost all of clouds to come together it needs something to attach to land on and this is called a cloud condensation nucleus and it's not like a molecule nucleus but it's something relatively flat either liquid or almost more often solid that's extraordinarily tiny. The most common examples are smoke from fires, ocean spray, tiny specks of soil, just like stuff from the ground

usually that gets swept up into the air is the necessary second thing for the water in the air to form cloud droplets. So you have like this tiny plate made out of like sand or salt or something, like some kind of like stuff. Yeah. And then the cloud kind of like, it's like a seed where the cloud forms around it. Yes. Yeah. And one source is the NOAA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, part of the US government. And they say that dirt, dust, salt crystals, something like that is at the core of every cloud droplet. And then at the same time, it's so tiny and so almost infinitesimal that we still consider cloud droplets to be just water. It's kind of there and not there at the same time. Okay.

So it's like, so this nucleus is at the center of every droplet in a cloud. Yeah. And it has to be there. Otherwise, the water vapor in the air doesn't condense into something. It just remains distributed in the air. Just like humidity. Yeah. Yeah. So clouds do need a second ingredient to form the droplets and the ingredient is so negligible we kind of act like it's not there and just describe clouds as water. It's a very

strange concept that I really like. So like after say like fire or something or like a volcanic eruption, would you get a lot of cloud formation because now there's more stuff in the atmosphere and so there's more chance that there are going to be these teeny tiny particles of carbon or earth or whatever? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It just needs to be a what they call flatter surface that is at least one micrometer and also usually not a lot bigger than that, because also it would just fall out of the air if it was too big. Right, right. Yeah, that is necessary for clouds. And this also helps explain some of the more specific clouds in the world, such as contrails from aircraft. Back to aircraft. The contrails are clouds. There are conspiracy theories that it's some sort of program to control people's minds, but it's just clouds because of this thing, because of how clouds form. Right. So it's made out of what is the plane giving off that is the seed of these clouds?

What is the plane giving off that is like the seed of these clouds? According to Imperial College London, it's because when jet fuel burns, that does leave behind more water, but it also leaves behind tiny particles of soot. And they are really, really small, but that's the exact thing for clouds. So in this space that the jet engine was in, it's all of the perfect things for a cloud all packed together. So that's why there's a clear contrail of cloud. I've recently read like a conspiracy theory that all the clouds have been replaced by contrails, which is interesting because I thought, I think I see some like clouds, but that could also be like a government projection, like they're using a big projector to like project fake clouds over the contrails. So we don't notice that all the clouds are contrails now. Somewhat understand why the contrails would be sort of a conspiracy because it looks, I mean,

first of all, something like if there's like a thing behind a plane, you're like, that's plane farts. That can't be good for me. Because Because plane has fuel. And if it's farting something out, that has to be toxic. And also, it's just like this big thing in the sky where it's like, mankind shouldn't be able to just do a new kind of cloud. That doesn't make any sense. Yeah. It's just us putting clouds behind the paths of our flying machines. That's some more godlike stuff for sure. And it does contribute to cloud cover in a climate change way. It's not good for the earth.

Yeah. Also, planes do produce emissions like from the field. Like that is a real thing. It's just that the contrails is not just, it's not just like pollution. It is, it's a cloud forming around maybe like the, like you said, these micro particles that could be considered pollution, but like the emissions, the contrails are not just like the emissions from the plane. Yes, that's right. Yeah. It's like a separate cloud phenomenon that's related. And yeah, good news, not mind control. It's, it's, that's right. Yeah, it's like a separate cloud phenomenon that's related. Yes.

And yeah, good news, not mind control. It's almost cuter. It's just a cloud in a sense, you know? Not mind control, just innocent clouds. This cloud condensation nucleus, it also helps explain acid rain. nucleus, it also helps explain acid rain. Because acid rain results when sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides and other pollutants like that are emitted. And either from the ground or into the air, then those can bond with water or bound with things that become cloud condensation nuclei. So what you're saying is if you could create microscopic plates made out of chocolate and put them in the air, we could get chocolate rain?

Oh, yeah. Hay Zonday, yes. Yeah, but that I would like to get creative with. Instead of having acid rain, maybe we could have rain be, I don't know, lemonade flavor. But then it'd look like pee. So maybe not that. But you get what I'm saying, right? Like if we can make acid rain, why can't know, lemonade flavor. Ah, but then it'd look like pee. So maybe not that. But, you know, you get what I'm saying, right? Like, if we can make acid rain, why can't we make...

Pennies from heaven. Fun rain or rain that's good or something. Some city like Boston or Chicago would do green rain for St. Patrick's Day if they got it together, you know? Yeah. For the Irish, they'd do it. Yeah. For the Irish, they'd do it. Yeah. Even though it would look extremely polluted. It's like, it's fun.

We're Irish. Oh, we don't care. Yeah. Nah, yeah. Oddly, the next number is two million tons. And two million tons is an estimate of the annual amount of bacteria lofted by air currents into clouds. Yummy. 2 million.

And they also estimate tens of millions of tons of fungal spores and some unknown amount of algae, you know, probably get brought up with these specks of something that become cloud condensation nuclei and get lifted into clouds, they're probably full of either living or dead tiny life forms from the earth. It's like a sky kombucha. Cloud bucha, sure. Cloud bucha. Sounds good. Delicious. See, no, you're trying to make me think clouds are gross, but it just makes me want to eat the clouds even more. Get all those good probiotics. Really, before researching, thought of clouds as just water.

Like, I don't know, it's just water. There's so much stuff up there and not in a pollution way necessarily, you know? There's just stuff in clouds. Yeah. I just hope you're not going to tell me there's poop in the clouds. On like a micro level, probably. Yeah. You know, like there's just a lot of micro everything up in our clouds. Well, I don't, I don't, I don't want there to be poop clouds or pee pee clouds, Alex. So yeah, there's nano poop up there, boy. The life forms in particular, there's some debate and study about what that means for life on Earth.

And it sources chemical and engineering news as well as BBC Science Focus magazine. There are some pretty elaborate theories about this being a huge deal, like that some microscopic life forms are glad to be swept up into clouds and can thrive up there and might even do a process called bioprecipitation as a way of spreading from place to place. Oh, that's exciting. It would be really cool and could be what's going on. And then there are also scientists who say that this is just kind of a big accident. Like just stuff on the earth becomes cloud condensation nuclei, and there might be bacteria on it. That's kind of it. Getting beamed up, these little bacteria like, no, no, no, no.

Right. Like we as larger life forms do not get swept up into clouds by accident. We're pretty fixed on the ground in a comfortable way. Yeah. Yeah. We can't really be evaporated up. Yeah. It's interesting because the formation of life actually has a similar need as the formation of a cloud, which is you need a plate. You need like a surface to kind of like adhere to. Wow. That is relatively calm so that a very delicate protein chain can form without it getting like smashed. So like the idea of a primordial soup is complicated by, might be compromised by another molecule just smashing into it like a bowling ball. So if you want like protein chains to form, there's like this idea of

like a primordial baklava where you have like sort of thin layers of some kind of surface and then protein chain, like enough stuff getting in there. But then like somehow the chaos being calmed a little bit by microscopic traffic bumps or something. And so that you could have these protein chains form. these protein chains form, but I'd be interested in whether like there could be some way in which this cloud bacterial distribution system could have, because like, you know, like if you had life forming on certain parts of the planet, like what if some of that was like evaporated up and then rained down somewhere and then distributed that way? I think that'd be very interesting. Primordial baklava. Yeah. I'm going to carry that way. I think that'd be very interesting. Primordial baklava. Yeah.

I'm going to carry that around. I like it. It sounds tasty. With a side of sky kombucha. Yeah. Because sky kombucha is happening and that stability you describe, either the life forms are loving it or they're very just upset. And this is essentially a danger that happened to them. There's a quote from microbiologist Cindy E. Morris of France's National Institute of Agronomic Research. She says the bacteria in clouds might be, quote, severely stressed out passive passengers. And it could be both answers, right? Like there might be some life forms where they're like, great, I'm going to bioprecipitate and propagate myself. And other life forms are

like, oh no, goodbye everyone. I'm in a cloud now. Like, oh well. Some are loving it, some aren't. Yeah. I mean, that would be, it sounds like that's a really interesting avenue of research. And I understand that when you say that the bacteria are stressed, that you mean like they are not in optimal conditions, so they're not healthy and they're not thriving. But it is really funny to think of like a little bacteria just going like, oh, gosh, darn it. I didn't want to be in a cloud today. This is the last thing I need. It's like our bit about an upset reptile cleaning its eyes in the plane. Yeah. Let me down. I'm a ground life form, guys.

And another thing about life forms, there's another mini takeaway here because mini takeaway number two. Clouds protect life on Earth as we know it. Not just the water cycle thing of there being water around. It's unlikely humans and most other organisms could continue living on Earth if we stopped having clouds. They're necessary for what we've set up here. Is it just because it'd be really boring if we couldn't look up and see bunny shapes, and that one looks like a tree, and that one looks like a giraffe? Right. Clouds are necessary visual advertising for various species. If we didn't have that,

we'd stop even caring about bunnies and giraffes. We'd be like, whatever. Exactly. Yeah. Not reminded. So why? Is the sun just too mean? Like, would it just kind of beat us with its incredible, incredible power? Yes, that's the answer. Yeah. Oh, okay. The most thrilling quote here is meteorologist James Ledoux of the US NIST, National Institute of Standards and Technology. He very colorfully says, quote, clouds keep us from being cooked alive. Oh, we're really like cooking up a nice stew today on this episode. We've got cloud kombucha. We've got primordial baklava.

We've got cooked life on Earth, all life on Earth cooked in sort of a giant casserole, a huge spherical casserole. Maybe we got a stew going, to quote Carl Weathers on Arrested Development. Yeah. Rest in peace. R.I.P. Yes, I like not being cooked alive. So thank you, clouds. It's great. Yeah. And clouds play a role in climate change in general, but we need some of them for the current earth temperature we are used to. It's just like how greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, it's not that we can survive without carbon dioxide. We do need it. Plants need it. It's an important thing. It's just that when the balance is askew, there's problems.

We don't know that this is the direction things are going. But there was one study in the journal Nature in 2019. They predicted, hey, if the current rise in global temperatures continues, that could interrupt or prevent a lot of our current cloud formation, especially over oceans. We might just have a lot less clouds on the Earth. This study has been criticized as maybe being too simplistic or focused on not enough kinds of data. Also, some media misreported it as no more clouds, which is not what they're predicting either. Here's just like a hot tip. If you read like a news article that like is referencing some kind of scientific research and it sounds like just bonkers, do look at the actual study because usually, and you don't have to read like the whole thing, just you can look at the

abstract and discussion even just, but sometimes when you like actually look at the thing, it's not like no more clouds and just like there would be like a 10% reduction in the amount of Nimbus Spectacularis or whatever. I don't know cloud names. Nimbus is one. Yeah, yeah. Nimbus, yeah. So people really overly ran with this and also some people object to it completely. But in the process, they said, hey, if we stopped having oceanic cloud cover, and a lot of the world is oceans, So if we lost a lot of our clouds,

what would happen? And they predicted that if we stopped having those oceanic clouds, that would cause a massive further increase in temperatures on the earth by about eight degrees Celsius, which is far too many. Yeah, that's a little bit too many. That would be pretty devastating. Yeah, because we're deeply concerned about many. That would be pretty devastating. Yeah, because we're deeply concerned about a much smaller rise in temperatures. So 8 would do that thing James Ledoux says. It would cook most of the life on Earth. Yeah, we don't want to be cooked.

Yeah. In a lot of science fiction, there's this idea of creating clouds, creating cloud cover. Scientists being able to control the weather. That was sort of the premise in Cat's Cradle was like, you know, using some like seeding, right? By Kurt Vonnegut, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. Do you know this author, Alex, named Kurt Vonnegut?

Have you ever heard of this author? What am I, some kind of Kurt Vonna male? No, not at all kurt vana guys podcast we have a lot of fun anyway yes uh i i drew i drew you guys as kurt in kurt vana get remember that you're like can you draw me as a kurt vana get you did yeah so me and our buddy michael sway and we it's on hiatus because we're sort of out of material but we made a podcast called- He ran out of books. Yeah, he's not around anymore. When's he going to come out with more books?

But we made a podcast called Kurt Vonnegut Guys, and our buddies Randall Maynard and Katie Golden made the logo and drew a picture of us in kind of the Vonnegut heart style, which is so cool. Yeah. That's one of my favorite forms of ever being drawn is in Kurt Vonnegut style. It's so great. Glad you liked it. But yeah. And then also I think like, what is it? Snowpiercer is this idea of them trying to like reverse global warming by like, uh, but they did it too strong and now it's an ice age. Um, and everyone's a cannibal. and everyone's a cannibal. There's a PC game called Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.

And one action you can do in the game is either put up a big mirror to direct more light at the planet or put up like a cloud cover to have less light come into the planet to like control the climate. Yeah. We can and probably should mention every piece of media that has had some kind of

altering the weather theme in it. But no, I mean, my point is, if we were in a situation where we didn't have enough clouds, has there ever been any research on how would you make a cloud or how would you encourage clouds to form? Yes. And that's our last number. And it ties into this funnigut thing. There's more to it. What? The last number is between 5% and 15%. That is a real thing, between 5% and 15%. That's the estimated increase in local precipitation if humans do a real technique called cloud seeding. cloud seeding. Yes. Man, I got to emphasize, I go into this thing completely blind. Alex does all the notes. It's just Alex does such a good job at leading me down the garden path that we can segue so naturally. And you're my good buddy. So you know I like Kurt Vonnegut, and that partly

led me to bring this into the show. And I don't use contrails to read your mind. Instead of a tiny rain cloud over me, it's a tiny contrail plane just doing circles. Spirals in my eyes, just spirals. Ignore. No pupils. Ignore me. Ignore me. Yeah.

So cloud seeding, this is real. And it's a scientific process developed in the 1940s. It's also gaining renewed popularity in the Western US to fight drought. The way it works is people fly up to the sky in airplanes. And they fly up to an existing cloud, there has to already be a cloud, we can't make that really. But from the airplane, there has to already be a cloud. We can't make that really. But from the airplane, they spray a compound called silver iodide. And the silver iodide causes a reaction where some cloud droplets freeze together and turn into snowflakes and precipitate. They usually rain by the time they hit the ground. But when we do this, we can increase the amount of precipitation from a cloud. If we don't seed the cloud, some of that water would just stay up there. So we get 5% to 15% more rain, modest increase. That's interesting. I mean, silver

iodide, is this okay? Can I drink this and be okay? Yeah, we think it is okay and we think it doesn't change the water or change the rain. And when people were developing this technology, that was one of their two big fears. They were concerned that they would create poison rain. And they were also concerned that the human intervention into clouds would cause weather disasters all over the world. Like somehow that would wreck the whole climate and the whole weather. And it doesn't really seem to. It seems to just be okay.

It's like a Jurassic Park situation, but with clouds. That movie would be so vibes. Like if you had a cloud park, Nimbus Park. They're all taking off their sunglasses in shock when a cloud just starts to look more like a dinosaur. That's it.

Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. taking off their sunglasses in shock when a cloud just starts to look more like a dinosaur that's it oh my god it's a cloud and then it keeps shifting and the music goes away like oh i guess yeah i guess that's temporary okay yeah uh yeah no i mean i think that there's always this fear that and it's a justified fear that if we start tampering with things like the weather, that it will become sort of a runaway trolley and we just, it'll start kind of having problems. That was like the whole, I mean, I guess I don't want to spoil the book if someone wants to read it, but yeah, like read Kaz Cradle kind of has an element of that. And we spoil it on the Kurt Vonnegut's podcast. We always just do the whole book.

So, yeah. Yeah. But, you know, it's, I think like, and obviously I think that human intervention has time and time again proved to often be disastrous in terms of upsetting the delicate balance of nature. So it's an understandable fear, but it is interesting that we essentially seem to, at least for now, be able to get away with seeding clouds and it doesn't screw things up too much. I don't know though. Maybe we'll find out later that it does.

It's just a surprisingly chill technology compared to what it could have been. Yeah. Cause, cause we've been doing it on and off since the 1940s. And if something really bad was going to happen, we'd probably know by now. We can't promise that's fine. Yeah, you'd think so. And the other less chill thing about it is that this now pretty much gets used for peaceful temporary rainfall increases, like for agriculture, for droughts. It was first developed as United States military technology. Of course it was. What are we going to do? Rain on the Ruskies? Like what was the idea? Like communism very famously can't stand high humidity.

It was like battlefield technology. The idea was if we're going to be in a combat area, The idea was if we're going to be in a combat area, we can either form more clear clouds, right? Like if we can get the cloud to rain itself out, then we can have clear sky if we want. They also thought maybe we can make clouds bigger by doing something to them. And then if like cover would help, we can have that. The idea was can we control the weather on the day of a battle by using our air forces? Can we make a cloud really big and in the shape of a scary face so they are too afraid to fight us? That's so goofy, man. Yeah, an ominous FDR over the Nazis. Yeah, yeah. I have this, like, my pet conspiracy theory is there's a lot of, like, scientists who will pitch ideas for research that they know is going to be more, have better use for a non-military kind of, like, situation.

But they know that to get funds, they should go to the military because they've got deep pockets. So they're like, oh, yeah, this cloud, sure, it could fight some Russians. Yeah, you'd stick some bullets in this baby and you've got yourself a weapon. Yeah, that was kind of the mindset. And they basically didn't follow through on that because it just doesn't quite do that. No, of course not. Of course it wouldn't. It's just not that thing.

No, of course it wouldn't work. What do you mean? The other interesting thing about its background is that there were two scientists at General Electric who made the breakthrough of silver iodide as the compound for cloud seeding. And the scientists were named Vincent Schaefer and Bernard Vonnegut. Vincent Schaefer and Bernard Vonnegut. That was really the root of Kurt Vonnegut's writing career, was his brother helping invent cloud seeding. There's also an amazing nonfiction book about it called The Brothers Vonnegut by writer Ginger Strand. Bernard Vonnegut got Kurt one of his day jobs by making him a press guy at GE. The book Cat's Cradle is particularly just kind of describing his brother's work and life in a science fiction way. And also Vonnegut's first

ever published short story is called Report on the Barnhouse Effects. And it's an exaggerated sci-fi story where this kind of scientist develops an ability to move things and events in the world with his mind. It's very cool. It's neat, yeah. I'd like a book about someone who creates military clouds, but then realizes he doesn't want his clouds to fight in the war. And so he has to free his clouds and make sure that no one could ever use his clouds for hate.

And everyone's just like, right, clouds are for peace, of course. He's like, my clouds are only for peace. And they're like, right, clouds are pretty peaceful. Yeah. No one feels threatened. I am become rain man. Cloud and Imer. Yeah, yeah. And folks, that's a couple of takeaways and a whole bunch of numbers. We're going to take a quick break and then come back with the amazing story of Cloud Names. Cloud Names!

Hey, folks, I'm taping this at an interesting moment in time. These words I'm saying right now, because they will come out a few minutes after the Maximum Fun Drive has ended. I'm speaking this really right at the beginning of it. We're about 24 hours in. And I want to say thank you to the hundreds of you who have stepped up and boosted or upgraded or backed Secretly Incredibly Fascinating. And thank you to the thousands of you who did that for Maximum Fun in general, because both of those kinds of things, it makes what we do possible. And I hope you truly understand that we research, we edit, we try hard, we put our heart and soul into making

something that we truly love and we hope you truly love. And your vote of confidence makes that motivationally possible and helps us understand that we're reaching somebody with what we do. And your financial vote of confidence funds it and makes it just a plausible economic situation at all. And then all of that said, one of my favorite things about MaxFun is we don't only ask you to support the shows. We also go out there and try to find a few actually good, actually awesome companies that would want to back a show like this and stretch out that support and build on it. And so this episode is secretly incredibly fascinating.

We have support from Wildgrain. I am full of Wildgrain right now. I baked up their croissants yesterday morning, and we are having their pasta tonight. That completes my current box, and I'm excited for the next one. Because here's the thing about wild grain. It is the first ever Bake From Frozen subscription box for the three best foods. Sourdough breads, fresh pastas, artisanal pastries. Right? The three best foods. Sourdough breads, fresh pastas, artisanal pastries. Right? The three best foods, sourdough breads, fresh pastas, artisanal pastries. Every wild grain item bakes from frozen in 25 minutes or less. There's no thawing required. You can also customize your wild grain box. If you heard me describing the

three best foods and said, I'm only into two of those or only into one of those, or I would just prefer to focus on one of those, wild grain has your back. You can do just bread. You can do just pasta. You can do just pastries. You can do two out of those three, or you can be like me and do all three. Because I got to have my ton of really pasta. I got to have my various versions of sourdough. The latest one had walnuts in it. And of course, pastries, right? They threw in a chocolate chip cookie, one of my boxes recently, and it was a chocolate chip cookie that just happens very quickly in 25 minutes or less. Even if I was mixing the stuff, it would have been about as good of a cookie and taken a lot longer, and I would have been a mess. Wild grain, you can just put it in the oven, and it happens for you. And it's as if you are a baker who has been up

since four in the morning, but instead you are a person who slept at four in the morning and then gets to have this stuff. For a limited time, you can get $30 off the first box plus free croissants in every box when you go to wildgrain.com slash SifPod to start your subscription. You heard me right. Free croissants in every box and $30 off your first box when you go to wildgrain.com slash sifpod. That's wildgrain.com slash sifpod, or you can use promo code sifpod at checkout. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places. Yes, I'm going to manifest and roam.

All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience.

One you have no choice but to embrace because yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. Remember, no running in the halls. And we are back and with one big last takeaway for the main episode. Because takeaway number three. Two scientists parallel invented the names for clouds and two other important theories. Wait, they came up with the same names for the same types of clouds?

It was two scientists came up with competing systems for naming the categories of clouds. And then one system won out easily. Okay, because I was going to say that would be really spooky and would lead more credence to the clouds or mind control theory. Oh, yeah. Credence to the clouds are mind control theory. Oh, yeah. Yeah, these two scientists are the British scientist Luke Howard in 1802, and then the French scientist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck in 1801. Yeah, another French versus English showdown. Boy, they hate each other.

Always fighting. Yeah. And then each of these guys also came up with another major theory that was famous, and Lamarck's is a little more famous. Howard's ideas are where we get the broad names for categories and classifications of clouds. It's interesting that no one else, or maybe before then there were people naming types of clouds. But why was this sort of the point at which these countries were like, yeah, we better step up our cloud game? One of our key sources is the Science Museum in London. There are digital resources about it. They say that a few scientists had thought about clouds in general and just no one had influentially tried to categorize them.

The other big influence was the taxonomic work of Carl Linnaeus with biology. I see. Right. And so that springboard, Howard in particular said, okay, Linnaeus for clouds. And it's just like real trendy to get into categorization at this point. Yeah. There's a lot of like British Empire dudes being like, I'm get into categorization at this point. Yeah. There's a lot like British Empire dudes being like, I'm going to categorize.

And a French Empire dude, you know, like Europeans were like, if we can do a Linnaeus, how about we do that with everything? Yeah. Just a bunch of undersexed control freaks wanting everything to have a little name. Yeah, probably true. I didn't check with these two guys, but you know. And starting with Luke Howard, who I had never heard of. I think a lot of people have not heard of him. He was born in 1772 in London, worked as a pharmacist during the day, and then got way into weather and clouds as a hobby. And in 1802, he published Essay on the Modification of Clouds. He proposed three categories of clouds, all with Latin names. He proposed the cirrus,

which means curl of hair. He proposed the cumulus, which means heap. Good so far. which means heap. Good so far. And then he proposed the stratus, meaning layer. And then also some subcategories that combine those, and along the way, one of the alternate names was nimbus. So he also proposed that name.

It basically just means a storm cloud or rain cloud directly in Latin. Mm-hmm. Hmm. And we really haven't changed it much since. That's pretty much what we call them. You got your clump clouds. You got your sort of flatties. I call them clumps and flatties. Clumps and flatties.

But you can call them whatever you want. At the same time, essentially, French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck proposed five categories of cloud names all in the French language in France. And it seems like Howard's system got more popular because most of European science was on board with Latin and French was a little more niche. Yeah, which is funny because I think niche is a French word, right? Oh, yeah. Sacre bleu, it is. Anyway, i don't speak that language i don't use it pan du jour french is known for moi you know what i mean and howard also was in london you know lamarck was in france that was significant too but the

combination of Latin from London. And then also the fun thing where Howard did not just name clouds, he made beautiful watercolor paintings of clouds. So it wasn't just his words on the page. He had just nice art that he made. He would go between the Lake District of Northwestern England and London and make watercolors of clouds as he went, and people loved it. The key to his success is that graphic design was his passion. Yeah. And he was liked by the fine art community on top of the science community. Apparently, the writer Goethe dedicated a poem to Howard's classifications of clouds. He was just more popular at this than Lamarck was. Lamarck was

like, I'm French. These are my French clouds. And people were like, fine, sure. But whatever. That French guy and his clouds don't really care now. The guy who does the watercolors, that's something. Yeah. And yeah, I'm going to link the website of the World Meteorological Organization. They run the leading current cloud atlas. A cloud atlas is a document of cloud shapes. And there's 10 main types that are all basically just Howard's names brought to the modern day. And then, like we said earlier, one of the sub-sub-supplemental kinds was created by the Cloud Appreciation Society. Good job, guys. Legacy.

And then, and the last, last thing about these cloud namers is that Howard and Lamarck each went on to do a theory that is very, very significant today. And both of those theories went through periods of not really being appreciated under Big Now. Lamarck was like known to me in school as being wrong about evolution. That was the shorthand I heard. Yeah, that was a bit of an oopsie-goofer. And he was like mostly wrong, but also we are checking in a new science called epigenetics whether in some specific ways he might have been onto something.

There was a bit of an overcorrection because like there was a whole Back when it was Darwinism versus Lamarckism, there was this big fight over how genetics worked and people were really polarized over it. And so when scientists kind of congregated around Darwin, who was on average more right, like it is not true that a giraffe stretches its neck muscles and passes on those uh the long neck jeans to its offspring that does not really work that way um i think that in because it became so polarizing people would just really strongly reject anything that had like a whiff of lamarckism yeah And so it took a while to come around to like, okay, yes, Darwin's idea of natural selection is correct, but maybe there's a little bit of influence of environment on genes that can impact how you pass on your genes to your offspring.

To like propose this idea of epigenetics had to go through this like, no, no, no, seriously, we're not saying giraffes stretch their necks and that's why they're longer. This is more complicated than that. And it's not goofy. It's a real thing. So yeah, it took some time. Yeah. And he was such a central person of the idea, it got named Lamarckism, which is an idea that when a life form is alive and develops a trait, it can pass that thing it learned onto its offspring. Right. This guy who's famous for that, he also tried to name and categorize clouds and basically lost a two-man race on that issue. Yeah. What a loser.

Yeah, what a loser. Luke Howard, who I, again, had never heard of, his other main scientific work was way ahead of its time. Because Howard, 1802, publishes his cloud ideas that get pretty popular. He's famous in his time for clouds. In a book called Cloud Ideas. And then he just loved weather. Like he was in this for the love of the weather and so that's so innocent he's living in london he records observations of london's weather temperature air pressure wind and precipitation from 1806 through 1830 wow Almost a quarter century of just noting the weather every day because he is very interested in it. And as he did that, he decided he saw a pattern. And in 1833, he published a work called The Climate of London. And that work had two amazing ideas in it. One is that the density of people and structures in London was affecting local temperatures.

Oh, interesting. So it's kind of a forerunner of ideas like urban heat islands and the idea that our urban density changes the climate on a long running basis in a location. What is an urban heat island? It's that the pavement and buildings are absorbing or reflecting the sun in a way that makes the spot hotter. Mm-hmm. things are absorbing or reflecting the sun in a way that makes the spot hotter. Yeah. Remember when in elementary school and there'd be asphalt and you'd stand on it and you're like, wow, this is some hot asphalt. Yeah. Like on our asphalt show, we talked about

it's just a lot hotter to be there. And so he, long before most people were talking or thinking about it, was theorizing that. And based on observations, he wasn't just guessing. And his other thing that he proposed in The Climate of London, quote, the real matter of surprise when we contemplate so many sources of heat in a city is that the effect on the thermometer is not more considerable, end quote. And then he described a rough idea of just climate change and that human activity on the earth might be changing the whole earth's climate. Yeah, which for the time is like a pretty... Yeah, 1833.

I mean, this was a time where we're like, what's happening to all the passenger pigeons? Anyways, I'm going to shoot me some more of me passenger pigeons. I'm just like, you know, like we could never run out of pigeons. What do you mean? Shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot. Right. We live in a world of infinite pigeon and that's fine. Right. Yeah. The clouds poop out pigeons and I shoot them. So yeah, the guy who coined all of our current Latin-based cloud names, he also was a forerunner of a lot of environmentalist theories, and it's really cool. What a tree hugger. Or a cloud hugger. I guess he's more of a cloud hugger.

Trees you can hug more easily. So that's what he settled for. Which is what, again, I'm very frustrated because when I was a kid, I thought clouds would sort of have the consistency of teddy bear stuffing that you could hug, but no, turns out just a bunch of water vapor and tiny microscopic plates of just stuff. Yeah. There's so much in there. Go enjoy the sky, everybody. That's the final message. Check it out. Sorry if you got a clear day today. I guess the show's not for you. I'm so sorry if you have blue skies. You shouldn't have listened to this show. It wasn't for you. Yeah, you blew it. You blew it. Go enjoy the blue skies angrily.

April sets the main episode for this week. Welcome to the outro with fun features for you, such as help remembering this episode with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, Earth's clouds are essentially just water and cannot form without a second ingredient. Takeaway number two, clouds protect life on Earth as we know it. Takeaway number three, two scientists parallel invented the categorization names of clouds and invented two further theories on top of that. Plus so many stats and numbers about cloud formation, cloud appreciation, the highest clouds, and more. Those are the takeaways. Also, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now if you support this show at MaximumFun.org.

As we said throughout Maximum Fun Drive, members are the reason this podcast exists. So members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is clouds on other planets. Visit SIFPod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of more than 15 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, and a catalog of all sorts of MaxFun bonus shows. It's special audio. It's just for members. Thank you to everybody who backs this podcast operation. Also, one extra thing about the bonus shows. We released one bonus show about decaf coffee in the main public feed for free at the start of the Max

Fun Drive. And I got a lot of really nice messages just about that, either people enjoying it or being thankful for the extra shows. So again, we do a new bonus show every week. If you support the show, you get that whole second podcast every week. I hope that's an exciting reward. If you help make this show happen, you get more show. So please check them out. They're really fun. And you can hear that bonus that we released for free in the announcement post about our MaxFunDrive activities. Additional fun things. Check out our research sources on this episode's page at MaximumFun.org.

Key sources this week include a lot of scientific material from the USNOAA, the USEPA, Space.com, the Royal Museums Greenwich, digital resources from Imperial College London and Chemical and Engineering News, and a couple of joyful books, including The Cloud Spotter's Guide by Gavin Preder-Pinney, founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society, and I referred back to The Brothers Vonnegut by Ginger Strand. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenapehoking, the traditional land of the Munsee Lenape people and the Wappinger people, as well as the Mohican people, Skadigok people, and others.

Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy, and I want to acknowledge that in my location, in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, Native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode, and join the free SIFT Discord where we're sharing stories and resources about Native people and life. There is a link in this episode's description to join that Discord. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord, and hey, would you like a tip on another episode? Because each

week I'm finding you something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode 72. That is about the topic of TV dinners. Fun fact, the idea for TV dinners came from one company being stuck with an entire freight train full of frozen turkey. So I recommend that episode. I also recommend my co-host Katie Golden's weekly podcast, Creature Feature, about animals, science, and more. Our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by the Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Special thanks to the Beacon Music Factory for taping support. Extra, extra special thanks go to our members. And thank you to all our

listeners. I am thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating So how about that? Talk to you then. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network of artist-owned shows supported directly by you.