Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 January 1910 — SUNSETS TO ORDER. [ARTICLE]

SUNSETS TO ORDER.

■«teoi*l«tlit Declare* We Afar Be Able to Control Weather. . , Are we quite helpless in the matter of bad weather? , The question arises out of a remarkable novel and interesting viewpoint adapted by a well known professor of meteorology and solar physics, with whom the Dally Mirror discussed the question, the Philadelphia Mirror says. Though as a scientific man, he declined to commit himself, he seemed to be decidedly of the opinion that we art not. "Perhaps we are rather too tolerant of bad weather and do not, as we might, take steps to alter things at all,” he began. "After all, we know that a lot of rain is caused by physical conditions which we can control, and we know that we deliberately blot out a considerable amount of sunshine which is doing its best to reach us. We know also that sunsets can be literally made to order. "To take the case of rain first. Generally speaking rain is merely the return to earth of water evaporated into clouds by the sun, which, as you are probably aware, sucks up altogether some 6,000-cubic .miles of-water per annum from the whole world’s surface. “This 6,000 cubic miles of rain we have to endure, whether we like it or not, but is derived from other causes, most prominent of which are the smoke and dust and similar impurities which we send up into the air. “These impurities give water vapor an Immediate opportunity to cluster, distill and descend again as rain. which the vapor would not have, in the ordinary way, until.lt had reached much higher altitudes and been carried by the winds to quite different localities. “Some day dwellers in rain-soaked manufacturing towns will realize thiST and then, perhaps, they will take steps to keep the air of their towns purer and get much less rain in consequence. “And less rain would mean more sunshine, for those same impurities, of course, shut out the sun. “As to the sunsets of which I spoke, I thought it was a matter of common knowledge that the more impurity there Is in the air the greater the of setting sunlight to exhibit the golden tints that are so much admired. "You would see a much finer subset, say, from a window of a Sheffield slum, than you could behold In the highlands of Scotland. The sunsets one hears so much of over the American prairies, for instance, are almost caused by forest fires. "From these brief ... Instances you will realize that man’s control over weather conditions Is even now far from being negligible and may be much increased In the near future.”