ABSTRACT
Betty worked on weather modification for 35 years, starting in 1950, only four years after initial attempts by cloud seeders. The work was controversial. By 1972, weather modification had become an important public policy issue: There was strong and increasing public pressure to try to bring precipitation to areas experiencing severe shortages of water. In 1973, University of Chicago Statistics Associate Professor K. Alexander Brownlee was working on cloud seeding issues in Colorado. Cloud seeding gained national attention due to projected severe droughts in the western US. Wallace E. Howell (1914-1999) used to be a commercial cloud seeder, but in 1976 went to work for the federal government in the Division of Atmospheric Water Resources Management at the US Department of the Interior Bureau of Reclamation Engineering and Research Center. Betty and Neyman seriously doubted the efficacy of cloud seeding. On July 7, 1977, they wrote a summary of their work for the KPFA Radio Station in Berkeley.
