There’s actually no good evidence that cloud seeding works. You can’t do a clean A/B test of it, so we’re relying on really bad data for it, but directionally, the evidence has all the signs of a non-effect. The data is noisy, and the closer you look. The smaller the effect gets. That’s the sign of there being nothing there.
We all know about correlations and what they don’t mean. Did the flooding stop when they stopped seeding? No, it didn’t.
Cloud seeding is a seductive idea to people and there’s a kernel of plausibility to it because the mechanism works in lab conditions. However there’s really no evidence that it works at scale or that any rain that happens wasn’t going to happen anyway. All the “evidence” for it is a couple of weak temporal correlations to people trying it here and there, and when it doesn’t do anything, people don’t report on that. Most of the of the positive reports of it come from quacks and scam artists in the 1930s, to boot.
People should let it go. There’s nothing here.
