(NaturalNews) It's a subject that no reporter wants to talk about in the mainstream media. It's a topic that government officials prefer to keep hush-hush. Weather manipulation is a shadowy, controversial topic that has gone under the radar for decades. Geoengineering dates all the way back to 1946, when a chemist working for General Electric, Vincent Schaefer, introduced cloud seeding techniques that he invented in a laboratory freezer.

Through the years, cloud seeding chemists have introduced new ways to manipulate the weather using planes and mass aerial dispersal of chemicals. Today, there are entire companies that specialize in controlling the weather; for instance, one European company charges wedding planners $150,000 to guarantee a rain-free wedding day. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that 55 cloud seeding projects took place last year in the US alone.

Geoengineering is not just a theory. It's a global business that empowers the "elite," allowing them to play with elements, planes, clouds and precipitation as if they are the region's rain god.

Unsuspecting people go about their normal day, not knowing what could be falling from the sky, or how it could be polluting the air they breathe. It's like one giant fish bowl, where chemical experiments are being carried out with no regard of the consequences.

Some of the compounds shot out into the skies today include silver iodide and sodium chloride. Kyathi Climate Modification Consultants, a cloud seeding company in Bangalore, uses sodium chloride flares to stimulate the formation of rain clouds and increase precipitation during storms.

"Most pilots are trained to avoid these storm systems," said cloud seeding aviation expert Byron Pederson in an interview with a reporter for Bloomberg Business. "We're trained to enter them." Pedersen commands a King Air B200 prop jet and is commissioned to enter cumulonimbus clouds to fire sodium chloride flares, one at a time, from 24 cylinders racked up on the plane's wings. The goal is to force water molecules to bind to the salt so that clouds can form quickly and release raindrops.

Pederson's job has become ever important in the Indian state of Maharashtra. The state, which is home to 110 million residents, has undergone three years of drought. Since 80 percent of the farms in the region depend on rain for irrigation, Maharashtra's infrastructure was doomed to fall apart. That's when the state's minister of revenue, Eknath Khadse, thought up a plan to salvage the state's agriculture. For $4.5 million, Khadse hired Weather Modification Inc. from Fargo, North Dakota, to come in and seed clouds over a 100-square-mile stretch in the heart of Maharashtra.

"Our situation is severe," said Khadse. "There is no other technology available in the world to bring more rains. We must be willing to try it."

Weather Modification Inc. reportedly generates $20 million a year in revenue from cloud seeding operations. They are currently looking to double their revenue in 2016 with negotiations on the table with governments in Asia, South America and the Middle East.

Patrick Sweeney, the chief executive of Weather Modification Inc., said, "People in Maharashtra are hoping for a cure-all to drought. They come out and dance in the streets when it rains, they hug our pilots and say, 'Do it again.' but we can't guarantee that the clouds will be there—and willing to cooperate." Sweeney's cloud seeding company is actively training pilots and meteorologists in Maharashtra to commission geoengineering flights over the next five years.

Geoengineering works to a degree, as confirmed by Dan Breed, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. The hard part is measuring its impact on a region's rainfall or snowfall. Software known as "Titan" (Thunderstorm identification, tracking, and nowcasting) is capable of interpreting and visualizing radar data as pilots seed clouds, allowing meteorologists to measure precipitation increases in real time.

Dan Breed has been conducting research on a $14 million government grant that has allowed Weather Modification Inc. and the University of Wyoming to collaborate and study the actual increases in precipitation after cloud seeding over the Wyoming mountain ranges. They've effectively measured increases in snowfall precipitation between 5 and 15 percent from cloud seeding. To create snowfall, silver iodide is used. Since the molecular structure of silver iodide is similar to ice, water droplets cling to it as it falls through the clouds, causing snowflakes to form.

In Maharashtra, India, the first phase of cloud seeding has paid off. The region has seen an increase of 37.4 inches of rainfall, enough to keep the crops alive. As risky and controversial as it is, geoengineering may be here to stay – a tool for governments and the elite to manipulate weather for both good and potentially nefarious results.

If all results of cloud seeding were productive and good and if all its goal's were well intentioned, then why aren't governments and state-run media outlets being open and transparent about this "great" global business? If the moisture is sucked out of the clouds from one region, how might this cause drought in other deprived, less advantaged regions?