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China Modifies Weather For 2008 Olympics
BRock97 writes: "An article in the August 5th issue of Newsweek describes the steps the Chinese are taking to ensure a perfect forecast for the 2008 Olympics. This includes shutting down factories that are pumping pollution into the atmosphere to increasing the number of trees planted to reduce dust and erosion (need to spread these kind of ideas world wide!). The interesting aspect, though, is all the research and development into using rockets and furnaces to modify the atmosphere and create the weather that would be optimal for the games. By heating the air or dumping cloud condensation nuclei into the atmosphere, various types of weather can be achieved. Seems that they have had success as far back as 1987, creating rain to help put out a raging forest fire. Cool stuff from a weather nerd standpoint."
The Chinese government announced a new tactic for enforcing state-controlled censorware: Lightning.
"There has been a great deal of talk about the weather over the years, but very little has ever actually been done."
Or more familiarly: "Everybody talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it."
Karma, please.
"Seems that they have had success as far back as 1987, creating rain to help put out a raging forest fire."
It sure would be a fantastic show of goodwill if China were to help us out a bit here in the states before the entire West burns to a cinder.
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
Problem is we have little idea what the long term effects would be on the envionment. Since we can't yet completely accurately model weather patters on a global scale there is no telling what changing the weather in China could do to the weather in other parts of the world (like maybe drought in Australia or the US?).
You'd be surprised. There have been a few studies in the US regarding the effects of polution on weather, and the results are pretty interesting. Basically, any area centered around a major population or industrial center will have consistently different weather on the weekends, when most plants are closed and there's not so much commuter traffic.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
... they'll be killing all of the butterflies. They're in the way of the Three Gorges Dam anyhow.
Brings new meaning to the words "Cold War."
I'm only halfway kidding.
"And like that
- Changing Our Weather One Smokestack at a Time
- Thunderstorms are affected by Pollution (May 2002)
- Tiny Particles of Pollution May Carry Large Consequences for Earth's Water Supply (December 2001)
Dust can also have an effect on rainfall. For a more general view of aerosols and there effects on climate change check out an aerosol fact sheet.I realize these links have a bias for NASA but NOAA is also actively researching this area.
.:: proud supporter of dc united
I apologize for asking that.
-- Ken Kinder ken@_nospam_kenkinder.com http://kenkinder.com/
That's it, tps12. I've been reading your overly dramatic posts for awhile now and you've finally made it on to my 'foe' list.
Weather is an inconvenience, not a threat.
The people who die in hurricanes, typhones, mudslides, droughts, tornadoes, and so forth may disagree with you.
We need to concentrate on using our biological and biotechnological knowledge and research to solve world hunger (by growing so-called "super food" and eliminating pests), stablize primitive nations (using factory-produced soldiers so none of our sons need die), and put an end to child labor (by creating affordable and reliable robotic labor in the world's developing regions).
There's more than enough food on the planet to feed the starving people. The problem is not technological, it's a problem of politics and distribution. Besides, if you're against fooling with Mother Nature regarding the weather, why are you so gung-ho about "eliminating pests"? As far as your other two examples, I don't even know where to begin...
Never mind the fact that the primitive cultures, and even Christianity (see, e.g., the Bible) often attribute the workings of weather to divinity.
So weren't supposed to be laisse-faire on the weather because primitive cultures believe the winds to be controlled by the gods?
The weather is quite literally a phenomenon that occurs in the domain of the Heavens.
Actually, the weather occurs in the domain of the atmosphere.
But when we start to presume that we can control the weather, then we are on the road to our own destruction.
Y'know, in spite of the fact that you're written a moderately lengthy post, you never once gave us any real reason why the weather is, as you put it, "not the kind of thing we should be messing with."
This post of yours is even worse than that one you made about the giant squid.
GMD
watch this
We can't predict the stockmarket either but there are still a lot of stock brokers who have made a lot of money on the stock market. Control would be an overstatement, manipulate would perhaps be more accurate. Even in North America I recall hearing about insurance companies releasing certain chemicals into clouds to prevent heavy hail. Also note that forest fires can and do have strong effects on weather patterns. Heck we've been inadvertantly affecting the weather since the industrial revolution. The reporter was the one saying control, the fact is that the Chinese have been successfully affecting the weather for some time, read the article if you don't believe me.
I stole this Sig
Gee whiz. Fly off the handle much?
If you read the article you'd know that they're talking about induced rain. That's all. You know there's going to be a soccer match in three days (or whatever), so you put silver iodide in the clouds to make it rain. Get much of the moisture out of the local atmosphere, reduce the likelihood of rain next week. It's a very localized and very well understood process. The hitch, of course, is getting the right amount of stuff into the atmosphere at the right time and in the right way. It's all in the delivery.
Besides, the article is worth it for the headline alone: "Rain called on account of game." LOL.
We can't not change the weather. Everything we do effects the weather. Globaly there is no such thing as doing nothing when it comes to the weather.
Your other ideas also neglect to consider closed environments. World hunger is related to population growth, food distribution and power (food is a weapon). You can't eliminate pests because lifeforms always adapt, bugs haven't existed for thousands of years for no reason. All our super food does currently is abuse certain current forms of pesticide in a monoculture crop. When that monoculture loses to the pests then bad things will happen.
There is no silver bullet in an ecosystem.
Seems that they have had success as far back as 1987, creating rain to help put out a raging forest fire.
It's a little known fact that this rain control research was originally designed by the government to extinguish burning Falun Gong protestors. The government eventually decided that beating the holy shit out of them worked better and was more cost-effective.
GMD
watch this
For the communist party's 50th anniversary in 1999, China did the same thing.
Since the Party had decreed that there would be perfect weather for such a momentous occasion, they shut down factories around Beijing for the entire week beforehand. Then a day or two before, they seeded the clouds, so that it would rain the day before the celebration, but be Perfect Weather in Tiananmen Square for the Day.
And indeed, the weather was perfect. The smog had disappeared, and the sky was clear and blue...
(To mod someone down or reply... 'tis better to contribute than mod down, I guess.)
Weather modification is one of those topics that atmospheric scientists tend to avoid.
Why?
Simply put, it's not known if it even really works. Sometimes cloud seeding does work (see Gagin and Neumann, 1981); sometimes it has the opposite effect than desired or none at all (see Tukey et al., 1978; Kerr, 1982). There was a large bit of debate as to what effects cloud seeding really has. Let's not mention that there are also, what they call "windows of opportunity" where it is hypothesized that the seeding can even have any semblence of an effect.
Much of the research in the 60's and 70's on cloud seeding was fairly inconclusive, at best. Certain bits of weather modification make sense (for example, reducing the potential sizes of hailstones), but just the basic tenets of "can we control where storms will rain" and "microclimate change" like the Chinese seem to be talking about, are all in the scope of chaotic behavior.
Cloud mechanisms are incredibly nonlinear, so even a small change in the environment can have totally unforseen circumstances. And whether or not you can actually even GET a measurable response from the cloud is another matter altogether.
I applaud the Chinese for reigniting interest in this field (which has been mostly dead since the early 80's), but I wouldn't bet the farm on it working as planned. For the Olympics, the couple tens to hundreds of millions of dollars needed to run such programs could pay off in the end... but for many other situations, the cost does not justify the risky means. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if this whole endeavor falls flat in the end, though. The available data is very ambiguous about the effects, and I really don't see much else that could justify the amount of "positive vibes" the article transmitted.
Now taking bets on how many events are drowned out by a typhoon that they decided to seed that makes an "unexpected" turn...
-Jellisky
(* After a tornado destroyed a town a few years back, Clinton (it might have been Gore) promised to devote federal money to research on preventing tornadoes in the American Midwest. *)
It is based on the theory that hot air generated from speaking politicians reduces tornado frequency.
Table-ized A.I.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Another source is waste heat from air conditioners. One article a while ago pointed out that all those fscking airconditioning units radiating into the street raise urban temperatures. I think it was 3 F or 5 F.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
As a result of this, Arkadelphia was named to Project Impact. Project Impact has the goal of preventing natural disaster damage, not by preventing the disasters, but by using construction and design techniques to allow structures to handle the forces of the disaster. Examples would be hurricane clips in Florida buildings, or sway dampers in Los Angles skyscrapers.
Anyway, the best link that I found to Arkadelphia and Project Impact is http://www.arkadelphia.org/pi/pi.html. I wasn't able to find any text of the speech Clinton would have made on his March 3, 1997 visit.
Chris Beckenbach