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China to Use Silver Iodide & Dry Ice to Control the Weather
eldavojohn writes "While we made light of it before, the MIT Review is taking a serious look at China's plans to prevent rain over their open 91,000 seat arena for The Olympics. From the article: 'China's national weather-engineering program is also the world's largest, with approximately 1,500 weather modification professionals directing 30 aircraft and their crews, as well as 37,000 part-time workers — mostly peasant farmers — who are on call to blast away at clouds with 7,113 anti-aircraft guns and 4,991 rocket launchers.' They plan on demonstrating their ability to control the weather to the rest of the world, and expanding on their abilities in the future."
Peasant farmers with rocket launchers. Lots of aircraft. What could possibly go wrong?
Ah, computer dating -- it's like pimping, but you rarely have to use the phrase "upside your head" -- Bender
...is four nosecones from 1960s nuclear weapon technology! HA! I knew it! *hide*
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
Wyoming has done similar tests (click "listen now").
More
So overall how much have the chinese spent on the 2008 summer olympics? Seriously.
Step 1 -- Weather Controlling machines
Step 2 -- sharks with lasers
Step 3 -- Global domination!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Following the announcement in 2001 that the 2008 Games had been awarded to Beijing, the government of the People's Republic initiated $40 billion of new construction there, bringing 120,000 Chinese migrant workers into the city (at about $130 each a month) and triggering a five-year steel shortage worldwide. [...] the Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions estimates that 1.5 million of Beijing's natives will have been displaced from their homes by government edict when the Olympics finally begins. This preemptory modernization is of a piece with China's scale, its 1.32 billion population, and the authoritarian control exerted by its Communist central government, which nowadays is dominated by technocrats and engineers who favor mega-projects like the world's largest dam (the Three Gorges dam over the Yangtze River), its highest railway (the Qinghai-Tibet line), and even its biggest Ferris wheel (in Beijing, opening in 2009).
Someone please try to justify evicting one and a half million people for the Olympics.
I'm sure someone will try...which just proves that China's subtle information campaigns to attempt to make the world think that everything is rosy or somehow justified are working like a charm.
"7,113 anti-aircraft guns "
Nice. Instead of raining water, it will rain lead. Good thinking china.
In China the Weather controls you ...
My favourite operating system is ReactOS; binary compatible to WinNT series
The Chinese government wants to use the Olympics to inject a dose of normalcy into their demeanor, but there is nothing normal about purposely and continually funding a genocide despite the requests and demands of every other nation in the world.
Why don't we sell them the technology our own Air Force has been using to disperse clouds? Its been a little while since I read about it, but as I recall, we have been chemically seeding clouds under the guise of "dumping" super-expensive jet fuel. The clouds dissapate rather quickly. Of coourse it makes better sense for the Chinese to WANT rain between now and the Olympic Games, in an effort to clean their air.
so
1. seed the clouds, make it rain,
2. use the jet fuel to dissipate the clouds
3. Profit??
How amazed would you be to suddenly find that you just forgot what I wrote and you needed to reread my post.... again.
now if they could only control pollution...
Just call China. Problem solved. Next.
I like
since 1936
Those Chinese are going to be seriously disappointed when they discover that all their bullets and rockets just pass right through the clouds. "This is some magical, mystical force that flies in the air and is impervious to our bullets!" But I guess if they've played enough Super Mario Bros they might think there are hidden blocks in the clouds and the only way to find out is to keep shooting at it (until they find the super-size mushrooms).
Here, back when out country was called USSR the Party would order the same thing done to prevent rain over the Red Square during the military parades that took place on major holidays, like November 7th (Anniversary of October Revolution) or may 9th (Russian V-Day).
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
.... most of the clouds happen to be over Tibet.
Isn't Silver Iodide bad for you, specifically your skin? I know there's this concoction (that has silver) that if you take too much of it turns your skin blue and is irreversible.
If china pumps a ton of this stuff out, this will obviously get into the drinking water and then the athletes will drink that water as well as the local citizens and so you get blue skinned Chinese and athletes!
I think the US, UK, and its allies should boycott the Olympics. Of course I'd like our country to show China that democracy is way better than communism like we did to the Russians back in the hey-day, but China has smog (high levels of mercury and lead than any smog city in the world) and now silver iodide in their drinking water. I wouldn't want our strapping young athletes to end up with lungs like that of a smoker and have asthma attacks.
Previewing comments are for sissies!
who are on call to blast away at clouds with 7,113 anti-aircraft guns and 4,991 rocket launchers.'
Isn't this from a spongebob episode, where plankton tried, yet again, to conquer the world?
"Die cursed, usurper clouds! Die!!!"
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
What you don't know is that the Chinese official who came up with this idea, his name translates as 'big butterfly'. When he flaps his wings in the considerable land mass of China, who knows what happens to the weather in Florida...
Let's just hope the farmers load the shells from the wooden boxes with the clouds on them, not the skull and crossbones, during the Olympics.
body massage!
Whatcouldpossiblygowrong?
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
What I wonder, is what China (in particular, the Chinese gov't) gains from hosting the Olympics. It costs money. It's hard on the citizens. It pisses off the citizens, and casts the government in a bad light. All the things they're doing to their citizens in preparation are not in a spotlight for the rest of the world, which also casts the government in a bad light.
So my question is, other than saying "we hosted the olympics in 2009", what benefit is it to them to do so? I'd think that they'd get more respect for having the games hosting in another country, and then having a winning Olympic team.
I don't even want to see how the media is going to paint China as this "mystical, magical land", when in reality it is a polluted cesspool of human rights violations, forced abortions, population control, poison in their products that are shipped to this nation. The forced smiles alone on their hand-picked robot citizens that will be obviously ordered to mill around Olympic Village and say wonderful things about China will be enough to make me hurl on my flat screen.
Yeah, my karma sucks....but so do the mods.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
What would Al Gore do? This is just one on many current problems in this world. There are so many unknown issues with the weather patterns right now. This is just going to complicate things even more. I feel the world needs to initiate a major pollution reform way before manually changing weather conditions. Of course everyone loves a sunny day but that isn't something we should control. My favorite past time is roller blading on a nice 70-degree day but I'm not about to ask someone to force the weather to be that way. You need to have patience. I invented the roller blade and had a work prototype. I showed a few people because I was impatient. Someone of course stole the patent and they are now rich beyond their wildest dreams. Wait for good weather, don't force it. We will all have plenty of days to roller blade. Btw, if anyone knows the person who stole my patent I would greatly appreciate any information. God bless.
Damn, so does that mean John Fogerty won't be doing the opening act?
Help a man when he is in trouble and he will remember you when he is in trouble again.
when you shoot iodine into clouds from below and shower them with liquid nitrogen and other chemicals from above above a full Olympic size stadium
Cloud seeding works about as well as a polygraph but with a bit more of a scientific basis behind it that makes people think it might just work this time. They can no more control the weather than we can read minds so it's not worth the sensationalist headline.
What I find interesting is the Chinese are open with their weather control program while US claims weather control is not possible and denies they have a program. Then I look up and see CHEMTRAILS hammering Cleveland whenever we have a sunny day (which is like 60 days out of the entire year!)
Just a thought...
why not a retractable glass dome? w/ all the $ they're expending on controlling the weather, I think they could have built and paid for (many times over) a retractable glass dome on the arena. if(!rain) keep_open; else close_glass_dome;
I don't see this going well with the climate oscillations, particularly the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the El Nino Southern Oscillation. This could cause massively destructive monsoons in the South East Pacific and flooding in South America in about a year. People still want to screw with mother nature regardless of the dangers that it poses.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
From TFA:
"Below, one member of China's army of part-time rainmakers mans an anti-aircraft gun to show the international media how he will shoot silver iodide into passing clouds."
I'm traveling by boat to the Olympics.
Help a man when he is in trouble and he will remember you when he is in trouble again.
If their housing is improved from a slum to something solid then there is nothing to worry about.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I can see it coming. China will master the use of weather as a strategic tool of warfare. Forget nuke - Categor 5 hurricanes incoming!
Nobody expects the Moral Equivalence Brigade!!!
...weather controls YOU!
What is known is that it was the humans who scorched the sky.
Go China!
I love the idea of them turning over "7,113 anti-aircraft guns and 4,991 rocket launchers" to "mostly peasent farmers".
Now that Polaroid has stopped making photographic films, I was wondering what we were going to do with all those spare silver halides short of flooding the world markets with goth jewellery.
Now I can sleep happy knowing that the Chinese are going to be spraying them into the atmosphere. I'm not a chemist, but as someone with an interest in photography, I predict a negative effect on our climate which may take some time to develop but will take a whole lot of sodium thiosulfate to fix!
of three anecdotes about China and the environment.
The first was from the Lonely Planet's China guide, wherein one of the contributors said he was an avid jogger who moved to Beijing. Upon discovering the poor air quality, he decided it was better for his health to stop jogging.
The second was the funny and sad story of the fate of songbirds in Beijing. Apparently, Chairman Mao hated them. So he commanded all the citizens of the city to go outside and bang on pots and pans. The birds, scared by the racket, flew around and around until they dropped dead out of the sky from exhaustion. Subsequently, the insect population soared without the birds to keep them in check.
A reasonable person might have concluded that they should bring back the birds and restore equilibrium, but not Mao. He then decreed that since insects were breeding in the grass and vegetation in the capitol, that everyone should turn out and uproot all the plants and soak the trees down with DDT (a practice which continues to this day, in fact). Then, with no ground-level vegetation around, the city began to experience vexing dust storms.
The Chinese Communist Party efficiently proclaimed it a consequence of being downwind from the massive Soviet industrial complexes in Siberia.
The third anecdote involves the Three Gorges Dam. When the it looked like the CCP would put the plans into action, scientists and experts from around the world unanimously proclaimed it a Bad Idea. It would wipe out endangered species. It would erase one of the two greatest cultural and scenic features of China: the Three Gorges are somewhat analogous to the Grand Canyon and have inspired Chinese poets and artists for thousands of years. It would prove ineffective in generating power over the long run due to the rapid silting up of the reservoir. It would dislocate millions of people pushed out by the rising waters. It would create a potential disaster for the people living downstream (including Shanghai, one of the most densely populated cities in the world), because the dam itself was built across several faults.
But the CCP went ahead, because nature and man must be subsumed beneath the needs of the proletariat. Now it turns out, once the reservoir is filling, that all those concerns were true. For instance, the increased weight of water in the reservoir above the fault lines has accelerated the number of temblors. Also, with restricted water flow, regions downstream are experiencing drought (an unexpected consequence). And with the reduced water flow, pollution has become more concentrated and caused public health problems. And the last unexpected consequence is that the increased water levels in the reservoir have triggered all kinds of landslides.
In short, China's approach to the environment is nothing short of a disaster. And unhappily for them, the effects of the disaster are immediately felt and born by the rank-and-file Chinese, given the high population density. Yet because of the totalitarian presence of the CCP and its totalizing ideology and propaganda, the country and its people are unable to efficiently evaluate proposals and effectively respond to problems.
It's sad, because the Chinese are an incredibly inventive and resourceful group. They've given so much to the world. One wonders what they could achieve in a free and open society. But alas, they have, at least for the time being, chosen to handicap themselves with a system that turns all their genius to idiocy.
The rest of us should observe, and take notes for our own societies.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Looking at it from our individualistic perspective, it seems like abused.
On the other hand, from a Chinese collectivist, 'end's justify the means' perspective, why does it matter if 1.5 million drones are relocated?
For some reason people don't own up to one perspective being better or worse than the other. This mediocrity in critical thinking presumably greases the wheels, so I'm not saying it's a bad thing.
However... the Chinese perspective is equally valid if, and only if, conflict is an equally valid activity as harmony.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
That China truly likes to control things....be it people or weather.
What "weather modification professionals?" Just where have you ever heard of anyone having a booming business of "modifying" the weather, outside of the funny papers?
The Red Chinese are looking more like bludgeoning buffoons every day.
.
Regards;
So the idea is to replace the clouds with smoke and shrapnel? Nice. It certainly sounds like a good idea to me.
There isn't a lot. In fact it is often used during droughts when air moisture is often at a minimum, making such an approach useless as there is no water to harvest.
The only people who claim it really works are the rainmakers themselves.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
"China must resolutely crush the Rain/Weather forces' conspiracy and sabotaging activities," The People's Daily, the mouthpiece of the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC), said in a hard-hitting commentary on Saturday as Beijing poured in thousands of Chinese troops to assert control in the restive Olympic regions of the country.
China alleged that the violent weather activities were "masterminded" by the Mother Nature "clique" with the "vicious intention" of undermining the Olympics and splitting China. Mother Nature has denied the charge, and said she is ready for a dialogue with Beijing.
No, New Orleans was a case of corrupt black city officials not properly utilizing the monies granted to them via the federal government.
I'm a long time Bush supporter and I have to concede that I was very disappointed with the way that he handled Katrina. Let me put it this way. If I was President, I'd have had an army in there on day one, stopping at every Home Depot on the way to pick up stuff to build with and sending the bills to Congress. I'd have had generators in there and the water out. That didn't take place. It doesn't mean that he's racist, as the original poster states, and nor does it absolve the local residents from their own admittedly corrupt local government, but, by the same token, when a man is drowning, you don't sit there and yell at him for not following proper safety regulations on the boat. You pull him out.
I wanted to see Bush with the megaphone in downtown New Orleans, the same way as he was on top of the WTC rubble. I thought that moment in September in NYC so long ago was Bush about as good as a President could get, and by contrast, the Bush we got for Katrina flew over the region in Air Force one, delegated the disaster to a low level functionary that wound up failing at the job, and then, to top it all off, gave us some vague excuses about seperation of federal powers and the posse commitatas act. The guy was already breaking the law doing wiretaps without a court order, so, if you are going to argue the President can bend the rules to protect the American people, then he should have bent them in New Orleans.
I mean, if Bush could muster the national purpose to turn an attack by a rogue group into an invasion of not one, but TWO countries, certainly going against the spirit of our own signing of the UN Treaty, then, he could have bent a few rules, and been that figurehead again, and mounted a national effort to rebuild New Orleans. The man had an opportunity to become a living legend, and he blew it, and America is lesser for it.
This is my sig.
In ATL, the citizens at least could use the 5th Amendment's taking clause to get just compensation for any property lost to the government.
I had to look, but China does surprisingly have a version of the "eminent domain" clause in their Constitution - See #6 of "Amendment Fourth" down the page. Note it doesn't say "just compensation"... it just says they can take private property, and pay you something for it. Somehow I don't think, unless you are a Communist party big-wig, that value is decided by an impartial tribunal in a court of law.
Santa Clara County, California used to have a weather modification program. It's Silicon Valley now, but it used to be a prime agricultural area; it has great topsoil. But it doesn't get quite enough rain.
So, for about thirty years, when rain clouds were passing over but it wasn't raining, the call went out to all the silver-iodide stations to start up their generators. These were basically oil burners that put out a smoke column with silver iodide in it.
It helped a little, enough to be statistically significant, but it wasn't spectacular. Beijing is putting in about 100x the effort to cover about 1/10 the area of the Santa Clare Valley effort, so they might get a useful effect.
Here in colorado, the lower part of the state has been using Silver Iodide for several years (basically, since the monster drought). This year they had to stop it because they were at 163% of normal. Was it the Silver? Do not know. But where it is not used, the amount is just slightly above 100%. So, it is possible that it is working. Now, what is needed is for us to build more resevoirs or start re-injecting back into the ground, rather than letting our water run off to other states.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
China has lots of rain in this area. They idea is make the rain happen west of the area. That way, the sky is dry as it moves over the crowd. In addition,the amount of silver iodide is a trivial amount.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I know it can be done. I saw one on television. But rocket launchers work, too.
And while they're working hard to control the weather, I'll just amuse myself over here by starting a large butterfly farm.
Shooting rockets for clouds before they reach the stadium? Sounds like an exciting video game pitch.
Oh my God, this cloud is coming right for us! Quick, return it to its maker with that ground-air missile! Blast, I missed it, it's going too fast!
You just got troll'd!
is that China has their yuan tied to the dollar (while the dollar has gone done by 33 - 50% against nearly all money, it has gone done less than 10% against the yuan. EU Euro is rising in strength and China is starting to really push their wares into there. In a short time, EU, Canada, and even Australia is about to run up monster deficits against China. It is already growing. Quickly. And I doubt that China will open up their money.
But I also suspect that EU (and perhaps the west) will use issue of CO2 as a means of changing a lot. In particular a simple carbon tax will solve a lot of their problem.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Well, at least now John Fogerty will have an answer to his question.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
I always said that if a few fighter planes were to launch multiple warheads into a storm, (hurricane or tornado) that they could actually destroy enough of the deadly force that it could
make the storm dissipate, however, the American gov. seems to love to rebuild all the time, and would not interfere in such disasters even if it were preventable. Too many jobs would be lost.
I truly applaud the Chinese for showing us up, now that the populace will know such things are quite capable, they might make enough stink to force some sort of action next time a class 5 hurricane hits Miami, or a class 5 tornado hits Texas etc.
I wonder if they were to be able to dissipate the clouds too to avoid flash flooding by dispersing the clouds over a wider area, instead of allowing it to accumulate all in 1 small place, causing these floods
What you refer to is the Great Sparrow Campaign which was an attempt to combat a severe grain shortage in China by exterminating airborne and landborne pests that consumed or fouled the grain. Like most large-scale attempts to restructure nature this one failed with ugly ugly consequences. In this case, absent birds to eat them the locust population exploded killing the grain.
Interestingly enough just at the same time that China was facing this massive grain shortage Russia called in, loans that it had outstanding demanding grain and other food in payment. Rather than Default the communists forced the loans to be paid but that ended whatever positive relationship the two countries had. All through the 80's when people talked of a "Communist Conspiracy" they ignored the fact that after that little stunt the Chinese hated the Russians.
One possible consequence of cloud seeding may be hinted at in this Guardian article RAF Rainmakers 'caused 1952 flood' Let's hope that isn't the case.
I think if the weather doesn't do exactly what china wants over the Olympic games they should impose a huge crack down on the weather, and state in many press conferences condemning the weather for "Going against what is best for the motherland." Also they should totally blame the Dalli Lama for instigating the weather to be "unresponsive to the needs of the greater community at large."
of Eastern Europe during the grand old days of Communism...
you were not allowed to walk along some of them
you also were greeted with scenes that would best reserved to hollywood sci fi
Communism abuses both the people and the land... while the ideal may not the reality was far harsher than most people are willing to believe
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
What does the phrase "1.5 million natives have been displaced from their homes" mean, in this case specifically? There is no fundamental human right to a *specific piece of property*. If those 1.5 million people were moved into comparable (or possibly even *better*) housing elsewhere in the city or in a city/town of their choice, or at least compensated with sufficient funds to purchase comparable housing, then I don't see a problem with it (we do the same thing in the US - it's called "Eminent Domain"). If those people were just thrown out on the street, or put into ghettos, that would be a violation of human rights. But, national governments need the power to re-allocate land use. Otherwise, there'd be *nowhere* for anyone to ever host the Olympics.
Sometimes, to build an airport, railroad, or public venue (such as a Stadium), you gotta move some people. That's just life. The important thing is how you accomplish that moving. It's possible to move 1.5 million people in a way that deals fairly with those people and doesn't make them homeless. I don't know if that is the case in this particular situation, but you have not offered any evidence that this is *not* the case.
Looks like it's time to be buying silver futures. With all that silver iodide going up in smoke (so to speak), and given the size of China's consumption of any resource, silver supplies are going to be far tighter in the future than they are now.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Crazy concept, we take and cover the stadium with a roof ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrodome ) that way the rain stays out. We even have some with the ability to be open when it's sunny and closed when it's not ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_Centre ).
This whole weather control thing sounds a lot like a stunt run by a snake-water salesman.
Me play joke,
Me put silver iodide in your coke.
"I'm a long time Bush supporter
Have you seriously considered taking the only possible course open to you to gain a scrap of integrity and put a bullet in your cowardly, deluded traitor's brain?
--
Lorn shot first."
Hey look a loser Star Wars fanboy with a stupid political opinion.
Get back to me when you move out of your mom's basement.
Of course, now is when you respond with an attack because I told you to. So respond and attack me, I'm ordering you to.
"In Beijing, not even the rain falls by chance."
(A reference to being in the center of the empire and all the palace intrigues that come with it).
Now it's actually true!
Sprinkled with racist content = Troll
Just used my last mod point, dammit.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
NOT!
USA used to think we could innovate our way out of all our problems both technical and social. Chinese hasnt learned limits yet.
So my question is, other than saying "we hosted the olympics in 2009", what benefit is it to them to do so?
Assuming you meant to say "2008" rather than "2009", I can only give you a partial answer. More specifically as to why it has to be 2008.
In Chinese culture, as well as other Asian cultures that share that heritage, the number 8 is a very lucky number and is also associated with prosperity. This belief is also applied into dates. The olympics is scheduled to start on August 8, 2008, or in number representation 8/8/8. I recall back in August 8th of 1988 (8/8/88), many Asian people where I lived (San Gabriel Valley, California which is otherwise known as the new LA Chinatown) bought up many lotto and lottery tickets.
I would imagine this number thing is so central in their beliefs such that the Chinese govt must really want to display prosperity.
Just to put some perspective on this. Fulton County's entire population in 1996 was only 750,000. Anti-olympic sites list 30,000 displaced by the Atlanta olympics. That is 1/50th the number affected in China.
Little do they know... It is really the west, with its mechanical carbon dioxide generators that create the "strange" weather. We even have them making their own.. And now they produce more than we do. HAHAHAHA!
What?
Am I the only one who noticed that they're using Dry Ice? Why aren't all of the environmentalists screaming that China's deliberately releasing large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere? Isn't this what's supposed to be causing global warming?
In the 50's Mao had some ideas about what enemies to fight (and mobilize the population against).
"the country's biggest four evils - rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows? "
Read the article (those of you who don't know this important bit of history so we don't repeat it)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3371659.stm
which ended in disaster and famine. Well now its the weather. Too bad the weather in one part of the world effects all other parts, the butterfly effect.
Between genetic engineering on the "oh it will be alright, we have taken into consideration all the possible consequenses" and massive weather modification (for some games). I think we have made great evolutionary progress towards total survival and total good life for everone forever, don't you?
If you don't /own/ the property, why /should/ you receive any compensation?
I've sold rental properties with tenants in them before. It's my property. I give notice as stipulated in the agreed contract, they leave, I sell. The previous tenants don't get any of the money.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
The Olympics are great for all the corporate entities that belly up to the government trough for contracts to work on all the various projects.
It is pork at its finest.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Although, China has been known, from time to time, not to follow its constitution to the letter. Read on to Article 35:
"Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration."
South-central Alberta (between Calgary and Red Deer in Western Canada) is known to be one of the worlds more severe "hail belts". Hail has been responsible for hundreds of millions in damage, ranging from crops and houses (penetrating shingles and shakes to the point of damaging the cladding underneath, as well as causing flooding) to automobiles and airplanes (a hail storm in the Calgary area caused a cargo flight to Minneapolis to abort its ascent when tennis-ball-sized hailstones destroyed the cockpit windscreen of the Boeing 727 jet).
For the past dozen years, the government has regularly seeded clouds in its hail damage mitigation programme. As a Calgary resident I can say that it has noticeably reduced the frequency and intensity of hail storms, and has probably contributed to millions of dollars in savings in disaster relief and insurance claims.
Given that this is not only an old practice, but one that occurs frequently around the world, I don't see where the news-worthiness or controversy is in China's application of cloud seeding to divert precipitation from Beijing during Olympic events, aside from the mildly amusing reason behind the project.
...a lot of Americans seem to think you can destroy a hurricane by nuking it out of the atmosphere. Needless to say, that would go pretty terribly wrong (radioactive concerns aside, in this country we obey the laws of thermodynamics, and adding energy to remove energy isn't compatible).
It costs a lot of money to try to deal with nature, and comparatively less to clean up its effects.
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
The way weather modification works (if it ever does: the jury's out on that one) is to find rain-bearing clouds and seed them so that the rain or hail falls somewhere other than where it would have normally fallen. The first thing, then, is to detect precipitation aloft. Pretty much the only way to do that is with weather radars -- satellite data is usually too coarse and not collected often enough.
... mountains. Which radar can not see through. And many of the storms do initiate over those hills.
Does Beijing have a weather radar? Good thing you asked. The Chinese government recently bought a S-band weather radar so that they could use it for the Beijing Olympic games. Unfortunately, being communists (see: East Germany), they decided that the best place to install the radar was in the middle of the city so that it could be admired by the proletariat.
Why is this funny? Because:
(a) weather radars have a "cone of silence". The radar is on the ground and has to see up high with a relatively flat beam. This means that for around 30km around the radar, it doesn't see squat. In other words, much of Beijing is in the cone of silence of the "Beijing" radar. (For comparision, the weather radar that covers Dallas in at Dallas/Fort Worth airport, far enough away from the two cities to get a good view of the weather over both of them).
(b) Most storms that hit Beijing move from West to East (as it does in most of the Northern Hemisphere). And to the west of Beijing are
Bottom line? It's going to be hard to see the storms coming. Let alone modify the weather.
Disclaimer: my views, not my employer's.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_Summer_Olympics#Los_Angeles_as_host_city
In fact (and to my very great surprise) that particular Olympics was particularly frugal. For example
with almost 40,000 people working on it and so many guns, they might be planning on shooting down all the clouds. Heck, with that many people, they could almost just stand in a big group on top of the mountain range and all blow really hard to make the clouds go away.
Disclaimer: You're right, that wouldn't work at all, I'm sorry.
In my state at least that would be incorrect, can you show me where the courts have ruled otherwise? I follow eminent domain rulings and I am not aware of any that have the result you claim.
"Whoa - great comeback, dude!! I guess you really showed MEwho's boss."
We both know it's the OP, that cunt Darby, I'm conversing with. You're even more pathetic for pretending otherwise. And I notice that you don't deny the truth of my comeback, you fucking basement dwelling twat.
"So what are you - a scaredy cat, or are you a little bitch?"
Neither, we're not related.
Thanks for replying like I told you to, it's nice to have someone I own totally.
You are now ordered to attack me personally again.
The weather is larger and more powerful then you can imagine.
That we can impact storms of such size in a meaningful way is irrational.
I doubt conventional explosives would make a difference...nukes(like a 9Mt sort) might but that would seem like a really bad idea...You know casting an extremely dangerous weapon into an extremely dangerous storm...no matter what Sci-fi's movie of the month might declare.
"Try using facts next time and stay within the bounds of reality.
Or just do the only decent thing left to you after the massive damage you've willfully aided and kill yourself.
--
Lorn shot first."
The FACT is that you're a loser Star Wars fanboy who attacked me after I pointed out what a useless piece of shit you are.
Now, go ahead and log out to personally attack me as an AC again, you danced when I ordered you to before and I'd like a replay.
If there's one area where China excels - it's in overpopulation. Perhaps their plan is to send "wave after wave of short-term thinkers" against problems until the preset kill limit is reached and their ideas start working?
Don't laugh. Taken to it's ultimate conclusion, this approach *would* actually work. I look forward to seeing both the remaining survivors congratulating each other on their success.
"I don't remember a Lorn in Star Wars. "
But you do remember the "who shot first" crap. Or are you going to lie and say that's not what you're referencing?
"And I didn't attack you."
You're a liar. It's pretty fucking pathetic that you even try this, but it says a lot about your character. that you think anyone would believe you and so you attempt it is incredibly funny, it really proves you have no dignity self worth at all.
And thanks for doing what I told you, that's twice I've made you dance for my pleasure.
Dance again, you amuse me you pathetic little whore.
This is not funny!!! We are going to stop global warming with new light bulbs and hybrid cars. Do not make fun of our Chinese comrads for using a differing method to take full control of the climate in China. You should understand that if we can control the entire global climate with light bulbs and cars they can surely control a tiny part of it with Chinese cultural, scientific, and spiritual, methods.
Clearly they only invited Rain http://k-popped.com/2008/01/korean-singer-rain-to-sing-beijing-2008.html to sing the Olympic song in order to get their evil clutches on him.
.. he's not fscking Rambo you know.
Shooting him with 7,113 anti-aircraft guns and 4,991 rocket launchers might be overkill though
Read this for knowing butterfly effect http://www.bleeding-obvious.co.uk/butterfly/butterfly.htm Cheers
Contrary to your belief, I'm not Darby. He did choose to post elsewhere in this thread, under his UID, personally attacking others, so he's certainly not afraid of losing karma for his point of view. So, if I was Darby, why would I have chosen to respond to you as an A/C? Surely not for fear of being modded down for an offtopic discussion, right? Of course, there is no way to prove to you I'm not Darby, but that's ok - you just go ahead and believe what you want. I'm not going to put that much effort into caring.
Now, I think you'll agree that there is nothing in this post indicative of a personal attack, as was ordered of me. No name calling. No argumentative reply. You see, some of us don't have to follow orders.
Oh, and I guess, by process of elimination my question has been answered. Look at the bright side - at least now I know your not a scaredy cat.
Now, just to show that I still pwn you, as I always have, I command you - reply to me.
P.S. - As I've been typing up my reply, I've been checking the thread. LOL!! I find it rather amusing that now I have both of you arguing amongst each other over my reply!! HA!! It kind of reminiscent of Sal the Stockbroker's Chinese Confusion phone call, though I guess if you never listened to Howard Stern you wouldn't have a clue what that is, and I don't have the time to explain it to you. Just trust me, it's rather amusing. Anyway, I told you Darby wasn't afraid to reply to you using his UID.
New Orleans was a failure of the municipality, or, at worst a state responsibility. It was deffinitely a case of the people reaping the fruits of their indifference - if they had bothered to elect a good mayor, and properly fund their police force, the whole situation would have turned out a lot different. The federal government should have never needed to step in, except to provide limited support as requested by the state and municipality.
What does the "F" in FEMA stand for?
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
...Free flights to the Olympics will be offered to Tibetan monks.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Just to use an indoor stadium.
The Gospel according to lolcat
<sarcasm>
They can't even control those upstarts in Tibet.
</sarcasm>
Call me crazy, but silver iodide doesn't sound like something I'd want shot in the air above the local farmland in vast quantities, especially when it is destined to be rained out onto the ground.
If they succeed will China's announcement ring with the same national pride as it did in this video?:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJ4K0hHin9s&feature=user
They cant even control the smog... But ya shoot more crap into the atmosphere...
Your comments have nothing to do with the Olympics and not really anything to do with China and are thus misleading. Done.
Admitted lies are usually considered dishonest - It doesn't matter if the intentions are good. This sort of stuff may be common in advertising but dodgy tactics like that have no place in a reasonable discussion. Consider where all this came from - cloud seeding in China linked to evil bastards killing kiddies in Sudan? Meanwhile you cheapen the word "Genocide" to refer to being from the same country as an arms dealer. I do not think very weak linkages supported by the "for the children" excuse and calling up the ghost of millions of Armenians and Jews is the sort of comment I really want to see except when that's what people are talking about. Unfortunately you all remind me of those loonies that say something bad about China at every opportunity because they want to bring the "good old days" of the cold war back.
You do realise that even though it is for a good enough purpose to justify lying about that it's still SPAM - messages to advertise a view just coming in unasked with nothing to do with anything else? Cloud seeding in China has nothing to do with Sudan.
I recognize that your post is in jest, but the interesting thing is that the translation you are mocking is that provided by CNN regarding the Tibet story, which is very innacurate. CNN and other American media sources have a tendency (intentional?) to make translations of those who have negative relations with the States sounds as if they are anachronistic despots or uneducated baboons. I can tell you as a speaker of Chinese that this was an unfair translation, and other media sources (including French) have much more natural sounding translations. Propaganda techniques can be quite subtle...
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
The headline should be "China to Use Silver Iodide & Dry Ice to Modify the Weather", since "Control" implies that they actually know what the outcome will be (fat friggin' chance o' that). Anybody know the Chinese translation of "hubris"? I'm laying 2:1 odds that these idiots wind up creating a tornado somewhere...
you really expect me to be able to express my opinion of what's so fucked up in this world in 120 characters or less?
It is not off-topic; it is about China and the upcoming Olympics, just not specifically about cloud-seeding. At worst it's partially off-topic.
As for your appeal to emotion in the claim that I am cheapening a word; I guess you would also claim that the support Mussolini provided to Hitler was not support for genocide, or that Hitler was not directly responsible for genocide because his subordinates were the ones who actually committed the murders. Where do you draw the line of responsibility? (not a rhetorical question; I'm asking you where you personally would draw the line in cases like these.)
"Unfortunately you all remind me of those loonies that say something bad about China at every opportunity because they want to bring the "good old days" of the cold war back."
That's a fine piece of hyperbole. It could win awards in a... hyperbole... contest.
Anyone else having flashbacks to Red Alert 2?
Go along with the rest of the west and put in a carbon tax. Once that is started, China will change dramatically. So will most of the large polluters. And yes, that includes America, but also large parts of EU.
"Contrary to your belief, I'm not Darby"
Yes you are liar.m But I'm not the guy YOU replied to.
"Of course, there is no way to prove to you I'm not Darby,"
Because you are Darby liar. No one believes you.
"Now, just to show that I am still pwned by you, as I always have been, I have replied."
FYP.
And, since you replied first Darby, after he insisted, that makes you his bitch. Now, when you reply because I've ordered you to, you'll be my bitch too.
"I find it rather amusing that now I have both of you arguing amongst each other over my reply!!"
Why would you find it amusing that we know you're Darby and you're lying?
So, Darby, again we catch you lying, and you reply EXACTLY LIKE WE TOLD YOU TO.
Do it again.
A ROOF! If you want to get complicated - make it a retractible roof.
Good to see that Sudan is not offtopic on an article about rain in China. Please go easier on us mere mortals that do not see a convoluted web of connections between two things as saying they are exactly the same as each other.