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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."
For what its worth, Atlanta did the same thing in 1996. The whole Olympic Centennial Park area, all the new stadiums, etc were all built in former slums occupied by people who were strangely no longer in Atlanta after.
You're thinking of Colloidal Silver.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colloidal_silver
It causes a condition called Argyria, which turns the skin permanently blueish-gray.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argyria
I'm not sure if other silver-based chemicals also have the same effect or not.
Check out this dude who took too much of the stuff:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XV0I6Q70Yw
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In soviet china, every cloud has a silver lining. Weather they like it or not!
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.
...that if you take too much of it turns your skin blue and is irreversible. The condition of drinking way too much of this is called Argyria."What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it?" - Doctor Who
sure, just as soon as someone justify evicting 30 or more families to build a mall or walmart. You do have a point here, but I think you're exaggerating some figures and it's hurting your argument. You claim "30 or more families" are "evict[ed]" from their homes every six months to build a Wal-Mart or a mall. Somehow I doubt this is true for a number of reasons.
First, the "big box" stores like Wal-Mart, Target, Home Depot, etc. try to find unoccupied land when they can because it's cheaper. Sure, in urbanized areas that's difficult or impossible, which is why their second choice is demolishing/renovating older shopping centers, warehouses, and so forth. There's several of these going on within ten miles of my home right now. Again, this is cheaper (and easier on the PR) than going after residential areas. The absolute last choice is a residential area because it's more expensive, more time consuming, and -- as you've noted in your argument -- it pisses people off sometimes.
Second, I question your use of the term "evict." Evict means they're forcibly parted from their property. This does happen from time to time, and when it does it makes news. There have been documented cases of eminent domain abuse centered around these types of stores, and you're quite right to complain about them. That is your argument: the encroachment on private property rights by local city zoning councils (which are after sales tax dollars) and the businesses they "work" for (who want your sales dollars and pay politicians with campaign contributions). You hurt yourself, though, by claiming it happens "almost every 6 months" to 30 families. The aforementioned abuses are inexcusable, but they are much rarer than you claim.
Third, you attempt to draw some equivalence between China displacing 1.5M people and our eminent domain abuses. That is a poor analogy for many reasons, not the least of which is that the Chinese have much more limited property rights than Americans do to begin with. Also, using your very own numbers, you claim 30 families are uprooted every six months in the U.S., and you claim it's been going on "for decades." By my calculations on your numbers (numbers I disagree with, BTW), the "fuckers in the USA" displace a maximum of 60 families a year. Assuming 3 people constitutes a family, that's 180 people per year. At this rate it would take over eight thousand years for the "fuckers in the USA" to displace 1.5M people, something the Chinese are doing in far less than a decade. Even that number pales when compared to the relocation required for the Three Gorges Dam project. Yet you seem to have a problem determining the difference in scale, morally equivocating one to the other.
Like I said, your argument against eminent domain abuses are quite valid, but your exaggeration and hyperbole degenerates your argument into frothing at the mouth. What we're doing with eminent domain abuse in this country is bad, but what's going on in places like China is much, much worse...so much so that it really diminishes the more egregious abuse by trying to link it with the lesser abuse.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Yeah, you're right, but the Supreme Court has unfortunately said otherwise.
I pretty much agree that the Olympics are going to be a huge expenditure with few tangible results, but I find it pretty unsurprising China is so gung-ho about this. In my opinion, hosting the Olympic games satisfies several agendas:
I don't mean to be overly cynical about the whole affair -- I had several Chinese friends who were ecstatic when it was announced that China would host the Olympics, and I'm happy for them. But in response to the original post, the Olympics often seem to be huge expenditures that may or may not pay off. Not to be unfair to developing nations, but... why do we constantly have to build new stadiums to accommodate the Olympics? Can't we just use the old ones we built, and focus more on the games and less on the "boom and bust" economics of building the infrastructure every 4 years?
The moon may be smaller than the earth, but it's much farther away!
We call it something different, but there is a lot of money spent on "cloud seeding" in the USA every year. There is some debate over whether or not it is effective, but apparently the Chinese aren't the only "bludgeoning buffoons" around here.
Someone get this guy a cookie! Additionally, NO wasn't the only Katrina victim, but only conspiracy theories make the news.
Sierra Tango Foxtrot Uniform