Slashdot Mirror
China Claims Score In Weather Manipulation
hackingbear writes "Despite prior skepticism over effectiveness, China claims successful application of weather intervention to ensure a stunning Olympic opening ceremony, according to a report by the official Xinhua News Agency:
'We fired a total of 1,104 rain dispersal rockets from 21 sites in the city between 4 p.m. and 11:39 p.m. on Friday, which successfully intercepted a stretch of rain belt from moving towards the stadium,' said Guo Hu, head of the Beijing Municipal Meteorological Bureau (BMB).
While there wasn't a single drop of rain over the National Stadium — also known as the Bird's Nest — during the opening ceremony from 8:00pm-12:00am on August 8, the weather services said that Baoding City of Hebei Province, to the southwest of Beijing, received the biggest rainfall of 100 millimeters Friday night, and Beijing's Fangshan District recorded a rainfall of 25 millimeters."
Would be finding those darn smog dispersal rockets.
Olympic cyclists had a hard time coping with the combined effects of the humidity, temperature, and smog laden air and visibility of the flame cauldron was barely a mile.
http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/trackandfield/columns/story?columnist=caple_jim&id=3475952
Not only is the weather being controlled but so are the people. For the first time ever the Olympic road cycling course was deserted. The silence freaked out quite a few of the riders, who are used to Tour de France conditions, where the spectators go berserk.
It's very hard to prove a negative. You could also claim that a squig of nutmeg around your neck will prevent alien abductions.
The tests of various rain-making programs have been more or less a wash. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't, or to look at it a diffrent way, sometimes it rains and sometimes it does not. I'll believe it when they can A) stop rain on demand, or B) start rain on demand. If you can't do either, sell your snake oil somewhere else.
...will grow larger.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I just watched the womens road race where they could have swapped bikes for canoes, the rowing is cancelled and several other events have been postponed because of rain.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
He who controls the weather, reigns supreme
Thanks, I'll be here all week!
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
... ...
It just doesn't have the "super villian-y" vein we expect from a super power
by their forced relocation to rebuild the city for the olympics. No rain to deal with.
In Soviet Russia, the weather manipulates you.
I was convinced it was the allies who had that tech.
I have a rock which keeps tigers away
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the purple monkey dishwasher
Yeah, they should just stick with the nukes. The weather machine belongs to the allies.
That's just mist. It'd just evaporation and humidity. Stupid American propagandists.
The polar bear repellant has kept the streets of Beijing free of polar bear activity.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
Or, to put it in a more Slashdot-friendly way:
Homer Simpson: Not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol must be working like a charm.
Lisa Simpson: That's specious reasoning, Dad.
Homer: Thank you, dear.
Lisa: By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.
Homer: Oh, how does it work?
Lisa: It doesn't work.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: It's just a stupid rock.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: But I don't see any tigers around, do you?
[Homer thinks of this, then pulls out some money]
Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock.
[Lisa refuses at first, then takes the exchange]
The system in use does not prevent rain, it just makes it fall elsewhere. Assuming for a moment that the system will get better, and perhaps we will be able to control other aspects of the weather like wind or temperature, I can see weather control becoming an international issue in the future.
One country could blow smog away over another, or prevent it from entering their airspace. What if two neighbouring countries have different ideas, or one decides to wreck the other econnomy (deliberately or otherwise) by preventing rainfall over their neighbour, perhaps by "stealing" it for themselves?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
"How do you know when a country has become a superpower? When the have superpowers"
Yep, worked real well... It's currently pouring with rain here in Beijing and has been for most of the afternoon. I guess they just stopped it for the opening ceremony and didn't bother about the rest of the events. Hah, yeah right.
Xinhua says a lot of things.
By creating clouds in one place they are cooling the air there, which granted 2% more clouds globally would reverse any effects of global warming, but meh.
When you have cold air in one place and warmer air in another it will move, pulling warm air towards the poles and cooler polar air towards the equator to be warmed. This can affect climate on a global scale providing large enough regions are being done.
As the warmer equatorial air is forced towards the poles, it will melt the ice, as the cooler polar air is moved towards the equator it will warm from more direct sunlight. Storms will form, the earth will die.
Ok maybe I dont write for the MSM but I could with tripe like this! bonus: my captcha is concoct
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_seeding
From NPR: $100 million A low estimate for the cost of the opening ceremony. That's about $476,000 per minute and almost $8,000 per second and more than twice the cost of the 2004 Athens opening ceremony.
There are many places in the world thirsting for precipitation of any sort and the Chinese are firing rockets to stop rain just so that the opening ceremony of their PR stunt can be free of dampness. I guess that they wanted to guarantee their hundreds of millions in pyrotechnics weren't ruined. Of course, the firing of rockets does nothing to help with global climate issues.
Meanwhile droughts and floods ravage other areas of China. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DEED7113BF93BA15753C1A96E948260
It rained during the US women's beach volleyball game against Japan. Where were your anti-Rain missles then? (I guess it didn't rain *that* much)
I can see what this will eventually turn into, a story on StumbleUpon. "In the 2008 Olympic games China deployed thousands of anti-Rain missle launchers and converted AA guns to stop weather clouds. In 2012 Olympics, Great Britain built a roof over their buildings.
I wonder if all of their nice weather is the cause for all of the freak thunderstorms over North America lately...
They want their article back.
The article you linked to contains the following dateline: "Published: October 28, 1988"
Way to keep up with current events.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
I saw the women's bicycle race this morning. They got soaked for over 3 hours in heavy rain.
Bert
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Wilhelm Reich did many experiments on weather control many years ago and, hard as it is to believe, most of the time his "cloud-buster" actually worked.
"This weather machine is a tad anti-climatic"
There, fixed that for ya.
If it's in you sig, it's in your post.
Are you going to find some news article in 1888 about China and say China is still being ruled by some imperial court?
The weather and air quality have been fairly close to the worrisome scenario painted months ago. I've been checking meteorological observations every day, finding the dew point at Beijing's airport in the mid and upper 70s on a regular basis and visibility of 1-2 miles common (It is currently under 1 mile, but there is rain falling).
Back in February I wrote on my blog of the potential Olympic weather: "So, when the deputy chief engineer of the Beijing Meteorological Bureau says, "Even if the rare extreme weather hits Beijing in August, people will not feel muggy. High humidity will not accompany the hot weather in August because their climax periods are different, " I'd hide the silverware and other valuables."
Current Beijing observations are here.
Dew points (the real number you should look at when you think humidity) have been consistently in the 70s--often the upper 70s. That's like walking around with a warm, damp cloth wrapped around your body. Much of yesterday had Beijing more humid than Miami.
I would feel better about what the Chinese say if dissenting voices were allowed to speak about the air!
There is an independent group from Cambridge Environmental Research Consultants in England who have been monitoring the air and issuing their own forecasts which have been much more pessimistic than the official government version. Now that forecast is gone! From Telegraph.co.uk: British scientists monitoring air quality in Beijing have been ordered to close down their website after their readings clashed with official statistics showing the city was meeting its pollution targets.
Did I get this right? They wanted to prevent rainfall in Beijing? In recent weeks, after every rainfall the air quality actually improved. You would think they would want some rainfall just before the games to improve the air quality.
If their seeding plan had failed, they still would have called it a success because it rained in Beijing and washed away some of the smog. They had nothing to lose!
that Bush and his neo-cons are over there seeing how to make this happen in America.
they would have been doing this like mad in sychuicans(sp) region after the earthquakes/rain. As it was, that area was SLAMMED with rain afterwards.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
There's a heap of "not rain" falling on the Men's Vollyball. One of the cameras got struck by lightning.
That's the thing about weather control. There are techniques known that given enough effort can apparently alter the weather. The problem is that they're expensive, rather unreliable, and sometimes alter the weather for the worse.
If the techniques do become more reliable, I predict that it'll be like forest management. If you prevent all fires for a time, you create the conditions needed for a truly devastating and uncontrollable "superfire".
People have been seeding clouds for DECADES. This is as newsworthy as saying "China Seeds Clouds".
*yawn*
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
They ARE afraid of them. Right now, the Chinese gov is a VERY small group of ppl. The military is being changed right now from suppressing ppl, to being able to take on USA for Taiwan. Individuals, they do not care about. Groups of ppl terrify them.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
China, I want to buy your rockets!
Wholesale messing with atmospherics without the barest understanding of the consequences is asking for trouble. Kicking a chaotic system hard enough to change its state has the power to shift it into a new groove. A new groove of weather that doesn't help humans survive as we have in the old one.
The Atlantis myth encodes a deep human taboo against messing with the weather as the highest, and most dangerous, exercise in vanity. China is doing an abysmal job protecting the atmosphere from all its other unbridled industrial activity. This latest stunt could really be daring nature to show us a real storm, or just take a hint and stop raining at all for some time. Or some other unpredicted change we can't handle.
--
make install -not war
I for one, welcome our new communist, weather-controlling overlords!
Wait.. On second thought...
Of course I didn't RTFA... why would I do that? You really are new here aren't you? Don't let my UID fool you.
The Broccoli Must Die
http://www.masturbatoreum.com/view.php?id=272