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."

Comments

Absence of evidence is not evidence of Absence

[Tom90deg]

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.

Re:Absence of evidence is not evidence of Absence

[Joebert]

Let's stop and think about what makes up a rain cloud for a moment.
It's essentually just a bunch of water vapor suspended in the air with some dust particles.

Eventually the air becomes soo saturated that the water vapors combine and become too heavy to say airborne, turning into rain.

One thing I've noticed living here in Florida for 20+ years where it's quite moist is that it seems to rain on almost every holiday where there's
a) Masses of people BBQ-ing
b) Masses of people setting off fireworks

Both of these activities fill the air with excess dust particles, which eventually crowd the area where water vapor accumulates quicker than happens naturally & causes the rain to fall. I think it happens like that here in Florida because of the relative humidity. I believe the same thing would happen in for instance, Seattle where it's very wet.

Given the Chinese are using rockets, I think there's a very good chance they actually can control the weather, to a point. It's kinda like detonating land mines before troops get to them, except in this case it's all about making the rain fall before it gets to the place an event is being held.

Re:Absence of evidence is not evidence of Absence

[dwater]

I think it's more than that in this case.

I've seen more tv programmes (inc news) about Chinese culture in the last week (controversial and not) than most of my life. This has to have a positive effect on the west understanding China generally.

Re:Absence of evidence is not evidence of Absence

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing I've noticed living here in Florida for 20+ years where it's quite moist is that it seems to rain on almost every holiday where there's
a) Masses of people BBQ-ing
b) Masses of people setting off fireworks

Whilst it sounds plausible, the smoke from these would tend to hang close to the ground, or at most, within a few hundred feet of the ground. Not up where the clouds are. Put another way, if you stuck your nose up around the clouds and took a sniff, you wouldn't smell smoke.

That it rains when people want to BBQ and set off fireworks is probably due to an entirely non-scientific effect: Murphy's Law.

Re:Absence of evidence is not evidence of Absence

[drinkypoo]

Just to put myself firmly in the crackpot camp, there was heavy chemtrail activity the day when the California fires began due to widespread heat lightning, in turn blamed on high temperatures and extremely low humidity. The idea of cloud seeding is to make the moisture fall out of the sky.

There's long-time evidence that cloud seeding works, and that "more is more" (as opposed to "less is more".) So there's no particular reason why you shouldn't believe that the seeding worked. On the other hand, now they're having flooding. Correlation does not imply causation, but tampering with chaotic systems is generally considered to have unforeseen consequences - which is why we call them 'chaotic'. They're confusing because they're complicated.

Remember, the most complicated computer systems in the world are used for what? Nuclear blast simulation, computational fluid dynamics/carbon fiber modeling/stealth/other highly repetitive modeling tasks, and climate modeling. About which I know next to nothing except that it keeps some very fast computers very busy.

International implications?

[AmiMoJo]

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?

Re:The most controlled Olympics ever?

[DeadDecoy]

That picture looks more like an anti-China pr piece, than anything else. If you look closely at the image, the wall isn't very long, tall or comprehensive as the photographer is able to get a picture of the disparity on foot. Sure, it's conveniently placed to hide the more impoverished parts of the town, but I don't think it's unreasonable that they want to present their best face to the world. If they were super totalitarian, they might have just relocated that person, preventing said image from being created.

Re:The most controlled Olympics ever?

[DigiShaman]

Media manipulation is a global phenomenon. Just about every country has their own agenda with it. For example in China, the media is controlled to protect the CCP and maintain control of the populous through mis-information. In the USA however, the media is all about the cultural "shock value". The more shock, the higher your ratings become for profit.

If anyone thinks there is a shred of honor left in any of the media conglomerates would be sorely mistaken. It's about bending, shaping, and molding the premise which to base the news on to achieve the predefined objective.