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

Waste

[NJVil]

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