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Geoengineering a Snow-Free Winter Fails In Moscow
dinoyum writes "Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov's promise of a winter without snow in the capital city has fallen short. While cloud seeding is not a new concept for Russia, often used on major holidays, geoengineering snow has never been done to that magnitude. Carrying off the $6 million procedure required jets to spray silver iodide into coming clouds, ensuring that all precipitation fell before it reached the capital. However a combination of disrupted radar, wind control, and faulty weathermen have been blamed by Luzhkov for his failed attempt at playing with mother nature. For now, Russia can go back to enjoying snow."
Fuck yeah
The first time this meme has ever made sense!
In (former) Soviet Moscow, Snow come to YOU.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
I didn't think they came in any other variety.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
Given what it costs to deal with snow in a major city each year, $6 million sounds like money very well spent. Now if only someone would get the dome cities idea back on the table...
If they want to avoid the snow they should just invade Spain and move there. Of course, their hockey tradition would die pretty quickly.
Winter geoengineers YOU!
That would be like Paris without dogshit.
seems weird they would be messing with cold weather precipitation cycles while the rest of the world is up in arms about the effects of global warming...
In soviet Russia we welcome global warming overlords....
3)profit!
At least Russia doesn't hide the fact that it's spraying Chem Trails... :)
Shrinkage on an epic scale!!!
Russia is reverting to its industry-over-humans ways. Sure road cleaning might cost a bit, but who would to spend 5 months with subfreezing temperatures but no snow (which would accidentally raise temperatures a bit). No snowmen, no snowballs, no sledding, no respite from pollution by covering up the accumulated gunk with white? And in spring city landscaping will suffer from lack of moisture in soil.
Is this used successfully anywhere, regularly?
I remember China making mention of doing this for the 2008 games, but as far as I can see, the only policies that really did make a difference in the weather was closing factories, and banning cars from the road to reduce the choking air pollution...
Snow geoengineer you..
Stealing all my snow. Bastards! I live further than anyone else from the office, if it snows I get a snow day. So far this winter it has snowed once on my way home from work, and it was all gone by morning.
I can hear you asking where I live... I live in the best place in the world! Vancouver Canada.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
The article in Time says Moscow usually spends about $12M on removal, twice the $6M cost of seeding for this exercise.
In Kapitalist russia YOU control snow,
In Communist Russia Snow controls YOU!
yet again a failed promise made by a politician, does it ever CHANGE?
Lemme get this straight. We're in the middle of a climate crisis, and they're messing with the weather? There couldn't possibly be a connection between precipitation and temperature could there? It's not like water vapor is the most prominent greenhouse gas or anything...
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
Nobody should mess with nature on a large scale like that. Especially not russia, they're not exactly known for thinking things through properly. Who knows what sort of chain effect this sort of shit could set off? It's bad enough that we alter coastlines, pollute the air, alter tides, etc. Fucking with precipitation is just fucking irresponsible.
One morning with nothing better to do, I watched from my hotel window as a crew removed snow from the Moscow street below. Men with shovels scooped the snow into a truck, no other machines were used. The truck disappeared to dump the snow into the river. The snow has so much salt in it that nothing, absolutely nothing downstream survives. It's a huge source of pollution. It took the truck about two hours to dump the snow and return. During this time the men lean against their shovels and smoked. They did not employ a second truck which led me to assume that in Russia a truck is worth more than six men.
So there is a good reason to stop snow accumulation in Moscow (reducing pollution) but unemployment would spike.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
And west of Moscow they get 12' of snow but east of Moscow they have a severe drought. There's no such thing as ideal weather for everyone even if it had worked. They talk about the butterfly effect, well this is the equivalent of dropping a nuke. Modifying weather there could reduce snow fall in the mountains leading to dry rivers in India or western China. There's simply no way to isolate weather and large scale engineering in Russia could affect weather worldwide. already it's hard to predict weather more than a couple of days ahead so it's impossible to judge regional and long term effects.
To save folks time, I will quote directly from the wikipedia article: "The amount of precipitation due to seeding is difficult to quantify. Cloud seeding may also suppress precipitation." The article contains plenty of examples of places where cloud seeding is used, but no data that would back up the "works" claim.
Go back and at least read the summary.
(Hint: a quote from TFS)
Carrying off the $6 million procedure required jets to spray silver iodide into coming clouds, ensuring that all precipitation fell before it reached the capital.
Cloud seeding is EXACTLY what they are doing. And it's not for a region, just Moscow...the 'capital' quoted from TFS above.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
It saved their asses from Napoleon and Hitler, and this is the thanks it gets!
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Maybe I'm being dumb, but how did they know it wasn't already going to be exhausted before it reached the capital?
A Russian failure? Inconceivable...
The past year or so the North Eastern US has seen almost weekly rain, it's almost impossible now to go 5 days without rain.
People please stop messing with the weather, you couldn't predict it then and you can't control it now (and you still can't predict it).
The mayor consults an expert team of babushkas stationed on the front steps of tenement buildings across Moscow. If the babushkas begin complaining about their arthritic knees more than usual it means rain is imminent.
"Liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty as well as the abuses of power." -- James Madison
These are the same folks that want to "nudge" an asteroid! http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091230/ap_on_sc/eu_russia_asteroid_encounter
A - I read the summary. Cloud seeding will result in precipitation forming prematurely - but it will not denude a cloud of all possible precipitation. I have never heard of anywhere close to 100% precipitation being prevented by cloud seeding... Thus my question. 2 - Moscow is over a 1000 km squared - I'd call that a region. This ain't a little burg somewhere.
Keep in mind, in China they use green spray paint on the grass in its parks and the sides of its strip-mined mountains.
Silver Iodide is a known carcinogen. Real smart putting that in the air so it can rain down on people. Of course, this is what governments do to the public. Slowly torture, rob and kill them. Carry on idiots...
Oh, and cattle eat grass not PETROLEUM FEED. That's why they have a rumen idiot. And why they don't graze in corn fields.
Yowza.
Luzhkov implemented a lot of crazy and unpopular projects. I'm glad he couldn't ruin our winter.
When I become dictator, I'm going to ban the use of road salt. Here in Ontario, Canada we dump it all over our roads, even when it looks like it MIGHT start freezing soon. I understand we're using less than before, but why not get rid of it altogether?
Just drive a little slower. Buy a better car and keep it longer, which you'll be able to do as it won't rust to pieces in 8 years. Cessating road salting will also help bridges and roads last longer and will cause less environmental damage.
The Swiss seem to manage mountain villages without road salt. Other than a communal laziness and a lack of interest in winter, I'm not sure why we need to continue dumping salt on our roads.
www.clarke.ca
wherein french companies/govt were subverting the sanctions so they could sell nice things to a rich dictator.
this destroyed a lot of credibility for france (and europe's) case against the war.
they thought america was being stupid and hasty, america thought they were just protecting their business deals with saddam.
there were no grownups around who anyone would trust to actually have legitimate,
google Sequoyah Fuels Corporation, Kerr-McGee and Grove Oklahoma. they took raffinate from the process of converting yellowcake into uranium hexafluoride gas, and sprayed it on fields where cows were grazing.
did it also occur to you that perhaps they had some of those machines, but in a massive city like moscow, they were being used on higher priority areas than your street?
and then what do you do with the machine all summer? it's just laying there taking up space in the maintenance department.
and... did it ever occur to you that the human body might not be able to shovel thousands of pounds of snow, solid, no breaks, for 10 hours a day? what do you want those 6 guys to do, ride in the truck to the river so they can watch it get dumped?
Here's a fun fact about how white collar IT people waste their time and taxpayers money: slashdot has tens of thousands of comments posted to it every day, all day, 9-5, whatever, and tens or hundreds of thousands of readers. how many of those people are getting payed to read slashdot?
the difference is you dont have a crowd of people driving by saying 'jee what a waste' when all those white collar guys do it from behind a cubicle wall.