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China, in Search of Water, is Building a Rain-Making Network Three Times the Size of Spain (scmp.com)
China is testing cutting-edge defence technology to develop a powerful yet relatively low-cost weather modification system to bring substantially more rain to the Tibetan plateau, Asia's biggest freshwater reserve. From a report: The system, which involves an enormous network of fuel-burning chambers installed high up on the Tibetan mountains, could increase rainfall in the region by up to 10 billion cubic metres a year -- about 7 per cent of China's total water consumption -- according to researchers involved in the project. Tens of thousands of chambers will be built at selected locations across the Tibetan plateau to produce rainfall over a total area of about 1.6 million square kilometres (620,000 square miles), or three times the size of Spain. It will be the world's biggest such project.
The chambers burn solid fuel to produce silver iodide, a cloud-seeding agent with a crystalline structure much like ice. The chambers stand on steep mountain ridges facing the moist monsoon from south Asia. As wind hits the mountain, it produces an upward draft and sweeps the particles into the clouds to induce rain and snow.
The chambers burn solid fuel to produce silver iodide, a cloud-seeding agent with a crystalline structure much like ice. The chambers stand on steep mountain ridges facing the moist monsoon from south Asia. As wind hits the mountain, it produces an upward draft and sweeps the particles into the clouds to induce rain and snow.
This won't increase total precipitation. Either the moisture is moving and raining somewhere which doesn't run to the water table attached to the reservoir, or all of this water is already coming down as rain. Are they stealing rain from another province over?
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I wonder who may loose out on the rain then? Also, I bet, China won't give a rat's ass as long as they have the stronger military and with annual growth of military spending in the double digits the rest of the world should better look out.
When 1person suffers from a delusion,it is called insanity.When many people suffer from a delusion,it is called religion
Put a hotspot in the strip club
professor higgins: "the rain in spain stays mainly in the plain" ...hold my oolong...
chinese scientists:
Good people go to bed earlier.
It's more like rain moving. The moisture is going to fall somewhere. They are just saying where and when.
So whereare they moving the rain from?
It seems a little worrysome given the poor state of climate science. Hopefully, if it cause an issue they can just stop and put things back to where they were.
Wont this have repurcussions on other countries? I am guessing all the water will end on China...
Isn't it kind of expensive to use up all that silver? Or does it not really use very much silver? (Or is that just a name?)
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Will all that silver have an effect on soil bacteria?
I mean unless the plan is to weaponize weather control why go through such a project?
All that new world silver the spaniards were pillaging went to china, and they don't like to share :), except for opium....
http://www.chineseargent.com/h...
Finally, that line has a purpose.
Thanks for the laugh.
The Yellow Menace is stealing our precious bodily fluids!
By forcing rain to fall on Chinese soil... they are effectively inducing a drought elsewhere. Say now, the south of Russia becomes incredibly dry because there is no rain. China has no regard for absolutely anything. They take a technology and simply use it, asking no questions.
What are the dry-to-be countries in the area do, then?
Would RO desalination plants be cheaper?
I'm no climatologist, but China mass-draining the monsoons of suspended water can't have anything but nearly catastrophic effects on down-wind ecosystems that have evolved over hundreds of millions of years to exist compatibly with current moisture patterns.
If they pull the moisture out of the air to get it to fall in Tibet, then it won't be there to fall wherever those air currents normally dump it - Eastern Russia, Northern China, or maybe even Japan. It would seem that relatively-dessicated air masses may behave unpredictably as well.
-Styopa
Who will be losing their usually rainfall?
This article brings up the idea of climate wars in which a nation-state substantially affects the weather to damage another’s interests. What if I could prevent 80% of the rain falling on your land? What if I could provoke floods or hurricanes? Ten feet of snow? What if tornados could be targeted?
Manmade Climate Change deniers. /s
Seriously, is there weather modeling software that can do some predictive analysis of what this means to everyone else in the region? And what impact this meddling may have on global weather patters?
Seems a bit more practical to build some desalinization plants. From what I have understood, recent advancements in membrane tech would make it far cheaper than in the past. Plus, there is the added benefit of lithium production.
https://www.ft.com/content/107...
The collected rain will probably be used for food production and drinking water. If the crops accumulate this silver iodide and then ingested, then what happens?
It is not entirely safe. From toxnet (https://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/search/a?dbs+hsdb:@term+@DOCNO+2930):
(It does not mention increased cancer risk, however, and no concentrations are mentioned, and hopefully the concentrations will be small)
1) MILD TO MODERATE ORAL TOXICITY: Patients with mild
ingestions may only develop irritation or grade I
(superficial hyperemia and edema) burns of the
oropharynx, esophagus or stomach; acute or chronic
complications are unlikely. Patients with moderate
toxicity may develop grade II burns (superficial
blisters, erosions and ulcerations) are at risk for
subsequent stricture formation, particularly
esophageal. Some patients (particularly young
children) may develop upper airway edema.
a) Alkaline corrosive ingestion may produce burns to the
oropharynx, upper airway, esophagus and occasionally
stomach. Spontaneous vomiting may occur. The absence
of visible oral burns does NOT reliably exclude the
presence of esophageal burns. The presence of
stridor, vomiting, drooling, and abdominal pain are
associated with serious esophageal injury in most
cases.
b) PREDICTIVE: The grade of mucosal injury at endoscopy
is the strongest predictive factor for the occurrence
of systemic and GI complications and mortality.
2) SEVERE ORAL TOXICITY: May develop deep burns and
necrosis of the gastrointestinal mucosa. Complications
often include perforation (esophageal, gastric, rarely
duodenal), fistula formation (tracheoesophageal,
aortoesophageal), and gastrointestinal bleeding.
Hypotension, tachycardia, tachypnea and, rarely, fever
may develop. Stricture formation (esophageal, less
often oral or gastric) is likely to develop long term.
Esophageal carcinoma is another long term
The rains are squeezed out of the monsoons by the Himalaya's and related mountains. There is no moisture left to seed after that. This is ridiculous.
It is literally a pain to see what is happening to Tibet. Chinese are destroying everything they could.
I mean, they have the manpower. They could use their scientists to determine the needed extension of land and its optimum location to cover with trees. That way they would naturally get more rain, retain more water in the soil, clean up the air, and reduce the risk of landslides, etc.
I'm not an ambientalist nor a scientist (heck, I didn't even read TFA), but using fuel-burning chambers seems like a very poor and short-term "remedy".
about China's intentions when they 'develop' anything in the hinterlands, is how this will assist them in destroying or diminishing the indigenous, non-Chinese, population.
Especially in Tibet.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Aside from the climate effects, what is the effect of putting a lot of siilver in the environment? Is everyone in China going to come down with Argyria? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Good read:
http://www.ranches.org/cloudseedingharmful.htm
"The question is not that is cloud seeding harmful, but how harmful."
I wouldn't want to be a worker at one of the seeding factories.
The last time I seeded a cloud, I just had to install OpenStack
120 characters ought to be enough for anyone
our common commitment to consolidate the socialist systems of the two countries and ensure wellbeing and a bright future for the two peoples
The double-speak these tyrants spout is amazing.
captcha: really
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Also install beavers on every little creek which will help as they build deep ponds that cut into evaporation compared to wide shallow ones while building up water stores and reclaiming land from scrub.
This from PBS last night.
Oh, also the beaver family installs will warm your heart.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The UK is on the Sterling. Throwing away silver in great quantities should have a negative effect on the Sterling.
Silver Iodine is a toxic substance and should not be used.
China is totally destroying our environment at a global scale.
http://www.ranches.org/cloudseedingharmful.htm
If they want rain, they should make it 10 times the size of England, not 3 times the size of Spain.
1). "I claim this rain in the Name of Spain!"
2). "The Rain in Spain falls Mainly in Manchuria!"
3). "Remember to Tibet your server!"
butterfly to flap its wings at the Southern tip of Argentina!
Or build out over the sea near the coastline, you can already desalinate sea water for essentially free using a sun still. The way it works is basically having a themal absorbing layer beneath an angled glass or polished surface, with a collection tray above the bottom, which is filled with seawater, but below the sealed glass lid. The small versions of these can collect a gallon or two a day, during sunny hours. Do a few large versions of these, possibly with heaters built into the bottom layer for boiling water during non-ideal environment conditions and you can get a lot of freshwater for a comparatively small outlay of capital in exchange for a large outlay of space.
The benefit to this over the desalinization plants is a reduction in the average required energy, less membranes for a reverse osmosis setup, and no change of saltwater contamination of the freshwater side of the system in the case of membrane failure.
This seems like a job for hydro oxide credits!
I remember when the US did something like this. There was such an international hue and cry that it was given over. Of course nowadays we have to be nice to totalitarians, so we'll probably not complain.