Posted 11.11.2009 at 6:08 pm
23 Comments
Forecast for Beijing: Cloudy The Chinese government employs the controversial practice of cloud seeding in an attempt to force precipitation in and around Beijing.
In The People's Republic of China, it's no secret that the Party controls just about everything. But as Beijing suffers through its second major snowstorm this season, residents are growing weary of their leadership's control-freak tendencies. After all, while the storm came as a surprise to residents, the government knew about it all along. In fact, the government caused it.
China has long tinkered with Mother Nature's waterworks, even establishing a state organ -- the Beijing Weather Modification Office -- whose sole purpose is to meddle with the weather. The purpose behind weather modification is less megalomaniacal than it sounds at first pass; a large swath of northeast China, including Beijing, has been mired in a drought for nearly a decade, and the party leadership would like to reverse that trend for both practical reasons and to show the Chinese people exactly who is in charge.
To do so, they've turned to cloud seeding, a controversial practice that involves launching (or dropping) chemicals into the atmosphere -- silver iodide in China, though dry ice and liquid propane also work -- that cause water vapor in the air to crystallize at temperatures it otherwise would not. Its effectiveness is dubious; while it's generally accepted that it works to some degree, it can only increase precipitation by 20 percent. Sometimes.
Weather manipulation is actually not as rare as one might think. Currently, 24 countries practice some kind of cloud seeding. Moscow's mayor keeps the Russian Air Force on cloud seeding duty to make sure it never rains on his parades (literally). The U.S. has dabbled with weather manipulation in attempts to curb the intensity of Gulf hurricanes back in the '60s, and the military seeded clouds over North Vietnam during the war there to extend the monsoon season. Oh, and the CIA seeded clouds in 1969 in an attempt to rain out the hippies gathering at Woodstock, but they partied right through it anyhow (that instance is unconfirmed, but groovy to think about).
China prefers to deliver its silver iodide to the sky via rockets or artillery. For the residents of Beijing, those armaments deliver all the headaches that go along with big snowstorms: traffic problems, flight delays, cancelled classes and various transportation issues. While the government claims the seeding is for the good of the country, that claim is about as dubious as the practice of seeding itself; in 2005, a snow melting agent killed 10,000 trees in Beijing, and experts worry it could be eroding the city's infrastructure. As of last night, highways in and around Beijing were closed and many roads were blocked, bringing day-to-day commerce to a grinding halt.
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I wonder what practices like this can lead to, countries could be fighting over water 'stolen' by another country.
Our local airport dose it to clear fog from the approach path.
must be a bad condition up there in Beijing.
Anz with for home portable water purifier
The CIA couldn't have made it rain at Woodstock. It had to be the FBI. After all, Hoover was still the FBI Director in 1969 and he was very jealous of FBI prerogatives. He would never have let the CIA operate within the US.
Wow, not only are the Chinese manipulating the weather, they've manipulated the calendar! It's obvious that you think it's April 1! Now the only question left is to decide whether we're in the past or the future!
Ill gladly take some of that cold weather here!
RT
www.ultimate-privacy.cz.tc
When you fool with mother nature you get spanked...
these people have nothing better to do
Let them destroy themselves... they want to play god. Let god play back.
WARNING INCOMING HURRICANE... STUPID... RUN FOR YOUR LIFE... at least thats what all those Chinese guys will be saying once they mess with the weather again (PS. saw 2012 today, so yeah, were all going to die except for John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Thandie Newton, Oliver Platt, and Chiwetel Ejiofor and all the other actors/staff that didn't).
Let's see drough were we can die of thirst or snow... I pick snow.
...this is just so unsettling.
I don't know about the Woodstock thing, but I've hard a lot about this snow storm recently and I can't believe how stupid the Chinese government is - I have to ask myself, is this some kind of population control like advertising cigarettes?
The Chinese people need to stand up before this gets any more out of control - otherwise I truly fear for what disaster lays ahead for them AND more importantly how the rest of us will pay for their ignorance.
what's the effect of widespread silver iodide?
kroberts i agree. but when they do stand up, the chinese government will just knock them down again
I think the Chinese government is very irresponsible. Not only did they not provide a reason for doing this, but there is no apparent reason at all which makes them look like a bunch of people waisting their valuable time and money on a snow storm that may have crippled there society. Not only there society but, as it also mentioned, the amount of tree dropped in numbers. Hopefully, the Chinese government will be able to redeem themselves.
Oh, this bothers me to no end. Shouldn't ANY future treaty on global climate change include some sort of weather manipulation standard? As in, don't do it--it's too dangerous?
-------------
www.anamericanlion.com
Silly commies.
This is the equivalent of a quartet of fleas pretending they're 'steering' the elephant they're riding on.
This will not end well.
The only power the Commies here in China seem to have is the power to convince you gullible paranoids that this is real. Has anyone done any fact checking? No one here on the ground in Central China believes it for a minute. Moscow's Mayor has no authority to send out the Russian Air force, since he's a political opponent of the central government. Get a grip folks. If it had any chance at all of working, why isn't Australia publicly announcing attempts to use it, given the devastation being caused by its protracted drought?
China does not have to create that for themselves,the Russians can create those conditions very easily and so can the US, The chinese are immature in their Haarp ability.
This "Grid" scientist says so,and can easily proof his commentary.
Modern grid manipulation is different that centuries old standard grid instruments.
The drought in Australia is not Haarp caused either,that is a ground field metal extraction event from tunnel bore mining,guaranteed.
"They" are killing this planet and you folks are letting "Them"
You'll SEE
The headline is wrong. This is really a story of a foolish government agency doing ineffective things and claiming credit when the weather was good. Now they have to face the flip side of claiming to control the weather. When the weather turns bad, because you can't really influence it in any significant way, you get blamed because you claimed you were controlling it.
"Moscow's mayor keeps the Russian Air Force on cloud seeding duty to make sure it never rains on his parades (literally)"
thats REAL commies for ya :P
@oldleftie
u r sooo naive....obviously, if he cant say it directly (even if he did, who would dare to sue him :P) If it rains, he'll have his underlings executed quietly, they know that, sooo they do whatever it takes to keep clouds away.
@oldleftie
u r sooo naive....obviously, if he cant say it directly (even if he did, who would dare to sue him :P) If it rains, he'll have his underlings executed quietly, they know that, sooo they do whatever it takes to keep clouds away.