ROK Drop

By on November 24th, 2009 at 5:00 pm

Is Chinese Cloud Seeding Responsible for Cold Weather?

» by in: China

I seriously doubt this cloud seeding in China had much to do with the current wet and cool weather there considering the cooling that has been going on around the world:

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.  [Popular Science]

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  • hotaruSTAR16
    3:48 pm on November 24th, 2009 1

    Wow, manipulating weather? China really is unpredictable in terms of its actions. The country really needs to make reforms if it wants to become one of the world's leading powers in the future. Asia Chronicle has more regarding the situations facing China. Worth a read I think. http://www.asiachroniclenews.com

 

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