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."

Re:Huh

[xutopia]

Montreal claims ~30000$CAD per kilometer of street. http://www.radio-canada.ca/regions/Montreal/2009/12/21/003-Deneigement-Outremont-Plateau.shtml?ref=rss [radio-canada.ca]

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

At least Russia doesn't hide the fact that it's spraying Chem Trails... :)

The article says....

[Primitive Pete]

The article in Time says Moscow usually spends about $12M on removal, twice the $6M cost of seeding for this exercise.

What climate problem?

[dontmakemethink]

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...

Re:The article says....

[Talderas]

So this year they're spending about $18M on removal.

Re:Does this EVER work? "not really"

[Wodenedow]

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.

Re:Does this EVER work?

[Anonymous Coward]

... which still involves cloud seeding by causing premature precipitation. If you don't care to RTFA or RTFWP, at least read the fucking summary.

Re:Snow Removal In Moscow

[istartedi]

Wow. That sounds like the Soviet Union never really ended. Is there so much snow that they can't use a plow and shove it up on the sidewalk?

That would eliminate all the jobs except "snowplow driver", of course.

As long as you are employing men with shovels, a 2nd truck doesn't really help. They need to rest anyway. The last thing they need is heavy smokers shoveling snow continuously without a break.

Re:Huh

[Rockoon]

Oxygen is poisonous too.

Re:Huh

[aliquis]

Over here a city [slashdot.org] with 20.000 inhabitants budgeted 1.12 million USD / year for snow removal so yes, 6 million to clear whole fucking Moscow would be very cheap indeed.

But well, snow lighten things up so when controlled it's not that bad. Cold dark misery with no snow would be even worse.

Re:Snow Removal In Moscow

[jrumney]

This may be surprising to you, but outside of North America sidewalks are for walking on, not for storing surplus snow.