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Science

China Modifies Weather For 2008 Olympics 53

Posted by timothy from the let's-plant-trees-sounds-good-to-me dept.
BRock97 writes: "An article in the August 5th issue of Newsweek describes the steps the Chinese are taking to ensure a perfect forecast for the 2008 Olympics. This includes shutting down factories that are pumping pollution into the atmosphere to increasing the number of trees planted to reduce dust and erosion (need to spread these kind of ideas world wide!). The interesting aspect, though, is all the research and development into using rockets and furnaces to modify the atmosphere and create the weather that would be optimal for the games. By heating the air or dumping cloud condensation nuclei into the atmosphere, various types of weather can be achieved. Seems that they have had success as far back as 1987, creating rain to help put out a raging forest fire. Cool stuff from a weather nerd standpoint."
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China Modifies Weather For 2008 Olympics More

China Modifies Weather For 2008 Olympics

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  • yea but.... (Score:1, Insightful)

    by The Rogue86 ( 588942 )
    what will happen to their economy between now and then.... if they shut down the factories how do they expect to remain a country till 2008? wont the peons rebell?

  • In other news... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Dr. Bent ( 533421 ) <ben AT int DOT com> on Monday July 29, 2002 @03:50PM (#3974014) Homepage
    The Chinese government announced a new tactic for enforcing state-controlled censorware: Lightning.

  • I wonder ... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by one9nine ( 526521 )

    If they will have the ablilty to create typhoons off the coast of China right where US spy planes are doing reconnisance.

  • Obligatory Twain quote: (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "There has been a great deal of talk about the weather over the years, but very little has ever actually been done."

    Or more familiarly: "Everybody talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it."

    Karma, please.

  • "Seems that they have had success as far back as 1987, creating rain to help put out a raging forest fire."

    It sure would be a fantastic show of goodwill if China were to help us out a bit here in the states before the entire West burns to a cinder.
  • Shutting down factories wouldn't seem to change the weather..

    Maybe in China the weather report consists of what the pH of today's "rainfall" will be. I'm all for reducing pollutants in the atmosphere, but that's not the weather.

    "Partly cloudy today with a pH high in the lower single-digits.. Better wear those chemical-resistant booties"
  • Problem is we have little idea what the long term effects would be on the envionment. Since we can't yet completely accurately model weather patters on a global scale there is no telling what changing the weather in China could do to the weather in other parts of the world (like maybe drought in Australia or the US?).

  • And to get rid of that pesky "Butterfly Effect"... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Peter T Ermit ( 577444 ) on Monday July 29, 2002 @04:25PM (#3974263)
    ... they'll be killing all of the butterflies. They're in the way of the Three Gorges Dam anyhow.
  • ..Taken to extremes?
  • Brings new meaning to the words "Cold War."

    I'm only halfway kidding.
  • Rain was also successfully averted at least three times in the past decade, twice for public sporting events and once during a panda festival, [Wang Wang] says.

    Wow! Rain was averted a total of four times in the past ten years. Out of what is likely hundreds or thousands of attempts, that's almost as good as pure luck!

    Using aircraft, rockets and even land-based furnaces...

    At least they are also trying to be kind to the environment. ;)

    So now Beijing is banishing polluting factories from city limits, planting trees to keep out dust blown in from the Gobi Desert and clamping down on vehicle emissions in hopes of guaranteeing blue skies by 2008.

    Now if only they can stop people from peeing in the street (seriously).

  • "Seems that they have had success as far back as 1987, creating rain to help put out a raging forest fire."
    Yes and as far back as the early 1970's an international law was passed that warring contries could not control each other's weather for the purpose of winning the war.
  • Since scientists control the weather, does that mean that the national weather service is infringing on intellectual property?

    I apologize for asking that.

  • Seems that they have had success as far back as 1987, creating rain to help put out a raging forest fire.

    It's a little known fact that this rain control research was originally designed by the government to extinguish burning Falun Gong protestors. The government eventually decided that beating the holy shit out of them worked better and was more cost-effective.

    GMD

  • The guys name is Wang Wang?! His parents must have hated him.

    But seriously, it's nice to see them doing this. It's a shame that they're planting trees and shutting down factories for the Olympics (as opposed to just wanting to clean things up), but if that's what it takes, so be it.

    • The guys name is Wang Wang?! His parents must have hated him.
      Mandarin Chinese (the language spoken around Beijing) has four tones. His family name (the first Wang) may sound very little like his given name (the second Wang).

  • They did this 3 years ago (Score:3, Informative)

    by pjcreath ( 513472 ) on Monday July 29, 2002 @05:55PM (#3974849)
    For the communist party's 50th anniversary in 1999, China did the same thing.

    Since the Party had decreed that there would be perfect weather for such a momentous occasion, they shut down factories around Beijing for the entire week beforehand. Then a day or two before, they seeded the clouds, so that it would rain the day before the celebration, but be Perfect Weather in Tiananmen Square for the Day.

    And indeed, the weather was perfect. The smog had disappeared, and the sky was clear and blue...

    • Now for the stuff that matters:

      Tiananmen Square, oh the happy memories! [amnesty.org].

      Let's not forget every parent's favourite, the child-quota! [amnesty.org]. (scroll down a bit)

      Fuck the olympics, watching or visiting. If you want to feel good then make a difference! [amnesty.org] Come on, if you were thinking of going to the Olympics, or know someone who is, ask yourself/them whether Amnesty International [or any worthy cause down to the amusing local alcoholic vagrant] would make better use of the cash than the International Olympic Committee, Chinese Guvverment, etc...

      Think about it.

      Ali

  • (To mod someone down or reply... 'tis better to contribute than mod down, I guess.)

    Weather modification is one of those topics that atmospheric scientists tend to avoid.

    Why?

    Simply put, it's not known if it even really works. Sometimes cloud seeding does work (see Gagin and Neumann, 1981); sometimes it has the opposite effect than desired or none at all (see Tukey et al., 1978; Kerr, 1982). There was a large bit of debate as to what effects cloud seeding really has. Let's not mention that there are also, what they call "windows of opportunity" where it is hypothesized that the seeding can even have any semblence of an effect.

    Much of the research in the 60's and 70's on cloud seeding was fairly inconclusive, at best. Certain bits of weather modification make sense (for example, reducing the potential sizes of hailstones), but just the basic tenets of "can we control where storms will rain" and "microclimate change" like the Chinese seem to be talking about, are all in the scope of chaotic behavior.

    Cloud mechanisms are incredibly nonlinear, so even a small change in the environment can have totally unforseen circumstances. And whether or not you can actually even GET a measurable response from the cloud is another matter altogether.

    I applaud the Chinese for reigniting interest in this field (which has been mostly dead since the early 80's), but I wouldn't bet the farm on it working as planned. For the Olympics, the couple tens to hundreds of millions of dollars needed to run such programs could pay off in the end... but for many other situations, the cost does not justify the risky means. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if this whole endeavor falls flat in the end, though. The available data is very ambiguous about the effects, and I really don't see much else that could justify the amount of "positive vibes" the article transmitted.

    Now taking bets on how many events are drowned out by a typhoon that they decided to seed that makes an "unexpected" turn...

    -Jellisky
  • After a tornado destroyed a town a few years back, Clinton (it might have been Gore) promised to devote federal money to research on preventing tornadoes in the American Midwest.

    It'll be a cold Olympics in China before we can do anything even remotely like controling the weather.
    (For you global warming guys: control is different then modify)

    The hubris (and ignorance) of large bureaucracies can really be mind-boggling sometimes.

    • Darn, I can't find a supporting link. But I remember it distictly.

      And to be fair, he probably mispoke (but I thought it was funny as hell).

    • (* After a tornado destroyed a town a few years back, Clinton (it might have been Gore) promised to devote federal money to research on preventing tornadoes in the American Midwest. *)

      It is based on the theory that hot air generated from speaking politicians reduces tornado frequency.
    • I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a Clinton fan, but I suspect that preventing tornadoes might not be what he had said. The closest I could find to what you were describing was an F4 tornado with winds to 260 mph destroying the town of Arkadelphia on March 1, 1997. Six killed, about 100 injured, 557 buildings destroyed.

      As a result of this, Arkadelphia was named to Project Impact. Project Impact has the goal of preventing natural disaster damage, not by preventing the disasters, but by using construction and design techniques to allow structures to handle the forces of the disaster. Examples would be hurricane clips in Florida buildings, or sway dampers in Los Angles skyscrapers.

      Anyway, the best link that I found to Arkadelphia and Project Impact is http://www.arkadelphia.org/pi/pi.html [arkadelphia.org]. I wasn't able to find any text of the speech Clinton would have made on his March 3, 1997 visit.

      Chris Beckenbach

  • ....is something that's been going on for a long, long time to provide rain for crops or to help control potential or pre-existing fires.

    -psyconaut
  • Especially when they are on the forefront of human rights issues....
    You can run over students with tanks and force sterilize women but hey let's be EXTRA CAREFUL that the weather goes good for the games...

    Way to focus on the important things in life...
    </rant>

  • Anyone read Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut? It has to deal with Chinese gravity experiments effecting the whole world.

    How does the Chinese government expect to localize their "experiments" within their borders, whether they are successful or not?

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