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China Science

China Expanding Weather-Control Program To Make Artificial Rain, Snow (businessinsider.com) 62

Posted by BeauHD from the playing-God dept.
China is massively expanding its weather-control project, and is aiming to be able to cover half the country in artificial rain and snow by 2025, the government said Tuesday. Business Insider reports: The practice of "cloud seeding" was discovered in the US in 1946 by a chemist working for General Electric. China launched its own similar program in the 1960s. Dozens of other countries -- including the US -- also have such programs, but Beijing has the world's largest, employing around 35,000 people, The Guardian reported.

In a statement, China's State Council said that the country's cloud seeing project will expand fivefold to cover an area of 2.1 million square miles and be completed by 2025. (China encompasses 3.7 million square miles, meaning the project could cover 56% of the country's surface area.) The project will be at a "worldwide advanced level" by 2035, the State Council said, and will help alleviate "disasters such as drought and hail" and facilitate emergency responses "to forest or grassland fires."
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China Expanding Weather-Control Program To Make Artificial Rain, Snow More

China Expanding Weather-Control Program To Make Artificial Rain, Snow

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  • China's neighbors, like Russia and India, will certainly appreciate any averse edge effect that the weather control program has on them.
    • Any adverse effect also.

    • Everytime they have one of their comedy soviet style 60s throwback parades in Moscow they seed any rainclouds nearby to stop it raining over the event.

    • Just like they a complaining about climate change right? The idea that people will get mad is one thing. The idea that they will have scientifically irrefutable evidence is another thing.

    • India is China's neighbor, but they are in different weather systems with 8 km high mountains separating them.

      Mongolia and Kazahkstan may be the big losers.

      But the evidence on cloud seeding is mixed. The results can be unpredictable.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gtall ( 79522 )

        The results are unpredictable, but that that is not what this is about. It is rather the CCP will brag about good weather events as being ordered by them, and will suppress any publicity about bad weather events. They cannot lose.

        • This is exactly it, it is well known that China will lie about everything to make themselves look like the good guys. We can expect a headline in the future where people working on weather control are thrown in jail, executed, or disappeared because it rained on a dictator-for-life's wedding day.

    • In a war between China and India+Russia, who would win?
      (Apart from everybody losing.)

    • A rather tall mountain range prevents any weather from moving from China to India. Nobody lives in Siberia. Wind rarely blows east to west to affect western neighbors. China's east coast gets plenty of rain, so there's no reason they'd seed clouds that could deprive Japan or Korea of rain. Southeast China also gets plenty of rain so they wouldn't do it there, but Southeast Asia would welcome a reduction of rain if they did.

      There's really nothing China can do to affect anybody else's weather. Cloud seeding i

      • China has been fighting desertification all across the north for decades now. Both due to the effects of the Gobi desert and climate change AND due to illegal (and legal) logging of old forests.
        To mitigate that, they've been planting a lot of new forests. A LOT. [wikipedia.org]

        Besides being monoculture forests (more susceptible to disease, not sustainable, worse for carbon capture and wildlife...) there's also a problem of all that new growth requiring water.
        Trees are literally trapping water in their root system. It's how

  • I know that many countries have been experimenting with weather control for a long time, but I've yet to see any proof that it actually works.

    • Cloud seeding is well documented. There are numerous examples of its use. The fundamental science behind it is also relatively simple. You need moisture in the air (i.e clouds) but once there, you can trigger a reaction to get percipotation. This isn't weather control in any significant manner and this the use of this term can be confusing to most. Significances is relative though, so the impact this can have on crops or air quality is non-trivial.

      • That's all fine, but the clouds have to be there in the first place.

        No clouds, no clouds to seed.

        • Might be a solution for Germany.

          We've got plenty of water passing above us, and in the past it rained down here too. Now we get droughts and countries elsewhere get too much water if they don't have the same problem.
          So making it rain could bridge the gap until we fixed the climate. And nobody would be harmed since we'd just be returning the weather to its original state.
          Of course it would be important for the amounts of water coming down to be predictable, so we don't start stealing those other countries' w

          • There is more science suggesting that plants and pollen have similar mechanisms for cloud seeding. So the fact there is less rain, could be due toecological changes.

            Cloud seeding isn't that predictable though. Weather is by nature a chaotic system. The outcome of a cloud seeding is dependent on moisture, temperature, and pressure. These very at altitude and around ceryain land features. It may also have side effects that affect other wind patterns. In general the practice is seen as stealing water from

          • We've always had floods and droughts, obviously going from barely survivable droughts to not survivable in Africa breaks the weather for humans, but in our temperate regions talking about fixing climate is silly. For the moment it just nudges it from one pretty great climate to another great climate. Impact of human land use has much more impact on water issues than climate for most people both in Europe and Africa for the moment. Burundi people needs the amount of people from 100 years ago, not the same ra

            • The drought in recent years in Germany a due to climate change. Not land usage.
              The droughts in Spain are due to land usage. And depleting aquifers. France had no real drought, but would have liked more water, too.
              In Portugal the idiocy was that they started 40 years ago to plant lots of eucalyptus for paper production. That sucks the country dry and is a permanent fire hazard.

      • Yes, cloud seeding is well documented. What's not well documented is any statistically significant increase in precipitation due to it.

        There is only one study showing conclusively that it works, and it's not even a year old yet. I remain skeptical until we see some additional studies in additional environmental conditions show the same effect. Right now it looks like it might have a small impact in mountain valleys in the winter. That's a far cry from saying it will work everywhere.

        A major issue is that see

        • Sorry,
          cloud seeding is done since decades.
          No idea for what you want/need a study.

          But I guess we'll find out in 5-10 years when someone leaks the information from China.
          It was wide spread used in the former eastern German republic. No one ever reported any harm ...

          • Palm reading "is done since decades" too.

            Just because you do something for a long time doesn't mean it's effective. There's either a real, measurable effect, or there isn't. You're arguing from a position of faith that it works. I'm suggesting that there's no need for faith that it works. If it does, we can measure the effect.

            When it comes to cloud seeding, there is exactly one study which shows a real, measurable effect. We want and need more study to understand if it actually works and if so, with what li

            • There's either a real, measurable effect, or there isn't.
              Yes, and there is.
              It is common sense.

              Or why do you think people are doing cloud seeding? Because it does not work?
              ROFL.

              If there are negative impacts, it's much more likely that we'll see them given that scale.
              So lets wait and see ... I wonder how they even want to produce the materials needed and have the planes/flighthours to distribute it.

  • When they’re stopping tornadoes.

  • Aka water theft (Score:2, Insightful)

    by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 )

    Serious grounds for war, as soon as crops don't grow anymore and people start dying of thirst.

  • Cloud seeding requires heavy metals to make rain. Usually a Silver compound. Hats off to the Chinese for proving Lead, arsenic and cadmium can be used as well. Phosphorous may even do the job. Just not sure if these additives is an environmental plus. The mining of sulfur rich local coal is a wee problem, as sulfuric acid weakens the reaction, meaning more heavy metals need to be used. I hope they use a lot, and reap their just rewards.

  • Population control? Favour certain areas with rain, deprive others all dependent on adherence to government demands?

    "If a butterfly flaps its wings in China ... " ? Does complexity theory imply that these activities have effects that are more far-reaching than the immediate area?

    Is there a strategic element? Make the enemies lines of approach a sodden mess by drenching them with constant rain?

    Lots of questions. Any answers?

  • And in the coming years when the weather patterns change will any of the hot-headed, under-educated Generation Duh remember what China is doing to change nature? No. They will simply follow attack on humans causing global warming, led by Chinese funding, as they are today.

  • California and many other drought stricken regions havenâ(TM)t been helped.

  • Are there any studies or even educated opinions from the scientific community on this?
    Seems to me if you're artificially encouraging precipitation over a very large area in one place, you're possibly causing/contributing to a drought somewhere else.
    Of course it's not like the Chinese government ever really concerns themselves with pesky little details like who else they might be causing harm.
  • we'll be reading how children in China were adversely affected by the heavy metal and chemical contaminants used in their experimental weather control program.

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