You know you live in an oppressive nation when the government decides when it will rain or not. And that’s exactly what is going on right now in China, believe it or not.
In advance of the opening of the Olympics next month, the Chinese are now blasting the clouds with thousands of artillery shells and rockets filled with silver iodide. The goal is to shoot down any potential rain making clouds so that it won’t rain on the opening ceremony.
USA Today reports on this strange story…
When he’s not tending cherry orchards outside Beijing, Yu Yonggang can be found behind the twin barrels of a 37mm anti-aircraft gun, blasting shells at passing clouds.
Yu is one of 37,000 peasants enlisted by the Chinese government to help produce rain in parched areas. The 45-year-old farmer works with China’s other trigger-happy rain men to water the crops, break up damaging hailstorms and put out forest fires. After a sandstorm blew through the capital in May, he lobbed shells and rockets skyward to coax rains that washed sand and grit from city streets.
Now Yu and the other rainmakers face their toughest challenge: making sure it stays dry for the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. The idea is for the peasant gunners to work with meteorologists watching radar in the capital. Together, they will hunt pregnant rain clouds and pound them with rockets containing silver iodide. The hope is that any moisture will fall before the clouds can threaten the parade of athletes and lighting of the Olympic flame at the new National Stadium.
China’s leaders want the Games to be a showcase for the country’s astonishing economic development. The cloud-busting effort shows how far they will go to ensure that nothing interferes with the pageantry.
Yu, who wears a green military jacket and helmet in his gunner’s seat, is already feeling pressure to perform. “The whole world will be watching the ceremony,” he says. “We must guarantee its success.”
In August, the Beijing Weather Modification Office will place the area’s 20 firing sites on standby for a major test. In the Fragrant Hills west of Beijing, Yu and six others at the Man-Made Hail-Prevention and Rain-Increasing Work Station will be at the ready, manning four anti-aircraft batteries, which are army castoffs from the 1960s. Yu’s wife will talk to Beijing by walkie-talkie, getting the all-clear from aviation authorities and relaying the firing order from the meteorologists. Yu says he hopes to dissipate any clouds completely, increasing the barrage and concentrating his fire if necessary.
Two summers from now, “if rain clouds are headed toward the Olympic stadium, we will intercept them,” says Zhang Qiang, a “weather modifier” at the Beijing Meteorological Bureau who will issue the command. “But I can’t guarantee the ceremony (will be dry). If there is a big rainstorm, I have no way to stop it.”
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-06-29-china-rain_x.htm
July 8th, 2008 at 4:25 am
Eh, while it may be oppressive in China, I don’t think the will to control the weather is indicative of that.
Controlling the weather seems like something many in the west would be all over if the technology was proven, including Stephen “airscrubbers” Covington.
I’m happy with leaving it up to nature, personally.
July 8th, 2008 at 5:48 am
Well, China is cloud-seeding just to ensure the success of an event. The government is doing that because they’re control freaks.
I advocate carbon scrubbing as a fast way of preventing massive worldwide flooding, the destruction of many acres of waterfront real estate and the war, refugee migrations, famines and disease that will inevitably result.
Also, I’m not a big fan of any additional heat and/or humidity.
There’s a substantial amount of research currently underway in developing systems to clean CO2 directly out of the atmosphere. For example…
http://www.groupe-intellex.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=79&Itemid=30
July 8th, 2008 at 6:12 am
Hu jintao can kiss my ass.
July 8th, 2008 at 11:05 am
LOL! Carbon scrubbing. Sorry Stephen, sometimes you actually make me double over in laughter.
July 8th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
We only have about 3 quadrillion kilograms of CO2 in the atmosphere. That’s 3,000,000,000,000,000, or 3 of what comes after trillion. It’s a lot, but not an inconceivable quantity.
Assuming we want to remove 2%, that would be 60 trillion kilograms, which is 132.28 trillion pounds. It’s actually pretty easy to put that into the atmosphere to begin with over a period of some years.
The real challenge with conditioning the atmosphere would be locating scrubbers in enough locations around the world. A very large unit located in one area would be inefficient as it would refine all the CO2 out in the area, without getting sufficient pass-through of air unless it used a giant fan.
July 8th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
Ok, so how much is supposed to be in the atmosphere?
July 8th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
3 quadrillion kilograms of CO2 is in the atmosphere. You don’t need but a slight artificial increase in gas levels to create a runaway effect that releases lots of other naturally stored gas. The issue isn’t the increase itself, but the fact that it doesn’t have an automatic counteracting agent elsewhere in the environment.
The biggest mistake made in the discussion over global warming is the hostile way of accusing industry and business of causing this. That is basically asking for a fight and puts everyone on the defensive.
July 9th, 2008 at 12:02 am
Again, how much is there supposed to be?
July 9th, 2008 at 12:24 am
3,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms or 6,613,900,000,000,000 pounds.
July 9th, 2008 at 3:48 am
Oddly enough, and this may surprise some of you, I’m not totally sold that carbon alone is the problem. Deforestation, urbanization, and the elimination of riparian zones elevates the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere, a much more potent greenhouse gas. In essence its a compounded effect. You have less carbon sequestration in plants and more water vapor high up (aka greenhouse gases). Vegetation keeps the water vapor lower and the landscape cooler.
All in all, I think ditching oil for cars is a good thing beyond the prospect of mitigating climate change. We should use it for plastics and other composites and maybe air travel until viable electric options are found. As for cars, bring on the change. Think of the convenience of being able to plug in at home and never having to stop by a service station. The infrastructure required to extract oil, refine it, distribute it, and maintain service stations is ridiculous. You’d could make a lot of people happy on all ends by delivering energy direct to the home.
July 9th, 2008 at 10:54 am
LOL! I’m sorry, but I can’t take any “climate change” talk seriously. It’s just a big joke.
July 10th, 2008 at 2:48 am
Mike, out of your love and familiarity with internal combusiotn engines, you would have us all burn oil forever while we’re sitting on the brink of a technological revolution. It doesn’t matter where you sit. Electric is the future and the time to impliment it, is now. If you’re right, its cheaper. If you’re left, it’s greener. Everyone wins. Bring it on.
July 10th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
Electric isn’t going to move big rigs. Electric isn’t going to have enough ass to do what an internal combustion engine can do. Sure, it can do some things, but it’s going to be nothing more than a toy, not a tool.
July 10th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
LOL! Who knew?
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/mg19926634.800-cleaner-skies-explain-surprise-rate-of-warming.html?feedId=online-news_rss20
July 10th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Wait now, I’ve seen electric sports cars, electric locomotives, and electric monster trucks. Why do you have electric motors? What is so fantastic about oil exactly?
July 10th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Why do I have an electric motor? I don’t, unless you count the one in my razor.
As for you question about oil, look around you right now. Just take a spin around the room. With out oil you wouldn’t have any of it.
July 10th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
OH! And those locomotives, you may want to tell them to get rid of those DIESEL engines that power them.
July 11th, 2008 at 5:04 am
Electric can and will power everything you’ve listed.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=BqqtJpfZElQ&feature=related
July 11th, 2008 at 10:56 am
Yea, it can power, but can it perform? Another example, and yes I know both are electric, would be a cordless vs regular drill. I won’t buy a cordless drill because it does not have the same power.
July 11th, 2008 at 10:58 am
As for your race car, great. I’ve seen that before. But that’s just a race car. How in the hell am I going to use that to transport 1000 lbf of dead weight, along with load cells that can weigh up to 65 lbs each and other equpiment?
July 12th, 2008 at 5:23 am
It’s true that battery-sourced electric doesn’t *yet* have the torque power needed for heavy industrial applications. For that purpose, H cells are more powerful than petroleum ever can possibly be, and more than batteries are now.
Fuel cells are probably the best option for large trucks, construction equipment and so on. They’re the new diesel.
Trains can be run off straight electricity supplied by track infrastructure. Not carrying the fuel means less weight up front, so more cargo can be pulled.
July 12th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
So you’re telling me those electric trains (like the bullet trains) could haul the loads that I see going down the tracks next to US-1? Along the lines of what you said it’s not about horse power so much as torque.
July 12th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
An electric train designed to do that could, yes - and it could do it more efficiently than a diesel. The locomotive could be smaller and the power could be meted out to all the trains in the system rather than having each engine burn its own fuel.
July 13th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Ok, now how are you going to get those electrons to the rails? The left isn’t going to let you build a new nuclear power plant.
July 14th, 2008 at 12:27 am
Some people will never be happy with any source of power. They’re also POed about solar plants, as I wrote in another post.
My two favorite forms of power are nuclear and solar. Unlike all other currently practical forms of generating electricity, they are highly mobile, extremely reliable, long-lived and extremely safe. Developing these technologies as far as we can take them will benefit us in the very long run.
They are also the only two current forms of power generation suitable for space travel. The more efficient we can make solar panels and derive energy directly from the atom, the better equipped we will be to send things on very long trips.