Beijing's first snow of season 'artificially induced'

[phantom power]

Terraform the earth!

BEIJING — Chinese meteorologists covered Beijing in snow Sunday after seeding clouds to bring winter weather to the capital in an effort to combat a lingering drought, state media reported.

The unusually early snow blanketed the capital from Sunday morning and kept falling for half the day, helped by temperatures as low as minus 2 Celsius (29 Fahrenheit) and strong winds from the north, Xinhua news agency reported.

Besides falling in the northeastern provinces of Liaoning and Jilin and the northern province of Hebei, the eastern port city of Tianjin also got its first snow of the autumn, the report said.

"We wont miss any opportunity of artificial precipitation since Beijing is suffering from the lingering drought," the report quoted Zhang Qiang, head of the Beijing Weather Modification Office, as saying.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gI95w6IEbOxWY5C8x2AwqB8MA7Tw

[Sinti]

1. I seem to remember, after Katrina and the Weather Modification bill

a bunch of folks here telling people here saying that weather modification/cloud seeding/drought creation was a bunch of woo-woo-tinfoil-hattery, and we needed to learn science. They were just beginning to look at it, and it would probably come to naught as nature is not so easily coerced. Now, it's an everyday thing. Where are the science guys saying this can't be done? Do they say that cloud seeding (and forcing rain in specific regions) yes, everything else no?

If they can make it rain, what else can they do? I imagine you could manipulate energy fields you could do a heck of a lot of damage. There are likely precursor events that could trigger all manner of natural events. Acts of god may not always be from "god" anymore.

[TheWraith]

2. You really DO need to learn science.

There's a huge difference between cloud seeding, which has been a known technique for over 60 years, and the quackery that says the government can just dial up hurricane whenever they like.

[Sinti]

3. I was told at the time that specifically cloud seeding was impossible

Articles about it from Australia were provided about the cloud seeding they were doing there, and the response was "you need to learn science". And I think you really, really should end your sentence with the word "yet". I would assume if you can make rain you can also make dry - if you don't know how yet, you will soon.

[NickB79]

4. Cloud seeding isn't impossible, it's just unpredictable

The best way to say it is that it is impossible to do it consistantly.

The Chinese have been attempting to seed clouds for years now, with spotty success at best. I would say they got lucky with this snowfall. After all, if they could control the weather that well, why has Beijing been in a drought for several years now?

[Sinti]

5. I can accept that it's unpredictable

After 60 years you would think the science would have advanced beyond spotty results, but maybe I expect too much.

The big fuss, as I recall it was over weather as a force multiplier, i.e. weather wars, and congressional hearings regarding the same. I recall being told to "learn science," and that this was impossible - along with the cloud seeding business. I also recall thinking, why would the military bother if it was impossible and was told about the money spent on psychic powers as force multiplier. Having done quite a bit of work for MILHIST I am well aware that they don't tell the public about things until long after it's no longer an advantage to them. Actually, as war fighters, that makes good sense.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Weather_control

[TheWraith]

6. You can't "make rain."

And you can't "make dry" either. You can encourage precipitation in one area by providing the particulates that raindrops and snowflakes form around. That's the principle behind cloud seeding. However, this is far from reliable, and even when it works you're just sucking moisture out of the air that was there already.

There have been attempts to use this method to "power down" hurricanes by precipitating out their moisture, and to reduce snowfall in one place by increasing it in a location upwind. However, neither application has had a provable real-world effect.

[Sinti]

7. I find it odd that you continue to make denials

regarding facts that those who actually have the power and capability admit to using, and trying to improve. Why would you do that? Are you merely objecting to the words I chose to use? My language isn't sophisticated enough for you? Is it the fact that I thought in terms of next steps? Some of us think in terms of what comes next, what the potentials are. It's not considered a sign of stupid, FWIW.

The military doesn't pretend it's not using it, studying it further, and having some success. They've even gone into tech transfer the technology is so old. Obviously, if they've gone to tech transfer, they've got something better. That's how it works in the government. They were trying to figure out how to consumerize HDTV way back in 1980. It no longer gave them any advantage - same with some satellite tech.

Apparently cloud seeding was reliable in the Philippines back in '69, '70, and '71. I would expect it to be much more robust now. I don't see why they couldn't release/inject water vapor along with dry ice, or silver iodide into the clouds - thus literally creating rain from nothing.

I would also expect that they would at least attempt to weaken strong storms and conversely, for military purposes, strengthen them. It's illogical, in my opinion, to think otherwise. If they won't take atom bombs off the table, do you really think they wouldn't cause floods and other extreme weather events to befall an enemy? If they cant do it now, I expect they will be able to, probably sooner than later.

http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=AD0723815">GROMET 2. Rainfall Augmentation in the Philippine Islands

A severe drought in the Philippine Islands during 1968 and 1969 led the Philippine Government to try cloud seeding as a means of rainfall augmentation. With the help of the United States, a silver iodide seeding project, GROMET II, was conducted over the entire archipelago from the end of April through mid-June 1969.

Benefits derived, at least in part, from the project included marked improvement in the agriculture, increased sugar production amounting to 43 million U.S. dollars, and augmented crops of rice and corn sufficient to make anticipated importation unnecessary. In addition, local personnel were trained in seeding techniques. Because of the success of GROMET II the Government of the Philippines conducted a similar operation during 1970 and planned another for 1971.

They obviously have military use for this impossible technology.

http://cryptome.org/weather-war.pdf">NON LETHAL WARFARE PROPOSAL
TITLE: WEATHER MODIFICATION...>


(1) To impede or deny the movement of personnel
and material because of rains-floods, snow-blizzards,
etc.
(2) To disrupt economy due to the effect of floods,
droughts, etc.

The US military wants to use weather as a force multiplier. They don't seem to see it as "unreliable". You can read their paper on it here in PDF, or here in HTML. They say they don't have the full capability they'd like just yet, but they refer to the technologies I'm thinking of as "technically proven to potentially feasible." This is what they say in public.

In the broadest sense, weather-modification can be divided into two major categories: suppression and intensification of weather patterns. In extreme cases, it might involve the creation of completely new weather patterns, attenuation or control of severe storms, or even alteration of global climate on a far-reaching and/or long-lasting scale. In the mildest and least controversial cases it may consist of inducing or suppressing precipitation, clouds, or fog for short times over a small-scale region. Other low-intensity applications might include the alteration and/or use of near space as a medium to enhance communications, disrupt active or passive sensing, or other purposes. In conducting the research for this study, the broadest possible interpretation of weather-modification was initially embraced, so that the widest range of opportunities available for our military in 2025 were thoughtfully considered. However, for several reasons described below, this paper focuses primarily on localized and short-term forms of weather-modification and how these could be incorporated into war-fighting capability. The primary areas discussed include generation and dissipation of precipitation, clouds, and fog; modification of localized storm systems; and the use of the ionosphere and near space for space control and communications dominance. These applications are consistent with CJCSI 3810.01, "Meteorological and Oceanographic Operations.

Extreme and controversial examples of weather modification-creation of made-to-order weather, large-scale climate modification, creation and/or control (or "steering") of severe storms, etc.-were researched as part of this study but receive only brief mention here because, in the authors' judgment, the technical obstacles preventing their application appear insurmountable within 30 years.14 If this were not the case, such applications would have been included in this report as potential military options, despite their controversial and potentially malevolent nature and their inconsistency with standing UN agreements to which the US is a signatory.

On the other hand, the weather-modification applications proposed in this report range from technically proven to potentially feasible. They are similar, however, in that none are currently employed or envisioned for employment by our operational forces. They are also similar in their potential value for the war fighter of the future, as we hope to convey in the following chapters. A notional integrated system that incorporates weather-modification tools will be described in the next chapter; how those tools might be applied are then discussed within the framework of the Concept of Operations in chapter 4.

We signed onto a UN a treaty back in 1979 (ratified in '80) regarding weather modification. So, you're telling me that these men bothered to craft this document, and get it ratified, for something that's not possible and/or unreliable and harmless? Don't you think they had bigger fish to fry at that time?

Article II:

Weather control, referred to here as "environmental modification techniques", means "any technique for changing -- through the deliberate manipulation of natural processes -- the dynamics, composition, or structure of the earth, including its biota, lithosphere, hydrosphere, or of outer space."

Examples would be:

* Manipulation of a natural process could be altering the flow of the Jet Stream.
* Controlling the dynamics could, again, include the Jet Stream as well as creating rainstorms, thunder and lightening, and hail.
* A change in the "composition or structure of the earth" could refer to earthquakes.

The Chinese are pretty happy to call it making rain. Making dry is just a childish way of saying the opposite. How about preventing rain? Halting rain?

China plans to halt rain for Beijing Olympics

Cloud-seeding is a relatively well-known practice that involves shooting various substances into clouds, such as silver iodide, salts and dry ice, that bring on the formation of larger raindrops, triggering a downpour. But Chinese scientists believe they have perfected a technique that reduces the size of the raindrops, delaying the rain until the clouds move on.

From CNN

"We can turn a cloudy day into a dry and sunny one by shooting the clouds less intensively than when we make rain," head meteorologist Mian Donglian for the Beijing municipal weather bureau told Time Out.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12644965/from/RSS/">From MSNBC - they're using it to wash away sand from a sand storm.

BEIJING - Chinese technicians have artificially generated heavy rainfall to wash a layer of sand and dust off Beijing, the official Xinhua news agency said on Friday.

A technology developed by American scientists, cloud seeding is achieved by shooting shells or rockets containing silver iodide particles into clouds. The icy particles freeze drops in the clouds, make the drops continue growing and eventually fall out of the clouds.

"Making dry"

The weather engineering office is weaving a defensive web from adjacent provinces to the Beijing suburbs. Twenty-six control stations have been deployed to fend off clouds or delay their movement.
http://en.beijing2008.cn/ceremonies/headlines/n214485376.shtml

There's are private businesses dedicated to weather modification, rain making, and hail/fog prevention and dissipation. They have to be licensed by the government, and they sell their services. The license is required to prove they're the real thing, and not a con artist.

Here's one:
http://www.weathermod.com/index.php
There are others.

It's an everyday thing, a useful technology, with potential dangers tremendous benefits to be considered. I would think that as a person who embraces science you would see the great potential here. Why would you downplay it, let alone flat out deny its efficacy? I have to say, you did answer my initial question. You are apparently right here, still.