
Won't succeed
They can't tell their Celciuses from proper Celsiuses, or Kelvins, even.
Or Hiltons, to be precise.
Chinese officials have announced that the Beijing Meteorological Bureau has successfully carried out experiments aimed at preventing light rain from washing out the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympics on 8 August. The problem for the games' organisers is that the showpiece Bird's Nest stadium which will host the gala is an …
If I remember correctly the Russians did the same trick for the May day parades in Red Square. But the Russians were stuck for cash and couldn't afford the Silver iodide, so they used cement dust instead. Or does that story belong with NASAs million doller space pen vs the mighty Russian pencil.
I ask because I can't find a link to confirm it. But I seem to recall that they did use cloud seeding techniques, very effectively - for the games - but disastrously for the farmers upwind - whose crops were ruined by unseasonable rainfall...
No you're right. I remember seeing it on Tomorrow's World and Pravda ran an article on it a few years ago:
http://english.pravda.ru/science/19/94/379/15693_weather.html
Let's hope the environmentalists get sufficiently wound up about weather mod that there's no chance of preventing the driving drizzle that will inevitably blight the 2012 opening ceremony.
As if the weather isn't screwed up enough thanks to Al Gore's global warming, now the Chinese are going to make matters worse by actively f*cking with it.
If weather control is this easy, why aren't we manipulating it to fix the current climate?
Still, it'll be funny in a few years when everyone dies from silver iodide poisoning...
... a hundred miles away. Rain on parade etc.
"Fucking with weather" is OK for the duration of the Olympics so long as the cloud seeding is scattered enough so as to not swamp out one small region. Not enough time to do any real damage. Longer term efforts cause the real problems (eg. Aswan Dam which has impact throughout the Med and has detectable impacts even into the Atlantic).
[Penguins coz they won't get hurt by crazy Chinese weather]