What is Digg?73 Comments
- theone3, on 10/12/2007, -2/+27Cloud seeding is nothing new. Various studies have proven it to be entirely inneffective and a waste of time, while others have concluded it's successful. Truth is, we really don't know if it works or not, but dammit, it's good PR.
- tragik, on 10/12/2007, -9/+25Looks like I'm the only one who thinks this is ***** amazing so far.
- baddmojoe, on 10/12/2007, -6/+16Ahh, all this fact checking leads to such a meaningful debate.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -34/+43i hate to break it to you but even with a smaller population the U.S put many times the amount of crap into the air.
- nigel40, on 10/12/2007, -20/+29With all the crap the country of china is putting into the air, the headline should be "China Makes Artificial Acid Rain for Beijing".
- drunkclam, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9@gravytrain and bogdon6 you are both wrong and Shrew7 is right
With 12.7% of the world's total, China is the second largest emitter of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions after the United States. China's share of world carbon emissions is expected to increase in coming years, reaching 17.8% by 2025.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/chinaenv.html - drizek, on 10/12/2007, -4/+11The poor pollute because they dont know any better.
The rich pollute because they think they are better. - nosmelc, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Well it depends on what metrics you want to use. I did not see a reference in the article you mentioned but I looked up some numbers in the World Health Organization Database and China and US are close on CO2 emission. China reported 88867 thousand metric tons in 2000 and 88447.7 thousand metric tons in 1995. The US reported 90245 in 1995 and 77707 in 2000.
If you use the same database to look at Sulfur emissions than China is clearly worse with approximately 34000 thousand metric tons in 1995 and 2000 compared to approximately 18000 thousand metric tons for the US for the same dates.
We can debate sources and numbers all we want but I think the proof is in going there. I have coworkers who go there regularly and the air and water quality is barely livable in a lot of places they have been to.
theblooms:I was not trying to reply to your message but an earlier one. Sorry for the operator error. - theone3, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Because its effect is negligable if there is indeed any. May as well do a rain dance and hope for a butterfly somewhere to start flapping its wings.
- UnrulyFellows, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8And in the US too. Just look up and see for yourself on days when there are chemtrails that expand into haze.
- geofffox, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7I am a meteorologist, but anyone with any scientific training will take this anecdotal evidence with a huge grain of salt (or silver iodide crystals - your choice). Attributing a single event to this seeding seems like really bad science.
An earlier poster was correct - in order to seed clouds, you need clouds. You can't make it rain wherever and whenever you want. But, seeding the clouds and removing their moisture and high albedo has to be impacting other areas 'downstream'.
If you're a person who is already worried about how humans are modifying our climate, this should scare the crap out of you. - jabbar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Per capita emissions of a few nations:
USA - 5 tons of carbon per person per year
Japan and Western Europe - range from 1.6-4.2 tons of carbon per person per year
developing world - averages 0.6 tons per person per year
China - 0.76 tons of carbon per person per year
India - 0.29 tons of carbon per person per year
Data comes from Peter Singer's book, One World. Citation: See G. Marland, T.A. Boden, and R.J Andres, Global Regional and National Fossil Fuel CO2 Emissions, Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
USA - Guilty as charged
vvaduva - i guess income does matter. do your research. - theone3, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8Well, I don't know about emission rates, but having visited Nanjing and Shanghai, the effects of polution on the population are staggering. In Nanjing, a Chinese friend pointed out to me a building that looked to be made in the 1970s. What was evidentally once a white building had turned a horrible shade of yellow. It looked like it had been slowly eroding. The building was made built in 1997, and I was visiting in 2000. I was told by my friend that this is the norm in Nanjing. That new buildings only looked truly new for 3-4 months. In Nanjing, open sewage ran under streets and beside pathways, and this personified the place. Not exactly the cleanest in the world.
In Shanghai, I stayed in a hotel with a great view. I wasn't high up, about 20 floors or so, but just looking down at the roads, I could see the pollution between the two points coloring the air a sickly yellow. A fairly close by hotel appeared almost ghostlike.
I've been to Dallas in the USA, and while you could see the pollution on the horizon, it was nothing like China! There's no denying that pollution is worse in China than the USA.
Living in Australia, we get regular comments from Japanese tourists that they've never seen the sunrise or sunset. It's impossible in Tokyo, due to the horrible smog. This should give you some indication of the pollution problems that developing Asian nations have. - ShadowRider, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Hm, people arn't too smart. Any number divided by 1.3 billion is very little.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -8/+12nope i'm right there with ya.
- SirCharge, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Its easier to just use those planes to dump flame retardant chemicals/water on the fire. Infinitely more controllable and effective.
It sounds to me like the Chinese government is taking credit for natural occurrences. "Oh, yeah, we made it rain. And tomorrow, through the great strides of communist ideology, we will make the sun rise!" - Cornloaf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I was in Beijing when they did this. There was a sandstorm that dumped 300,000 tons of sand on Beijing in 2 days. Yes... tons. The sky was orange (which was a big upgrade from the polluted tan color I was used to!)
The local papers said that they did it in the rural areas to clean the roads. I was in the hardest hit area and the hotel staff was vacuuming the parking lot on the first day. On the second day they were mopping up the sand. The rain did not come to the urban areas. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4one material safety data sheet(msds) for silver iodide just warns it may make you perminately blue if you eat it.
http://physchem.ox.ac.uk/MSDS/SI/silver_iodide.html
another no meantion of making you blue but more scary.
https://fscimage.fishersci.com/msds/20805.htm - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3http://www.weathermodification.org/organization.htm
these guys enjoy the idea of messing with the weather so much.. they formed a group. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Is there any reason that people haven't used this technology to help alleviate forest fires?
- mathew_bug, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7huh...this was made on my city like 2 years ago... They produced the effect with Calcium Chlorine.
- vvaduva, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8Shaworider - you are full of crap. Income has little to do with how much one pollutes - I could very well argue that low income folks spew out MORE carbon than the rest because they literally burn coal, wood, plastic and even garbage. How do these people stay warm in the winter and what do they cook with? Or did the Chinese now also found a magic way to keep billions of people warm without putting any crap into the atmosphere?
- billydisaster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The British did this in 1952 to a little village called Lynmouth, huge downpour and a few people killed in the floods.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn1219 - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2you still need the atmosphere to be near the saturation point..
meaning it would have to look like it is going to rain to make it rain
there is a good reason it isnt popular in the us..
I agree a rain dance probably has as much of a chance of working. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2um and this is the same thing
first you need clouds to seed them
silver iodide does disperse clouds by making them drop the rain
it has been looked into for miltary to make bomb runs easier. - Monkeyget, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3The russian have exactly the opposite technology : a way to dismiss the clouds.
For example they used it to clean the sky during a ceremony at moscow with important foreign dignitary.
Too bad i can't find an article on it. - green67, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2cool...artificial rain......understood......how about a reverse process?.....disperse a rain cloud?....stop a flood?....kill a hurricane?.....I guess we are playing god after all.....dugg
- MasterDwarf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I think this is quite cool. Looks like it may have done way back in the 50's and led to a flood in England:
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn1219 - listentothis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Did anyone else notice "four-tenths?"
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2alphabet do you really think that if it was that easy people would care?
sure cause a drought in a city to allow farmlands to get rain.
there is evidence it works somewhat.. but it wont work without water in the air. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5wow yeah mega old..
we have been cloud seeding practically since there have been planes
but i take the claims of a nation that exerts editory control over the media, with a grain of salt. - Alphabet, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4@theone
alright, cloud seeding works, and it's highly effecting in areas that receive little rain. The reason why it's not used more is because if you make it rain in one area, that means another area won't receive any rain. If you do it too often, you'll cause a massive drought in the other area. - mrlost117, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1sie
- Nitro2985, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5Carbon Dioxide isn't the only thing released from factories.
- kcappraiser, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3The pollution in China is aweful. I was supposed to move there and on a trip to check it out I got a horrible cough and my eyes burned whenever I went outside. There were times I couldn't breath when traffic was going by. We stayed at a nice hotel on the river in Guongzhou(sp?) and you couldn't see across the river. It was horrible. I was really looking forward to moving but was more concerned about my health.
- OBKenobi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Because, except for possibly Tony Bliar, the UK doesn't want to turn into a bunch of weather-manipulating apocalyptic Communists.
- jabbar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1thats the point...rich countries, with populations nowhere near the population of poorer countries, are putting out way more polution. the total quantity may be the same, but they are obviously being irresponsible if a country that manufactures a crap load more than we do can manage to keep emissions down to levels that are considerably lower than what we put out. the data is not supplied by china itself; there are ways to track CO2 emissions to their source. again, in Peter Singer's book.
- CarzorStelatis, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Why can't the southeast of England do this instead of a 'hosepipe ban'?
- jabbar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Calcium chloride
- shamam, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2@ schadenfreude52
Because only you can prevent forest fires. - teamparadox, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Wouldnt it have made more sense, been cheaper, and been less of a hazard to people and the enviroment if they...you know, transported some water instead?
- megaton, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Wow! I get modded down for THIS *****? Per capita? Do you not know how many people there are in China? THEY HAVE THE WORLD'S LARGEST POPULATION! That, combined with their high pollution makes them the most polluting country in the world!
Jesus, I'm moving back to Slashdot. At least the readers weren't such idiots... - theblooms, on 10/12/2007, -10/+10"rinse dust from China's capital"
I guess they are still trying to wash away the blood from Tiananmen Square.
Communism is enslavement. And America, sadly, is party to it. Without our support, the Communist regime would have collapsed a decade ago, just like it did in Europe. - lockle, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1No, I agree that this is amazing also... but you can only have so much moisture in the atmosphere. There are already areas that get into conflict because a country or city upstream uses way too much water and the people downstrem don't have enough... What if we start getting into conflicts because countries start "stealing" the moisture before it gets to their neighbors?
- emjaychina, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Well, glad everone is thinking.
Here's a curveball for you people who say they are stealing rain from other areas and will cause droughts.
What happens when they seed clouds that would otherwise have dumped all that fresh water into the ocean. Lots of fresh water could be saved if we caused it to rain before clouds went out to sea.
Correct? :) - Atomic1fire, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4what about cuba that hasnt colapsed yet
- Nocturnal, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3Wow that's pretty amazing even though who knows what the lasting effects of putting that kinda stuff in the air could lead to.
- FAT_PIGGY, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2can you say HAARP
http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/haarp/ws.html - artofwar420, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1HOW oh HOW, but the real question is Does the US have this kind of technology, of course, HOW CUMM WE DON"T KNOW ABOUT IT? I don't know.
- demondog, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Great, now the US is going to be flooded with cheap Chinese rain...
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