John Garnaut in the Age (Australia), reporting from Beijing: Freak snowstorms and record low temperatures sweeping northern China are linked to global warming, say Chinese officials. But this week's dump appears to have no link to the Chinese Government's relentless efforts to manipulate the weather, which have prompted decades of experiments designed to modify the micro-climate.Beijing's first attempt at weather modification involved a fighter-bomber dumping 200 kilograms of dry ice or common kitchen salt - depending on the source - into the clouds to break a drought in 1958, following an edict from Mao Zedong. Today, China has about 2000 weather modification offices, which bomb the skies with silver iodide to induce rain.
No officials have claimed credit for inducing or amplifying the snow dump, in contrast to November 1, when Beijing recorded its earliest winter snowfall in 22 years. The Beijing Weather Modification Office later admitted that it had fired 186 rockets into the air to break the drought.
The office also claimed some credit for turning oppressive smog into a brilliant blue sky just in time for China's National Day military parade on October 1. And it blasted the sky with 1104 rockets to keep the rain at bay for 2008's Beijing Olympics opening ceremony.
The Southern Weekend newspaper reported that the program had previously been halted in 1980, after a decade in which 169 people were killed and 410 injured due to unspecified weather manipulation-related accidents….
Shot of the Chinese flag by Janaa, who has released it into the public domain
1 comment:
Hi Brian, thanks for this great post. I think this is a great example of how the term 'global climate disruption' is an effective way of describing the impacts we're seeing from overall global surface temperature increases. I'm blogging for SFU's ACT (Adaptation to Climate Change Team) at www.act-adapt.org, where we're exploring some of these adaptation issues. Thanks for the post!
Post a Comment