China Using Weather Mods for Games

[B]Rain free Beijing opening ceremony guaranteed[/B]

BEIJING (Reuters) - Beijing's meteorological bureau believes it can manipulate the weather to guarantee a dry opening ceremony at next year's Olympic Games, an official said on Wednesday.

Rainfall is often made heavier by cloud seeding in the drought-stricken Chinese capital but scientists have also been testing "artificial mitigation of rainfall" and found it can be effective in small areas.

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Interesting to say the least. In know this type of cloud seeding technology has been used around the world multiple times before. There is a difference between helping farmers and doing it just for sport (literally). This could have huge implications for huge swaths of chinese farmland leading up to Beijing, possibly inducing flooding, crop failures, and such. (even if its done for a week or two).

What is your take on this?

China has a "Rainmaker Division"- thousand of semi-militia with old AA-guns to seed clouds (there is big problem with agricultural areas becoming desert) so they are fully capable to do this. About ecological
complications - this type of regimes in any country would prefer good publicity above any complications that may arise as a result. They have oppurtunity to show their might to the world - and they'll go for it.

I say do it, they wont know what it does unless they try it out, it may have bad results, it may have good ones.

I'm all up for new technologies and the only way to find out of this works (in reverse of course) is to give it a whirl.