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China Is Building a Rain-Making System Three Times as Big as Spain
- gregw134 9y agoReally cool. It uses silver iodide though. How much silver would need to be consumed to make this work? That probably won't be cheap.
- jkw 9y agoThis sounds like a potential military weapon as well
- mc32 9y agoThey mention the US, CN and then SU, now RU, had engaged in weather research for offensive purposes --but at least some of that has turned to defensive measures now, given pop growth and climate change.
- zingmars 9y agoThe conspiracy theorists are going to love this.
- callmeal 9y agoIt is. And it worked so well, there's an international treaty[0] against using it in war. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_Modification_Convention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_Modification_Con...
- hyperpallium 9y agoI've always thought Australia should build a giant canal from the Great Australia Bite up through central Australia. Perhaps forming a permanent inland sea. The sea water evaporating would fall as rain (not sure where, though...). A question for this article is who would have gotten that rain had it not been seeded.
- akerr 9y agoDo you mean Lake Eyre? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Eyre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Eyre There has been discussion about flooding it with sea water for years but it seems impractical.
- hyperpallium 9y agoNot specifically, more DIY inland sea. I think the big problem is motivation: we have heaps of arable land, and people are increasingly concentrated in cities. EDIT thanks for the headsup, there's quite a bit online about it. I had this idea pre-internet, but haven't had the idea of googling it. IANA millennial, AMA (but I won't know).
- ThrustVectoring 9y agoThe Qattara Depression in Egypt should probably get dug to the sea first. It's significantly deeper, which would allow you to generate significant amounts of hydroelectric power by flooding the depression.
- cbHXBY1D 9y agoJudging by the Suez Canal or the Salton Sea it doesn't have good long term effects. Eventually it dries out and the salt left behind gets flung around surrounding areas, contaminating water supplies and ruining crops.
- zenmollusc 9y agoWhere would this rain that's being diverted normally end up? Is some other country going to have a drought because of this?
- jcoffland 9y agoIt's possible, even likely, that much of the rain would have fallen on the ocean.
- Thetawaves 9y agoReally? Because most of the moisture originated from the oceans in the first place. Are you saying that after genesis, it travels for some time over land before being deposited back in an ocean?
- shahar2k 9y agoprovided no other variables... considering it's 71% of the area of the planet, I'd say it's 71% likely to rain on the ocean
- tigershark 9y agoI don’t think so. I’m not an expert but I know that mountains contribute to the cloud formation and also the temperatures gradient between the land and the sea may contribute. So I would think that you can’t just take the percentage of land mass to predict the percentage of precipitations.
- collyw 9y agoThat sounds kind of shortsighted reasoning. I know that in Scotland most of the weather comes from the West, hits the mountains and falls as rain. Its dryer on the east coast (though it still rains plenty).
- logfromblammo 9y ago
- bigbluedots 9y agoThe potential environmental impact of loads of silver iodide on human and other animal life is of concern. But it is China, so they probably don't care about that aspect.
- murukesh_s 9y agoNot only China, but which large country cares about larger environmental impact? Looking at the weapons the big countries are still building (man made floods, tornadoes etc) I don't think it's fair to target China alone.
- bigbluedots 9y agoYou have a point, but other large countries don't manage to pollute their environment anywhere near as badly, except for possibly India. For example: https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://amp.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2017/jun/02/china-water-dangerous-pollution-greenpeace&ved=2ahUKEwipz66l_ZDaAhUEvLwKHTbYBOwQFjAaegQIBxAB&usg=AOvVaw3HH2Lin2cyQvd1Qx9txGjw&cf=1 https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http...
- rattray 9y ago> which large country cares about larger environmental impact? Germany and Japan come to mind.
- titzer 9y agoSuch irony. The losers of WWII now care about the fate of the planet more than the "winners". I say "winners" because no one really wins a war. We all lose.
- askvictor 9y agoI wonder if that's due in part due to them being restricted in how big they could grow their militaries, so spent this money on other things.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ggm 9y agoExcluding systems which put water into the air, Atmospheric water is a zero sum game AFAIK so if this causes rain to fall where the Chinese want it, somebody else misses out. Freshwater from high mountains in the India/China region is a hot topic. They're running out of glaciers.
- thinkloop 9y agoAgree. It would work out if the rain was destined for the ocean or other unusable area. Otherwise they are taking it from other people.
- rz2k 9y agoI wonder how much of it is equivalent to depriving the Pacific Ocean of rainfall, and whether that has meaningful implications.
- dengnan 9y agoIt worth to mention that the southern part of China has a different climate than the north. It is very normal that during summer, there is flood in South but drought in North. The situation may different from year to year but the trend is very clear. That is also why there is South–North Water Transfer Project[1] 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/South%E2%80%93North_Water_Transfer_Project https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/South%E2%80%93North_Water_Tr...
- saagarjha 9y agoThe "stolen" rainfall doesn't have to be spatial, necessarily; it could be temporal as well. It might provide a way to control seasonal floods caused by excessive rainfall during a short period.
- titzer 9y agoIt's hard to see how moisture can stay in the air for months at a time, but I am not a climate scientist, so who knows.
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- product50 9y agoIn other news, in San Francisco, the NIMBYs won an agitation to prevent a 4 school building from being constructed. I am kidding..maybe. In all honestly, I think the time for US to create large scale construction projects that serve humanity (at the expense of environment) are over. We are lucky that the interstates got build in 1950s, that the NYC Subway was formed in late 19th century etc. Today, the regulations and outrage is so strong that none of these would have been possible. It is good to see other countries such as China being on the cutting edge to see what is possible.
- drieddust 9y agoThey have not learned from sparrow killing episode I guess. This time though cost may be very high and entire world might end up paying.
- brailsafe 9y agoI feel like there's a bit more nuance in who's lucky that the interstates were built. But I do see your point.
- beegeezuz 9y agoYou could still build, but you rather spend money on wars.
- ehnto 9y agoI see your point, but I think we have done enough at the expense of the environment. A little more forethought in that area is welcome at least. Some wild ambitious construction in favour of the environment and humanity would be excellent. But we seem suddenly frugal when that comes up. It's of course more nuanced than I am about to make it seem, but that world governments are not chomping at the bit to install as much solar as possible is telling. The price is right, but the incumbents are hard to motivate, and for some reason generation of one of our most important, most volatile and most polluting resources is a private market concern.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
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- thinkloop 9y agoMIT figured out fusion this month, water shortages are on the verge of being solved since water is not scarce, just dirty/salty - it's an energy problem.
- dx034 9y agoI think the recent 200GW solar power deal between Saudi Arabia and SoftBank has more potential to solve desalination problems than Fusion (at least over the medium term).
- thinkloop 9y agoThat too, although solar still has relatively high costs per watt. Fusion can make energy nearly free.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- adrianN 9y agoIf your reactors are nearly free or last a very long time, which, given they use all kinds of super advanced stuff and have parts that are bombarded by Neutrons, I doubt.
- rgbrenner 9y agoNo, fusion wont make energy nearly free. Let's pretend a fusion plant is completely free to build, maintain, operate, and decommission. 50% of the cost of electricity is from transmission and distribution. Those costs aren't going anywhere. So at most, you'll get a 50% savings. But you're not getting that either, because that fusion plant definitely wont be free.
- fspeech 9y agoFor the purported usage (desalination) distribution is not an issue. But obviously fusion generated electricity won't be free, though marginal cost of production may approach that (if it ever becomes a reality).
- panic 9y agoGoogling around a bit, there seems to be a long history of weather-modification news coming out of China. In 2008, according to the Beijing Weather Modification Office, China used rockets to make sure the Olympic opening ceremony was rain-free: https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/how-beijing-used-rockets-to-keep-opening-ceremony-dry-890294.html https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/how-beijing-use... In 2013, China was producing "55 billion tons of artificial rain a year" according to the China Meteorological Administration: https://qz.com/138141/china-creates-55-billion-tons-of-artificial-rain-a-year-and-it-plans-to-quintuple-that/ https://qz.com/138141/china-creates-55-billion-tons-of-artif... Last year, the CMA spent millions on airplanes and rockets to affect rainfall: http://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/2064729/china-showers-y115b-rainmaking-project-parched http://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/206... That said, it's unclear whether cloud seeding actually works: https://cen.acs.org/articles/94/i22/Does-cloud-seeding-really-work.html https://cen.acs.org/articles/94/i22/Does-cloud-seeding-reall.... An experiment in the US, the Wyoming Weather Modification Pilot Program, gave somewhat positive but inconclusive results on the order of a 5 to 15 percent increase in precipitation amount: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/we-may-never-know-how-well-cloud-seeding-works/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/we-may-never-know-how-w... And, sure enough, in 2011, China's rainmaking tech wasn't enough to fix the Yangtze delta drought: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/jun/01/china-drought-weather-modifying-yangtze https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/jun/01/china-dr... To me, all this rain-making news out of China seems like either propaganda or some Chinese government bureau justifying its existence by inflating how much this cloud-seeding technology can actually do. But that's just my feeling from an hour of searching around and skimming articles -- I'd love to hear how I'm wrong!
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y agoHydro Tasmania had run a cloud seeding program for a while. I just looked it up again and the program has been on hold since 2016. https://www.hydro.com.au/water/rainfall/cloud-seeding https://www.hydro.com.au/water/rainfall/cloud-seeding
- furyg3 9y ago> To me, all this rain-making news out of China seems like either propaganda It's easier to organize a very public and sophisticated rain dance than it is to properly manage water resources at scale.
- cdepman 9y agoI think access to water resources has always been part, if not the bulk, of modern China's Tibet play. And now they're starting to tap into those resources. I wonder what the effects will be once they start pumping / rain-making at an even more massive scale. More on water resources in Tibet: http://www.tibetnature.net/en/introduction-water-resources/ http://www.tibetnature.net/en/introduction-water-resources/
- sametmax 9y agoWell yeah. It's a territory next to India, which is short on water, has a huge population and the atomic bomb. So it was always about who would get it first without getting busted.
- musage 9y ago> it was always about who would get it first without getting busted The question is, to what kind of person, and how would they realize they have been busted? Eichmann demonstrated that even sentencing and hanging someone doesn't necessarily make them understand what they've been sentenced for and why they must hang. What is left is to weigh the guilt of judging someone without the mental capacity to understand what is going on, and the guilt of leaving them destroy and kill yet others. It's not fully satisfactory either way, that boat kinda sailed. > [Q: Isn't there a certain calculus that someone who is sitting in the shoes of a Condoleezza Rice can make, that they're responsible for the best outcome for American citizens, and there's an upside of going into Iraq which is we get one of the greatest material possessions in world's history, and there're downsides which are: we upset the international community, and maybe there's more terrorism. Couldn't you envision a calculus where they say, sure, that's the reason, and it's a good reason, let's do it. What's the flaw in the calculus?] > Oh, I think that's exactly their calculus. But then we ought to just be honest and say, "Look, we're a bunch of Nazis." So fine, let's just drop all the discussion, we save a lot of trees, we can throw out the newspapers and most of the scholarly literature, and just come out, state it straight, and tell the truth: we'll do whatever we want because we think we're gonna gain by it. And incidently, it's not American citizens who'll gain. They don't gain by this. It's narrow sectors of domestic power that the administration is serving with quite unusual dedication... -- Noam Chomsky, Talk titled "Why Iraq?" at Harvard University, November 4, 2002 Same shit, different contintent.
- aeroman 9y agoUnfortunately there is little evidence that cloud seeding is actually able to increase the overall precipitation in most cases [0 - response to NRC report on cloud seeding]. There are spectacular results when glaciating individual clouds [1] and there is some evidence of glaciogenic cloud seeding (the kind done with silver iodide) working in mountainous regions where supercooled clouds are common [2 - paywalled unfortunately]. However, much of the Tibetan plateau has high amounts of dust, which means that the clouds already form ice at relatively warm temperatures [3]. In this case, silver iodide might not be expected to have a large effect on precipitation formation. It is also very difficult to detect a change in precipitation, as it varies strongly in both space and time, requiring long averaging periods to detect a change. This will be an very useful experiment if it goes forward, but I suspect that concerns over rain-stealing are rather overblown, as are hopes that it could significantly enhance rainfall in arid regions. [0] - https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/BAMS-86-5-647 https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/BAMS-86-5-647 [1] - https://www.ge.com/reports/snow-men-cometh-kurt-vonnegut-ice-nine-white-christmas-demand/ https://www.ge.com/reports/snow-men-cometh-kurt-vonnegut-ice... [2] - http://www.pnas.org/content/115/6/1168 http://www.pnas.org/content/115/6/1168 [3] - http://www.pnas.org/content/107/25/11211 http://www.pnas.org/content/107/25/11211
- speeq 9y agoThis is total conspiracy theory stuff and I'll probably get downvoted into oblivion but has anyone else in London found it really strange on how on the day of the Brexit referendum - we had these sudden overnight thunderstorms which resulted in many roads being flooded, polling stations being inaccessible and huge delays / suspensions of the Tube? Just a coincidence and bad luck? * http://uk.businessinsider.com/polls-open-britain-eu-referendum-london-weather-2016-6 http://uk.businessinsider.com/polls-open-britain-eu-referend... * https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/06/22/brexit-heavy-rain-with-a-chance-of-leaving-the-e-u/?utm_term=.bcafd7f1b002 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/06/22... * https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/uk-weather-commuters-urged-go-8262824 https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/uk-weather-commuters-u... The next morning it all cleared away and it was a beautiful sunny day to the point where even Nigel Farage had to make a comment / joke about it [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLCb1cGROAw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLCb1cGROAw]. If localized rain-making on a massive scale like this is possible, I wonder if it was used to manipulate the referendum by whoever might be interested in that.
- orf 9y agoI reckon there are far cheaper ways to influence the vote than that. Like sticking a big whopping lie on the side of a bus and parading it around as truth, then admitting it's a lie 30 minutes after the results
- baxtr 9y agoRain coming down over London is really strange and noteworthy.
- speeq 9y ago> The issues were caused after the South East was struck by a massive thunderstorm, which saw a month's worth of rain fall in an hour, in the early hours of EU referendum day. I've lived in London for a while, it was definitely not your usual bit of rain.
- frockington 9y agoDid the sun rise the following morning too?
- trisimix 9y agosteals tibet fucks it up with silver iodide
- dang 9y agoPlease don't do internet tropes here. They're bad for discussion quality. On HN the idea is to (a) have a substantive point to make and (b) make it thoughtfully. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- f_allwein 9y ago> The system, which involves an enormous network of fuel-burning chambers Oh dear... Wonder what will be burned there?
- Digit-Al 9y agoSounds like a bad idea [1] to me. 1. http://www.ranches.org/cloudseedingharmful.htm http://www.ranches.org/cloudseedingharmful.htm
- rdsubhas 9y agoNot being apocalyptic and all, but reminds me of this: http://matrix.wikia.com/wiki/Operation_Dark_Storm http://matrix.wikia.com/wiki/Operation_Dark_Storm
- rgrieselhuber 9y agoInteresting how quickly we went from “weather modification is a conspiracy theory” to reporting about it on an increasingly regular basis.
- hungerstrike 9y agoYou're right. As a fan of conspiracy theory drama, I love it when I make this discovery (how something went from conspiracy theory to non-conspiracy theory). I had actually read about this before it had its own Wikipedia page and people thought I was crazy if I chose to speak about it - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Popeye https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Popeye Those who have a deep desire to be in control will try almost anything. As far as actual conspiracy theories go, I don't see why some people have such a hard time imagining that powerful, control-hungry people could form groups and work together to feed their desires. I guess they just can't relate because that's not how they think or they just don't want to think about it because it makes them uncomfortable.
- RosanaAnaDana 9y agoIts in my 'Petersons guide to Weather' from the early 90's. Interestingly, it was Kurt Vonnegut's brother who did much of the early research.
- IAmEveryone 9y agoDoesn’t it actually disprove the conspiracy theories, considering how open these schemes are handled?
- tim333 9y ago>The chambers burn solid fuel to produce silver iodide seems a little off - most fuel doesn't contain silver or iodine. I expect what happens is the put silver iodide on the fuel and then they heat produced causes it to rise up in the manner of a hot air balloon. Incidentally silver iodide seems to cost $300-$500 / kg but you don't need very much of it Wikipedia has "Approximately 50,000 kg are used for cloud seeding annually, each seeding experiment consuming 10–50 grams."
- alexc05 9y agoUnder the guidelines of the Clean Water Act by the EPA, silver iodide is considered a hazardous substance, a priority pollutant, and as a toxic pollutant.(10) Some industries have learned this all too well. ... If the toxicity manifests in pollution and illnesses, the effects may not be reversible ... http://www.ranches.org/cloudseedingharmful.htm http://www.ranches.org/cloudseedingharmful.htm So.... this doesn't seem like the best idea.
- celticninja 9y agoChina seems to be somewhere that is happy with short term solutions without considering longer term impacts.
- staz 9y agocompared to the rest of the world?
- antoineMoPa 9y agoYeah I'd 's/China/Humans/'. I'm referring to the fact that (mostly) everyone emits CO2 with cars, without caring about longer term impacts on global climate, sea rise, increase of hurricane frequency and intensity, etc.
- forapurpose 9y ago> (mostly) everyone emits CO2 with cars, without caring about longer term impacts on global climate, sea rise, increase of hurricane frequency and intensity, etc. I don't think that's accurate. Most? countries regulate CO2. European countries do, for example.
- antoineMoPa 9y agoAccording to this graph, car seems to be dominant in europe too. [2014] Of course Europe is doing better and I'd like to see more trains in Canada and the US. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/File:Modal_split_of_inland_passenger_transport,_2014_(%25_of_total_inland_passenger-km)_YB17.png http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/...
- blondie9x 9y agoThis should be regulated internationally by the UN. This solution is like turning on the AC when it's hot out. It won't make it less hot outside and you will need more and more electricity to power the AC as the world heats up from increased CO2 levels. This technology releases significant amounts of CO2 and as the Earth's temperature rises from increased greenhouse gas concentrations, solutions such as these will show diminishing returns because the technology they are built upon only worsens the underlying problem by producing significant amounts of the gas causing the problem in the first place. Disappointing approach to solving climate change and mitigating it's impacts.
- sametmax 9y agoWhat's more, local weather is always existing in a global context. When they'll modify the meteorology at the scale of their country, it may very well impact the climate of the entire planet. Water must come from somewhere. Air current will be impacted. And temperature deltas. It's very concerning.
- tptacek 9y agoThe UN has no authority to regulate China like that.
- schoen 9y agoI guess the the previous poster is implicitly proposing an international treaty on the atmosphere (edit: maybe creating a new UN specialist agency). Of course, there are already a number of other treaties in this area and while some of them have worked reasonably well (like the treaties to protect the ozone layer by eliminating use of CFCs), others have been fraught with difficulty. There are already international treaties on water rights, even with dispute resolution mechanisms in some cases, so maybe these mechanisms could be extended somehow to water rights in atmospheric water. (Not that this is by any means easy in the case of surface water.)
- Giorgi 9y agoWhat exactly is being burned to produce silver iodide?
- _bxg1 9y ago> The chambers burn solid fuel to produce silver iodide, a cloud-seeding agent with a crystalline structure much like ice. > ...releasing only vapours and carbon dioxide, which makes them suitable for use even in environmentally protected areas. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm
- maxgiraldo 9y agoWhy not plant trees? https://forestsnews.cifor.org/10316/make-it-rain-planting-forests-to-help-drought-stricken-regions?fnl=en https://forestsnews.cifor.org/10316/make-it-rain-planting-fo...
- mdorazio 9y agoThey are [1]. Planting trees alone is not enough. [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-tree-plant-soldiers-reassign-climate-change-global-warming-deforestation-a8208836.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-tree-pla...
- RosanaAnaDana 9y agoSo trees don't change the 0 sum aspect behind cloud seeding: if the rain falls in one place, it can't rain in some other place. The primary reason why plants (read: anything photosynthetic) have a role to play in where it rains is the same principle behind cloud seeding. Plants, when they don't have sufficient nutrients to run photosynthesis and make new plant material, release unused photosynthesis as short chained hydrocarbons, usually ethane and some derivatives. Idea here is that it gives them a place to land the electrons from photosynthesis without tearing themselves apart when nutrients aren't readily available. These short chained hydrocarbons go on to play the same role as the silver compound used by China; they form the 'seeds' for droplet formation. Neither method does anything to address the fact that there is only so much water in the atmosphere (although that is changing with a changing climate).
- echevil 9y agoChina is probably planting more trees than any other country in the world. http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/20305/20160321/china-reforestation-nasa-deforestation-efforts-pollution.htm http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/20305/20160321/china... “Based on the images captured by NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), it was revealed that 1.6 percent of the total land surface of China became heavily forested in a span of only ten years from 2000 to 2010.” http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/284/1854/20162559 http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/284/1854/2016... “China is investing immense resources for planting trees, totalling more than US$ 100 billion in the past decade alone”
- magwa101 9y agoWhat could go wrong?
- trophycase 9y agoI'm sure this will have no unintended consequences...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]