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China Is Building a Rain-Making System Three Times as Big as Spain

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Re: China Is Building a Rain-Making System Three Times as Big as Spain

#101

Post by titzer »

nugi wrote: post #73
titzer wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...caring about climate change does not necessarily have a strong correlation with views on war. I think the right side of the American political spectrum pretty much disproves this one.

Thats funny, I have never met anyone from any political system, short of nhilism, who doesen't care about climate change. The argument, whivh you seem to be intentionally reframing, is about the cause of said change. Don't make HN political, particularlly with petty, misleading quips like that.

No, I am not reframing. I'm sorry for your limited experience, but I have met far too many conservatives that all but spell it out. I used to be one and traveled in those circles. Look at people's actions. Conservatives in Congress and the WH cut the EPA, they cut Climate Science budgets, and not only do they offer all-out denial, they often just flat out state that a warmer planet would be or could be a good thing. So if that doesn't qualify as "not caring" about climate change, then we aren't seeing the same thing. Obviously, not everyone on the right is a fire-breathing climate denialist, but the OP was about correlation between views on war and views on climate change and IMHO there is strong one.

Re: China Is Building a Rain-Making System Three Times as Big as Spain

#102

Post by [deleted] »

rsynnott wrote: post #58
Thetawaves wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? 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?

Yes. See https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/climate-data/gpcp-monthly-... , second image, for instance. Most rain falls on the oceans.

[deleted]

Re: China Is Building a Rain-Making System Three Times as Big as Spain

#103

Post by saas_co_de »

ggm wrote: post #12

Excluding 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.

I don't think that is necessarily true. Whatever rain falls evaporates again. If you increase the amount of rain in one place then evaporation also increases. You have increased the capacity of the water cycle at least in a local area. Also most of earth is ocean so increasing rain on land does not necessarily take from other land.

Re: China Is Building a Rain-Making System Three Times as Big as Spain

#104

Post by _bxg1 »

> 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

Re: China Is Building a Rain-Making System Three Times as Big as Spain

#107

Post by RosanaAnaDana »

maxgiraldo wrote: post #105

Why not plant trees? https://forestsnews.cifor.org/10316/make-it-rain-planting-fo...

So 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).

Re: China Is Building a Rain-Making System Three Times as Big as Spain

#108

Post by musage »

sametmax wrote: post #96
cdepman wrote: post #41

I 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/

Well 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.

> 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.

Re: China Is Building a Rain-Making System Three Times as Big as Spain

#109

Post by RosanaAnaDana »

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #82

Interesting how quickly we went from “weather modification is a conspiracy theory” to reporting about it on an increasingly regular basis.

Its 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.

Re: China Is Building a Rain-Making System Three Times as Big as Spain

#110

Post by crowbahr »

philipodonnell wrote: post #97
ggm wrote: post #12

Excluding 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.

Wouldn't higher temperatures and lower humidity due to water vapor extraction lead to an increase the evaporation from the oceans to maintain the balance? Not saying that wouldn't have other effects, just wondering if atmospheric water is really a zero sum game. Based on this [0], it looks like the weather systems head out over the pacific after passing China, so should have ample time to refuel? [0] http://wasatchwe…

It's not a 0 sum game so much as an equilibrium expression.

They're just putting their thumb on one side of the scale. Where the extra evaporation comes from and how it affects global climates is too tricky to predict but that's not going to stop them so we'll just have to live through it.

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