Earlier quoted context omitted.
China seems to be somewhere that is happy with short term solutions without considering longer term impacts.
compared to the rest of the world?
who else is shooting silver iodide into the sky?
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
#112Excluding 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…
You're right, but it would depend a lot on the weather conditions downwind
Re: China Is Building a Rain-Making System Three Times as Big as Spain
#113This 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 sh…
The UN has no authority to regulate China like that.
Re: China Is Building a Rain-Making System Three Times as Big as Spain
#114This 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 sh…
The UN has no authority to regulate China like that.
I 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.)
Re: China Is Building a Rain-Making System Three Times as Big as Spain
#115What could go wrong?
Re: China Is Building a Rain-Making System Three Times as Big as Spain
#116Interesting how quickly we went from “weather modification is a conspiracy theory” to reporting about it on an increasingly regular basis.
Doesn’t it actually disprove the conspiracy theories, considering how open these schemes are handled?
Re: China Is Building a Rain-Making System Three Times as Big as Spain
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
compared to the rest of the world?
who else is shooting silver iodide into the sky?
Well the United States did from 1962-1983.[0]
Unfortunately humans learn best from negative consequences, rather than from historical observation. Most bad things have already been tried before.
Re: China Is Building a Rain-Making System Three Times as Big as Spain
#118Why not plant trees? https://forestsnews.cifor.org/10316/make-it-rain-planting-fo...
China is probably planting more trees than any other country in the world.
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/284/1854/2016...
“China is investing immense resources for planting trees, totalling more than US$ 100 billion in the past decade alone”
Re: China Is Building a Rain-Making System Three Times as Big as Spain
#119In 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 an…
Not an engineer but, if your infrastructure is that old first of all I'd focus on maintenance, rather than having dick measuring contests with countries that have questionable attitudes towards pollution, safety and nature.
Not only old but also not enough. In areas that population have grown a lot in the past few decades, it makes a lot of sense to build new infrastructure to keep up with the demand
Re: China Is Building a Rain-Making System Three Times as Big as Spain
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not an engineer but, if your infrastructure is that old first of all I'd focus on maintenance, rather than having dick measuring contests with countries that have questionable attitudes towards pollution, safety and nature.
The condition of the roads and infrastructure in a large part of the US is very, very bad when compared to countries like the Netherlands. It’s like the US is a superpower with third world infrastructure.
As someone who has traveled to many third world countries in SE Asia and South America I can confidently say that the US does not have third world infrastructure. Most claims of this are frequently done by somebody pushing some kind of narrative