Messing with the weather
With the 2008 Summer Olympics coming up, I'm intrigued by the weather headlines coming out of Beijing in recent months:
China Planning Massive Weather Modification for Olympics.
Beijing to Shoot Down Rain for the Olympics.
China Moves to Enslave Mother Nature.
China Plans to Halt Rain for Beijing Olympics.
These are stories about weather modification going on in Asia to keep the environment dry and sunny for the Olympic games. And they're not from some crackpot Web sites, the stories are appearing in respected media outlets such as CNN and the Los Angeles Times.
"Cloud-seeding is a relatively well-known practice that involves shooting various substances into clouds, such as silver iodide, salts and dry ice, that bring on the formation of larger raindrops, triggering a downpour," reports the LA Times. "But Chinese scientists believe they have perfected a technique that reduces the size of the raindrops, delaying the rain until the clouds move on."
My question is: Where does that rain move on to?
Across the ocean and over parts of North America, perhaps, where the Midwest has been deluged most of the summer and the weather around these parts has been soggy since May.
If you subscribe to the butterfly effect -- the notion that a butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon can cause a tornado in Kansas -- then this major attempt at weather modification half a world away could conceivably have an impact on the skies of Western New York.
According to the USA Today report on China's bid to control the skies: "It's a bold -- and, according to international scientists, dubious-- bit of stage managing."
Anyway, Buffalo's precipitation so far this year is above average (by almost 1 1/2 inches), and it's been a somewhat disappointing summer from the standpoint of local sun worshipers.
Who can we blame for that?
-- Rick Stanley
