Rain, Rain, go Away

Well the Beijing Olympics are fast approaching, with the opening ceremonies on August 8th. Recently there has been a lot of conflict over Beijing involvement in Tibet and protests have been disrupting the torch relay in places across the globe. Beijing is very anxious to make sure the games go off without a hitch, to show the world that they can take care of business.

Anyways, I was on the Internet looking at stories about the olympics and a certain article caught my eye. The title was slightly odd, it read Operation Beijing Storm: rockets target rain. I had to click on the link because my mind was mulling over what they could possibly mean by 'rockets target rain.'

Apparently, China has a different type of agency--The Weather Modification Office. Can they do that? I haven't heard of a weather modification bureau or anything of the type in America. It seems that the Commies can do something that we can't (gasp!) Back to the rockets. Evidently there are 21 stations surrounding Beijing that will be ready to fire on a moments notice in order to prevent a downpour during the games. These rockets will fire canisters that will disperse silver iodide into approaching rain clouds. Silver iodide is very insoluble in water, and will cause water droplets to concentrate. Abra Cadabra and let there be rain. If this method doesn't force the clouds to drop their moisture elsewhere, then three planes are ready to take off and disperse catalysts that will cause it to rain.

As a side note, weather control has for some reason seemed as an utterly amazing topic to me. How can we mess with nature like that? Can we use this to our advantage? I don't know if any of you have read Michael Crighton's novel State of Fear (author of Jurrassic Park), but this explores a scenario where they manipulate weather. Ecoterrorist fire about a thousand small rockets into an approaching storm system. The rockets have microfilament wire attached to them, which create an easy pathway for electricity and therefore lightning. By dramatically increasing the lightning, the storm grows extremely powerful and causes flash floods and the like. Now I don't know how realistic this scenario is, but wouldn't that be awesome. I have always viewed the realm of weather as one thing that our technology could not influence, that we are stuck with what God throws our way. I guess that there is no end to what we can accomplish.