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what the post-opening propaganda will be like if that day turns out to have sunny blue skies...

He always wanted to know "who'll stop the rain?" The Chinese.

Am I the only one seeing this retarded mess of a theme on idle.*?

I think I'd prefer to get wet or use an umbrella than breathe the horrible smog [guardian.co.uk] that blankets Beijing. In fact, the rain is often the only thing that reduces the smog and air pollution for a shirt while.

NPR had a story about how they're forcing 1/3 of the cars to stay off the road and shutting down a bunch of factories to try to reduce the air pollution for the olympics. Maybe just letting (or making) it rain, instead of stopping it from raining, would do even more good.

Not exactly 'new' tech...the silver iodide version's been around forever, and the liquid nitrogen version doesn't sound particularly revolutionary.

It does, however, go along with the Chinese cultural desire to control the elements, which heretofore has been embodied mostly with the rivers--the legendary "Yellow Emperor" was the first to stop the flooding of the Yang Tze; the current government has thrown massive resources into the Three Gorges dam. Controlling the rivers has been traditionally (as far as I recall, anyway) seen as evidence of controlling the land, and thus of being a legitimate government.

Controlling the rain, then, would be an extension of this.

Chinese military transport aircraft will take off from Beijing loaded with kids and gigantic loudspeakers. You will hear chants of "Rain, Rain, Go Away, Come Back Again Another Day".

Zhang Qian, head of weather manipulation (best title to have on a business card ever)

Mad scientists can't start out being James Bond villains. This seems like a great place for an aspiring mad scientist to work, fresh out of mad grad school.

This thing isn't new at all: Eighteen years ago, at the 1990 Asian Games in Beijing, the organizers already managed to control the rain quite successfully. For instance, the opening ceremony which would have been disrupted by rain without intervention, ran smoothly in fairly sunny weather instead.

The technique is simple: Detect in advance the clouds which could cause rain in Beijing, then send airplanes to spread special dust particles to cause those clouds to rain immediately, thus "empty" them before they reach Beijing.

I'm quite convinced the Chinese aren't the only ones who's done this.

So if they stop a hurricane in China, does that mean a butterfly here will stop flapping its wings?

Believe it or not, the United States already has this technology. And it's in the hands of the rednecks.

There's a stock car track in Bristol, TN that holds 165,000 people, and has 43 800+ horsepower cars running around an oval just a shade over a half mile long. This generates a lot of heat-- body heat, engine heat, heat from tires cornering on concrete fast enough to turn fifteen second laps. Enough heat that, as long as the race is still running, rain clouds can blow over Bristol, drench the entire city with rain, but the pocket of high pressure due to the heat (and possibly some counter-clockwise swirling motion due to the cars) will keep the rain from passing directly over the track.

If the caution flag flies and the cars slow down for too long, thus slowing the heat output and cooling the track, the rain may start to fall on the track, but it takes one heck of a storm to make the rain fall while the race is green-flagged.

-F