Beijing Shot Rain From Sky To Keep Opening Ceremony Dry

What other government in the world, for what other reason, would be able to "guarantee" the weather? One of the biggest feats of China's spectacular opening ceremony on Friday wasn't inside the stadium. As those of us inside the Bird's Nest feared rain -- and secretly, because of the heavy heat and humidity, prayed for it -- the city's meteorological bureau peppered approaching clouds with over 1000 silver-iodide rockets. That triggered intense showers outside the city and preempted a rainfall on China's parade.

It was one of the more fitting, if unacknowledged, touches to the super-sized ceremony, which after all was about China's human daring and ingenuity.

Ever since Mao Zedong, who declared that "man must defeat the heavens," the country has used cloud-seeding mostly to alleviate drought. Though the practice is not as uncommon as it seems -- NASA plays with the technique to provide good weather for shuttle launches and Los Angeles and Wyoming have relaunched their own programs. But Friday marked what was perhaps the the world's most intense (and unique) rainmaking mission, one which scientists had in their sights for years. Opening ceremony director Zhang Yimou had warned that rain would be the biggest threat to China's biggest ever showcase. It simply was not going to be allowed to fall.

While the city was setting off 33,866 fireworks, it also "fired a total of 1,104 rain dispersal rockets from 21 sites in the city between 4 pm and 11:39 pm on Friday, which prevented a rain belt from moving toward the stadium," bureau chief Guo Hu said, according to China Daily.

Just as the rockets were slamming the clouds, the opening ceremony reached a middle section, "Nature." At the center of the stadium children were painting a landscape and singing a song:

The air is warming The ice cap is melting Land becomes smaller Birds are vanishing

We plant trees We sow seeds The earth turns green The sky is blue indeed...

If the lyrics describe a miraculous progression from ecological devastation to renewal, the last line sounds a bit like the mantra of a religious meeting or a hypnotist's session. That night, the sky wasn't blue, and it was heavy with humidity and pollution, but it wasn't raining. To make this propaganda at least more accurate and appropriate, perhaps "We sow seeds" might have been changed to "We seed clouds."

Even before it won its Olympic bid in 2001, China poured millions of RMB into its rainmaking project, hoping to trigger smog-clearing showers, provide water to dry land and, for the opening ceremony, to keep storm clouds at bay. Though there are widespread doubts about how effective cloud-seeding is -- even some officials have admitted their techniques remain un-proven -- Beijing says it is able to control some of the weather some of the time. And while the city is known for heavy summer rain, in the past two years you could sometimes tell when a sudden downpour was coming based on the visiting schedule of IOC officials.

Besides concerns about the chemicals used (safe, officials insist), and the occasional cement bag falling from a seeding plane, there are larger questions about how cloud-seeding can negatively effect weather patterns, and how it serves to "wash away not just the dirt, but people's memory" of the dirt, as Wen Bo told me in 2006.

Given the city's and the country's environmental issues, techniques like forced rain, drastic car bans, factory shutdowns and general sugar coating only obscure the bigger problems, creating apathy among officials and citizens and drawing money away from sustainable projects, like improving irrigation or cleaning up factories.

I've long thought, honestly, that one of the best things about living here was the feeling of frustration over pollution, in a way that few other places can offer. The more intense a problem, the more motivated you are to work on fixing it, right?

Nevertheless, Beijing can't simply keep press a button whenever it wants to clear the skies of smog or stop rain. Right? Right? (The next guarantee of the weather will likely come with the Olympics closing ceremony on the 23rd of August.)

The great irony of course is that whether cloud seeding works or not, part of the motivation for it is to counteract China's other, more effective weather modification project -- the one engineered daily by its legions of cars, factories and power plants.

And even if the government is seen as powerful enough to control the weather, the central government has precious little control over more important issues, like corruption and industrial pollution.

But perhaps the fall of the rain in Beijing presents an upshot.

If China has the power to stop the rain (among many other impressive claims to ingenuity, like those cultural strengths it shared at the opening ceremony) then citizens and even officials might begin to ask themselves, "Why don't we have the power to stop more unsavory things lingering in the air, stop things from from pouring down on the people?"

See previous posts from Treehugger on Chinese rainmaking here and here. In Plenty, Tom Scocca goes deeper.

Comments

[RightWingMarine]

If this is true this is fantastic technology. We should exploit this for commercial gain which could help the entire nation. Georgia could get the rain it needs. Instead of pumping water to parts of CA for crops we could just make it rain.