Posted on 11/04/2009 8:00:58 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
Beijing gives frosty reception to man-made snowstorm
Wed Nov 4, 1:26 AM
BEIJING (AFP) - Government scientists in Beijing have been pilloried for inducing a recent heavy snow fall that jammed traffic, delayed air travel and left city residents shivering, state media said Wednesday.
Sunday's snowfall dropped more than 16 million tonnes of snow on the Chinese capital, blanketing a city where winter heating services have yet to be switched on and leading to howls of public protest, the China Daily reported.
The Weather Modification Office shot massive amounts of chemicals into clouds over the city the night before to provoke the snowfall, which it said was needed due to a lingering drought in the region, the paper said.
Heating in most Beijing buildings was due to be turned on November 15, but city officials were forced to move the timetable forward and were working Wednesday to bring buildings onstream ahead of schedule.
"This arbitrary government decision had disregarded the interests of the people... we should (have) considered the potential hazards of cloud seeding," said one commentary carried in the paper.
(Excerpt) Read more at ca.news.yahoo.com ...
Ping!
</sarc>
My son’s karate instructors are in Beijing! They ought to have an interesting story to tell!
This is wrong, period.
Heating in most Beijing buildings was due to be turned on November 15, but city officials were forced to move the timetable forward and were working Wednesday to bring buildings onstream ahead of schedule.
Cloud seeding does not change the temperature.
Algore must have caused the cold weather.
Thanks.
We are going to do that too. It's called the smart grid, which is Dem-speak for supply side energy modification. Few people take the time to figure out just what this means. It means the government will tell you when you can turn on your heat or cooling, and how much.
What an odd way of describing snowfall.
After I beat on Google's unit conversion and using the standard 10 inches of snow = 1 inch of rain (probably too high considering how wet and slushy it looks instead of dry and fluffy), 16 million metric tons of snow came out to be 1 inch spread over a 50 mile x 50 mile region. If you dumped it over less area it would be deeper.
1 inch over a five county region isn't very much.
“where winter heating services have yet to be switched on...” coming to us if they get the cap and trade and Super Grid through - with that, they WILL control our thermostats... “You can’t have your thermostats on 72 - you can’t eat all you want to..” from a man who keeps the Oval Office thermostat on 77! and wears shirtsleeves in mid-winter But that is Socialist rules - “The laws we make are for YOU to suffer under, not US. We are Special human beings. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXIvmJ8xenc
Beijing is a very dry place in the winter, and they are just not equipped to deal with snow. It isn’t the depth of the snow that has caused the problem, it is the fact that it snowed at all. When a city is not prepared to handle it, even a small amount of snow can cause serious problems.
I’m from Cleveland, Ohio. Up here in the wintertime, we wake up in the middle of the night to a massive “THUD” and see another 6 inches of wet snow on the ground at least once a week. I cannot begin to describe how amused I was when during my undergraduate days in Nashville, Tennessee I watched as an inch of snow tied up the town for two days while snowplows and salt trucks were called in from Kentucky.
But snow wouldn't make Beijing have to turn on building heat early, which is the implication of this story.
You just can’t make some people happy. Did it end the drought or not? The article fails to say.
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