Thu 31 Jan 2008
Submitted by YOUR NEW REALITY
No country in the world has been as severely hammered by chaotic weather in the past three years than China. Monumental floods, typhoons, drought, desertification and now snow storms so intense that entire cities have virtually shut down.
With the Olympic Games only a few months away, the Chinese government is promising to take control of the weather over Beijing, and banish the usually sudden, and intense summer storms.
The cloud-seeding program to break up storm fronts, or to encourage them to dump their rain before reaching Beijing, has been under trials for years, with the help of the Russians, who claim they can guarantee rain free military parades and celebrations in Red Square.
The official Chinese government news agency says that “all out war” has now been declared on unruly, and disruptive, weather :
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There has been much interest in China’s attempt to reduce pollution ahead of the Olympic Games - but that is just one area of intense activity.
There is also a team of scientists working on reducing rainfall, to try to ensure that the Games’ Opening, on August 8, goes as smoothly as possible.
At a news conference, Beijing Meteorological Bureau deputy chief Wang Jian Jie announced that the work is beginning to pay off.
The scientists explained that, depending on the temperature, they have been seeding clouds with liquid nitrogen or silver iodide, to try and curb rainfall.
As the meteorologists work on manipulating the weather later this year, officials across the country are struggling to cope now with the worst winter the country has seen in decades.
Heavy snowfalls and freezing conditions have left hundreds of thousands of people without power.
The outages have led to the cancellation of trains, just as millions of migrant workers try to head home for the Lunar New Year holiday season.
Hundreds of thousands of travellers have been stranded ahead of the peak holiday season.
One worker said he had been stranded for 10 days.
The chaos saw Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao travel to the southern city of Guangzhou to address the crowds at the train station with a megaphone.
In a rare political event, he apologised for the inconvenience.
“I have come to see how everyone is,” he said.
“You’re all suffering. Everybody wants to go home. We totally understand how you’re all feeling.”
…with frustration growing among those stranded, the official Xinhua news agency has spoken of the need to wage “all out war” on the weather chaos.
500,000 Stranded At Chinese Train Station During Massive Blizzard
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