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Russians have been artificially providing clear skies for their May 9th Victory Parade in Moscow for decades.

unixfreak

Here's the key points of the article. I realize i misspelled "Chinese" in the title, but can't seem to edit it, sorry about that.

Run by the Weather Modification Department, a division of the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, the program employs and trains 32,000 to 35,000 people across China, some of them farmers, who are paid to handle anti-aircraft guns and rocket launchers [source: Aiyar]. These heavy-duty weapons launch pellets containin­g silver iodide into clouds. Silver iodide is thought to concentrate moisture and cause rain, a process known as cloud seeding. China has invested heavily in this technology, using more than 12,000 anti-aircraft guns and rocket launchers in addition to about 30 planes [source: Aiyar].

The Beijing Weather Modification Office spent a lot of time researching how to prevent rain in the city during the Aug. 8 opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics. The government even guaranteed clear skies for the event -- a promise it managed to deliver on. The feat only took the launch of 1,104 rain dispersal rockets from 21 sites in the city to pull off [source: O'Neill].

Even in areas with very low humidity, there's at least some water in the sky and clouds. A rainstorm happens after moisture collects around naturally occurring particles in the air, causing the air to reach a level of saturation at which point it can no longer hold in that moisture. Cloud seeding essentially helps that process along, providing additional "nuclei" around which water condenses. These nuclei can be salts, calcium chloride, dry ice or silver iodide, which the Chinese use. Silver iodide is effective because its form is similar to ice crystals. Calcium chloride is often used in warm or tropical areas.

Scientists may not be sure if cloud seeding actually works, but despite the skepticism, China is moving forward. The nation spends $60 to $90 million a year on weather modification, in addition to the $266 million spent from 1995 to 2003 [source: Things Asian]. The government plans to produce 1.7 trillion cubic feet (50 billion cubic meters) of rain a year through the practice [source: Aiyar].

moe

Why is this in /v/Conspiracy ?

Cloud seeding is neither new nor secretive.

unixfreak

I'm more used to seeing articles ridicule weather modification, under the impression that weather modification is a subject of tinfoil hats and only nutters believe it is currently being carried out in our skies. At least, that's the impression i get when discussing it most places. The conspiracy is in the denial of operations like these, and the fact that if governments are willing to pump large sums of money (like this case) into operations like this, then why is it "ridiculous" that they are not spraying silver iodide pellets from the back of planes for the process of cloud seeding?

moe

Isn't the ridicule mainly based on the low amount of evidence suggesting that these tactics actually do anything, not the fact that governments are openly executing these practices? Cloud seeding was a hot topic of news even back in 2008. If someone is actively denying the existence of cloud seeding with how open it already is, I doubt they're worth trying to convince.

Alias_Unknown

We've been cloud seeding since the 60's or so. Definitely by the 70's. If there was ever a land war with Russia the US planned to heavily seed clouds to monsoon conditions. Turning everything to mud and bogging down or hampering Russian troop movements and particularly tank columns.