Archive for the ‘Olympics’ Category
(Source: Reuters)
A Chinese worker demonstrates how he will fire a barrage against errant clouds during the Olympics in August. (Source: Reuters)
China will bring out the BFGs to try to make sure weather doesn’t rain on its Olympics
China may have to worry about clouds of smog and black soot due to its lax environmental policies and large scale adoption of inefficient partial-combustion obsolete technologies, but one thing it won’t have to worry about at the 2008 Beijing Olympics this August is rain – that is if everything goes according to plan.
China is leveraging its significant military resources to wage a war against Mother Nature. China plans to deploy 20 anti-aircraft (AA) guns around the city, firing a steady barrage of special payloads containing silver iodide and dry ice into cloud cover, whenever it should appear. The Chinese hope that this novel strategy will help make the Olympics rain free and perhaps give it a chance to show off its military prowess.
The country is so confident in its rain fighting powers that the 91,000-seat Olympic stadium, nicknamed the “Bird’s Nest,” has no roof. The efforts are being led by the city’s Weather Modification Office, a sub-branch of the China Meteorological Administration. The AA/rocket launcher assault is only one phase of a three-pronged assault the Office plans to deploy against inconvenient weather.
The first phase is detection. China will use satellites, planes, and radar to track incoming weather. It will also leverage the power of an IBM p575 supercomputer, which the city purchased last year. The computer is capable of doing a modest 9.8 trillion floating point operations per second and has enough power to accurately model by the kilometer hourly reports for the entire 44,000 square kilometer (17,000 square mile) Beijing area.
Upon detection, the second phase will commence, starting with a barrage from 20 ground-based sites encircling the stadium. Two aircraft will also be scrambled to spray dry ice and silver iodide into the clouds in an attempt to stop them from reaching the stadium.
If rain manages to break through these barriers, China will deploy its weapon of last resort: liquid nitrogen. Aircraft will pummel the clouds with liquid nitrogen. This, according to officials, will increase the number of droplets in the cloud, but reduce their size, making them less likely to fall. Officials hope this last ditch effort might hold off the clouds long enough for them to pass safely over the stadium before releasing rain.
There is a 50 percent chance of precipitation during any day that month, according to past trends. The games will occur during Northeast Asia’s rainy season. Zhang Qian, head of Beijing’s Weather Modification Office, warns that past results for weather modification during heavy rain haven’t always been successful. However, he optimistically mentions, “the results with light rain have been satisfactory.”
The Chinese government is working very hard to try to make the games a demonstration in the countries newfound power and prosperity. The government spent $40B USD bringing 120,000 migrant workers (at $130 per month) into Beijing for the massive construction projects planned, starting in 2001. In all, 1.5 million people will be displaced by the new construction projects.
China, with a population of 1.32 billion, has a penchant for excess; featuring the world’s largest dam, the world’s highest railroad, and in 2009, the world’s largest Ferris wheel. China’s weather modification program will also be the largest in the world, when fully deployed. It will feature over 1,500 weather modification professionals who will coordinate 30 aircraft and their crews, and a ground force of 37,000 part-time workers, mostly peasant farmers.
State media said one police officer was killed and the exiled Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy reported one Tibetan protester shot dead and another critically hurt after unrest in Sichuan’s Ganzi (Garze) Tibetan Prefecture.
“The police were forced to fire warning shots, and dispersed the lawless mobsters,” the brief Xinhua news agency report said, without mentioning any deaths of protesters, who it said attacked with rocks and knives.
The latest news of unrest and arrests comes after protesters seeking to put pressure on China tried to disrupt the Beijing Olympic Games torch-lighting ceremony in Greece, an act that Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang called “disgraceful”.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy urged China on Tuesday to show responsibility over the unrest and refused to rule out a possible boycott of the Beijing Olympic Games.
“I don’t close the door to any option, but I think it’s more prudent to reserve my responses to concrete developments in the situation,” Sarkozy said, when asked about a possible boycott.
In Washington, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, reacting to Sarkozy’s remarks on the Olympics, said there was no change in Bush’s plans to attend the Games.
“We believe that China should respect minority cultures — particularly in this case, the Tibetan culture — and we want to make sure that there is freedom of the press and international access to the area,” Perino said. Continued…
- In: Beijing | boycott | china | EU | Geneva | Nicolas Sarkozy | Olympics | opening | Tibet
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Nicolas Sarkozy, the President of France, has led a chorus of European criticism over China’s actions in Tibet, refusing to rule out a boycott of the Olympic Games opening ceremony.
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Tibet groups abroad say a protester was shot dead when police responded by ‘firing indiscriminately’
“I don’t close the door to any option. I want dialogue to begin and I will graduate my response according to the response given by Chinese authorities,” Mr Sarkozy said.
Until yesterday, Western governments had been measured in their response to two weeks of unrest in Tibet, mostly rejecting any possibility of an Olympics boycott.
But days of strident attacks on the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, by Beijing; an uncompromising security response inside Tibet, and the publicity gained by anti-China protesters abroad have generated a fiercer response.
Britain also criticised Beijing, with an annual report by the Foreign Office highlighting Beijing’s “violation” of human rights in Tibet. David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, said worldwide concern about the situation in Tibet was “justified and proper”.
“There needs to be mutual respect between all communities and sustained dialogue between the Dalai Lama and the Chinese authorities,” he said.
In its first collective statement, the European Union demanded that China stop using force against peaceful protesters, while also calling on demonstrators to “desist from violence”.
“The EU stresses the importance it attaches to the right of freedom of expression and peaceful protest,” it said at the United Nations in Geneva.
Germany also urged dialogue between China and the Dalai Lama. A spokesman said Chancellor Angela Merkel was prepared “at any time” to repeat her meeting last year with the Dalai Lama, which plunged relations between Beijing and Berlin into an unexpected freeze.
At the weekend, the Chinese government accused the Dalai Lama of being behind rioting in Lhasa, which left 19 dead, and of conspiring with Muslim terrorists to sabotage the Olympic Games.
A government spokesman said a protest by free speech campaigners at the lighting of the Olympic torch in Greece was “shameful and unpopular”.
The spokesman added: “We also believe that competent authorities in countries through which the torch relay will pass have the obligation to ensure a smooth relay.”
This suggests that China expects host countries, including Britain, to react vigorously to prevent protests.
Today, in a public relations fightback, Beijing will take a small, carefully selected group of foreign journalists to Lhasa to present its side of the story.
The government confirmed that a policeman was killed by rioters in a Tibetan area of Sichuan province on Monday.
Tibet groups abroad say a protester was shot dead when police responded by “firing indiscriminately”.
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