On Sunday, November 1st, Beijing experienced unseasonal snow fall for 11 hours. It's said that it was heavy and arrived early. OK! So what, you say. Who cares what the weather is like in China, right? Well, what's odd about this story is that China is claiming that the snow was manufactured, in other words, man-made. Yes, China claims that it's in the weather modification business and plans to seed the clouds to help with its lingering drought.
Now, before we jump all over China, the country is not alone in experimenting with such techniques. The United States has done so and continues to be interested in such weather modification abilities. But there's doubt among some scientists that it works at all. They call into question the ability to know if modification techniques worked or if the weather would have occurred anyway.
Referred to as geoengineering, the techniques comprising this area are creating a lot of buzz among investors. Yet there's concern that geoengineering our environment might be dangerous. Could this ability be used as a weapon? What might happen if a few people get hold of such techniques, could they hold the rest of the world hostage? Interestingly enough, the 1976 Environmental Modification Convention was designed to stop nations from meddling with each others weather. Hmmm...
So, the next time it rains or snows, we might be more inclined to ponder if this came from the sky naturally or if such weather is a human invention.
