Weather as a (potential) Weapon

Like something from that (remake) movie THE AVENGERS or something Dr. Evil would cook up.. only it's here, it's now and it's Chinese:

http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2007/0...nners-can-pla/

Clouds for sale! Chinese businesses (and event planners) can play God

Posted Jun 8th 2007 4:48PM by Sarah Gilbert
Filed under: China, Agriculture
I come from a long line of farmers and ranchers, and I thought I'd heard of just about every way to inspire rain: Let's see, we have our praying, our rain dancing, and the always-useful "if I water the garden this evening it's sure to rain tonight." But in China, cloud seeding -- the practice of literally creating clouds, with or without rain -- is a booming business. And in the strange world-that-is-China, it's the government who's selling.

The odd thing is who the buyers are. When the "Office of Artificial Weather Inducement" was created, it was meant as a public service -- to wash away pollution, for example or (even stranger) to create clouds in the day or days before an event (it's planned for the 2008 Summer Olympics) to increase the likelihood the event itself will be clean, bright and sunny.

I visited a group of young techs in North Dakota years ago that was into this. Do not remember the company they worked for :D, but they had a few guys watching radar and the other ones flew the missions. They have to have just the right conditions in the atmosphere if I remember right.

I think I also read somewhere Cloud Seeding was used in Vietnam War also. "Operation Popeye"

Quote:

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PRELUDE

1967: The United States begins a top secret rainmaking operation in Southeast Asia to hamper the movement of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops and supplies. It runs until July 1972. During the Vietnam war, the U.S. also carries out massive herbicide spraying operations (Agent Orange, etc.) and mechanical vegetation removal with ÒRome PlowÓ tractors.

March 1971: Citing a leaked US government memorandum, a US news report reveals indications of a super secret US rainmaking operation over Laos.

June 1972: Meeting in Stockholm, the UN Conference on the Human Environment adopts Recommendation 218, asking governments to carefully evaluate the likelihood and magnitude of climatic change.

July 1972: Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird testifies to the US Congress that the US has never engaged in environmental modification activity over North Vietnam.

1972-74: US Congress "doves", led by Senator Claiborne Pell, press the Defense Department for release of information about alleged secret US weather modification programs in Southeast Asia.

11 July 1973: The US Senate adopts a resolution (S.71) urging an international agreement prohibiting environmental warfare. S.71 includes a draft treaty with the commitment "to prohibit and prevent, at any place, any environmental or geophysical modification activity as a weapon of war".

28 January 1974: Acknowledging that his 1972 testimony was false, Laird (by then counsel to President Nixon) privately admits that the US used weather modification in North Vietnam in 1967-68. Contents of the letter are leaked.

20 March 1974: In a top secret Senate hearing, the US military admits to "Operation Popeye", a cloud seeding program in Cambodia, Laos, North and South Vietnam. The Pentagon says Popeye ran from 1966 through 1972. At least 2,600 flights spent over 47,000 units of cloud-seeding materials.

19 May 1974: Pell forces declassification of the transcript of the "Operation Popeye" hearing.

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Probably google it and find 100s of articles on it.:;)