I seriously hope these chemicals underwent extensive testing and audits to ensure that there wouldn't be harmful side-effects. Casually spraying chemical coctails into the atmosphere is a good way to get everyone killed.

"It's the PAX...."

but seriously, I know China is trying to preen here but what I see is that the reason why everyone else can't do the same thing is that in most other countries, the other constituencies that might have an interest in how the weather is manipulated actually have some sort of say, and in the event that the weather is manipulated, someone would have some sort of responsibility for it.

I consider these features, not bugs. YMMV.

For those of you who haven't been to China, the skies are always overcast.

I have been to Shanghai. It was sunny.

Absolutely right . . . sunny in Ningbo too.

China is a huge place, some parts have rain, some sunny, occasionally some parts get hit by a typhoon.

I was in changchun, shanghai, and kunshan. There was always a thick haze blotting out the sun. This was in the summer though.

Summer olympics: same thing.

Anywhere south of Beijing, other than industrial towns of Guangdong, is almost always pretty sunny.

Shanghai is covered in smog

and that's why China has 5th largest desert in the World and 1st largest in Asia - Gobi desert.

They do this every City Day in Moscow for some years already.

This year it failed for some reason, tho.

They also did that at MAKS this year.

maybe they are a bit more careful after bag with cement failed to pulverize in 2008: http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSHAR758445...

Oops. Didn't know that.

via Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_seeding