Vacuum Tube Solar Hot Water Comes to Cambridge

One of the first home improvements Rachel and I made when we purchased our condo here in Cambridge this spring was a solar hot water installation on our rooftop.

The system we had put in uses vacuum tubes, a newer, more efficient type of solar collector than the black box flat panels of old. As a writer covering energy and the environment in Cambridge and China, I'd spent the past three years tracing this new and exotic technology back to the factories and cities in China where they are surprisingly commonplace. 

I first read about the tubes three years ago in a story in the Boston Globe. A family in Newbury, MA was using a massive installation to provide hot water and heat for their giant barn of a house.  A photo that went with the story showed their installation covered in frost on a cold winter day. Somehow, despite the cold, the tubes were still kicking out 120 to 160 degree water.
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Out of Guangxi

Check out the story I wrote for New Scientist this week on what Chinese paleontologists believe to be a 110,000 yr old human jaw bone (see photo on right).

If their claims about the fossil they found in China's southern Guangxi province prove true, it would raise some interesting questions about human origins.

Specifically it could challenge the widely held belief that modern humans are the direct descendents of Homo sapiens that migrated out of Africa around 100,000 years ago.

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First Sip

Check out a couple of white headed langurs in southern China as they come down out of the trees to drink from a recently built pond at the Chongzuo EcoPark in Guangxi Province, China.


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King Cobra III

A couple days after our recent run-in with a king cobra, Pan pulled the snake out of the freezer for a full dissection.

He and his assistants spent a couple hours weighing, measuring, counting rings, extracting venom, and IDing organs. The cobra was likely 2-3 years old—on the cusp of breeding age—was just shy of 2 meters long, weighed 900 g (2 lbs), and had 56 dark bands from head to tail.

Like all king cobras, it likely fed exclusively on other snakes and may have limited its diet even further to a single species.

At one point Pan entertained thoughts of extracting the cobra's venom and injecting it, bit by bit, into a pig or water buffalo to cultivate antivenom. If someone was then bit on the reserve, they could simply withdraw some blood from the by-then-resistant animal and inject it into the stricken person.—Snake antivenom available in hospitals worldwide is obtained in more or less the same way, by slowly building up venom antibodies in a horse or sheep.

I figure Pan, who had a successful lab career before turning to conservation biology, would have as good a chance as anybody at hacking his own antivenom.

Still, I'm not sure I'd want the blood of a barnyard animal injected in me and hope I never have to choose between that and trying to hold out for an additional 2 hours to get to the nearest hospital. Then again, future bite victims may not have the luxury of weighing such options as Pan wasn’t able to extract enough venom for the experiment.

After the dissection was completed, Pan gave the gal bladder to Jintong, the park worker who accidentally ran over the snake. In Chinese medicine, snake gall bladder is thought to improve eyesight and Jintong said he would put it in alcohol and share it with his family and friends.

This being China, we then divvied up the snake meat with Jintong and his family, chopped it, fried it in oil, added a dash of salt and hot pepper, and ate it.


It was pretty bony, like a small fish, and I hate to say it, but it really did taste like chicken.

Phil
















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King Cobra II

I started walking back to my room at the Chongzuo EcoPark the other evening after watching the langurs come down the mountain to their roost.
It was a warm evening and I'd stayed watching them settle into their cliff face caves a bit longer than usual. By the time I began the roughly 15 minute hike back to the reserve's headquarters, it was already quite dark.
I hadn't bothered to pack a flashlight as I knew the path fairly well and preferred to let the moonlight guide me.
Then, I started thinking about all the warnings I'd recently read about cobras. I flipped open my cell phone for what little light it offered and grabbed the first stick I could find.
After a couple minutes of fumbling around, Jintong, one of the reserve's staff, drove towards me driving an electric cart. He said he'd just run over a snake and proceeded to unfurl a very recently deceased, very large king cobra. He hit the snake on the path I was about to walk down, about 100 meters from my room.
Then, before I thought to ask for a ride, anywhere, he drove on. I froze, convinced every branch and twig I saw on the path before me was a king cobra.

Pan told me afterwards that I needed to be especially careful this time of year. The temperature here on the edge of the tropics was just starting to rise and snakes were beginning to come out in the evenings to lie in open paths warmed by the sun.

Rachel would later tell me it snowed again in Boston and that sounded pretty nice to me.

Phil
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The Chicken Coop

Not far from the entrance to the Chongzuo EcoPark there is a collapsing cinder block building that once served as the living quarters for biologist Pan Wenshi and his students.
I’ve seen animal enclosures in Chinese zoos that are nicer than this.

The building—an abandoned army barracks—had no running water, no electricity, no door, and a gaping hole in one wall. Pan’s bed, shown here, was a thin wicker mat laid over a row of boards. Stumps and logs were used for seats and benches. Field notes were compiled by candlelight, and when it rained, water flowed into the building.
In 2000, the county government took pity on Pan and, to honor what he'd done for surrounding villages, they spent $1 million on park improvements, including a rather architecturally inspired research facility and living space.
Until recently, the cinder block building and its Spartan furnishings served as a museum of the not-so-good-ol’ days of '96 to '00. Since my last visit, it received a long overdue conversion to its current use; a chicken coop.


Phil
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Happy St. Pat's

Happy St. Patty’s Day from the PRC. I took a break from monkeying around in Chongzuo to spend a couple days in Yangshuo, China.
Yangshuo was a once gorgeous, now overrun mountain town on the Li river in southern China that has been a backpacker mecca since us laowai started descending on the country in droves in the 1990s.
The place is by no means the quiet retreat it once was, but anyplace serving the pride of St. Jame's Gate on March 17 works for me.
I spent the evening with Paul, an Englishman, and Joe, a local kid all of 10 years old.
Paul has taught English here for the last three years. He makes close to $1000 a month teaching business English in one of Yangshou’s many private schools. At this pay, he says he lives well; enough to eat out each night at the many restaurants catering to foreign tourists. He says he can’t stomach the local food, but he has a Chinese girlfriend and says the weather here beats dreary ol’ England any day.
Paul can’t stay long though as it’s “quiz”, or trivia, night at another nearby pub.

Joe is friend of Paul’s and, based on his English skills, I get the feeling this isn’t his first night hanging out at The Alley Bar. When Paul called him on his lack of green, he ran home and put on the sweater seen here. –When I ask Joe what St. Patty’s is all about, he says it’s when people wear green and drink stuff from Ireland. He says there is more to it than that, but he can’t remember the rest.
Joe first learned English from a Australian and does a wicked rendition of Crocodile Dundee's “that’s not a knife, this is a knife”.
His favorite sport is rollerblading.
“I get nice air,” he says.

Out of the blue, Joe hits me with the following riddle.
“Who is too rich?” he asks.
“Bill Gates,” I counter knowing China’s obsession with the world’s richest man.
“No, a river; it has banks on both sides.”
I go to give the kid a high five but he counters with “down low”, and then, withdrawing his hand, “too slow.”
Something tells me that of the two of them, Joe has the better gig.

Phil
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King Cobra

I could see moving to Chongzuo--the weather is nice enough, the food is delicious, and the wildlife can't be beat--if it weren't for the snakes.

The reserve's walking paths are lined with billboards warning visitors of king cobras and urging them to stick to the main paths. Like most people, though, I tend to take warning signs aimed at tourists with a grain of salt.

But just to be safe, I did some Googling the other day to find out just what these snakes are all about.

A children's educational website informs me that;
-The king cobra holds a record length of 5.58 m (18.3ft) for a venomous snake.
-It has a head as big as a man’s hand and can stand tall enough to look you straight in the eye.
-the king’s venom is actually less lethal than a common cobra’s. However, the king makes up for it by delivering more venom per bite...enough to kill an elephant or 20 people.

"Tigerhomes" notes;
-Nearly ALL snakes will avoid man…there are however snakes known to aggressively attack man such as the King Cobra of Southeast Asia…

Medicine On-Line weighs in with;
"The most common and earliest symptom following snake bite is fright, particularly of rapid and unpleasant death. Owing to fright, a victim attempts 'flight' which unfortunately results in enhanced systemic absorption of venom. These emotional manifestations develop extremely rapidly (almost instantaneous) and may produce psychological shock and even death."

And here, again from Medicine On-Line, is the kicker;

"On an average - cobras and sea snakes result in about 10% mortality [28]-ranging from 5-15 hours following bite."

I don't think I'll be straying from any paths again anytime soon...

Phil
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Bulbuls, Wagtails, and Great Tits!

There is a saying about the people of southern China that they eat anything with four limbs except tables, anything that flies except airplanes, and anything that swims except ships.
Perhaps, but birding in southern China's Chongzuo EcoPark is nonetheless amazing!
Noisy flocks of red-whiskered bulbuls are found in spades in the reserve’s trees and tall grass. The birds remind me of the Steller's jays that steal French fries off the plates of unwary diners at Nepenthe in Big Sur, California.
The following images—courtesy of the Peking University Chongzuo Biodiversity Research Institute—are all birds I’ve seen here this past week.
red-whiskered bulbul above

common tailorbird












great tit
















cattle egret














white breasted waterhen












white wagtail

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Dr. Pan's Secret Lair

At first glance, the Chongzuo EcoPark, where biologist Pan Wenshi studies white-headed langurs, appears as timeless as a Chinese landscape painting. Rugged karst peaks shoot straight out of rice paddies and sugar cane fields tended by villagers and their water buffalo. It's a scene that seems little changed for thousands of years.

The reality, however, is much more interesting.



The Chongzuo EcoPark is a former military base that was in the process of being decommissioned when Pan first arrived thirteen years ago.
Few signs of the area’s military past remain except for a massive munitions storage depot carved into the middle of one of the reserve’s mountains.

Six-inch-thick steel reinforced cement doors guard the entrance to the now abandoned depot, but much of the inside remains a natural limestone cave.

On one side of the mountain the cave opens to a cliff face about 70 meters above the valley floor where a langur family roosts most nights. Pan's assistants—LiJun, JinTong, and Lin—recently drilled a couple of cameras into the cliff face for some close up observations.

The Chinese biologist is fascinated by sociobiology, the theory that certain social behaviors—such as the practice of infanticide by male langurs—are evolutionarily advantageous.

With these cameras—which connect to a tent-enclosed-desktop inside the cave—he hopes to unlock the secrets of the animal's monkey business.





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Back in Chongzuo

I wrote a story last fall on Pan Wenshi—China's founding father of conservation biology—and the white headed langur, an endangered monkey he’s spent the past decade trying to save.

At the time, Pan told me I really should come back in late winter when the year’s newborns still have their bright, canary yellow fur. I knew that Pan and his students also do an annual census of the langurs through the winter months, so when the chance came for me to make a return visit, I jumped on it.


I’m now mid-way through a two-week stay at the Chongzuo Eco Park, a 24-square km nature reserve a stone’s throw from the Vietnam border in southern China. The very phrase Chinese-nature-reserve may sound like a complete contradiction of terms, but this tiny island of biodiversity—in a country that is admittedly otherwise choking on its own pollution—is absolutely breathtaking.

When Pan arrived here 13 years ago, locals were well on their way to poaching the last remaining langurs, felling what was left of their forest habitat for firewood, and blasting their mountain home into limestone quarries.

Over the past decade, however, he’s had phenomenal success working with surrounding villages to help bring them out of poverty and to foster in them an interest in wildlife protection. The end result has been rapid reforestation within the reserve and a five-fold increase in the langur’s population--including one really cute newborn that we’ve been watching the past few days.

Phil

Images of langur and reserve courtesy of Peking University Chongzuo Biodiversity Research Institute.
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More Bad News for The Big 3

The amount of time the Big 3 Automakers have to get their act together on energy efficient transport just got a lot shorter.

On Monday a Chinese automaker began selling the world's first mass produced, plug-in-electric vehicle. The car, The F3DM by BYD—Build Your Dream—sells in China for $22,000 and gets 62 miles on battery-only power. The Volt, GM’s plug in hybrid will cost twice as much, get a third fewer miles to the battery, and won’t come out for another two to three years.

Interestingly, BYD rose from the ashes of a bankrupt state-owned auto company it purchased in 2003; recession be damned, let the Big 3 fail if they must so that someday they, or their successors, might make something relevant.
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Beijing Smog Blog, An Update

"Like a giant kid who's been holding a fart in during a three week [now nine week] elevator ride, Beijing has apparently relaxed its many industrial sphincters and let a big one rip." -Imagethief

My brother Gene just returned from his first trip to Beijing. He arrived a few days after emergency measures to clean Beijing's air for the Olympics and Paralympics ended on Sept 21. The following, including three photos taken 1 day, 3 days, and 5 days after a rainstorm, is what he reports.

Beijing - America in a different (and hazier) font.
Beijing is pretty much America at this point. I'm sure smaller cities and especially cities in Western China are very much, not America, but Beijing is. It's a great city. Massive in size. Very much on-the-move. It's an exciting and busy place to be. The food is great and plentiful. The history is rich and long and apparently if you were in charge in Beijing ... you built another palace inside the Forbidden City. I think every castle of Europe could fit inside the Forbidden City. There is some great new architecture that's really impressive: from the bird's nest and the water cube to the CCTV building and more. I met with several people at different high-tech companies and they were all very helpful in aiding our understanding of doing business here, and they were all very excited to be part of this raging economy.

The following are the differences between Beijing and America as I see it.

Air quality: Indoor air quality with all the smoking is disgusting - ok, I'm a spoiled Californian who never has to experience indoor smoke at home. Outdoor air quality - well see the pictures attached. The first was taken the day after it rained. The rain scrubs all the particles out of the air. The second photo was taken two days later. Ouch. I went for a run today and I am wondering how many cigarette-equivalents I have just inhaled. I don't think I could live here because of the air.

Language - ok, that one is obvious.

Red. Ok, people, I know red is the big, important color in China, but seriously - explore the color palette a bit more.

Traffic. They are way more 'green' than Americans in that there are tons of people who bike or ride small mopeds which guys in America could never be seen riding. They drive their cars on the freeways like one would drive a bike - as though crashing into something is not likely to cause any damage. Therefore going backwards on the freeway, dropping off passengers in the middle of the freeway, or getting to a freeway exit and stopping at that mid-point between taking the exit and staying on the freeway are all completely normal.

Food. The waitresses will wait forever for you to give an order. In the US if you aren't ready to state your entire party's order back-to-back, they say "I'll give you a minute and come back". Chinese menus, of course, are gi-normous with about 150 different options. The waitresses are all too willing to hang out, answer questions, watch you rub your chin, turn the page, discuss with each other ... they are very patient. Of course there are a few things I've eaten here that would not be on a menu in America: bull bladder, pig trotter (foot), chicken feet, some kind of frog and marinated pig's ear. They were all good. The food here is awesome. Even 'fast food' in China can include vegetables. When's the last time you got broccoli at a fast food restaurant?

Pre-reported news: I was lucky enough to be here when the Chinese astronauts (Taikonauts) took off and did the space walk. There was much excitement about this at our office and we watched the space walk live through the internet. Prior to the astronauts even leaving the earth, however, the Xinhua news agency reported the mission a success, noting that they 'captured the target' 12 seconds ahead of plan, and even included dialogue that the astronauts said to each other. The Chinese team in my office said it's common to have stories that describe how things will be before they happen. Like America, the engineers I work with here are a bit cynical on the manned space mission. They said "Yeah, China wins bronze in space-walking" and they ridiculed how some Chinese official tried to convince people that there was some scientific reason to do the mission. Sounds similar to the debate in the U.S. whenever manned space programs are announced.

Mao: They say that people over 50 like Mao better than Deng and people under 50 like Deng better than Mao. Let's see, Mao killed more people than anyone else in history combined. Deng changed China to capitalism and brought more people out of poverty than anyone else in history combined. Well, I guess people over 50 in America have their odd bouts of nostalgia too.

I asked my guys here how they thought China would change the world in the next 20-50 years. guy said the world would change China more than the other way around. A few stressed that China loves peace and it would not be changing the world in the way America has been. One expressed that China might bring a lot of help to Africa where they have been investing heavily. I said I wished America would be influenced by Chinese art and culture and particularly that we could learn to be more patient and long-term in our planning, like the Chinese appear to be.

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Pan Wenshi and the White-Headed Langurs

Rachel and I returned from the PRC to the People's Republic of Cambridge about a month ago, however, a story I reported over the summer just came out in today's New York Times.

It Takes Just One Village to Save a Species

By PHIL MCKENNA

Published: September 22, 2008

CHONGZUO, China — Long ago, in the poverty-stricken hills of southern China, a village banished its children to the forest to feed on wild fruits and leaves. Years later, when food stores improved, the children’s parents returned to the woods to reclaim their young.

To their surprise, their offspring had adapted to forest life remarkably well; the children’s white headdresses had dissolved into fur, tails grew from their spines and they refused to come home...Click here for full story copyright, New York Times.


Story Behind the Story

Perhaps China's greatest environmental success story to date, this was also a really fun piece to report. The Nongguan Nature Reserve with its mind bending karsts and tropical forests is absolutely amazing, and I got to experience it with Rachel who was able to join me for my visit.



I'd known of Pan's prior work with pandas for some time but hadn't heard what he'd been up to recently, until a good friend visited the reserve and told me I really ought to check it out. Thanks for the tip, Ollie!



Check out the following video I shot in the Chongzuo Eco-park and hear Pan tell how alpha males patch themselves up after bloody battles with other males.



Langur and landscape photos used with permission from Peking University Chongzuo Biodiversity Research Institute


Phil Click Here to Read More..

Usain Bolt, Julian Marley, and Rachel

Rache and I were at a party hosted by the Jamaican Embassy the other night to watch Usain Bolt set another world record in the 100 meters. We watched on a giant projection screen as Bolt not only dusted the competition and set a new world record, but did so with one shoe untied and jogging the last 30 meters.
After the race we were all hanging out waiting for the second half of the evening's entertainment--Bob Marley's son, Julian, and his band--to show up .
There was a group of dreadlocked Rastas hanging out near the stage and, as this is a rather unusual sight in the PRC, I had Rache and a friend pose for a photo with them.
When the band started up we realized the guys they'd just had their picture taken with were Julian and his right hand man! (see photos). It was a pretty amazing concert, a Bob Marley cover band led by one of his [many] sons for a crowd of less than 100.

Phil Click Here to Read More..

Phelps, Deng Linlin, Georgian Brazilians and other musings

[The following post comes from guest blogger MeanGene; my brother]

Michael Phelps, who tied Paavo Nurmi (among others) in 9 gold medals, has this in common with the Finnish runner - the ability to bounce back quickly and do it again. Paavo Nurmi, in 1920's, won gold and set world records in the 1500m and 3000m races in one day. But "one day" is misleading. He had only 26 minutes to rest between these races. He won 3 other golds in the same Olympics with 1500m as his shortest run.
Another athlete with this remarkable ability to bounce back is Lance Armstrong. We don't know about Paavo Nurmi, because he died in the 70's, but Lance and Michael Phelps have an ability to remove lactic acid from their bodies at a rate seen in almost no other athletes. In fact, a scientist studying lactic acid in swimmers has tested 5000 other swimmers and always found a lactic acid level, post-competition, from 10-15 millimoles/liter, whereas Phelps level is about 5. Last night they showed Phelp's schedule for a day in which he got 2 more golds and 2 more world records and it included total swimming (including competition, warm up, training) of 5 miles. --Check this story for more freak of nature Olympians.

The best display of team camaraderie - the Croatian water polo team (men's) have all grown moustaches. (I can't find a picture, wish I could).

Synchronized Diving (the Chinese are like mirrors) has made me think of synchronized swimming, which reminded me of this Saturday Night Live skit.

Even the Chinese guys in my office think their gymnasts are underage. There is much discussion on the web about Deng Linlin who some think is missing a tooth, meaning one of her adult teeth has not grown in yet. The story is that a Korean gymnast a few years ago got busted for that when she gave a big smile on the podium. It later came out that she was listed as being 15 years old three years in a row. At the very least, the Olympic committee should call the event "Girls Gymnastics" instead of womens. The more I hear about all the hell they go through at a young age, (from a neighbor who is a former gymnast), the more I don't want to watch.

While there have always been athletes on the US team who were born elsewhere, historically it has been immigration. Increasingly it looks like people try out for their own team, and if they don't make it, hustle to another country where they can. In a very timely match, the Georgian women's beach volleyball played the Russian women's beach volleyball today. The Georgians won, of course, the two woman team were both from Brazil. Click Here to Read More..

Froggfurter's Adventures

I am proud to announce that my wife Rachel--aka The Froggfurter--has been keeping her own blog of our adventures here in the PRC. Check it out! She has lots of great photos--from bathroom stalls to Buddhist temples--and fascinating insights into life as the exotic yogini at a Beijing yoga retreat. (my apologies for not pointing you to her site sooner!)

Phil Click Here to Read More..

Mask on, mask off?

[The Following is a blog I wrote for New Scientist. Check out the original here]

Is Beijing's air safe to breathe?

Members of the US Olympic team came under fire earlier this week for embarrassing their Chinese hosts... by parading through Beijing airport with anti-smog masks covering their faces from ear to ear.

But with the Games' Opening Ceremonies less than a day away, the question remains whether such precautions are a good idea, or worthy of the apology the team members later made to Chinese officials.

One thing that is clear, however, is that the emergency anti-pollution measures enacted on 20 July - pulling half the cars off Beijing's streets, halting construction, shutting down factories - are having little to no effect on the city's pollution levels.

A frequently-updated chart of the city's Air Pollution Index (API), compiled by researchers at Tsinghua University in Beijing and the University of Rhode Island in the US, has found no correlation between the emergency measures and the air quality. In fact, pollution levels nearly doubled in the first week following the 20th, before subsiding.

The reason, says Kenneth Rahn of the University of Rhode Island, has everything to do with wind, and little to do with local pollution prevention measures.

So long as the winds continue to blow out of the south - where the forest of coal-fired plants that powers Beijing is located - air quality in Beijing will continue to worsen, until northern winds out of Mongolia clear the skies. It's a pattern that repeats itself about every two weeks during the summer, and as the Games are about to begin, Beijing is one week into foul air buildup.

But just how bad are pollution levels in the city right now? It depends on who you ask. Most days the API has remained below 100, the magic safe number, as determined by China's Ministry of Environmental Protection.

Yet each country's measurement of API is a little different, making it hard to say just how foul things really are. BeijingAirblog does a good job of converting Beijing's figures to US and Hong Kong API measurements. It finds that the city's current air pollution would register as moderate in the US and, surprisingly, high in Hong Kong.

Walking through central Beijing on Monday afternoon - early in the current week-long pollution buildup - I found pea-soup skies and a sun that disappeared behind a thick haze at 5:30, nearly two hours before actual sunset.

If I were an athlete, I think I'd make whatever apologies were necessary, but give them through the best mask I could find on any days I didn't see blue skies overhead. Still, I wouldn't be pointing any fingers; I doubt the API of Los Angeles in 1984 was much better than today's Beijing.

Phil Click Here to Read More..

Eclipse over the Great Wall

Check out the full story here. Videos © New Scientist. Eclipse image courtesy of Alphonse Sterling, NASA.

STORY BEHIND THE STORY

Getting to the eclipse site was totally nuts. I flew into Dunhuang, a couple hundred kilometers further west of Jiayuguan on a flight full of eclipse chasers from Germany and the US.
In the days leading up to the 1st, thousands of eclipsers were pouring into the region from all over the world and local officials started to freak! We were told that entrance into the special Eclipse Cities they set up in the desert would now be road blocked and only those with prearranged permits would be allowed in. One group I was hoping to join for the event had to find a new viewing site after the place they'd been planning to use for a year was suddenly barred to foreigners a week before the event.
I couldn't really figure out what the big deal was until someone pointed out that the eclipse path cut through a lot of closed off military land including Jiuquan, the launch site of China's two recent manned space flights. Getting worked up over countless foreigners pouring across the desert with giant telescoping cameras suddenly started to make a lot more sense.

Phil Click Here to Read More..

Take Cover!

Rachel and I were taking a cab home from a day in the big city Monday night when all of the sudden what seemed to be anti aircraft missiles started going off all around us. It was dark and pouring rain but the flames from the rockets were less than 50 yards away and the noise was deafening. We quickly realized that these were cloud seeding rockets.

My first thought was they were practicing inducing heavy rainfall here in the hills west of town to reduce the amount of rain from falling on Beijing. Olympic planners have launched a full scale assault on the weather to try to prevent rain from ruining the opening ceremonies and other outdoor events.

Talking with our hosts the next morning, however, they informed us that the rockets in our neighborhood are for hail prevention. They say the anti-rain rockets are further west into the hills and the rockets launched here are to prevent hail stones from forming and taking out the fruit trees in the many nearby orchards.

So the Chinese use cloud seeding rockets to induce rain, to prevent rain in other places, and, it seems, to prevent hail stones from forming.

Pretty savvy weather commanders here in the Middle Kingdom, eh? Perhaps not.

William Langewiesche has a great article in Vanity Fair profiling the country's top rainmakers and tracing the long history of cloud seeding back to its roots in the States. His final conclusion is it likely has little to no affect but sure packs a powerful sense of control.

[Photo by Calum MacLeod, lifted from USA TODAY]. Click Here to Read More..