China doesn’t non-unique it---at best, recent modification is a

Bettina Bluemling et al. 19. Bluemling is at the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Queensland. Rakhyun E. Kim & Frank Biermann are at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development at Utrecht University. “Seeding the clouds to reach the sky: Will China’s weather modification practices support the legitimization of climate engineering?” Ambio 49, 365–373 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-019-01180-3

Conclusion

This Perspective article analysed how far political legitimacy for the implementation of weather modification programmes in China could be extended to solar radiation management. We conclude that weather modification could become a stepping stone to create political legitimacy to implement climate engineering, and here in particular solar radiation management. In the same way as Deng Xiaoping coined the phrase “stepping on stones to cross the river” for the era of the Industrial Civilization, in China’s political system, narrating the new era of the “Ecological Civilization” may at some point want to make use of “seeding the clouds to reach the sky”.

Erica C. Smit 15. Juris Doctor Candidate, May 2015, William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “Geoengineering: Issues of Accountability in International Law” Nevada Law Journal, Vol. 15:1060. Spring 2015. https://scholars.law.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://scholar.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1604&context=nlj

In November 2009, the Wall Street Journal reported that China’s Weather Modification Office started seeding clouds with silver iodide in an effort to counteract a lingering drought in Beijing.2 Even though China intended this procedure to produce local rain, it instead accidentally produced snowfall, leading to the biggest blizzard in China in over five decades.3 This incidental, manmade blizzard caused over $650 million worth of damage and forty deaths.4 Although unintended, this calamity stirred a controversial uproar over whether state actors have the right to modify the weather or manipulate the climate.5 The United Nations—along with many scholars opposed to environmental modification techniques—argued that the weather belongs to everyone, and because the environmental consequences can potentially be transnational, state actors should not tamper with it.6 Further, opponents of environmental modification techniques argue that this science is underdeveloped and stress the potential harm to our ecosystems if a drastic modification of the environment occurs. 7

Although China has practiced only small-scale and temporary weather modification techniques, such as cloud seeding, its accidental blizzard exemplifies the exact problems that the international scientific community is currently debating about geoengineering. Geoengineering is commonly defined as the “deliberate large-scale intervention in the Earth’s climate system, in order to moderate global warming.”8 Instead of regional weather modification techniques—like cloud seeding in order to produce local rain—geoengineering’s effects go beyond state territories, and may encompass whole continents, or even hemispheres. Stated simply, geoengineering is a form of weather modification, but on a global or hemispheric scale. The two terms—weather modification and geoengineering—can seem interchangeable at times because both sciences involve environmental modification techniques and can cause devastating results. Nevertheless, this note distinguishes between the two sciences to demonstrate geoengineering’s potential for even greater disaster than weather modification.9

As demonstrated by the documentary Owning the Weather, many states, private corporations, and even individuals increasingly use weather modification techniques to combat global warming, but weather modification is just a limited, temporary fix.10 Although China’s weather modification techniques are not as large-scale as geoengineering, the accidental Beijing disaster provides a glimpse of the catastrophes geoengineering could cause before legal regulatory mechanisms are set in place.