MADE IN CHINA:CHINA to make ARTIFICIAL weather!!!!

BEIJING-After weeks of watching the mercury soar, hardening the already cracked earth of their wilting orchards and farms,a group of farmers on the outskirts of Beijing gather in the Fragrant Hills that line the western fringe of China's capital city.Unlike their ancestors,they do not assemble to perform a rain dance or gather in a temple to pray to the Lord Buddha to bring the rain.Instead, they grab rocket launchers and a 37-millimeter anti-aircraft gun and begin shooting into the sky.What they launch are not bullets or missiles but chemical pellets.Their targets are not enemy aggressors but wisps of passing cloud that they aim to "seed" with silver-iodide particles around which moisture can then collect and become heavy enough to fall.The farmers are part of the biggest rain-making force in the world: China's Weather Modification Program.According to Wang Guanghe, director of the Weather Modification Department under the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, each of China's more than 30 provinces and province-level municipalities today boast a weather-modification base, employing more than 32,000 people, 7,100 anti-aircraft guns, 4,991 special rocket launchers and 30-odd aircraft across the country. "Ours is the largest artificial weather program in the world in terms of equipment, size and budget," Wang said, adding that the annual nationwide budget for weather modification is between US$60 million and $90 million. It is no coincidence that the world's biggest such project is in China.The country's leadership has never been cautious about harnessing nature, taking on a slew of what were once thought impossible engineering challenges, such as the Three Gorges dam, the world's biggest hydroelectric project, and the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, the world's longest highland railroad.For a largely agrarian country like China, the weather was thought of as far too important to be left to the whim of gods or nature.
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As in the days of Noah...