It's always fascinating to see new, if worrying, points on the road towards global water scarcity. According to this Scotsman article the Chinese are really serious about creating rain, "using aircraft, rockets and even anti-aircraft guns to seed the clouds for precious moisture." Provinces are reportedly competing to get the rain before their neighbours using technology that's been around for decades, but never used so intensely. The article reads like the synopsis of some unbelievable sci-fi comic:

Five major regions of Henan province, about 400 miles south of Beijing, all seeded clouds around the same time last month during a bad dry spell. But one of them, Pingdingshan, received most of the rain that finally fell on 10 July, mostly because it was in the path of prevailing winds. ...

"We didn