Scientific rainmaking has suffered in the U.S., where it was first tried, from too much free enterprise. The rain-thirsty parts of the country are teeming with commercial rainmakers, most of them only faintly scientific. Their rosy promises, seldom justified, have discredited all "experimental meteorology" with a large part of the public.
In Australia, rainmaking has enjoyed a better-regulated infancy. According to Welsh-born Dr. George Edward Bowen, a leader in the development of both radar and radio astronomy, Australia's carefully controlled program of "cloud physics" experiments has yielded clear and encouraging results.
Most of the Australian experiments backed by CSIRO (the Commonwealth Scientific and...
