Urgent Report - Weather control by 1966!

I used to enjoy reading Popular Science, Mechanical Science, Sciencey Mechanicalness and similar magazines. The cover article typically features a thrilling painting (there's a clue)  about heads in jars surviving for centuries, laser guided hover-fish or something interesting / horrifying. Then, flip to the article and it's a lot of "artist conceptions" and generally made up bullshit about "what may one day be possible". They then grab a couple of guys with degrees to quote about the state of one technology or another and then they make goofy predictions about when incredible things may happen. I got tired of this continual tease and disappointment and quit buying the magazines. In their defense, they've got to grab eyes at the newsstand, and the easiest way to do it is with sensationalist craziness that's only bound to annoy you with it's overall flimsiness once you actually look at the reasoning. You don't grab attention with headlines like "Most Products Incrementally More Useful This Year! Page 46!"

This just in from our Bureau Chief stationed in 1956. Apparently, mankind will control the weather by 1966, and will have the power to melt the polar ice caps at the flip of a switch by 1980. The author, Dick Halvorsen, uses the great line "Crazy day-dreaming? Science-fiction? Not a bit of it." He then goes on to point out the power of weather, as evidence for his prediction. The destructive force of nature is not the part that sounds stupid, Dick. After that, there's a fictional account of a possible World War III being fought with storms and floods. This makes up the bulk of the article. Near the end of the article, he does a paragraph or two the fact that people have been able to make it rain sometimes. Boom! Case closed! Cloud seeding, therefore, complete weather control in ten years.

We now present in full the article from June 1965's issue of Mechanix Illustrated for your hilarity.