Fixing the Sky

by James Rodger Fleming

  3.5 Irving Krick’s generators for cloud-seeding operations in seventeen western states and Mexico. (WILLARD HASELBACH, “‘RAIN MAKER OF THE ROCKIES’: HISTORY’S BIGGEST WEATHER EXPERIMENT UNDERWAY,” DENVER POST, APRIL 22, 1951, 17A)

  Deadly Orgone

  In 1951 a near fatal experiment with radium led Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957), an eccentric Austrian-born physician and practicing psychoanalyst, to conclude that he had discovered a new type of proprietary energy he called “deadly orgone,” which, in its material form, he claimed, appeared in the air as black toxic specks that could calm the winds, cause tree leaves to droop, silence the birds and insects, and even sicken humans. The following year, Reich invented a “cloudbuster,” a cluster of hollow pipes resembling a Gatling gun, to attract and remove the deadly orgone from the atmosphere. Running water through the tubes served to rinse out and drain off the accumulated toxins. Or so he claimed.

  Reich, who had worked with Sigmund Freud on human sexuality in the 1920s, moved to Germany in 1930 and joined the Communist Party, seeking to combine social theory and personal liberation from sexual taboos. When the Nazis came to power, Reich was forced into an itinerant life in a number of Scandinavian countries, where he experimented, using basic electrical equipment, on what he termed “bioelectric energy.” His experiments led him to believe that he had discovered a fundamental motive power of the universe, which he first called “bions” and later “orgone energy.” He postulated that this energy permeated all life and was also present in the atmosphere. Moving from Norway to the United States in 1939, Reich lectured on the psychological aspects of orgone energy and devised a simple device he named the Orgone Energy Accumulator to demonstrate his theories on both healthy and cancerous tissue. In the late 1940s, accused of fraud and suspected of conducting a sex racket, Reich moved his operation to a remote location in Rangely, Maine, to an estate he called Organon. It was here that he discovered “deadly orgone.”51

  Reich claimed to be able to prevent or produce rain wherever he pointed his cloudbuster; he even devised a smaller-scale medical device that he pointed at his patients! After all, isn’t it either raining or not raining all the time? And aren’t patients either mostly healthy or unhealthy? An eyewitness to a demonstration in Maine in 1953 reported: “The strangest looking clouds you ever saw began to form soon after they got the thing rolling.”52 Maintaining Reich’s legacy, a dedicated band of enthusiasts is currently clearing the air of “chemtrails,” with homemade cloudbusters constructed from copper pipe, quartz crystals, and metal filings. They are “repairing the sky.”53 They do so at the risk of their health, however, since plans published on the Internet do not include a drain for the deadly orgone. Use of this device will be followed by rain or clearing skies—your choice.

  Provaqua

  If Charles Hatfield were active today, he might be working for Earthwise Technologies, trying to peddle the company’s ion rain project. Unsung heroes often emerge, however, to expose the charlatans and to contest unsupportable claims. Richard “Heatwave” Berler, a television weatherman in Laredo, Texas, deserves to receive a journalism award for using moments stolen from his nightly weathercast to confront the charlatans and reveal the madness. In late November 2003, in response to an unsolicited proposal, the Webb County Commissioners Court issued a contract to Earthwise Technologies for rainmaking in the vicinity of Laredo. The project, called Provaqua, involved building four large iongenerating rain towers spanning the Rio Grande watershed at a cost of up to $5 million. Webb County taxpayers were asked to pay $1.2 million, with the balance coming from Mexico.

  Earthwise, a sole proprietorship operating out of Dallas, Texas, was promoting an unproven Russian technology known as IOLA (ionization of the local areas). Three years earlier, the company—or, more accurately, Steven Howard, its president and sole employee—made an unsuccessful bid to install up to twenty-five “ionization platforms” in the Houston–Galveston area, a heavily populated region and, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, a non-attainment area for air pollution. For a fee of $25 million a year, he offered to clear the region’s air of particulate matter and reduce concentrations of ozone near the ground. According to Howard, the company’s patented IOLA technology would create an ascending “convection chimney” to draw in polluted air and disperse pollutants more rapidly and at greater heights than occurs naturally. Much like a giant home air purifier, Howard explained, the devices would help precipitate heavier particles and could mitigate the formation of ground-level ozone.

  The Laredo project claimed to be able to harness and redirect natural atmospheric energy processes in the Earth’s hydrological cycle. According to Howard, clouds were not necessary to produce rain. Ions floating up from the tall electrified towers that his company proposed to erect would cling to humidity in the air, generating clouds and producing a slow, gentle rain. The ions would also attract new “aerial rivers of moisture” from the Gulf of Mexico and would disperse pollution and freshen and purify the air. In a presentation to the commissioners court, Howard further explained that IOLA “changes the electrical charge of water vapor, thereby speeding up the natural velocity of condensation.” Earthwise offered to generate a 15 to 20 percent minimum increase in measurable rainfall, with a maximum 300 percent increase.54 Local TV channel KGNS interviewed the excited Webb County chief of staff, Raul Casso, who explained that society had wanted to create rain for centuries and that he believed it was now possible: “Making it rain ... has always been one of man’s age-old aspirations. ... [Y]ou have [dowsing] forks and diviners, and rain gods and all sorts of things that people have done to try to evoke rain; but you can’t do it—until now.”55 Heatwave Berler, however, smelled a rat.

  In the closing moments of one of his evening weathercasts, Heatwave humbly expressed his concerns about the project, saying that he was not arguing that it was impossible for the project to work, just that there was no evidence of it working. He interviewed Casso, asking him if the county commissioners had sought the opinion of any scientists before making the decision to spend $1.2 million of the taxpayers’ money on the project. Casso initially listed the various civic groups they had talked to, but eventually admitted that no, they had not asked any scientists. Heatwave’s questions generated a list of explanations from Howard (doing business as Earthwise Technologies), all of which Heatwave systematically debunked.

  Heatwave, now fully engaged with the issue, used his weathercast to express his concerns about the lack of peer-reviewed articles and improper documentation provided to the commissioners. He also found it interesting that Howard, like Dyrenforth and Hatfield long before him, was trying to make it rain during the naturally occurring rainy season. Earthwise was claiming experimental successes based on only one year of precipitation measurements, a timeframe that Heatwave stressed was much too short when dealing with weather, especially when rainfall amounts in different years and in different locales can vary by as much as an order of magnitude. He drew the analogy to tossing a coin once and then concluding that all coin tosses would have the same outcome. When Heatwave discovered that similar projects elsewhere had been terminated due to lack of evidence, Earthwise Technologies responded that there was a lot of research and articles on the methodology, but that unfortunately it was all in Russian and had not been translated. This puzzled Heatwave, since the American Meteorological Society and the World Meteorological Organization, to name only two organizations, had a long history of cooperation with Russian meteorologists and issued reports and abstracts in translation to overcome language barriers. The absurdity of the situation spurred a spoof advertisement for “Dud Light” on the local radio, the gist of which was that for only $5 million you can get a machine that magically makes rain, with instructions in Russian and with the guarantee that it has failed to work everywhere else it was tried.56

  The fiasco ended in a dramatic Webb County Commissioners Court meeting in December 2003 during which Judge Louis Bruni aggressively and embarrassin
gly supported funding. He was voted down by the county commissioners because of the overwhelming rejection of the project from their voter constituency, largely brought about by Heatwave’s investigations. A local magazine, Laredos, summarized the mood of the meeting: “While the early minutes of the meeting were glossed by a thin patina of civility, the proceedings quickly degenerated into a side show of blatant disdain, sarcasm, chicanery, the rearing of ugly heads, a couple of juggling acts, patronizing platitudes, and for some on the sidelines of county government, incredulity that public leaders conducted county business in this manner.”57 Humble Heatwave Berler had stood up to and defeated the rainmakers, saving the county and the region millions of dollars and further embarrassment.

  Hail shooting to protect a crop and rainmaking in times of drought are usually considered to be desperate acts by desperate people. But there are other dimensions, both cultural and psychological. One is the solidarity of a community trying to do something, anything, to augment Providence. Another is the sheer entertainment value of a traveling rainmaker’s entourage coming to town with its mysteries, loud fireworks, and showmanship. Many times, people do both: pray and hire a rainmaker. Charles Hatfield undoubtedly turned a profit by working with the moist air masses provided by nature and predicted by the weather bureau. John Stingo and George Sykes combined climatology, handicapping, and complicated apparatus in executing their confidence game. They, like Clinton Jewell and others, kept their secret techniques under close wraps. Others, like Frank Melbourne, made their money by selling their secrets as a kind of franchise operation to the highest bidders.

  Common traits of successful charlatans include seeking financial gain by taking credit for natural rains. Little to no capital and no business training are needed. A sense of ethical responsibility or long-term engagement with a community may be detrimental. Use of the latest technologies, juxtaposed in odd and mysterious ways with claims of esoteric knowledge, and recitation of a scientific mantra also seem to help.

  Practicing meteorologists were uniform in their criticism of rainmaking and hail shooting. In 1895 meteorologist Alexander McAdie wrote: “Rainmakers of our time bang and thrash the air, hoping to cause rain by concussion. They may well be compared to impatient children hammering on reservoirs in a vain effort to make the water flow.”58 Weather forecaster Ford Carpenter’s examination into the methods of the rainmaker revealed “a disregard of physical laws,” with no proof or prospect of success;59 and Cornell University president David Starr Jordan ridiculed rainmakers when he called their attempts to grow rich without risk or effort “the art of pluviculture,”60 a practice that William Humphreys defined as “the growing and marketing of rain-making schemes, a never-failing drought crop.”61

  Are there charlatans out there now ? Certainly there are huge commercial interests, similar to Irving Krick’s, hoping to profit from the scientific and social angst surrounding looming water shortages, damaging storms, and climate change. The Provaqua project in Laredo is one obvious example. Massive ocean iron fertilization schemes to cash in on carbon credits also come to mind (chapter 8). Weather control is currently being practiced on five continents in some forty-seven countries, through some 150 experimental and operational programs. To what effect? In 2002 the Texas Department of Agriculture provided funding of $2.4 million for rainmaking activities. Throughout the American West, agricultural, water conservation, and hydropower interests are conducting routine weather modification operations that cover about one-third of the total area. They are not sure if their efforts are effective, but they are afraid to stop!

  In 2003 the National Academy of Sciences issued the report Critical Issues in Weather Modification Research. The study cited looming social and environmental challenges such as water shortages and drought, property damage and loss of life from severe storms as justifications for investing in major new national and international programs in weather modification research—in essence, finding engineering solutions for nature’s shortfalls and wrath. Although the report acknowledged that there was no “convincing scientific proof of efficacy of intentional weather modification efforts,” its authors believed that there should be “a renewed commitment” in the field. The fact is, weather modification has never been shown to work in a reliable and controllable way, and the report admitted as much: “Evaluation methodologies vary but in general do not provide convincing scientific evidence for either success or failure.”62 This has been true throughout history, and it remains true today.

  During the 2008 Summer Olympics, China spent more money on rainmaking and rain suppression than any other nation—but with no verifiable results. The country has developed a cadre of peasant artillerists, supported by a high-tech weather central, who stand ready to bombard every passing cloud with chemical agents assumed to either dry it out or make it precipitate. Note the use of cannon. In every era, weather and climate controllers employ the latest techniques: explosives, proprietary chemicals, electrical and magnetic devices. Aviation was added in the early twentieth century, as were radar and rocketry by mid-century. Since then, every new technology of any meteorological relevance has been proposed or actually tried in the controversial quest for weather control. 63 With so much invested and so little to show for it, perhaps there are more charlatans out there than we might imagine.

  4

  FOGGY THINKING

  Fog is a cloud that is earth bound.

  —ALEXANDER MCADIE, “THE CONTROL OF FOG”

  FOR most of human history,at least until 1944, people were at a loss to know what to do about the fogs and vapors obscuring their view. Natural fog, seen from afar, is quite beautiful as it pools in the river valleys or burns off on a sunny morning, but those enshrouded by it may not fully welcome the whiteout conditions it brings. Of course, such obscuration can be a good thing, as in Virgil’s Aeneid when Venus cloaks her son and his companion in a thick fog to protect them on their journey, or when, following a massive artillery barrage in World War I, the fog, “mute but masterful ... countermanded all battle orders, and the roar of a thousand batteries gave way to stillness.”1 Sometimes fog is used as a theatrical curtain. Shakespeare employs the weather to reveal Hamlet’s mental state when he apprehends the sky filled with “a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors.” Coleridge’s ill-fated albatross first appears to the Ancient Mariner out of an ice fog. Then there is London or pea soup fog, mixed with the smoke of millions of chimneys, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “duncoloured veil,” sometimes yellow, sometimes brown, composed of an unhealthy mixture of smoke and vapor.2 Actual, as opposed to literary, fogs were deemed unhealthy and undesirable, capable of interrupting or suspending normal activities such as shipping or aviation.

  In 1899 Cleveland Abbe described a local fog dispeller suitable for use on ships to assist navigation, or perhaps to increase precipitation. It was called the Tugrin fog dispeller. In foggy weather, a pipe 3 inches in diameter with a musket-shaped flange at the end was used by the navigating officer to direct a powerful stream of warm air from the engines to “blow a hole right through the fog,” causing it to fall as raindrops and providing forward visibility of several hundred feet, sufficient to avoid a collision.3 Abbe further suggested that if the pipe was aimed vertically, it could be used to condense and precipitate fog moisture—for example, for agricultural uses along the California coast. According to meteorologist Alexander McAdie, in March 1929 a murky smokefog, the densest and most persistent in twenty years, settled down over New York City, forcing transatlantic liners to lie at anchor. Commerce was suspended and commuters were stranded for several days. With the rise of commercial and military aviation, efforts to dispel fog were driven largely by the desires (and actual needs) of pilots to overcome the vulnerabilities and limitations that fog imposed. In the second quarter of the twentieth century, electrical, chemical, and physical methods of fog dissipation included the electrified sand trials of L. Francis Warren and his associates, the experiments with chemical sprays of Henry G. Houghton, an
d the operational FIDO fog burners of World War II. All these projects were relevant to aviation safety, and all were of interest to the military.

  Electrical Methods

  From the time of Benjamin Franklin, the role of atmospheric electricity in meteorological processes, including its suspected role in stimulating precipitation and its possible role in clearing fogs, was under active investigation. In the early nineteenth century, chorographer John Williams proposed a scheme to dehumidify the British climate by electrifying it. For personal, political, and vaguely scientific reasons, he argued that climatic change in England became noticeable around 1770, with the spring and summer months becoming cloudier, wetter, and colder and the winters milder. Williams attributed this shift to human “change effected on the surface of our Island,” due to the cutting of forests, digging of canals, and enclosing of lands—all of which had combined to increase the amount of moisture released into the atmosphere and caused adverse effects on human health and agriculture. These physical changes, he claimed, were themselves due to political and economic changes, including the American Revolution, the inflated price of grain, and heavy taxation on labor and agriculture. It was a view that sprang from the author’s personal malaise and a generally unsettled mood in Britain. Williams argued that the newly “ungenial seasons” might be ameliorated by building electrical mills, two per county, with giant rotating cylinders to diffuse excess electrical fluid into the surrounding air. He imagined that the newly electrified air would then act to dissolve fogs and dissipate rain clouds. The electrical mills were never built, and the British, as ever, are still damning their damp and cloudy climate and discussing their “peculiar weather,” with no ready answers as to what, if anything, is wrong with it or how, if at all possible, to fix it.4