Fixing the Sky
Page 36
Note that all these wedges involve large geometric factors: 2-, 50-, even 700-fold increases (or decreases) in current practices, with unspecified costs or other considerations. The global back-of-the-envelope nature of these suggestions, the sheer scale of the challenge, and the lack of fine-grained analysis regarding local and regional implementation strategies had led some, geoengineers included, to wonder if it can be done efficiently—or at all. At the 2007 American Academy meeting on geoengineering, Socolow was musing aloud about adding a geoengineering wedge to his portfolio; I suggested that this was probably a premature move.
The middle course is Phaethon’s ideal path, as advised by his father, Helios, to spare the whip, hold tight the reins, and “keep within the limit of the middle zone,” neither too far south or north, nor too high or low: “the middle course is safest and best.”102 Inviting people from different cultures and diverse walks of life to take action on climate change involves defining a middle course, not a path of least resistance but one between doing too little about climate change (which has been the case recently with much of U.S. policy) and doing too much (which would most certainly be the case if the climate engineers have free rein to turn the planet into a machine). For that matter, it is also possible for well-meaning social engineers to attempt to do too much, by promoting overly aggressive or one-size-fits-all approaches to energy-climate-environment issues. We have yet to demonstrate that economic prosperity can exist or that development can proceed without the use of fossil fuels, although it seems we must indeed do so in the interest of long-term sustainability. Many minds are currently working on plans for expanding the middle course, but these should not include taking up Phaethon’s reins and repeating his mistake.
Paper, even that provided by the Patent Office, lies still for anything to be written on it. Recall the 1880 patent of Daniel Ruggles “for producing rain fall by conveying and exploding explosive agents within the cloud realm”; the 1887 patent of J. B. Atwater “to destroy or disrupt tornadoes”; the 1892 patent of Laurice Leroy Brown for a tower to transport and detonate explosives automatically for “aiding rainfall”; and the patent awarded in 1918 to John Graeme Balsillie for ionizing a volume of air and switching the electrical polarity of clouds, “by means of suitable ray emanations.” Not to slight the modern era, recall also the 2003 promise by Earthwise Technologies to clear the air and enhance rainfall in Laredo, Texas, using patented “ionization towers.” Now, are you ready for the “Welsbach Patent” to offset global warming? It was granted in 1991 to inventors David B. Chang and I-Fu Shih of Hughes Aircraft Company. Chemtrail conspiracy theorists, suspicious of the U.S. government, are certain that the military is using this technique to seed the lower stratosphere with microscopic particles of aluminum and barium oxide emitted in jet aircraft exhaust.103 Climate engineers may point out that the early patents were just fantasies, while Welsbach seeding would actually “work.” This depends on what you mean by making something “work” in more than a narrow technical sense.
Earlier modification plans always were couched in the context of the pressing issues and available technologies of their eras: James Espy wanted to purify the air and make rain for the East Coast, General Robert Dyrenforth set out to solve the problem of drought in the West, and L. Francis Warren hoped to clear airports in the 1920s, while the Russians and Americans vied over militarizing weather and climate control throughout the cold war. In 1971 climatologist Hubert Lamb wrote that the greatest pending climate emergency might be the overuse of the natural water supply in Central Asia and elsewhere. In 1991 Michael MacCracken at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory turned his attention to geoengineering the climate as a response to global warming; that same year, Ralph Cicerone and his colleagues proposed injecting alcane gases (ethane and propane) into the ozone layer as a possible way to heal the damage being caused by chlorine compounds.104 Each generation, it seemed, has had its own leading issues for investing in technologies of control.
Ideas about fixing the sky are seemingly endless, and wild new ideas arrive daily in my in-box. Recently, an engineer claiming space science credentials proposed to shuttle tanks of liquid nitrogen to high altitudes to chill the air and form high, thick contrail-like clouds—this with no analysis of the energetics of the process, either in producing sufficient quantities of liquid nitrogen (which is energy-intensive), in delivering it to altitude (which is both polluting and energy-intensive), or in understanding the radiative consequences of artificial cirrus haze (which can serve to warm the atmospheric layers beneath it). Ideas about stirring up the deep-ocean column with Mixmasters, laying down gigantic plastic bags of liquefied CO2 on the ocean floor, tilling “biochar” charcoal into the soil, blowing bubbles to make the oceans more reflective, or perhaps shooting each individual CO2 molecule into space have all been floated as trial balloons. Just yesterday, my in-box had a proposal to flood the Sahara Desert and the Australian Outback to plant mega-forests of eucalyptus trees. My personal favorite involves supernanotechnolog y of the future and would entail adding tiny “shock absorbers” to each carbon–oxygen bond in CO2 molecules. This would serve to keep the molecular bonds from vibrating and rotating freely, thus preventing properly retrofitted CO2 molecules from acting as strong infrared absorbers and emitters; in lay terms, it would stop them from behaving like greenhouse gases. Imagine the boost to industry and “American competitiveness” in developing high-tech and “green-collar jobs” to manufacture and install more than 1026 such submolecular devices worldwide! Of course this is nonsense, but in the coming years you will see many such proposals to “fix the sky.” They will be couched in the language of possibility and will convey a sense of unprecedented urgency. But now you know the precedents, the checkered history of weather and climate control.
In 2009 I participated in an America’s Climate Choices workshop on geoengineering. At the meeting, convened by the National Academy of Sciences at the request of Representative Alan Mollohan (D-West Virginia), the dominant voices were those of scientists and social scientists interested in a full assessment of the possibilities and dangers of geoengineering; influential policymakers were the primary audience. Unlike earlier meetings, advocates for particular technological fixes were not in the ascendant. I consider this an encouraging development as we seek more nuanced perspectives.
In my presentation, the only one representing the history of science and technology, I pointed out how climate engineers mistakenly claim that they are the “first generation” to propose climate control and how commercial and military interests have inevitably influenced what scientists and engineers have considered purely technical issues. Geoengineering, like climate change, involves, quintessentially, socio-technical hybrid issues. As the American Meteorological Society is recommending, any enhanced research on the scientific and technological potential for geoengineering the climate system must be accompanied by a comprehensive study of its historical, ethical, legal, and social implications, an examination that integrates international, interdisciplinary, and intergenerational issues and perspectives and includes lessons from past efforts to modify weather and climate. History can provide scholars in other disciplines with detailed studies of past interventions by rainmakers and climate engineers as well as structural analogs from a broad array of treaties and interventions. Only in such a coordinated fashion, in which researchers and policymakers participate openly, can the best options emerge to promote international cooperation, ensure adequate regulation, and avoid the inevitable adverse consequences of rushing forward to fix the sky. I repeated this message in my 2009 testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Science and Technology.105
In his Critique of Pure Reason, the philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote: “The whole interest of my reason ... is concentrated in the three following questions:
1. What can I know?
2. What should I do?
3. What may I hope?”106
These general questions are of immense theoretical,
practical, and moral import. Here we conclude by applying them to weather and climate control.
• What can I know? We know that climate is nebulous, complex, and unpredictable. We know that it is always changing, on all temporal and spatial scales; and we know few of the turbulent details: what the weather will be next week or if a sudden and disruptive climate change looms in the near or distant future. We know that humans, especially the “Takers,” have perturbed the climate system through agriculture, by the burning of fossil fuels, and by the sum total of many additional practices. We do not know the ultimate outcome of all this, but we strongly suspect that it may not be good. We know that weather and climate control has a checkered history, rooted in hubris and populated with charlatans and sincere but misguided scientists; we also know that most plans for weather and climate control were speculative responses to the urgent problems of the day and were based on then-fashionable cutting-edge technologies—cannon, chemicals, electric discharges, airplanes, H-bombs, space probes, computers—with much of it military in origin. We know that those who understand the climate system best are most humbled by its complexity and are among the least likely to claim that they have simple, safe, or cheap ways to “fix” it. We also know that many weather and climate engineers thought they were the “first generation” to think about these things and, since they faced “unprecedented” problems, were somehow exempt from historical precedents. On the contrary, they were critically in need of historical precedents.
• What should I do? We should all be asking this question and working together to implement the most reasonable, just, and effective answers. My colleagues at the Climate Institute are eloquent supporters of middle course solutions, but they also advocate responsible geoengineering research, while educating and gently correcting the speculators.107 Some have asked if the risk of geoengineering is worse than the risk of global warming. I think that it just might be, especially if we neglect the historical precedents and cultural implications. We should cultivate a healthy dose of humility, even awe, before the complexities of nature (and human nature). Do not propose simplistic technical solutions to complex socioeconomic problems; do not even propose simplistic socioeconomic solutions. Do not claim credit for unverifiable results. Adopt the Hippocratic prescription for a planetary fever: “to help, or at least to do no harm.” Practice mitigation and adaptation in a pluralistic world with many climes and many cultures. Perhaps as a first ethical approximation, we could follow Kant’s categorical imperative: “Act only on a maxim that you can at the same time will to become a universal law.”108
• What may I hope? We can hope that fears and anxieties that freeze us into inaction or that tempt us to do too much might be overcome and that a middle course of climate mitigation and adaptation might emerge—amenable to all, reasonable, practical, equitable, and effective.
NOTES
Introduction
1 National Academy of Sciences, “Geoengineering Options.”
2 Crutzen, “Albedo Enhancement.”
3 Fleming, “Global Climate Change and Human Agency.”
4 Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore, 501–705; Fleming, Historical Perspectives on Climate Change, 11–32.
5 Fleming, Meteorology in America, 44, 99.
6 Jordan, “Art of Pluviculture,” 81–82; Spence, Rainmakers.
7 Ekholm, “On the Variations of the Climate,” 61.
8 Fleming, Callendar Effect, xiii.
9 Wexler, “U.N. Symposium.”
10 President’s Science Advisory Committee, Restoring the Quality, 127; Weart, “Climate Modification Schemes.”
11 Fleming and Jankovic, eds., Klima.
12 Curry, Webster, and Holland, “Mixing Politics and Science,” 1035.
13 Weinberg, “Can Technology Replace Social Engineering?”
14 Emerson, Conduct of Life, 86–87.
1. Stories of Control
1 Bulfinch, Age of Fable, 62; Ovid, Metamorphoses, 1.750–779, 2.1–400.
2 Emanuel, What We Know About Climate Change, 53.
3 Milton, Paradise Lost, bk. 10, lines 649–650.
4 Dante, Divine Comedy: Inferno, canto 4, lines 146–148.
5 Catlin, North American Indians, 1:152–153.
6 Quinn, Ishmael, 80–81.
7 Verne, Purchase of the North Pole, 143.
8 Twain, American Claimant, opening section, “The Weather in This Book.”
9 Hahn, Wreck of the South Pole, or the Great Dissembler, 48.
10 Griffith, Great Weather Syndicate, 6.
11 Cook, Eighth Wonder, 55–56.
12 Gratacap, Evacuation of England, 54.
13 Train and Wood, Man Who Rocked the Earth, 11.
14 England, Air Trust, 17–21.
15 Wilson, “Rain-Maker,” 503.
16 Mergen, Weather Matters, 233.
17 Roberts, Jingling in the Wind, 3–6.
18 Nash, Rainmaker, 60–61.
19 Quoted in “From the Footlights,” n.p.
20 [McGavin], “Darren’s Theatre Page,” n.p.
21 Kael, “Reviews A–Z,” s.v. “The Rainmaker.”
22 Liebling, Just Enough Liebling, 283.
23 Clarke, “Man-Made Weather,” 74.
24 Bellow, Henderson the Rain King, 201.
25 Vonnegut, Fates Worse Than Death, 26.
26 Bohren, “Thermodynamics,” n.p.
2. Rain Makers
1 Bacon, Works, vol. 8, Great Instauration, 23–24.
2 Ibid., vol. 5, New Atlantis, 399.
3 Ibid., vol. 8, New Organon, 115.
4 Fleming, “Meteorology,” 184–188.
5 Butterfield, Origins of Modern Science, viii.
6 Merchant, Death of Nature, 193.
7 Cohen, Revolution in Science; Shapin, Scientific Revolution.
8 Fleming, Meteorology in America, 23–54, 66–73, 78–81, 95–106.
9 Espy, Third Report on Meteorology, 100.
10 Espy, Philosophy of Storms, 492–493.
11 Congressional Globe, 25th Cong., 3d sess., December 18, 1838, 39–40.
12 Quoted in Meyer, Americans and Their Weather, 87.
13 Espy, Philosophy of Storms, 492.
14 Quoted in Harrington, “Weather Making,” 51–52.
15 Espy, Second Report on Meteorology, 14–19.
16 Quoted in Espy, Fourth Meteorological Report, 35–36.
17 Leslie, “Rain King,” 11.
18 Meyer, Americans and Their Weather, 89.
19 Hawthorne, “Hall of Fantasy,” 204.
20 Le Maout, Effets du canon, 13.
21 Quoted in Le Maout, Lettre à M. Tremblay, 5.
22 Le Maout, Effets du canon, 11.
23 Le Maout, Encore le canon, 13.
24 “Caius Marius,” in Plutarch’s Lives, 3:220.
25 Humphreys, Rain Making, 30.
26 Powers, “Rain-Making,” 52.
27 Stone, “Rain-Making by Concussion,” 52.
28 U.S. House of Representatives, Production of Rain by Artillery-Firing, 5.
29 Ruggles, “Method of Precipitating Rainfalls,” 1; “Novel Method of Precipitating Rainfalls,” 342.
30 Ruggles, Memorial, 1.
31 Van Bibber, “Rain Not Produced,” 405.
32 “How About That Patent for Rain-Making?” Farm Implement News, October 22, 1891, clipping in NOAA Central Library.
33 Williams, “Bizarre & Unusual Will of Robert St. George Dyrenforth,” 12.
34 Dyrenforth, Report of the Agent, 8–10.
35 Farm Implement News, September 1891, n.p., clipping in NOAA Central Library.
36 Dyrenforth, Report of the Agent, 16–17.
37 Farm Implement News, September 1891, n.p.
38 Dyrenforth, Report of the Agent, 25.
39 Quoted in Hering, “Weather Control,” 181–182.
40 Dyrenforth, Report of the Agent, 32.
41 “Government Rainmaking,” 309–310.
42 Scientific American Supplement, Octob
er 17, 1891, 13160.
43 Clarke, “Ode to Pluviculture,” 260.
44 Curtis, “Rain-Making in Texas,” 594.
45 Quoted in Scientific American Supplement, October 17, 1891, 13160.
46 Hering, “Weather Control,” 182.
47 Blake, “Can We Make It Rain?” 296–297.
48 Blake, “Rain Making,” 420.
49 Moore, “Famine,” 45–46.
50 “Another Rain Controller,” 113.
51 Harrington, “Weather Making,” 47.
52 Brown, “Tower and Dynamite Detonator.”
3. Rain Fakers
1 Hering, Foibles and Fallacies of Science, 240.
2 Seneca, Naturales Quaestiones, quoted in Frazer, “Some Popular Superstitions,” 142.
3 White, History of the Warfare, 1:323–372.
4 Arago, Meteorological Essays, 219.
5 Lomax, Bells and Bellringers, 20.
6 Arago, Meteorological Essays, 211–213.
7 Fitzgerald, “At War with the Clouds,” 629–636; Hering, “Weather Control,” 185.
8 Cerveny, Freaks of the Storm, 36.
9 Abbe, “Hail Shooting in Italy,” 358.
10 Owning the Weather (Greene).
11 Humphreys, Rain Making, 1.
12 News clipping, undated, Franklin Papers.
13 Franklin, “Weather Control,” 496–497.
14 Franklin, “Much-Needed Change of Emphasis,” 452.
15 Franklin, “Weather Control,” 496–497.
16 Franklin, “Weather Prediction and Weather Control,” 378.