The Weather Doctor's Book Reviews

Fixing the Sky:
The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control

by James Rodger Fleming

James Rodger Fleming is one of the foremost historians of meteorological sciences, whose books I have reviewed previously on this site. While I have enjoyed them all, I found his latest work Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control the most entertaining as well as informative. In this volume, Fleming takes us on a tour of human attempts to fix or modify the weather from the earliest days when humans beseeched a storm god for intervention to grandiose schemes to change or avoid changing global climate.

His overriding message is that attempting to “fix” the sky can be a dangerous experiment in pseudoscience or misplaced applications of science theory to the real world. Beginning with fascinating chapters on modification concepts in mythology, motion pictures and literature (and not just limited to science fiction novels), he shows us how weather and climate modification concepts have arisen. Then, Fleming “examines issues and the “tragicomic history of the rainmakers, rain fakers, weather warriors, and climate engineers who have been both full of ideas and full of themselves of health and navigation in the 1830s, drought in the 1890s, aircraft safety in the 1930s, and world conflict since the 1940s. Killer hurricanes, ozone depletion, and global warming fuel the fantasies of today.”

In a few instances, such as using large fires to clear airport runways of fog and microclimate and weather modification applications in agriculture, we have been able to fix the sky, though in the former, the immense cost of clearing runways could only be justified during wartime. However, most attempts at changing the weather have been follies and often were complete scams, aimed at bilking the desperate. Some, based on unproven ideas or pure insanity, would have been tragicomedy had not they been so dangerous. One that sticks with me was the practice of shooting barrels of nails from cannons in hopes of warding off witches who caused severe thunderstorms.

I am sure the book will rile many conspiracy theorists in his discussion of military applications of weather and climate control. It might also thrill lawyers at the thought of the consequences of weather modification gone both right and wrong. (If you made it rain on my farm, could my neighbor sue for denying him his rainfall?)

I recommend this book to those interested in weather and climate modification and the history of applied meteorology. I would also recommend it to those who take an interest in the consequences of extreme geoengineering through large-scale modifications.

About the author: James Rodger Fleming is a historian of science and technology and professor of science, technology, and society at Colby College. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), elected “for pioneering studies on the history of meteorology and climate change and for the advancement of historical work within meteorological societies.” He recently held the Charles A. Lindbergh Chair in Aerospace History at the Smithsonian Institution and the AAAS Roger Revelle Fellowship in Global Stewardship and was a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. His previous books include: Meteorology in America, 1800-1870; Historical Perspectives on Climate Change; and The Callendar Effect: The Life and Work of Guy Stewart Callendar (1898-1964), the Scientist Who Established the Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climate Change. He also edited Weathering the Storm: Sverre Petterssen, the D-Day Forecast and the Rise of Modern Meteorology.