FIXING the weather is an old science fiction standby. Today, some believe we can fix our atmosphere鈥檚 ills by geoengineering the climate. Science historian James Rodger Fleming is having none of it. For him, the story is full of charlatans, fantasists and climate fascists. Even bona fide scientists don鈥檛 win his respect. He happily fingers 鈥減athological鈥� Nobel laureates and 鈥渄isingenuous鈥� Royal Society reports. Whether the would-be weather-makers are covering ice caps with soot or adding sulphur to the stratosphere, he views them with the 鈥渄eepest suspicion鈥�.
But does any of it work? Is China really chasing rainbows when it forks out tens of millions of dollars every year on cloud seeding? Could we successfully shade the planet with magic dust? I loved the stories of hokum and hubris, but I would like to have had a few more answers.
Fixing the Sky: The checkered history of weather and climate control
Columbia University Press