Page 185 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

Academy of Sciences was established by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 to
“investigate, examine, experiment, and report upon any subject of science or art”
whenever called on to do so by any department of the government. In the twen-
tieth century, the task-oriented National Research Council coordinated scien-
tific research during America’s brief involvement in World War I; and during
World War II, the National Defense Research Committee, the office of Sci-
entific Research and Development, and the Manhattan Project demonstrated
convincingly the absolute importance of promoting and supporting scientific
research, development, testing, and evaluation of new weapons systems. In the
cold war era, science became a prominent and permanent component of all
modern militaries. 6
Links between science and the military—in perspectives, personnel, values,
budgets, scale—have grown inexorably over the years. This “pursuit of power” in
modern states, however, has come at a steep price. As was the case in Irving Lang-
muir’s pathological enthusiasm for weather control, and in many other instances
of what has come to be called “big science,” the military can act as a distorting
force in the ongoing development of natural and engineering knowledge, specifi-
cally by imposing secrecy on new discoveries in the name of national security and
seeking to weaponize every new technique, no matter how new or speculative,
such as James Van Allen's discovery of the magnetosphere (chapter 7). 7
In the relationship between scientists and the military, it is safe to say that
scientists seek support from the state and access to political power, while the
state (especially the military) seeks power over nature as promised (and some-
times delivered) by scientists. of course, transcending this dichotomy is the co-
production of the military-scientific-industrial state in which the various com-
ponents are by no measure independent of one another. As geoscientists pursue
knowledge of the Earth, they tend to focus their investigations on those areas in
which technology and military interests have made resources readily available. In
doing so, they go far beyond availing themselves of commercial, state, or mili-
tary patronage; they actually contribute to the commodification, nationalization,
and militarization of the natural world. 8

meteorology and the military

During the War of 1812, U.S. Army Surgeon General James Tilton, motivated by
prevailing environmental theories of disease that linked illness and epidemics to
weather and climate, issued a general order directing all the medical personnel
under his command to prepare quarterly reports as part of their official duties

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