Page 204 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

seeding in Vietnam was revealed in the press, it caused an immediate firestorm of
controversy. People were concerned at the time that we had opened a Pandora’s
box of evil and we really did not know where it might lead. Ultimately, it led
to international embarrassment for the United States and the ratification of the
rather toothless ENMoD convention. But if ENMoD was born from abuse,
can it be revised and reinvigorated to prevent larger abuses?
In the decades following the ratification of ENMoD, the rhetoric of the
meteorological community emphasized scientific internationalism and the free
exchange of data and information, even as much of its funding continued to flow
from cold war military sources. The showcase international research collabora-
tion of the 1980s, the Global Atmospheric Research Programme, served the dual
needs of the U.S. world-spanning military. After the collapse of communism,
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the U.S. national laboratories, showcases for the talents of weapons scientists,
suddenly became “greener,” providing a boost to Edward Teller’s ongoing pro-
gram of training atmospheric scientists, many of them armed with basic phys-
ics and access to military funding and hardware, hell-bent on “fixing the sky.”
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After 2001, classified meteorological research, funded by the deep pockets of the
military and the Department of Homeland Security, was dedicated, for exam-
ple, to detecting and predicting the spread of plumes of heavier-than-air gases
in urban settings, especially Washington, D.C., or to seeking effective chemical
sniffers for toxic, explosive, or radiological sources in and around government
buildings, airports, train stations, and harbors.
With the reputation of the field of weather control severely tarnished as it
is, the military’s semi-official public line is “you can’t control how the world is
changing around you, so you have to be able to control how you react to that
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change.” Spokesmen for this view emphasize training, discipline, and vigilance.
The air force will say it is in the business of improving the accuracy and usefulness
of its forecasts and its capabilities in general by applying operational risk manage-
ment techniques to both routine and exceptional weather services. This is true so
far as it goes, but there is probably much more that the military simply does not
know or cannot say—most likely the latter.
on the other side of the coin are conspiracy theorists who see a toxic cloud
on every horizon. Their fears are fueled by statements such as those made in
1997 by Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen, who warned of “an eco-type
of terrorism whereby [adversaries] can alter the climate, set off earthquakes
[and] volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves. . . . It’s
real, and that’s the reason why we have to intensify our efforts, and that’s why
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this is so important.” Cohen, known to levitate on occasion, at least rhetori-
cally, was responding, off the cuff, to questions about the possibility of all sorts of

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