Page 206 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

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fearS, fantaSieS, and PoSSibilitieS of Control

Present awful possibilities of nuclear warfare may give way to others
even more awful. After global climate control becomes possible, perhaps
all our present involvements will seem simple. We should not deceive
ourselves: once such possibilities become actual, they will be exploited.

—John von Neumann, “Can We Survive Technology?”

limate fears, fantasies, and the possibility of global climate control
were widely discussed by scientists and in the popular press in the
C third quarter of the twentieth century. Some chemists, physicists,
mathematicians, and, yes, meteorologists tried to “interfere” with natural pro-
cesses, not with dry ice or silver iodide but with new Promethean possibilities of
climate tinkering opened up by the technologies of digital computing, satellite
remote sensing, nuclear power, and atmospheric nuclear testing. Aspects of this
story involve engineers’ pipe dreams of mega-construction projects that would
result in an ice-free Arctic ocean, a well-regulated Mediterranean Sea, or an elec-
trified and well-watered Africa. Pundits also fantasized about engineering the cli-
mate and possibly weaponizing it, using, for example, nuclear weapons as triggers.
Far from being a heroic story of invention and innovation, global climate con-
trol has had, from its first mention in the literature of science fiction, a dark side,
hinting at the possibility of global accidents or hostile acts. The warnings of two
close scientific associates, John von Neumann (1903–1957) and Harry Wexler
(1911–1962), one famous and one as yet relatively unknown, provide a framework
for examining such issues. Von Neumann was a mathematician extraordinaire