Page 233 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

information needed to provide efficient weather services in all countries. Wexler
was clearly on top of his science, a leader in new techniques and technologies,
and a figure of international importance. In other words, he was a meteorolog-
ical heavyweight. 66
In 1958 Wexler published a paper in Science that examined some of the con-
sequences of tinkering with the Earth’s heat budget. He began by describing
the two streams of radiant energy and their seasonal and geographic distribu-
tion, one stream directed downward and the other upward, which “dominate
67
the climate and weather of the planet Earth.” The downward stream of energy
consists of the solar radiation absorbed by the Earth’s surface and atmosphere
after accounting for losses by reflection. The upward stream is infrared radiation
emitted to space by the Earth’s surface and atmosphere, the latter mostly from
atmospheric water vapor, clouds, carbon dioxide, and ozone. Wexler wrote: “In
seeking to modify climate and weather on a grand scale it is tempting to specu-
late about ways to change the shape of these basic radiation curves by artificial
means” (1059), especially by changing the reflectivity of the Earth. After a brief
examination of possible albedo changes caused by using carbon dust to blacken
the deserts and the polar ice caps, Wexler turned to the notion, probably origi-
nating with Teller, that detonating ten really “clean” hydrogen bombs in the
Arctic ocean would produce a dense ice cloud in northern latitudes and would
likely result in the removal of the sea ice. The balance of the paper in Science is an
examination of the radiative, thermal, and meteorological consequences of this
outrageous act, not only for warming the polar regions but also for the equato-
rial belt and middle latitudes. Noting perceptively that “the disappearance of
the Arctic ice pack would not necessarily be a blessing to mankind” (1062–1063)
and implying that a nation like the Soviet Union already had the firepower to
try such an experiment, Wexler concluded with a paragraph whose relevance has
not been diminished by time: “When serious proposals for large-scale weather
modification are advanced, as they inevitably will be, the full resources of general-
circulation knowledge and computational meteorology must be brought to bear
in predicting the results so as to avoid the unhappy situation of the cure being
worse than the ailment” (1063).
In 1962, armed with the latest results from computer models and satellite
radiance measurements as applied to studies of the Earth’s heat budget, Wexler
expanded his study to examine theoretical questions concerning natural and
anthropogenic climate forcings, both inadvertent and purposeful. He did this
in his lectures to technical audiences: “on the Possibilities of Climate Control,”
presented at the Boston chapter of the American Meteorological Society, the
Traveler’s Research Corporation in Hartford, and the UCLA Department of

216 | fearS, fantaSieS, and PoSSibilitieS of Control