Page 254 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

Budyko found this scheme preferable to other ideas of the time, such as the
one to create thermal mountains. In James Black and Barry Tarmy’s article “The
Use of Asphalt Coatings to Increase Rainfall” (1963), two workers for the Esso
Research and Engineering Company in New Jersey argue that “useful amounts of
rainfall might be produced economically in arid regions near seas and lakes” by
“coating a large area with asphalt to produce thermal updrafts which increase the
sea breeze circulation and promote condensation.” one acre of petrochemi-
32
cal paving materials, conveniently supplied by Esso, would be needed for every
2 to 3 acres of enhanced rainfall area. The authors cited the ancient Babylonian
practice of burning their fields after harvest, supposedly to create a blackened
area that would produce extra rainfall for the next crop (but possibly for other
reasons), and the early work of Espy on producing rain by large conflagrations.
Turning to the recent literature, they cited papers on “man-made tornadoes” by
Jean Dessens, who burned an acre-size pool of fuel oil at the rate of 1 ton a min-
ute to create artificial clouds and even a small tornado, and suggested that the
weather could be controlled artificially if an inexpensive means could be devel-
33
oped “to paint the Earth black” (emphasis added). This sounds very much like
the Sherwin Williams paint slogan “Cover the Earth” or perhaps the irreverent
bumper sticker “Earth First! We’ll Pave the other Planets Later.”
In 1962 Harry Wexler was the first to use the new methods of computer cli-
mate modeling and satellite heat budget measurements to warn of the possi-
bilities, dangers, and excesses of “climate control,” including ways to destroy the
ozone layer either inadvertently or with possible harmful intent. The following
year, the Conservation Foundation report Implications of Rising Carbon Diox-
ide Content of the Atmosphere, based largely on the work of Charles David Keel-
ing and Gilbert Plass, predicted climate problems ahead and noted: “As long as
we continue to rely heavily on fossil fuels for our increasing power needs, atmo-
spheric Co will continue to rise and the Earth will be changed, more than likely
2
for the worse.” 34
Gordon J. F. MacDonald, professor of geophysics at UCLA, was of the opin-
ion that weather control, even of severe storms such as hurricanes and typhoons,
was just the beginning step in an escalating game of environmental and geophysi-
cal warfare using climate engineering. He thought that belligerents might, for
example, cut a hole in the ozone layer over a target area to let in lethal doses of
ultraviolet radiation, manipulate the Arctic ice sheet to cause climatic changes or
massive tidal waves, trigger earthquakes from a distance, and in general manipu-
late or “wreck” the planetary environment and its geophysics on a strategic scale.
MacDonald developed his perspective as a high-level government adviser, Penta-
gon confidant, chair of the National Academy of Sciences Panel on Weather and

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