Page 255 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

Climate Modification, and member of the President’s Science Advisory Com-
mittee (PSAC) in the Johnson administration. 35
In 1965 the PSAC issued a report titled Restoring the Quality of Our Environ-
ment, which contained 104 recommendations about pollution of air, soil, and
waters. Appendix Y of this report, the work of a subcommittee on atmospheric
carbon dioxide chaired by Roger Revelle, is now widely cited as the first official
government statement on global warming. It pointed out that “carbon dioxide
is being added to the earth’s atmosphere by the burning of coal, oil, and natu-
ral gas at the rate of 6 billion tons a year. By the year 2000 there will be about
25 percent more carbon dioxide in our atmosphere than at present.” Increases
in atmospheric Co resulting from the burning of fossil fuels could modify the
2
Earth’s heat balance to such an extent that harmful changes in climate could
occur. The subcommittee also explored the possibilities of deliberately bringing
about “countervailing climatic changes.” one ill-conceived suggestion involved
increasing the Earth’s solar reflectivity by dispersing buoyant reflective particles
over large areas of the tropical sea at an annual cost of about $500 million. The
subcommittee pointed out that this technology, which was not excessively
costly, might also inhibit hurricane formation. No one thought to consider the
side effects of particles washing up on tropical beaches or choking marine life or
the negative consequences of intervening in hurricanes. And no one thought to
ask if the local inhabitants would be in favor of such schemes. Another specula-
tion involved modifying high-altitude cirrus clouds to counteract the effects of
increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. The subcommittee failed to mention the
most obvious option: reducing fossil fuel use. 36
In 1968 Joseph o. Fletcher (b. 1920) of the RAND Corporation published
a review of the known patterns and causes of global climate change. In addition
to natural causes, the main influencing factors seemed to be the side effects of
industrial civilization: carbon dioxide emissions, smog and dust pollution, and
waste heat. As Wexler had argued in 1962, purposeful climate modification was
also a theoretical possibility, but Fletcher was beginning to argue that it was
now becoming a necessity. He reported on recent activities in the Soviet Union
aimed at climate control, none of them very promising, and asked: “What can be
37
done to speed progress” in this field? Fletcher’s prescription was that climate
science must follow what he considered an inevitable four-stage progression:
observation, understanding, prediction, and control. Global observations were
being conducted or planned at the time using new satellite platforms and large-
scale field research campaigns, while theoretical groups were forming around
increased computing resources and new mathematical models of atmospheric
and oceanic circulation. Fletcher thought that “an inevitable result” of all this

238 | tHe Climate enGineerS