Fixing the Sky (16 page)

In the nineteenth century, the scientific rain kings—James Espy, Charles Le Maout, Edward Powers, Daniel Ruggles, and Robert Dyrenforth—were altruistic monomaniacs who based their vision of a prosperous and healthy world order on the ultimate control of a single weather variable: precipitation. Grasping at scientific straws while posing as masters of an esoteric aerial realm, they
appealed to the public's sense of the possible and, for funding, to the government's general lack of good sense. They wrote speculative books, brandished patents, and tinkered with their gadgets and toys, many of them incendiary or explosive, like children with firecrackers on the Fourth of July. It would be unfair to call them charlatans, since they explained their technical principles, experimented in the open (often with military surplus equipment), and avoided direct or deceptive marketing techniques. Yet there was often more hoopla than actual theory, and in lieu of results, their efforts produced perhaps less promise than hype.

2.3 Tower and dynamite detonator proposed by Laurice Leroy Brown. Aside from the danger of climbing a high metal tower when storms are building, the dynamite (
D
) sliding down the sloping wire (
B
) would completely destroy that part of the apparatus. (ADAPTED FROM U.S. PATENT APPLICATION 473, 820, APRIL 26, 1892)

Of course, things are different now, if only much larger in scale. Twenty-first-century climate engineers behave as, well, altruistic monomaniacs who base their vision of a prosperous and healthy world order on the ultimate control of a single climate variable: either solar radiation or carbon dioxide (chapter 8). Yes, things
are truly different now. No longer do “climate kings” grasp at scientific straws while posing as masters of an esoteric aerial realm; nor do they appeal to the public's sense of the possible and, for funding, to the government's general lack of good sense. Or do they? There is no flood of speculative books, patents, articles, and gadgets regarding geoengineering. Or is there? Surely the “boys with their military toys” syndrome has long since passed. Or has it?

RAIN FAKERS

—DANIEL HERING,
FOIBLES AND FALLACIES OF SCIENCE

“
IT
is not in human nature to suffer froma prolonged orrepeated evil without seeking for a remedy”
¹
—so wrote Daniel Hering in 1924 regarding weather control. In the struggle of the agriculturalist against hail and drought, that “remedy” was to seek new techniques for altering the weather. When the rainmaker mixed his proprietary chemicals and a sprinkle of rain touched the parched prairie, it was hard to dissuade the relieved farmers from believing that they had witnessed a miracle. Hering called this charlatanism an “old, familiar form of delusion”—
post hoc, ergo propter hoc
—and a weather control, “vagary.” After the hail cannons were discharged with a mighty roar and the storm clouds dissipated, “it [was] hard ... to convince the relieved grape growers that the cannons [had] not shot the storm away” (249).

The hoopla and hype of Robert Dyrenforth and his team could well be considered a form of charlatanism, except that they made some attempt, modest as it was, to explain their assumptions and they conducted their affairs without extensive marketing efforts. Like James Espy before him, Dyrenforth fits better into the sincere but deluded category of those who became overly enthusiastic about
a single technique or theory. The hail shooters and the rainmakers who mixed secret chemicals, however, preyed on misguided hope and gullibility.

Over the years, two basic approaches have prevailed concerning what to do when severe weather threatens: ceremonial and militaristic. Sacrifices, prayers, and the ringing of consecrated storm bells were favored by most until about 1750; since then, military assaults on the clouds have predominated. In ancient Greece, the official “hail wardens” of Cleonae were appointed at public expense to watch for hail and then signal the farmers to offer blood sacrifices to protect their fields: a lamb, a chicken, or even a poor man drawing blood from his finger was deemed sufficient. But woe to the negligent hail watcher if the signal was not given in time to offer the sacrifices and the crops were subsequently flattened. He himself might be beaten down by the angry farmers. The Roman philosopher Seneca mocked this practice as one of the “silly theories of our Stoic friends.”
²
In Norse tradition, making a loud racket during storms was said to frighten away the demons of the storm. This was also a widespread practice among early and medieval Christians. A passage in the Bible about the “prince of the power of the air” convinced Saint Jerome that there were devils around when storms were about. Witches, too, were accused of causing bad weather. The
Compendium Maleficarum
(1626) contained an illustration of a witch riding a goat in the storm clouds. Throughout the Middle Ages, processions, often involving entire villages, were held in times of storm.
³

Church bells were inscribed, consecrated, and even baptized. In his
Meteorological Essays
(1855), the noted French scientist and politician François Arago cited a number of traditional prayers that were recited during the installation of a new church bell, including the following: “Bless this bell, and whenever it rings may it drive far off the malign influences of evil spirits, whirlwinds, thunderbolts, and the devastations which they cause.”
⁴
As well as calling the faithful to prayer and assembly and warning the community of invaders, the peals of the church bell were thought to agitate the air, disperse sulfurous exhalations, protect against thunder and lightning, and disperse hail and wind. The German playwright and lyric poet Friedrich Schiller placed as the motto of his famous “Song of the Bell” the Latin inscription customarily adorning many church bells:
Vivos voco; Mortuos plango; Fulgura frango
(I call the living; I mourn the dead; I break the lightning).
⁵
In Austria, it was traditional to ring “thunder bells” or blow on huge “weather horns” while herdsmen set up a terrific howl and women rattled
chains and beat milk pails to scare away the destructive spirit of the storm. But is it dangerous to ring church bells during thunderstorms? Because a large number of bell ringers had been struck dead by lightning, Archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria banned the practice in 1750. The French government followed suit in 1786, but noted in its decision that the demons were still suspected of throwing lightning at churches. Still, bell ringers were well advised to avoid any proximity to or contact with a wet rope connected to a large metal object in a high tower during electrical storms.

3.1 Medieval hail archers. (OLAUS MAGNUS,
HISTORIA DE GENTIBUS SEPTENTRIONALIBUS
, 1555)

Confronting the storm with displays of military might was also a venerable practice (figure 3.1). The mythical King Salmoneus of Elis, who traced his lineage to Aeolean roots, was an arrogant man who imitated thunder by dragging bronze kettles behind his chariot and hurled blazing torches at the sky to imitate lightning. It was his impious wish to mimic the thunder of Zeus as it rolled across the vault of heaven. Indeed, he declared that he actually
was
Zeus and designated himself the recipient of sacrificial offerings. Zeus punished this ridiculous behavior by striking him dead with a thunderbolt and destroying his capital city of Salmonia. His mistake of playing god brought down the wrath of heaven against him, but also triggered the annihilation of both the unjust and the just in his kingdom. In this case, imitation was not rewarded as the sincerest form of flattery. In the fifth century B.C.E., Artaxerxes I of Persia was said to have planted two special swords in the ground with the points uppermost to drive away clouds, hail, and thunderstorms.
⁶
In France in the eighth century, the populace
erected long poles in the fields to do the trick. The poles were not anticipations of Benjamin Franklin's lightning rods, but were festooned with pieces of paper covered with magic inscriptions to protect against storms, a practice that the emperor Charlemagne regarded as superstitious. In the farm communities of central Europe, it was traditional to ignite gigantic heaps of straw and brushwood in advance of an approaching storm. The main effect of this was likely not meteorological, but it did foster a sense of shared risk and community engagement. Of course, the burning pyres contributed to the awesome spectacle of flashing lightning and pealing thunder.

In more recent times, according to Arago, nautical men generally believed that the noise of artillery dissipated thunderstorms and that waterspouts could be disrupted by the firing of cannon (figure 3.2). He mentioned the case of the Comte d'Estrées, who in 1680 fired on storms off the coast of South America and dissipated them, reportedly to the amazement of the Spanish witnesses. In 1711, however, a furious French naval bombardment in the harbor of Rio de Janeiro was followed by a tremendous thunderstorm (216).

3.2 Naval vessel firing its guns at a triple waterspout. (ESPY,
THE PHILOSOPHY OF STORMS
)

The practice of firing storm cannon apparently spread from sea to land. An entry on
orage
by Louis de Jaucourt in the famous French
Encyclopédie
of 1750 states that the dissipation of storms by the noise of cannon “does not seem out of all probability” and may be worth the cost of an experiment. By 1769 a retired French naval officer, the Marquis de Chevriers, had set up his battery in France to fight against strong hail and damaging storms. Ever the empiricist, Arago examined the weather records of the Paris Observatory, where, within earshot, regular gun practice took place for more than twenty years at a nearby fort. He found no effect of the cannonading on dissipating the clouds (214–218). By the middle of the nineteenth century, however, the opposite opinion—that the concussions of great explosions might make it rain—had garnered renewed public attention, but certainly not acceptance, through the work of Charles Le Maout, Edward Powers, Daniel Ruggles, and Robert Dyrenforth.