Oysters, beer, and a meteorological breakthrough
Boston Globe (April 17, 2016),
Fleming, James R. 2013. “A History of Weather and Climate Control.” Opinion Article, Geoengineering Our Climate Working Paper and Opinion Article Series. Available at:
James Rodger Fleming, “Weather as a Weapon: The troubling history of geoengineering so far,” Slate Magazine
Is there a technological fix for global warming? Where would we put a “planetary thermostat,” and who would control the settings?
Robert Krulwich, “The Bomb Watchers.”
This is an actual case of geoengineering (planetary scale intervention) in 1962.
Geoengineering in any form looks downright dangerous to Colby College historian James Fleming, whose latest book is Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control. Fleming does not mince words: “Geoengineering is in fact untested and dangerous. We don’t understand it, we can’t test it on smaller than planetary scales, and we don’t have the political capital, wisdom, or will to govern it. Planetary tinkering is not ‘cheap,’ as some economists claim, since the side effects are unknown. It poses a moral hazard by possibly reducing incentives to mitigate. It could be attempted unilaterally, or worse, proliferate among rogue states, and . . . learning from history, it would be militarized. Geoengineering could violate a number of existing treaties.”
— Quoting Christopher Cokinos in The American Scholar (Autumn 2010).
The hokum and hubris of geoengineering our climate
FIXING the weather is an old science fiction standby. Today, some believe we can fix our atmosphere’s ills by geoengineering the climate. Science historian James Rodger Fleming is having none of it. Read more…