Climate Changers

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The best-known case in point came during the Vietnam War, when the American military tried using 'cloud seeding' technology to flood the Vietnamese countryside. Operation Popeye's results were nominal at best and ultimately deemed unverifiable by the military, though they did kick up a storm of controversy. Eventually, the Soviet Union embarrassed the United States by leveraging public outrage at the program to enact a United Nations ban on using weather modification for military purposes.

That ban could come into play again, Fleming writes, as questions arise over who would control new climate-changing technology. The United States, for example, might have a conception of an ideal climate that differs starkly from its old foe's, since Russia stands to benefit handsomely if global warming melts shipping lanes into the icebound Arctic Circle. Even private companies have flirted with the climate-change market. Science fiction writer and University of California physics professor Gregory Benford has announced plans to 'cut through red tape' and use private investment to fund his sun-shading project, which would launch diatomaceous earth (a substance used in cat litter) into the atmosphere.

For many geoengineering advocates, the drive to such radical measures isn't profit but fear. Global warming, they warn, could become a catastrophe far sooner than people think. Technology Review (Feb. 2007) reports that University of Arizona astronomy professor Roger Angel is promoting his own sun-shading plan as a stopgap 'emergency option.' Ultimately, Angel says, weaning ourselves from nonrenewable energy sources is 'the only permanent solution.'

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