First, that when a moist cloud is present, which if undisturbed, would pass away without precipitating its moisture, the jarring of the cloud by concussions will cause the particles of moisture in suspension to agglomerate and fall in greater or less quantity, according to the degree of moistness of the air in and beneath the cloud.
Second, that by taking advantage of those periods which frequently occur in droughts, and in most if not in all sections of the U.S. where precipitation is insufficient for vegetation, and during which atmospheric conditions favor rainfall, without there being actual rain, precipitation may be caused by concussion.
Third, that under the most unfavorable conditions for precipitation ... storm conditions may be generated and rain be induced, there being, however, a wasteful expenditure of both time and material in overcoming unfavorable conditions. (58)
To paraphrase all this, if you go to a dry area during a typically rainy season and conduct entertaining and impressive demonstrations but do not take any careful measurements, you can usually convince the eyewitnesses of your efficacy and, in turn, claim credit for any rain that does fall nearby.
The media had a field day with Dyrenforth’s experiments. The Nation criticized the government for wasting tax dollars, observing that the effect of the explosion of a 10-foot hydrogen balloon on aerial currents would be less than “the effect of the jump of one vigorous flea upon a thousand-ton steamship running at a speed of twenty knots.”41 Scientific American pointed out that after the rainmakers had telegraphed from Texas to all parts of the country announcing the wonderful success of their bombs, it was discovered that the meteorological records for that locality had indicated probabilities for rain for a day or two in advance of the firing, and that the rain would have fallen all the same without any burning of powder or sending up of balloons. The article was accompanied by an illustration of traditional rainmaking in India and the cutting remark that there “seems to be little doubt that the swinging of a Hindoo head downward is just as effective for producing rain as the making of loud noises.”42 The Farm Implement News published a satirical cartoon of Dyrenforth and his team in action (figure 2.2).
F. W. Clarke’s humorous “An Ode to Pluviculture; or, The Rhyme of the Rain Machine,” published in Life in 1891, was undoubtedly inspired by Dyrenforth’s experiments. In the poem, the hapless farmer, Jeremy Jonathan Joseph Jones, seeks to break a drought using
cannon, and mortars, and lots of shells,
And dynamite by the ton;
With a gas balloon and a chime of bells
And various other mystic spells
To overcloud the sun.
His third shot into a cloudless sky “brought a heavy dew”; his fourth, tornadoes, “thunder, rain and hail.” Jeremy drowned in the ensuing flood, and his farm is now a lake. All efforts to stop the deluge were in vain,
Until the Bureau at Washington stirred,
And stopped the storm with a single word,
By just predicting—Rain!43
Curtis, the meteorologist on the Dyrenforth expedition, ended his official report on a sour note: “These experiments have not afforded any scientific standing to the theory that rain-storms can be produced by concussions.”44 He thought it had only encouraged the “charlatans and sharpers” who were busily engaged in defrauding the farmers of the semiarid states by contracting to produce rain and by selling rights to use their various methods. But Senator Farwell, who had supported the experiments, was very upbeat in an interview with the New York World: “For twenty years I have had no doubt rain could be produced in that way, and quite expected the experiments to be successful.... When Prof. Dyrenforth makes his official report of these experiments, I expect that [the government will appropriate] $1 million, may be, or $500 thousand any way, for rainmaking.”45 Dyrenforth ultimately claimed victory and was actually reappointed as government rainmaker in 1892 to continue the work in San Antonio, Texas, with a grant of $10,000, although he spent less than half of that. He distanced himself from all the press coverage and hoopla, but claimed in his official report that his practical skills, combined with his use of special explosives “to keep the weather in an unsettled condition,” could cause or at least enhance precipitation—when conditions were favorable! Not everyone was convinced, however.46
2.2 Robert St. George Dyrenforth claimed success after his federally funded rainmaking mission to Texas in 1891. After receiving a telegram from the weather bureau saying “Rainstorm approaching,” Dyrenforth orders his assistants to speed up: “Hurry up the inflation, touch off the bombs, send up the kites, let go the rackarock; here’s a telegram announcing a storm. If we don’t hurry, it will be on us before we raise our racket.” (CARTOON BY H. MAYER, IN FARM IMPLEMENT NEWS, SEPTEMBER 1891, 25)
In 1891 Lucien I. Blake, professor of physics and electrical engineering at Kansas State Agricultural College, reviewed the Dyrenforth experiments and criticized the working assumption that concussion alone could make it rain. Blake noted that the effect of “air quakes” (basically energy from sound waves) should be immediate, yet Dyrenforth reported rain hours or days after the explosions. Perhaps, argued Blake, the smoke and particles from the explosions had a greater effect than the concussions. He pointed out that scientists had recently discovered that moisture does not condense in dust-free air but only in the presence of dust nuclei, or “Aitken nuclei.” Blake further observed that every hailstone had a bit of dust in it and pointed to his own experimental seeding results with powders of carbon, silica, sulfur, and common salt that precipitated the moisture in a condensation chamber, and on burning sulfur and gunpowder to produce heavy, visible clouds of vapor.47
A year later, Blake proposed a field test to produce rain in the free atmosphere by raising, at intervals of about half a mile, a number of relatively inexpensive tethered balloons, each lifting a 30-pound smoldering ball of turpentine mixed with sawdust, straw, or paper pulp. These would generate a considerable smoke screen and might produce the right type of nuclei in the proper (but not excessive) concentrations needed for rain. Although he had insufficient funds for the field test, he claimed that his reasoning was based on sound laboratory experiments and would be much cheaper than Dyrenforth’s elaborate explosive techniques.48
Observers from afar also commented on the explosive American rainmaking attempts. In Transactions of the Epidemiological Society of London for 1892, Sir William Moore noted that a rainmaker in New York had exploded 200 pounds of dynamite carried aloft by a balloon over the Croton Aqueduct and was immediately rewarded with a heavy downpour. He thought it “quite possible” to produce rain, since in his understanding clouds were “masses of minute vesicles” in an aeriform state. Their liquefaction could be caused by an explosion and the resulting compression that forces the moisture to coalesce, become larger drops, and fall as rain. Contrary to Powers, Ruggles, and Dyrenforth, all of whom maintained that concussive explosions could intervene directly in copious streams of invisible high-altitude moisture, Moore held that the amount of rain produced artificially would be insufficient unless clouds were already present, an unlikely situation during droughts in tropical lands. Instead, he recommended that governments invest in irrigation systems.49
One of the more colorful ideas for bringing down the rain at the time came from G. H. Bell of New York in 1880. He proposed building a series of hollow towers 1,500 feet high—one set of towers to blow saturated air up to cooler air and have the moisture condensed into rain, the other set to suck in rain clouds and store them for use as needed. The inventor considered that the same system could be used to prevent rain by reversing the blower so that the descending air might “annihilate” the clouds.50
Other explosive ideas were in the air as well. A weather patent to destroy or disrupt tornadoes was filed by J. B. Atwater in 1887. His device consisted of dynamite charges with blasting caps installed on poles and situated a mile or so southwest of a settlement. A tornado crossing the elevated minefield was supposed to detonate the ex
plosives with its high winds and flying debris, hopefully disrupting its circulation and protecting the town. With the likelihood of a given area being visited by tornadoes rare and their recurrence even more rare, the installation of minefields, even elevated ones, never caught on—fortunately so for the generation of children then playing in the fields.51
The most improbable invention, however, belongs to Laurice Leroy Brown of Patmos, Kansas, who filed a patent application in 1892 for an “automatic transporter and exploder for explosives aiding rain-fall” (figure 2.3). The device was basically a large tower (A) with a sloping wire (B) connected to a battery (C) on which an operator can hang a stick of dynamite (D) on a pulley (E) and have it roll along a track until it completes an electrical circuit through a wire (F) and point (G) at the end of the track (H). The completed electric circuit was intended to ignite the dynamite and set off shock waves to stimulate rainfall, according to the ideas published by Edward Powers. Although erecting, and especially operating, such a device would certainly be a welcome diversion on the Kansas plains, possible design flaws include the danger to the operator of climbing a high metal tower with sticks of dynamite during an electrical storm and the apparent certainty that the first detonation of explosives at the end of the track would completely destroy the apparatus at the base of the sloping wire.52
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?
3
RAIN FAKERS
Among the many people who “live by their wits” there is a class who prey upon others subtly yet publicly. Their impelling motives, cupidity and desire for notoriety are stimulated by their vanity, and their rudder is hypocrisy. Although it is their business to live at the expense of others, it is not as parasites or fawning dependents; rather, they make dupes of their patrons, and they do this by pretending to possess knowledge or skill of a high order in some professional line. Their victims become their prey through sheer credulity and the predatory class [is known as] charlatans.
—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.
At War with the Clouds
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 we
ll 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.
Fixing the Sky Page 11