Sixty nine years ago, on this day, May 28, 1954 Colliers” Magazine had a cover story about “Weather made to order?”
(See fascinating article on this image here – https://picturingmeteorology.com/home/2017/1/6/weather-made-to-order-1954)
The article itself begins thus-
A WEATHER station in southeast Texas spots a threatening cloud formation moving toward Waco on its radar screen; the shape of the cloud indicates a tornado may be building up. An urgent warning is sent to Weather Control Headquarters. Back comes an order for aircraft to dissipate the cloud. And less than an hour after the incipient tornado was first sighted, the aircraft radios back: Mission accomplished. The storm was broken up; there was no loss of life, no property damage. This hypothetical destruction of a tornado in its infancy may sound fantastic today, but it could well become a reality within 40 years. In this age of the H-bomb and supersonic flight, it is quite possible that science will find ways not only to dissipate incipient tornadoes and hurricanes, but to influence all our weather to a degree that staggers the imagination
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 314ppm. As of 2023 it is 420ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that in the 1950s the species – especially the American wing of it – was rolling drunk on Hubris.
What I think we can learn from this
If you were at all switched on in the 1950s, you knew about weather modification, both inadvertent and inadvertent. But you probably assumed either a nuclear war would mean you had nothing to worry about, or there would be some technological fix…
What happened next
Through the mid 50s, a bunch of these sorts of articles – others that explicitly talked about carbon dioxide build-up [something Orville would do a few years later] got published. They must have been read, both by policymakers and ordinary people. But the signal really wasn’t emerging from the noise. And of course, the planet was not getting warmer the way that it is now 60 or 70 years later. And we have to try to remember that these people simply didn’t know what we know now.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.