Seventy-two years ago, on this day, December 18th, 1953, Irving Langmuir gave a seminar at General Electric,
In 1953, at the time he was making highly dubious claims for the efficacy of weather modification and even climate modification, Langmuir presented a seminar at GE on “Pathological science” or “the science of things that arenʼt so.”(27) Utilizing his own criteria for pathology, Langmuirʼs claims for cloud seeding qualified on several counts: they rested on observations close to the threshold of detectability, on apparently meaningful patterns generated in field trials; on the inability of critics to reproduce the experiments; on the intervention of the courts, legislature, and the press; and on overreliance on the credentials of a Nobel laureate rather than proof.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 312ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that in the aftermath of World War 2, anything seemed possible, if you threw enough money and brains at it.
The specific context was – hydrogen bombs had been tested, and weather modification was “in the air” – but maybe it couldn’t be done…
What I think we can learn from this – even those taking the grants for the experiments were not sure it could be done…
What happened next – Langmuir died in 1957. The Weather Modification bandwagon rolled on for decades.
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.
References
Fleming, J. 2006. The pathological history of weather and climate modification: Three cycles of promise and hype . Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences (2006) 37 (1): 3–25.
https://doi.org/10.1525/hsps.2006.37.1.3
Also on this day:
December 18, 1970 – Science article about “Man-Made Climatic Changes”
December 18, 1996 – Australian greenhouse emissions sharply UP.
December 18, 2008 – Tim DeChristopher does his auction action