Eighty years ago today…
“An important meeting took place in Washington, DC,on 9 January 1946. Convened by Francis Reichelderfer, the U.S. Weather Bureau’s Chief, it was supposed to be secret, but a detailed account of it appeared in the New York Times two days later! There were a dozen meteorologists at the meeting, some of them military men, and there were two guests: John von Neumann, a mathematician from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and Vladimir Zworykin of RCA, who had invented the scanning television camera. They had come to explain their startling proposal, that the electronic digital computer planned by Neumann might be used to forecast and ultimately control the weather.”
Walker History of Met Office p318
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 349ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that humans have always wanted to control the uncontrollable, for understandable reasons. Shamans, witch doctors, rain dances, ghost dances etc etc.
The specific context was that after you split the atom and nuke 150,000 civilians with two bombs, what could stop you from controlling everything!
What I think we can learn from this – smart people often don’t understand that smarts will only get you so far.
What happened next
They built their computer. March 5, 1950 – first computer simulation of the weather…
They tried (and failed) to control the weather. But long-term? They certainly succeeded in climate modification…
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.