James Rodger Fleming, author of Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control, was recently interviewed by both ABC Radio’s Late Night Live as well as New Books in History. In both interviews, Fleming talks about the frequently misguided efforts throughout history to affect the weather.

Marshall Poe from “New Books in History” writes about the book:

In Fleming’s excellent telling, the story is entertaining though a bit sad. It’s sadder still that the weather-controlling con is still being run by seemingly well-intentioned people who claim they can “fix” global warming by means of some outsized, outrageous, and out-of-this-world engineering scheme. Fleming, who both knows the science and has looked at the history, is more than dubious. The only way we can “fix” the sky is to leave it alone and hope for the best.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science has also posted a video of Fleming’s recent talk on geoengineering. Fleming critiques recent proposals aimed at “fixing the sky” to help reduce global warming. While such proposals differ from the military uses of geoengineering considered during the Cold War and the Vietnam War, the implications are still troubling.

From the AAAS site:

Fleming said today’s proponents of geoengineering for climate control need to look beyond the technical details of proposals. He argues, as he put it in his book, for “the relevance of history, the foolishness of quick fixes, and the need to follow a ‘middle course’ of expedited moderation in aerial matters, seeking neither to control the sky nor to diminish the importance of the environmental problems we face.”

More on the book: Read the introduction.