WEBVTT - The Man Who Played With Hurricanes 0:00:15.410 --> 0:00:25.810 Pushkin Irving Langmuir stood in the control tower at the 0:00:25.850 --> 0:00:31.170 airport at Schenectady, upstate New York. He was gazing intently 0:00:31.290 --> 0:00:37.330 upwards uberinoculars a little single propeller aeroplane. Langmuir was in 0:00:37.370 --> 0:00:42.290 his mid sixties, gray hair, brown glasses every inch, the 0:00:42.370 --> 0:00:47.050 distinguished scientist. The year was nineteen forty six, a cold 0:00:47.090 --> 0:00:51.410 and crisp November morning, barely above freezing, with an almost 0:00:51.450 --> 0:00:57.850 completely clear blue sky. Almost there were some clouds fifty 0:00:57.890 --> 0:01:01.210 miles away, and that's where the little plane was heading. 0:01:02.170 --> 0:01:06.530 The plane had four seats. Two were occupied in one 0:01:06.610 --> 0:01:10.570 sat the pilot in the other of inglang Muir's assistant, 0:01:10.970 --> 0:01:14.330 a man called Vincent Schaeffer. He had with him a 0:01:14.410 --> 0:01:19.130 cardboard box containing six pounds of crushed dry ice and 0:01:19.210 --> 0:01:22.010 a motorized dispenser he'd rigged up back in the lab. 0:01:22.530 --> 0:01:25.450 The little plane had taken forty minutes to climb to 0:01:25.530 --> 0:01:28.890 ten thousand feet, but the cloud that Vincent Schaefer wanted 0:01:28.930 --> 0:01:31.050 to fly into was higher still. 0:01:32.090 --> 0:01:33.690 Can we get to it? He asked. 0:01:34.570 --> 0:01:39.130 The pilot pushed the plane upwards. At thirteen thousand feet, 0:01:39.410 --> 0:01:43.930 they reached the cloud just a little higher Schaefer looked 0:01:43.930 --> 0:01:49.050 at his thermometer minus seventeen point five degrees fahrenheit twenty 0:01:49.130 --> 0:01:53.210 seven point five degrees celsius. He fired up the dispenser 0:01:55.210 --> 0:01:58.410 out into the cloud. When the first pound of dry ice, 0:01:59.010 --> 0:02:04.930 the second, the third, then the dispenser jammed. Schaefer was 0:02:04.970 --> 0:02:08.610 starting to feel dizzy. That's not surprising at fourteen thousand 0:02:08.650 --> 0:02:12.130 feet in a plane that isn't pressurized. Forget the dispenser. 0:02:12.570 --> 0:02:15.610 Shaeffer opened the plane's window and tipped out the rest 0:02:15.650 --> 0:02:23.330 of the dry ice from the cardboard box. Back in 0:02:23.370 --> 0:02:27.210 the control tower, Irving Langmuir stared at the cloud into 0:02:27.210 --> 0:02:29.010 which the little plane had disappeared. 0:02:30.370 --> 0:02:31.130 Was it changing? 0:02:32.170 --> 0:02:32.410 Yes. 0:02:33.410 --> 0:02:36.810 Within minutes, it began to shift and swirl, and then 0:02:37.370 --> 0:02:40.010 out of the base of the cloud came just what 0:02:40.170 --> 0:02:45.170 Langmuir had hoped to see, snow. There was no mistaking it. 0:02:45.730 --> 0:02:49.090 He didn't even need his binoculars. From fifty miles away. 0:02:49.210 --> 0:02:51.970 You could see the streamers of snow with a naked 0:02:51.970 --> 0:02:57.650 eye before the little plane had even landed. Irving Langmuir 0:02:57.890 --> 0:03:00.930 was on the phone to a journalist. This is history, 0:03:01.130 --> 0:03:05.450 Langmuir said, mankind has finally learned to control the weather. 0:03:06.570 --> 0:03:11.290 Of course we hadn't. We just started to fool around 0:03:11.330 --> 0:03:34.530 with it. I'm Tim Harford and you're listening to cautionary tales. 0:03:43.450 --> 0:03:46.970 In the early nineteen hundreds, General Electric was one of 0:03:47.050 --> 0:03:51.010 America's biggest companies. He'd like to invest in what would 0:03:51.010 --> 0:03:56.610 nowadays call blue Skies research. When the young Irving Langmuir 0:03:56.730 --> 0:04:00.450 left academia to start work at the company's campus since Schenectady, 0:04:00.770 --> 0:04:05.050 he was given the usual welcome speech. Look around the lab, said, 0:04:05.130 --> 0:04:08.970 Langmir's new boss. Work on any problem that interests you. 0:04:09.690 --> 0:04:13.970 Don't bother with finding practical applications. Let me worry about that. 0:04:14.050 --> 0:04:19.650 You just have fun. General Electric employed smart people and 0:04:19.730 --> 0:04:23.490 let them do pretty much anything they liked. And Irving 0:04:23.530 --> 0:04:28.210 Langmuir wasn't just smart, he was brilliant. He became the 0:04:28.210 --> 0:04:33.010 first industrial chemist to win a Nobel Prize for discoveries 0:04:33.210 --> 0:04:38.890 and investigations in surface chemistry. These discoveries did turn out 0:04:38.930 --> 0:04:43.810 to have practical applications. Langmuir's work let General Electric corner 0:04:43.890 --> 0:04:48.450 the market in gas filled incandescent light bulbs, not that 0:04:48.570 --> 0:04:54.170 Langmuir cared much about that. He thirsted for knowledge, pure 0:04:54.450 --> 0:04:59.370 and simple. Langmuir was the living stereotype of the absent 0:04:59.450 --> 0:05:03.490 minded genius, famous for getting so deeply lost in. 0:05:03.530 --> 0:05:04.850 Thought that he could be. 0:05:04.890 --> 0:05:08.170 Oblivious to the world around him. There was the time 0:05:08.210 --> 0:05:11.130 a woman fell down the stairs right in front of him. 0:05:11.290 --> 0:05:16.850 As others rushed to help, Langmuir, in another world, didn't notice. 0:05:17.410 --> 0:05:21.130 He stepped right over her and kept on walking. And 0:05:21.210 --> 0:05:23.930 the time he forgot he was eating breakfast at home, 0:05:24.290 --> 0:05:27.130 not in a restaurant, and left a tip for his 0:05:27.210 --> 0:05:30.890 wife on the kitchen table. And the morning he turned 0:05:30.930 --> 0:05:34.570 up at work without his car, it turned out he'd 0:05:34.610 --> 0:05:37.130 been stuck in traffic, and he had simply left it 0:05:37.170 --> 0:05:41.250 in the middle of the road and walked. 0:05:42.090 --> 0:05:42.450 Now. 0:05:42.530 --> 0:05:47.890 In nineteen forty six, Langmuir had a new obsession the weather. 0:05:49.410 --> 0:05:52.170 During the war, he'd worked with the military to study 0:05:52.210 --> 0:05:57.570 how ice forms on aircraft wings as they fly through clouds. Water, 0:05:57.730 --> 0:06:01.090 of course, turns from liquid to solid when the temperature 0:06:01.170 --> 0:06:06.570 drops below freezing point, except sometimes it doesn't. Clouds can 0:06:06.610 --> 0:06:10.330 be in a state called super cool. The temperature drops 0:06:10.330 --> 0:06:14.490 below freezing, but the tiny water droplets won't crystallize from 0:06:14.570 --> 0:06:21.810 mist into ice unless something disturbs them. Langmuir and his 0:06:21.890 --> 0:06:26.850 assistant Vincent Shaefer, both loved to ski. Their wartime work 0:06:26.970 --> 0:06:29.130 made them look at the clouds above the hills on 0:06:29.170 --> 0:06:33.130 a cold winter day and ask themselves, what if we 0:06:33.170 --> 0:06:40.010 could make those super cooled clouds dispense snow on demand. Remember, 0:06:40.450 --> 0:06:43.210 you could work on anything you liked at General Electric, 0:06:44.210 --> 0:06:48.970 Langmuir and Shaefer decided to work on making snow. Shaefer 0:06:49.090 --> 0:06:52.410 commandeered one of the chest freezers the company made. He 0:06:52.490 --> 0:06:55.370 lined it with black velvet so he could see if 0:06:55.490 --> 0:06:59.170 ice crystals were forming. Then he took a deep breath 0:06:59.530 --> 0:07:04.330 and breathed slowly out into the freezer. His breath hung 0:07:04.370 --> 0:07:08.610 there in a mist. Now he and Langmuir had their 0:07:08.770 --> 0:07:12.250 very own own super cooled cloud right there in the lab. 0:07:13.250 --> 0:07:14.250 What could they add to. 0:07:14.210 --> 0:07:19.010 Their cloud that might make it form ice crystals? They 0:07:19.050 --> 0:07:26.410 tried talcum powder, sulfur, magnesium oxide, no luck. Then one 0:07:26.530 --> 0:07:30.290 summer day, the weather got so hot the freezer started 0:07:30.330 --> 0:07:34.290 to struggle. Schaeffer needed to keep the temperature down, so 0:07:34.610 --> 0:07:37.610 he got some dry ice. He dumped it back in 0:07:37.650 --> 0:07:41.810 the freezer, and all at once, millions of tiny ice 0:07:41.850 --> 0:07:46.450 crystals popped into being and settled on the black velvet lining. 0:07:47.250 --> 0:07:48.690 It looked magical. 0:07:49.770 --> 0:07:53.530 Vint and Schaeffer had made snow in the lab, could 0:07:53.570 --> 0:07:56.130 he and langmure make it snow in the real world. 0:07:56.970 --> 0:08:00.730 They waited impatiently for summer to turn to winter. They 0:08:00.770 --> 0:08:04.170 rented a little four seater prop plane, and at last 0:08:04.650 --> 0:08:08.530 a day arrived that was cold and clear, with distinct 0:08:08.650 --> 0:08:13.890 clouds to aim for. Schennected in New York November the fourteenth, 0:08:14.210 --> 0:08:17.970 scientists of the General Electric Company, flying in an airplane, 0:08:18.130 --> 0:08:22.250 conducted experiments with a cloud and were successful in transforming 0:08:22.250 --> 0:08:26.170 the cloud into snow. That's an announcement from General Electric. 0:08:26.410 --> 0:08:29.490 It had its own in house news bureau to publicize 0:08:29.530 --> 0:08:32.370 all the clever things its researchers did and help the 0:08:32.410 --> 0:08:36.690 company's image. The press release stopped short of claiming that 0:08:36.850 --> 0:08:40.930 mankind could now control the weather. For all his enthusiasm, 0:08:41.290 --> 0:08:46.690 langmure knew they'd only done one experiment. Still, what promise. 0:08:46.770 --> 0:08:49.450 It had shown a single. 0:08:49.170 --> 0:08:51.970 Plane could generate hundreds of millions of tons of snow. 0:08:52.570 --> 0:08:54.890 Thus a supply of moisture could be stored up for 0:08:54.930 --> 0:08:58.530 the spring months to feed irrigation and water power projects. 0:08:59.130 --> 0:09:01.970 Snow might also be produced at mountain resorts for the 0:09:01.970 --> 0:09:06.730 benefit of skiers. The next month, December The little plane 0:09:06.770 --> 0:09:10.290 went up again with a bigger load of ice, on 0:09:10.410 --> 0:09:14.170 a day with more clouds in the sky. This time, 0:09:14.330 --> 0:09:19.050 it didn't snow straight away, but once it started it 0:09:19.090 --> 0:09:23.850 didn't stop. Across the Mont and upstate New York, the 0:09:23.970 --> 0:09:29.410 snowstorm was epic. Dozens of cars crashed, businesses had to 0:09:29.410 --> 0:09:34.570 shut up shop for a week. Langnuur was exultant. He 0:09:34.650 --> 0:09:37.610 called his boss, the head of the research campus. We 0:09:37.810 --> 0:09:43.370 did that, the boss said, don't tell any journalists. The 0:09:43.410 --> 0:09:46.730 company's lawyers had started to think it might be unwise 0:09:46.850 --> 0:09:51.290 for General Electric to go around claiming responsibility for the weather. 0:09:52.090 --> 0:09:55.450 If they really had caused this snowstorm, that might not 0:09:55.570 --> 0:09:58.090 be good for the company's image. With the people who 0:09:58.090 --> 0:10:01.450 had crashed their cars or had to close their businesses, 0:10:02.210 --> 0:10:07.170 they might decide to sue. The boss hatched a plan. 0:10:07.890 --> 0:10:12.090 He called in the USA military. Would they be interested 0:10:12.130 --> 0:10:13.930 in learning to control the weather? 0:10:14.810 --> 0:10:18.410 They would. The boss told Langmuir that he wasn't to 0:10:18.490 --> 0:10:22.930 meddle with clouds himself anymore. He could only advise the military. 0:10:23.570 --> 0:10:27.090 They would conduct the experiments, and with any luck, they 0:10:27.130 --> 0:10:31.490 would get the lawsuits if anything went wrong. Langmuir didn't 0:10:31.490 --> 0:10:36.570 mind that at all. The military, after all, had bigger planes, 0:10:37.370 --> 0:10:41.370 and Langmuir had big ambitions. He was already talking about 0:10:41.370 --> 0:10:46.850 making deserts bloom and learning to control hurricanes. What would 0:10:46.890 --> 0:10:50.490 happen if you dumped dry ice in a hurricane? He'd 0:10:50.530 --> 0:10:53.010 like to find out. You couldn't try that in a 0:10:53.050 --> 0:10:57.530 single engined, four seater prop plane, but you could in 0:10:57.570 --> 0:11:02.610 a bomber. Langmuir and Shaefer theorized that the dry ice 0:11:02.690 --> 0:11:06.610 might weaken a hurricane, but perhaps they shouldn't experiment on 0:11:06.610 --> 0:11:10.930 one that would soon make landfall, just in case they 0:11:10.970 --> 0:11:13.770 needed a storm that was heading away from anywhere it 0:11:13.770 --> 0:11:18.650 could cause harm. In October nineteen forty seven, they got 0:11:18.650 --> 0:11:23.770 their chance. Hurricane King had formed in the Caribbean. It 0:11:23.810 --> 0:11:27.410 had clipped the western edge of Cuba and curved over 0:11:27.490 --> 0:11:32.250 southern Florida, dumping vast amounts of rain. Now it was 0:11:32.370 --> 0:11:36.930 drifting out into the Atlantic, further and further away from land. 0:11:37.770 --> 0:11:42.770 It was an ideal test. From a military base near Tampa, 0:11:43.170 --> 0:11:47.450 three bomber planes took off and flew towards the hurricane. 0:11:47.530 --> 0:11:50.890 They were carrying one hundred and eighty pounds of dry ice, 0:11:51.530 --> 0:11:56.570 a raft of scientific instruments to gather data and Vincent Schaeffer. 0:11:57.890 --> 0:12:01.090 They found the storm three hundred and fifty miles out 0:12:01.130 --> 0:12:03.650 to sea. They dumped the dry ice in it and 0:12:03.810 --> 0:12:07.890 flew around for a while, taking photos and making observations. 0:12:07.930 --> 0:12:12.690 Nothing too dramatic seemed to happen. They headed back to base. 0:12:14.010 --> 0:12:17.250 As soon as they'd turned their backs on Hurricane King. 0:12:18.130 --> 0:12:26.890 It did something nobody had expected. Cautionary tales will be 0:12:26.970 --> 0:12:44.170 back in a moment. In her book Under a White Sky, 0:12:44.650 --> 0:12:48.770 the author Elizabeth Colbert describes her encounters with people who 0:12:48.810 --> 0:12:53.210 work on geo engineering ideas to fix climate change, not 0:12:53.370 --> 0:12:57.050 just by reducing our emissions, but by intervening in the 0:12:57.050 --> 0:13:02.610 climate in some other way. Those ideas are controversial. The 0:13:02.690 --> 0:13:06.330 phrase under a white sky comes from a field of 0:13:06.370 --> 0:13:12.250 geoengineering called solar radiuation management, shielding the earth from sunshine 0:13:12.530 --> 0:13:15.810 to keep it cooler, like closing the blinds on your 0:13:15.850 --> 0:13:19.530 window on a summer's day. You could do that by 0:13:19.570 --> 0:13:24.930 shooting reflective particles into the stratosphere. One possible side effect 0:13:25.730 --> 0:13:30.130 is turning the sky white. Colbert talks with an academic 0:13:30.210 --> 0:13:33.770 who researches this idea. He gets hate mail, he tells her, 0:13:34.290 --> 0:13:38.170 even death threats. She also talks to a physicist who 0:13:38.290 --> 0:13:43.930 founded the field of negative emissions, basically sucking carbon dioxide 0:13:43.970 --> 0:13:47.130 out of the atmosphere. He came up with the idea 0:13:47.250 --> 0:13:50.930 after asking a friend over a beer, why is nobody 0:13:50.970 --> 0:13:56.290 doing these really crazy big things anymore. Colbert visits a 0:13:56.370 --> 0:14:00.130 startup in Iceland that's putting the idea of negative emissions 0:14:00.250 --> 0:14:04.850 into practice. Picture an air conditioning unit stark on a 0:14:04.890 --> 0:14:09.330 shipping container. It sucks in air, uses a chemical process 0:14:09.370 --> 0:14:13.610 to extract the carbon dioxide and inject it underground, where 0:14:13.730 --> 0:14:17.370 it turns to rock. The graduate students who founded the 0:14:17.410 --> 0:14:23.530 startup tell Colbert they faced a lot of opposition. People said, guys, 0:14:24.330 --> 0:14:29.170 you shouldn't be doing that. Those people weren't particularly worried 0:14:29.210 --> 0:14:32.970 that the Icelandic shipping containers would damage the planet directly. 0:14:33.850 --> 0:14:38.050 They were worried the shipping containers would foster complacency. We 0:14:38.130 --> 0:14:41.770 don't yet know how well these ideas will work. And 0:14:41.890 --> 0:14:44.970 if the general public gets the impression that scientists are 0:14:45.010 --> 0:14:47.690 going to figure out how to fixed climate change, they 0:14:47.770 --> 0:14:51.450 might think, great, we don't need to worry about reducing emissions. 0:14:52.650 --> 0:15:01.130 But the idea of geoengineering wasn't always so controversial. In 0:15:01.170 --> 0:15:05.170 the nineteen fifties, scientists in the Soviet Union had a 0:15:05.170 --> 0:15:09.410 problem they wanted to solve. For northern latitudes are a 0:15:09.450 --> 0:15:13.210 gigantic ice box. The icy breath of the Arctic is 0:15:13.290 --> 0:15:17.290 felt for thousands of kilometers around. It causes the permafrost 0:15:17.330 --> 0:15:21.650 over vast expanses of Soviet lands, the silent tundra, and 0:15:21.690 --> 0:15:26.690 the unexpected cold blasts which are feared by Ukrainian horticulturalists. 0:15:27.650 --> 0:15:31.850 I'm quoting from a book called man Versus Climate, published 0:15:31.850 --> 0:15:36.530 in Moscow in nineteen sixty one. Co author was Nikolai Rusin, 0:15:36.930 --> 0:15:42.770 an outstanding climatologist with over fifty scientific publications. The other 0:15:43.370 --> 0:15:47.410 Leah Flitt, a journalist with good experience in the field 0:15:47.450 --> 0:15:51.690 of popularization of science. The book's publisher was so keen 0:15:51.770 --> 0:15:55.450 to popularize this particular science that they put out an 0:15:55.530 --> 0:15:59.810 English translation. The reader may ask, what senses there in 0:15:59.850 --> 0:16:03.010 attempting to change the climate. Would it not be better 0:16:03.050 --> 0:16:05.250 to leave this to nature and wait and see? 0:16:05.610 --> 0:16:08.810 Of course not. The arcticgeis is a great disadvantage. 0:16:09.850 --> 0:16:13.210 So what did Flit and Rousin think we could do 0:16:13.370 --> 0:16:18.330 about the Arctic ice? They outline several ideas being discussed 0:16:18.330 --> 0:16:23.090 by Soviet climatologists, you might scatter ash or peat dust 0:16:23.490 --> 0:16:26.570 that would make the ice less reflective. It would absorb 0:16:26.730 --> 0:16:31.570 more heat and start to melt. Scientists estimate that eighty 0:16:31.730 --> 0:16:35.170 to one hundred kilograms of dust or ash per hectare 0:16:35.250 --> 0:16:40.090 of ice ought to do the job. Alternatively, you might 0:16:40.170 --> 0:16:44.850 use potassium to create a high altitude dust ring, similar 0:16:44.850 --> 0:16:48.930 to that in circling Saturn at the right angle. A 0:16:49.050 --> 0:16:52.410 ring around the planet would direct more sunshine onto the 0:16:52.450 --> 0:16:54.130 northern latitudes. 0:16:53.930 --> 0:16:54.770 And warm them up. 0:16:55.530 --> 0:17:00.690 It would admittedly make the equator cooler too. That that 0:17:00.730 --> 0:17:04.210 shouldn't cause any problems we couldn't solve. As Flit and 0:17:04.290 --> 0:17:09.010 Rusin explained, the Africans would require warm dwellings and entirely 0:17:09.130 --> 0:17:14.810 different clothes, shoes, etc. Flit and Rucin describe another proposal 0:17:15.410 --> 0:17:19.730 for a fifty five mile dam across the Bearing Strait 0:17:20.010 --> 0:17:24.890 between Siberia and Alaska. Such a dam would change the 0:17:24.930 --> 0:17:29.970 direction of warming ocean currents the central heating pipelines of 0:17:29.970 --> 0:17:34.650 our planet, point those pipelines towards the far North, and 0:17:34.850 --> 0:17:38.090 in just three or four years, the Arctic would be 0:17:38.610 --> 0:17:43.810 completely free from ice. Building a dam to Alaska would 0:17:43.850 --> 0:17:49.010 need America's cooperation. Wouldn't that be unthinkable at the height 0:17:49.050 --> 0:17:53.610 of the Cold War Not, according to then presidential candidate 0:17:53.970 --> 0:17:58.410 John F. Kennedy. The idea of the dam, said Kennedy, 0:17:58.650 --> 0:18:05.050 was certainly worth exploring. Flit and Rucin waxed lyrical about 0:18:05.050 --> 0:18:09.370 the benefits. No more frost in Moscow orchards blew in 0:18:09.410 --> 0:18:14.610 Alaska and northern Canada. All this is splendid, But is 0:18:14.650 --> 0:18:16.650 it really possible technically? 0:18:16.850 --> 0:18:17.130 Yes. 0:18:18.290 --> 0:18:21.210 Nowadays we often see in the news that Arctic ice 0:18:21.290 --> 0:18:25.330 is melting and perma frost is disappearing, and we tend 0:18:25.370 --> 0:18:29.450 not to think of that news as splendid. We worry now, 0:18:29.490 --> 0:18:33.730 not about the cold but global warming. You might assume 0:18:33.810 --> 0:18:37.930 that Leah Flitt and Nikolai Rusin hadn't heard of global warming. 0:18:38.730 --> 0:18:39.330 You'd be wrong. 0:18:40.410 --> 0:18:44.170 The book mentions the greenhouse effect, although the term is 0:18:44.210 --> 0:18:46.930 new enough that the translator puts it in scare quotes. 0:18:47.730 --> 0:18:51.370 Flit and Rousin site figures on carbon dioxide emissions that 0:18:51.410 --> 0:18:55.690 suggest that the mean temperature of the Earth's atmosphere will 0:18:55.810 --> 0:18:59.290 rise four to five degrees in less than fifty years. 0:19:00.570 --> 0:19:05.010 Four to five degrees centigrade in fifty years. That's nearly 0:19:05.090 --> 0:19:11.450 ten degrees fahrenheit. Thankfully it hasn't happen that fast, not yet. 0:19:12.330 --> 0:19:15.930 But what fascinates me is the lesson the author's draw. 0:19:17.090 --> 0:19:20.450 The prospect of global warming doesn't scare them as it 0:19:20.530 --> 0:19:21.290 scares us. 0:19:22.050 --> 0:19:23.090 Quite the opposite. 0:19:23.330 --> 0:19:27.290 They see it as encouraging evidence that man can modify 0:19:27.650 --> 0:19:32.450 and hence control the climate. If we can affect temperature 0:19:32.570 --> 0:19:35.970 so much as a mere byproduct of our everyday routines, 0:19:36.730 --> 0:19:39.690 just imagine what we might achieve if we actively put. 0:19:39.530 --> 0:19:40.370 Our minds to it. 0:19:41.570 --> 0:19:46.090 Presently available power, resources and technological possibilities permit us to 0:19:46.250 --> 0:19:49.490 remake the climate of entire regions. 0:19:49.010 --> 0:19:49.610 Of the world. 0:19:50.850 --> 0:19:53.810 Just as today we plan the construction of new cities, 0:19:54.050 --> 0:19:56.890 so in the future we shall have to plan improvements 0:19:56.930 --> 0:20:01.050 in the climate the things people used to believe. It's 0:20:01.050 --> 0:20:04.730 easy to mock them, but it also makes me uncomfortable, 0:20:05.130 --> 0:20:08.730 because we don't generally mock people for a sincerely held 0:20:08.770 --> 0:20:12.770 belief in the capacity of human ingenuity to make life better, 0:20:13.290 --> 0:20:17.050 especially not people who've proved their scientific chops, like Nikolai 0:20:17.090 --> 0:20:21.170 Rusin with his fifty publications or Irving Langmuir with his 0:20:21.290 --> 0:20:27.010 Nobel prize. The authors of Man versus Climate share Langmuir's 0:20:27.050 --> 0:20:31.130 fascination with clouds, and not just with how to make 0:20:31.170 --> 0:20:36.530 them snow, but also how to make them disappear. Many 0:20:36.610 --> 0:20:39.930 regions of the Soviet Union are deprived of sunlight for 0:20:40.050 --> 0:20:45.530 several months. By destroying such cloud cover, man could substantially 0:20:45.570 --> 0:20:47.330 improve climatic conditions. 0:20:47.770 --> 0:20:49.370 Crops would ripen more quickly. 0:20:50.250 --> 0:20:53.290 When you eat man versus climate, there's no tone of 0:20:53.410 --> 0:20:57.490 self awareness, no sense of I know this sounds crazy, 0:20:57.530 --> 0:21:02.130 but hear me out. Instead, there's just a sense of calm, 0:21:02.530 --> 0:21:08.450 measured optimism. Clouds, fog, thunderstorms, and hailstorms cannot be controlled 0:21:08.450 --> 0:21:12.410 in the same way, say hand or engine driven machinery, 0:21:12.450 --> 0:21:15.530 and yet man will eventually learn how to control, or 0:21:15.650 --> 0:21:20.410 rather influence them in the desired manner. Man will eventually 0:21:20.570 --> 0:21:24.530 learn to influence the weather and plan improvements in the climate. 0:21:25.570 --> 0:21:29.130 Nobody now thinks we can do any of that. Why 0:21:29.170 --> 0:21:32.890 did we lose that sense of ambition, that touching faith 0:21:32.970 --> 0:21:37.410 in the power of human ingenuity, or as the physicists 0:21:37.410 --> 0:21:40.970 who came up with negative emissions puts it, why is 0:21:41.090 --> 0:21:48.450 nobody doing these really crazy big things anymore? The day 0:21:48.490 --> 0:21:52.090 after he had dumped dry ice on Hurricane King in 0:21:52.130 --> 0:21:56.250 a US Air Force bomber Vincent Schafer flew home from 0:21:56.330 --> 0:21:59.490 Florida to New York. He had planned to use the 0:21:59.570 --> 0:22:02.570 time on the plane to write up his notes, but 0:22:02.690 --> 0:22:07.370 in the sky high above Georgia, Vincent Shaffer's plane began 0:22:07.450 --> 0:22:13.770 to jutterer, and soon it was lurching violently. This was 0:22:13.810 --> 0:22:18.410 the worst turbulence Schaefer had ever experienced, and he couldn't 0:22:18.410 --> 0:22:21.330 write a word. He put down his pen and his 0:22:21.410 --> 0:22:27.130 notebook and clung the arm rests of his seat. Later 0:22:27.770 --> 0:22:31.930 he found out what had been flying through Hurricane King. 0:22:33.170 --> 0:22:35.890 What was it doing in Georgia It should have been 0:22:36.010 --> 0:22:39.050 hundreds of miles away, heading further out into the Atlantic. 0:22:40.170 --> 0:22:43.410 The storm had done something completely. 0:22:43.050 --> 0:22:43.810 Out of the blue. 0:22:44.650 --> 0:22:48.810 It had abruptly turned back towards land, and far from weakening, 0:22:49.090 --> 0:22:53.810 it had picked up strength again. Hurricane King battered the 0:22:53.890 --> 0:22:57.330 coastline around Savannah with one hundred mile an hour winds. 0:22:57.850 --> 0:23:02.770 It caused twelve foot storm surges. A falling tree killed 0:23:02.770 --> 0:23:06.890 a man. The storm destroyed crops and damaged hundreds of buildings, 0:23:07.090 --> 0:23:12.530 damage that cost millions of dollars to repair. Irving Langmuir 0:23:13.330 --> 0:23:14.410 was thrilled. 0:23:14.890 --> 0:23:15.450 We did that. 0:23:16.690 --> 0:23:20.450 The lawyers at ge were having conniptions again, but the 0:23:20.570 --> 0:23:26.170 dry ice had redirected the storm accidentally. Langmuir was sure 0:23:26.210 --> 0:23:29.290 of it, and he was also sure that meant they 0:23:29.290 --> 0:23:33.530 could learn to do it deliberately, to direct storms exactly 0:23:33.570 --> 0:23:37.850 where they wanted them to go. Langmuir gave an interview 0:23:38.090 --> 0:23:40.210 to Fortune magazine. 0:23:40.370 --> 0:23:40.930 There is a. 0:23:40.810 --> 0:23:44.770 Reasonable probability, he told them that in one or two years, 0:23:45.250 --> 0:23:49.250 man will be able to abolish most damage effects from hurricanes. 0:23:50.530 --> 0:24:12.690 Of course we didn't cautionary tales will return. At General 0:24:12.770 --> 0:24:19.170 Electric's research campus Irving, Langmuir acquired another assistant, Bernard Vonnegut, 0:24:19.930 --> 0:24:23.130 brother of the novelist Kurt, who also worked for a 0:24:23.130 --> 0:24:27.170 while in the company's news bureau. Their time in Schonnectady 0:24:27.410 --> 0:24:32.330 is described in Ginger Strand's book The Brothers Vonnegut. Like 0:24:32.410 --> 0:24:36.770 all the smart scientists General Electric employed, Bernard was told 0:24:37.210 --> 0:24:40.330 look around the lab and work on anything that takes 0:24:40.370 --> 0:24:46.170 your interest. Bernard was interested in Vincent Schaeffer's freezer, lined 0:24:46.210 --> 0:24:50.410 with black velvet and containing a super cooled cloud of breath. 0:24:52.050 --> 0:24:55.890 Schaefer had discovered that pellets of dry ice made the 0:24:55.930 --> 0:25:01.810 cloud in the freezer form. Snow, what else might Bernard thought? 0:25:01.850 --> 0:25:05.170 A rapid expansion of compressed air might do the trick. 0:25:06.010 --> 0:25:08.570 He went to a toy store and bought a children's 0:25:08.570 --> 0:25:12.210 pop gun for seventy five cents. He lowered it into 0:25:12.210 --> 0:25:17.490 the freezer, pulled the trigger, and it worked. Millions of 0:25:17.530 --> 0:25:21.770 ice crystals popped into being something else made snow in 0:25:21.810 --> 0:25:22.570 the freezer too. 0:25:23.450 --> 0:25:24.650 Silver iodied. 0:25:25.730 --> 0:25:30.010 One sub zero winter night, as Bernard drove home from work, 0:25:30.570 --> 0:25:32.930 it occurred to him that the moisture in the air 0:25:33.370 --> 0:25:38.810 must be super cooled. What would silver iodide do to that? 0:25:39.690 --> 0:25:43.250 He got home, stuffed some newspaper and silver iodied into 0:25:43.290 --> 0:25:47.690 an oil burner and carried it around. Before long, he 0:25:47.770 --> 0:25:50.890 got a call from his next door neighbor, a colleague 0:25:50.930 --> 0:25:51.410 from work. 0:25:52.050 --> 0:25:53.010 Are you falling around? 0:25:53.410 --> 0:25:57.130 Said the neighbor. Why, it's a lovely clear evening. 0:25:58.130 --> 0:25:59.450 I can't see your house. 0:26:00.410 --> 0:26:05.290 Yeah, that was me, replied Bernard. I made the fog. 0:26:06.730 --> 0:26:11.250 In summer nineteen forty nine, Irving Langmuir, Vincent Shaefer, and 0:26:11.250 --> 0:26:15.010 Bernard Vonnegut set up camp in New Mexico with their 0:26:15.050 --> 0:26:20.210 team from the military. Langmuir had dreamed of making Desert's bloom. 0:26:20.770 --> 0:26:23.970 He wanted to see if dry ice could conjure rain 0:26:24.250 --> 0:26:28.650 from an arid sky. Bernard had brought along a silver 0:26:28.770 --> 0:26:32.010 iod eyed smoke generator had made in the lab. He 0:26:32.090 --> 0:26:35.690 told Langmuir he was going to set it going. Langmuir 0:26:35.770 --> 0:26:38.130 didn't seem to hear him. He was lost in thought. 0:26:38.130 --> 0:26:38.410 Again. 0:26:39.570 --> 0:26:43.650 At six am, Bernard got up and started the smoke generator. 0:26:44.570 --> 0:26:47.370 He sent up balloons to check which way the wind 0:26:47.530 --> 0:26:52.050 was carrying the silver iod eyed smoke towards the mountains. 0:26:53.330 --> 0:26:57.530 By lunchtime, clouds were building near the mountains, and was 0:26:57.570 --> 0:27:01.930 that thunder It was nearly time for Vincent Shafer to 0:27:01.970 --> 0:27:05.010 take off with dry Ice in a B seventeen bomber, 0:27:05.290 --> 0:27:10.530 so Bernard turned the smoke machine off. When Shaeffer got 0:27:10.530 --> 0:27:14.490 to the clouds, he was surprised to find they were 0:27:14.650 --> 0:27:22.410 already raining. It rained, and it rained. That night, Bernard 0:27:22.530 --> 0:27:25.610 again told Langmuir that he had been running the silver 0:27:25.690 --> 0:27:31.290 iodide generator. This time Langmuir heard and he was stunned. 0:27:32.130 --> 0:27:37.890 This was even better than dry ice. Bernard Vonnegut had 0:27:37.930 --> 0:27:48.730 made a thunderstorm. Why do we no longer aspire to 0:27:48.890 --> 0:27:54.290 influence the weather? There's an obvious answer, Despite what Irving 0:27:54.370 --> 0:27:59.090 Langmuir thought, We've learned we can't. But that's not quite right, 0:27:59.690 --> 0:28:03.050 because people still do seed clouds to day with dry 0:28:03.130 --> 0:28:06.730 ice and silver iod eyed and there's no scientific consensus 0:28:06.770 --> 0:28:10.890 on whether or not those people are wasting time. Some 0:28:10.970 --> 0:28:14.930 say cloud seeding doesn't work, others insist that it does 0:28:15.330 --> 0:28:19.570 to some extent in some conditions. I think that lack 0:28:19.610 --> 0:28:23.410 of agreement after three quarters of a century tells us 0:28:23.530 --> 0:28:27.090 there's a deeper problem. This sort of thing is hard 0:28:27.130 --> 0:28:31.050 to test. You can't run controlled experiments on the weather 0:28:31.490 --> 0:28:35.450 or the climate. Every time Irving Langmure picked up the 0:28:35.490 --> 0:28:39.010 phone to a journalist, the US Weather Bureau grew more 0:28:39.090 --> 0:28:44.210 and more exasperated. Their post bag bulged with angry letters. 0:28:44.730 --> 0:28:47.850 Why are you merely trying to predict the weather? Why 0:28:47.850 --> 0:28:51.610 don't you do something about it? The Weather Bureau tried 0:28:51.610 --> 0:28:54.610 to make Langmure see that he couldn't make claims on 0:28:54.610 --> 0:28:58.890 one off events. Would that thunderstorm in New Mexico really 0:28:58.930 --> 0:29:02.890 not have happened without Bernard Vonnegut's silver iod eyde. What 0:29:02.970 --> 0:29:06.650 about that huge New York snowstorm? Who could say for sure, 0:29:07.490 --> 0:29:13.210 not the Weather Bureau. As for Hurricane King, nobody had 0:29:13.210 --> 0:29:16.690 predicted that sharp turn back to land, but that didn't 0:29:16.730 --> 0:29:20.970 mean Vincent Schaefer had caused it where the historians combed 0:29:21.010 --> 0:29:24.410 through the records and found that something similar had happened 0:29:24.450 --> 0:29:28.370 once before, in nineteen oh six. To find out if 0:29:28.450 --> 0:29:32.570