US Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, “Weather Modification Research,” 85th Congress, 1958, 44–53.
See, originally, Charles Stankievech, “Cinema, Gramophone, Radio: A Quiet History,” eContact! 11, no. 2 (July 2009) →; and, more recently, Karmenu Vella, “High-Level Session of the Arctic Stakeholder Forum: European Investment Priorities for the Arctic,” European Commission, speech transcript, June 16, 2017 →.
John Von Neumann, “Can We Survive Technology?” in The Neumann Compendium, ed. F. Bródy and T. Vámos (World Scientific, 1995).
The Epic of Gilgamesh, trans. Maureen Gallery Kovacs (Stanford University Press, 1989), 44.
Sun-Tzu, The Art of War, trans. John Minford (Penguin, 2008), ebook.
Matthieu Gounelle, “The Meteorite Fall at L’Aigle and the Biot Report: Exploring the Cradle of Meteoritics,” Geological Society, London, Special Publications, no. 256 (2006). Gounelle points out that an early term for meteorites was “Betyl stones (from the Hebrew Beth-el, abode of God)” (73).
For a further connection between meteorites, ecology, and weapons see Charles Stankievech, “Magnetic Anomalies in the Arctic: Colonial Resource Extraction, Meteoric Cults, and the Rare Earth Age,” in Rare Earth, ed. Nadim Samman and Boris Ondreička (TBA21 / Sternberg Press, 2015).
“Remarks on the Present State of Meteorological Science,” read at the Meteorological Society of London and published in its Transactions, no. 1 (1839). Also quoted in part by Paul N. Edwards, who used it as the inspiration for the title of his excellent book A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (MIT Press, 2010), 431.
Charles Babbage, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures (1832; Cambridge University Press, 2010), 17. For the first major work on air pollution, see John Evelyn’s Fumifugium (1661), which outlines a history of pollution in London since medieval times, as well as solutions such as removing polluting industries from the city and using vegetation as a remedy. Available at →.
James Rodger Fleming, Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control (Columbia University Press, 2010), 53, 169.
First Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, vol. 1 (Smithsonian Institution, 1848), 25 →.
I have previously mapped the decentralization of warfare through an analysis of military outpost architecture in The Centre Cannot Hold (AEAC, Queen’s University / K. Verlag, 2015). See also, in the same volume, “The Listening Ear: British Coastal Wireless Interception Stations and After” by David Murakami Wood, Canada Research Chair in Surveillance Studies.
For a substantive political history of computation in the Cold War, see Paul N. Edwards, The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America (MIT Press, 1996).
For an online archive documenting the scouting, construction, and daily operation of a DEW Line station, as well as the station’s interface with local Inuit communities, see Parks Canada historian David Neufeuld’s BAR-1 DEW Line Archive, coded and hosted by myself as of my 2009 DEW Project →.
Daniel Heidt and P. Whitney Lackenbauer, The Joint Arctic Weather Stations: Science and Sovereignty in the High Arctic, 1946—1972, 1st ed. (University of Calgary Press, 2022), 67.
The role of JAWS and DEW Line stations in protecting national sovereignty in the uninhabited archipelago (JAWS was significantly farther north than the DEW Line and any Indigenous communities) was supplemented by the forcible relocation of Inuit communities to northern sites far beyond their traditional territory and the sustenance of their regular flora and fauna. The Canadian government apologized and offered modest financial restitution in 2010 →.
“Canada: The Borderline Case,” originally delivered as part one of McLuhan’s 1967 Marfleet Lectures at the University of Toronto, and later published in The Canadian Imagination: Dimensions of a Literary Culture, ed. David Staines (Harvard University Press, 1977). In light of the present essay, it would be interesting to update McLuhan’s “Hot” and “Cold” media with a theory of “Warm” media, i.e., media that is sensorily engaging and socially interactive.
For current tracking of competing claims and filings, see the “Arctic Map Series” created by Durham University’s IBRU: Centre for Borders Research →.
Roger Revelle, “International Discussions of IGY (International Geophysical Year),” in Second Supplemental Appropriation Bill, 1956: Hearings Before Subcommittees of the Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives, Eighty-fourth Congress, Second Session (US Government Printing Office, 1956), 465–74 →.
Roger Revelle and Hans E. Suess, “Carbon Dioxide Exchange Between Atmosphere and Ocean and the Question of an Increase in Atmospheric CO2 during the Past Decades,” Tellus, no. 9 (1957).
The New Yorker commissioned Carson to write a series of essays in the summer of 1962 under the title “Silent Spring,” which were later collected and published as a book. Carson was a marine biologist with a previous award-winning book titled the Sea Around Us (1954) that also fittingly highlighted the ocean’s pull toward a planetary understanding of climate change as pointed out by Revelle.
Due to the classified nature of military intelligence and operations, creating a comprehensive timeline is difficult. The following account is primarily gleaned from policy documents and from reports published in the civilian sphere by military think tanks, complimented by only a few declassified reports discovered through references and FOIA requests. It is important to remember that, according to Peter Galison, the ratio of classified to nonclassified publishing is five to one. Thus we can safely assume that there are blind spots in this text, as there most likely are earlier unknown texts addressing climate issues within the military intelligence sphere. See Peter Galison, “Removing Knowledge,” Critical Inquiry 31, no. 1 (2004).
The Schwartz and Randall report, “An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security,” was commissioned by Andrew Marshall for the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment in 2003 →.
Four out of five of the of the “future global strategic shocks” in the report were climate related (the outlier being a pandemic): “Abrupt Climate Change,” “Methane Catastrophe,” “Thermo-Haline Disturbance,” and “Mega-Volcanic or Seismic Event” resulting in climate and agriculture collapse. See United Kingdom Ministry of Defence, Global Strategic Trends 2007—2036 (Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre: January 2007), 77–79.
UN Press Release, “Security Council Holds First-Ever Debate on Impact of Climate Change on Peace, Security, Hearing Over 50 Speakers” →.
Wissenschaftlicher Beirat der Bundesregierung Globale Umweltveränderungen (German Advisory Council on Global Change), Climate Change as a Security Risk (Earthscan, 2007) →.
“China’s National Defense 2008” (State Council Information Office, Jan. 2009), 4. The paper contextually highlighted China’s new policy towards international integration, so one wonders if the casual mention of climate change, along with General Xiong Guangkai’s speech the same year in London, was a performance for an international community that had recently proclaimed climate change as the international problem of 2007.
Actual military documents show little interest in climate change but acknowledge changing environmental factors playing a role in a broad spectrum of emerging concerns—especially in the Arctic, where there is a competition for resources. In 2007, in a controversial media stunt, Russia sent a submarine to the bottom of the Arctic Ocean to plant a Russian flag at the North Pole. The mission was called “Arktika 2007” and was partly a lobbying tactic amidst controversial claims to seabed jurisdiction for deep-sea mining and offshore oil extraction. Also, two nonmilitary reports from the time, focusing on “Climate Doctrine” and Arctic policy, inferred connections to climate shifts in the Arctic and called for increasing Arctic security forces and infrastructure: “National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation to 2020” (approved by Presidential Decree no. 537, May 12, 2009); “Climate Doctrine of the Russian Federation” (Presidential Order no. 861-rp, December 17, 2009); “Foundations of State Policy of the Russian Federation in the Arctic to 2020 and Beyond” (September 18, 2008, directive no. Пр-1969).
US Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review Report (February 2010) →.
John Platt, “Social Traps,” American Psychologist 28, no. 8 (1973).
Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science 162, no. 3859 (1968).
US Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review Report, 85.
In the IPPC’s Fifth Assessment Report of 2014, which included a new initiative and chapter devoted entirely to “Human Security,” a special case study considered the 2003 explosion of violence in Dafur, Sudan as an example of climate change–caused conflict. But since the conflict was local, the report resisted placing too much weight on climate causation since neighboring governments remained stable. The Arab Spring, with its multiple political conflicts across unconnected regimes, is considered a stronger argument for climate change as a threat multiplier. The report also draws attention to “geopolitical competition over access to Arctic resources that escalates into dangerous tensions and crises (high confidence).” See W. N. Adger et al., “Human Security,” in Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects, Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ed. C. B. Field et al. (Cambridge University Press, 2014), 773, 778.
Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (Harvard University Press, 2011).
Douglas Berenson, “Pentagon Officials Consider Asking for Waiver for US Forces: DOD Officials Warn Climate Change Treaty Could Harm Military Readiness,” Inside the Pentagon 13, no. 41 (October 9, 1997).
Neta C. Crawford, Pentagon Fuel Use, Climate Change, and the Costs of War (Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University, 2019) →.
Petraeus’s quip is from a widely quoted June 7, 2011 memo promoting a report from the US Department of Defense’s Assistant Secretary of Defense for Operational Energy, Plans & Programs, Energy for the Warfighter: The Department of Defense Operational Energy Strategy, June 14, 2011 →.
Marijn Nieuwenhuis and Mikko Joronen, “Colonial Pyrotechniques in Palestine: Arboricide and Fiery Dispossessions,” Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, October 26, 2025).
Paul Virilio, Bunker Archaeology, trans. George Collins (Princeton Architectural Press, 1994). 37. Peter Sloterdijk’s widely referenced Terror from the Air (2002) popularizes Virilio’s thesis.
See Fleming’s chapter “Weather Warriors” in Fixing the Sky for a detailed account of military experimentation in weather modification in the twentieth century.
“Weather Control Called ‘Weapon’” and “Weather Bill in Senate,” New York Times, December 10, 1950, 68.
Howard T. Orville, “Weather Made to Order?” Collier’s, May 28, 1954.
James P. Espy, The Philosophy of Storms (C. C. Little and J. Brown, 1841). 494.
“Paradoxers” was a nineteenth-century term equivalent to today’s Silicon Valley’s “disrupters.” See Mark W. Harrington, “Weather Making, Ancient and Modern,” National Geographic, April 25, 1894.
Deborah Shapley, “Weather Warfare: Pentagon Concedes 7-Year Vietnam Effort,” Science 184, no. 4141 (1974).
For the first committee hearings uncovering domestic activities, see US Congress, House, Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Oceans and International Environment, ”Weather Modification,” 93rd Congress, 2nd Session, January 25 and March 20, 1974 (US Government Printing Office, 1974) →; for the second committee on international relations, particularly in light of conversations with the USSR, see US Congress, Senate, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on International Organizations and Movements, ”Weather Modification as a Weapon of War,” 93rd Congress, 2nd Session, on H. Res. 116 and 329, September 24, 1974 (US Government Printing Office, 1974) →. United Nations General Assembly, Resolution 31/72, “Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques,” in 31st Session: Volume I: Resolutions and Decisions, 21 September—22 December 1976, A/31/39 (United Nations, 1976).
Col. Tamzy J. House et al., Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025 (US Air Force, August 1996) →.
The 2008 decision was inspired by the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP10), 2010. Decision X/33: Biodiversity and Climate Change, Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity →.
Holly Jean Buck, After Geoengineering: Climate Tragedy, Repair, and Restoration (Verso, 2019).
ENMOD before COP10; the Haida Gwaii Indigenous people in Western Canada ocean fertilizing in 2012; David Keith selling his Carbon Engineering Ltd. to Occidental Petroleum, which is building the world’s largest carbon capture installation, etc.
See Kim Stanley Robinson’s hard science fiction novels that deal with geoengineering, most recently The Ministry for the Future (2021), in which a fictional Indian state unilaterally implements “solar radiation management” after a heatwave kills ten million citizens.
See →.
“Iran General Says Israel Steals Clouds, Causes Drought,” Newsweek, July 2, 2018. The same article recounts how Iran’s military was helping the country’s Ministry of Energy in its own domestic cloud-seeding operations.
Holly Jean Buck, “Para-Environmentalism as Popular Atmospheric Politics,” presented at Shaping Atmospheres Symposium, organized by Ala Roushan and Charles Stankievech, University of Toronto, November 7, 2024.
Jorge Luis Borges, “On Exactitude in Science” (1946), in Collected Fictions, trans. Andrew Hurley (Penguin, 1999), 325.
NVIDIA Corporation, “NVIDIA Announces Earth Climate Digital Twin,” press release, March 18, 2024 →.
See Simulation, Exercise, Operations, ed. Robin Mackay (Urbanomic, 2015).
Michel Serres, Hermès V: Le passage du Nord-Ouest (Éditions de Minuit, 1980).
