A Brief History of Climate Folly

Trying to Control the Weather, from the Stone Age to the Space Age

If reducing carbon emissions is too difficult and too slow, could we engineer a scientific solution to the climate crisis?

For millennia, humans have been trying – or claiming to – influence the weather. We have thought up ever more audacious and technologically advanced ways to change our climate to suit our needs, from performing human sacrifices, to drawing up plans to drain the Mediterranean, create a ‘second moon’, or even drop nuclear bombs on polar ice caps.

In this book, Tim and Emma Flannery provide an entertaining overview of the most extraordinary attempts – from the utterly ridiculous to the not so sublime – and the ecological, geopolitical, and ethical issues they have raised. But despite past failures and wasted resources, new initiatives are being explored to bring us back from the brink of climate collapse: from pumping saltwater into the Arctic to injecting sulphur into the atmosphere. Drawing on the most up-to-date developments in climate science, Tim and Emma show us how these technological efforts are just as likely to fail and our hubris may lead us into even greater destruction.

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