Even a small diversion of 5 to 15% of the flow of the rivers mentioned could have far reaching effects. Therefore, this or any other plan of action which might result in a climatic change, should be carefully studied and delayed until man is confident he can predict the results; which might not be observable until several decades have passed.

But where does the motivation come from to push ahead with such developments, and with such potential consequences. One found, for example, the World Plan of Action for the Application of Science and Technology to Development recommending weather modification among an absolute cornucopia of other ways to raise agricultural and resource productivity. [34] There must be literally twenty different ways to achieve the same end, of increased rates of development. If so, is it absolutely necessary to push ahead with all twenty, if nineteen are innocuous and one contains the kind of military and international implications indicated in the literature?[31] From what we know of our historic past 'behavior, the chances of abuse of anything with promise of reward in its abuse that is developed to the point of operational utility is nearly 100 percent. One must not do everything just because it becomes physically or technically possible to do it. Few social attitudes from the recent historical past, in particular this attitude towards application of new technology, are more certain to end man as a species if not brought into perspective and brought under control. The concept of estimation of risk, and balance of benefit and risk—including long term risk and possibility of weapons application as an absolute must on the cost side-in short, "technology assessment", has finally become part of government planning. It should not be foreign to suggestions made for the sake of development either. Quite often when there are obvious military applications there will be extensive pressure from military research directorates or research groups to push civil applications as well, to popularize and make acceptable and conventional the practice, to broaden the research base, to develop independent centers of institutional pressure. There is no reason for "development" to be coopted in this process, in fact it is perverse. There are other ways to achieve the same ends, without the same enormous risks. The analysis of alternative solutions, often ones already at hand without the development of new technology, is also part of technology assessment.

REFERENCES AND NOTES

1. Brownlow, C., “Brazil Emphasizing Space Programs," Aviation Week and Space Technology, 104, No. 24, December 16, 1974, p. 16.

2. Lockheed C-130 Hercules advertisement, Army 13, No. 9, April 1963, p. 5. 3. "Weather as Weapon? Studies Begun," Chicago Tribune (AP), January 5, 1975, p. 6.

4. "Weather Modification, India's New Weapon," Times of India, March 25, 1973.

5. Advertisement, Ceres (FAO), 4, No. 1, January-February 1971, p. 58. 6. Homan, R. L., "Moscow, Washington Present Environmental Warfare Pact, Washington Post, August 22, 1975; "U.S. and Soviet Offer a Pact on Weather," New York Times, August 22, 1975; Prohibition of Weather Modification as a Weapon of War, Hearing, Subcommittee on International Relations, House of Representatives, July 29, 1975.

7. Prohibiting Military Weather Modification, Hearing, Subcommittee__on Oceans and International Environment, Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate, July 26-27, 1972, 162 pages.

8. Weather Modification, Hearing, Subcommittee on Oceans and International Environment, Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate, January 25, 1974, March 20, 1974, 123 pages.

9. A useful summary of the national and international recommendations and proposals that preceded the joint draft treaty can be found in the section "Prohibition of Environmental Means of Warfare," pages 432 to 436 of World Armaments and Disarmament, SIPRI Yearbook, 1975.

10. Weather Modification as a Weapon of War, Hearing, Subcommittee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, Sept. 24, 1974, (pages 13, 19 to 21 in particular). Dr. Weiss's wary reading of the 1974 joint US-USSR statement continued,

We also need to recognize the limits of the statement. The statement calls only for the "most effective measures possible to overcome the dangers of the use of environmental modification techniques for military purposes."

This implicitly suggests that it is possible to use techniques of environmental modification for military purposes in acceptable ways. The problem is that the statement explicitly refers to climate modification in the text and not to weather modification which is the more imminent problem. It is left ambiguous in the statement whether the use of weather modification techniques raises "dangers" which need to be overcome.

11. There have been a series of puzzling Soviet statements calling for new international accords between "the big powers" to ban "new types of mass annihilation weapons and systems to deliver them," first in an address by Secretary Brezhnev on June 13, 1975 (Wren, C. S., "Brezhnev Calls for Accord Against Terrifying Arms," New York Times, June 14, 1975), by various Soviet commentators all through June, and to French President Giscard d'Estaing on October 16, 1975 ("Exotic Weapons Proposal' by Brezhnev Puzzles West," International Herald Tribune, October 17, 1975). Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko formally presented the proposal in a letter to UN Secretary General Waldheim on September 23, 1975, which even contained a draft treaty, without naming the weapons in mind. (Pravda, September 25, 1975; English translation, Novosti Press Agency Daily Review, September 25, 1975). Back in August 7, 1974 the USSR requested the UN General Assembly to discuss a "Prohibition of Action to Influence the Enivornment and Climate for Military and Other Purposes . .". In submitting this proposal the Soviet Union stated that "there was a real danger that the achievements of science and technology would be used to create new types of weapons of mass destruction and to devise new means of waging war." This language is indistinguishable from sentences in the more recent Soviet calls for controls on new and unidentified weapon systems, and it is thus possible that they have weather and climate in mind here as well, if in fact they have anything specific in mind. But in the consistent Soviet tradition of being as vague and ambiguous as possible at all times about anything having to do with real weapons, they have seen fit not to idenitfy what they are talking about.

12. Weather Modification Research, Hearing, Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, March 18-19, 1958, pp. 18–22.

13. Rigg, Col. R. B., "Deluge or Drouth," Army, 11 (5), December 1960, pp. 50-54.

14. There may be another parallel here. The 1955 CBW advisory committee had also urged the Army Chemical Corps to carry out a public relations campaign to "achieve a more candid recognition of the proper place of CBW." That campaign was begun in 1958. It is possible that some of the articles on weather warfare which appeared about this time in the U.S. military journal literature were motivated by a similar thought.

15. Kotsch, Comm. W. J., "Weather Control and National Strategy," U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, 86 (7), July 1960, pp. 74–81.

16. Horton, A. M., "Weather Modification, A Pandora's Box?", Air Force Magazine, 58 (2), pp. 36-40.

17. Stanford, P., "Is the Pentagon Tinkering Too Much with the Weather, Parade (Washington Post, Weekly), May 5, 1975.

18. Fleagle, R. G., et al., Weather Modification in the Public Interest, American Meteorological Society, 1974, 86 pages. Government testimony in the two Senate Hearings referred to above (7, 8) was extremely ambiguous as to whether or not there was classified military research in this area, with officials stating that they were ordered not to discuss the question in open hearing.

19. Montgomery, S., "BOMEX Aims for Improved Weather Prediction," Under Sea Technology, 10 (5), May 1969, pp. 80-83.

Fleagle, R. G., "BOMEX: An Appraisal of Results," Science, 176 (4039), June 9, 1972, pp. 80–83.

Wick, G. "Where Poseidon Courts Aeolus (NORPAX)," New Scientist, 57 (829), January 18, 1973, pp. 123–126.

Gallery, Rear Adm. P. D., "BOMEX: Showing the Close Relationship Between Oceanography and Meteorology," Data on Defense and Civil Systems, 14 (5), May 1969, pp. 26-37.

"Navy's Role in BOMEX," Naval Research Reviews, 22 (3), March 1969, pp. 10-17.

20. "USAF Admits Weather Satellite Mission," Aviation Week and Space Technology, 98 (11), March 12, 1973, p. 18.

"Weather Coverage," Aviation Week and Space Technology, 99 (20), November 12, 1973, p. 11.

21. Holmquist, Rear Adm. C. O., "Long-Range Weather Prediction," U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, 99 (11), November 1973, pp. 45–50.

22. Department of Defense Appropriations for Fiscal Year 1972, Hearings, Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, U.S. Senate. 92nd Congress, First Session, 1971, pp. 674-678.

23. Ibid., for Fiscal Year 1972, pp. 647-656 and 739-742; and for Fiscal Year 1973, pp. 817-819.

24. It is interesting in this respect that "The National Science Foundation gradually is taking over ARPA's weather/climate research" (reference 16, above) just as it co-funds a substantial portion of oceanographic research that has direct military implication and application.

25. Shapely, D., "Rainmaking: Rumored Use Over Laos Alarms Arms Experts, Scientists," Science, 176 (4040), June 16, 1972, pp. 1216-1220.

Greenberg, D., "Vietnam Rainmaking: A Chronicle of DOD's Snow Job," Science and Government Report, June 16, 1972.

Hersh, S., "Rainmaking Is Used as Weapon by U.S.," New York Times, July 3, 1972.

See also Senate Hearings, references 7 and 8, particularly the latter, pp. 87-123.

(Apparently in 1963 the CIA attempted to artificially produce rain over Saigon to control Buddhist street demonstrations (see reference 17), but it is difficult to know how to categorize this even in a theater of war, if it had occurred without any subsequent weather modification operations-except as an excellent example of a trivial covert operation that could serve to pry open an entire new area of warfare if the two sides were even approximately evenly matched in capability, the way chemical warfare operations began in WW I and quickly escalated.)

26. MacDonald, G. J., "Weather Modification as a Weapon," Technology Review, October-November 1975, pp. 57–63.

27. Shapley, D., "Rainmaking: Stockholm Stand Watered Down for Military," Science, 176 (4042), June 30, 1972, p. 1404.

28. Greenberg, D. S., "Pell Urges Ban on Military Weather Control," Science and Government Report, 1 (22), January 12, 1972, p. 4.

29. Fiscal Year 1974 Authorization for Military Procurement, Research and Development, etc. Hearings, Committee on Armed Services, Part 1, April-May 1973, pp. 984-988.

30. Minutes of the 29-30 March, 1973 Meeting of the Weather Modification Association, Extract, Statement approved at the Weather Modification Association meeting 14 September, 1973; (membership at the time, 153 persons).

31. Weiss, E. B., "The International Legal and Political Implications of Weather Modification," Third Conference on Weather Modification, American Meteorological Society, Boston, 1972, pp. 232–236.

Weiss, E. B., "International Responses to Weather Modification," International Organization, 29 (3), Summer 1975, pp. 805-836.

Weiss, E. B., "Weather as a Weapon," (in) Air, Water, Earth, Fire: The Impact of the Military on World Environmental Order, A Sierra Club Special Publication, International Series, No. 2, May 1974, pp. 51–62.

Weiss, E. B., "Weather Control: An Instrument for War?", Survival, 17 (2), March-April 1975, pp. 64-68.

Taubenfeld, R. F. and Taubenfeld, H. J., "The International Implications of Weather Modification," The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 25 (1), January 1969, pp. 43-46.

As well as the paper by Gordon J. MacDonald (reference 26) and the U.S. Senate and House Hearings (references 7, 8 and 10) and Prohibition of Weather Modification as a Weapon of War, Hearing, Subcommittee on International Organization, Committee on International Relations, U.S. House of Representatives, July 29, 1975.

32. "Blames U.S. for a Disaster," Ithaca Journal (Agence France-Press), July 16, 1975, p. 2.

33. Data derived from H. H. Lamb, in Weather, 25 (10), October 1970, pp. 447-455.

34. World Plan of Action for the Application of Science and Technology to Development, Prepared by the Advisory Committee on the Application of Science and Technology to Development (ACAST) for the Second United Nations Development Decade, United Nations, New York, 1971, 286 pages.

[From the Los Angeles Times, Jan. 29, 1976]

WEATHER WARFARE FORECAST: PARTLY CLOUDY-U.N. TREATY WOULD PERMIT "PEACEFUL" ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH BY MILITARY

(By Lowell Ponte1)

In 1957, then-Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson (D-Tex.), was enchanted—as were a number of lawmakers-by the fantasies of Department of Defense researchers who would use weather as a weapon of war. "From space," he said, "one could control the earth's weather, cause drought and floods, change the tides and raise levels of the sea, make temperate climates frigid."

A decade later, as President, he made some of those fantasies spring to life by authorizing massive rain making, defoliation and other kinds of environmental warfare in Southeast Asia.

As congressional inquiries have subsequently learned, the Pentagon secretly spent at least $3.6 million a year between 1967 and 1972, seeding clouds over North and South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The expressed purpose of such seedings, which in one instance increased rainfall by 30%, was to muddy vital supply trails, thereby hampering enemy troop and supply movements. Pentagon spokesmen called the seedings a failure, but defended the project as humane: "Raindrops don't kill people, bombs do."

The Department of Defense has denied that its cloud seeding over North Vietnam in 1971 caused that country's heaviest rains and worst flooding since 1945, when more than a million Vietnamese had perished from flood and subsequent famine. But the Pentagon does make this admission: Just prior to the 1971 floods, it carried out a concerted policy of bombing flood-control dikes in North Vietnam. Still, U.S. leaders have long professed that war aimed at civilian populations is wrong. With this in mind, as well as the unknown hazards of massive tampering with natural processes, Senator Claiborne Pell (D-R.I.) introduced a 1973 resolution calling for an international treaty to prohibit environmental warfare "or the carrying out of any research or experimentation directed thereto." On July 11, 1973, the Senate approved Pell's measure, 82 to 10.

Partially in response to the resolution, the United States joined Russia in proposing a treaty to ban "military or any other hostile use of environmental modification techniques." Submitted in August to the 31-nation U.N. Conference of the Committee on Disarmament in Geneva, the draft agreement is expected to win Senate ratification by this fall.

Pell's subcommittee on oceans and the international environment began hearings on the proposed treaty last week, though it is a far cry from what he originally wanted.

His chief objection is that the treaty would not ban military research or experimentation with environmental modification-"ENMOD," as it is called by a growing Pentagon bureaucracy dedicated to its study. Quite the contrary, the treaty clearly allows any "peaceful" research-even when conducted by a military organization.

The trouble comes when you try to define "peaceful."

The Pentagon, for example, contends that its Climate Dynamics program is essentially peaceful, because it is defensive in nature. Reseachers in this program use elaborate computer models to study means of melting polar icecaps, generating hurricanes or otherwise utilizing "key environmental instabilities" to release vast amounts of potentially destructive energy. (These researchers have already discovered subtle ways that this country could, secretly from space, disrupt weather in the Soviet Union, thereby wrecking harvests and keeping that country dependent on U.S. grain imports.)

Pentagon officials say the program is necessary to detect any secret Soviet environmental tampering aimed at wrecking weather in North America. Indeed, because the proposed treaty makes no mention of forming an international agency to inspect or regulate climate modification programs, the Defense Department is likely to request even more money for the Climate Dynamics program-so the United States will be better able to detect treaty violations.

1 Lowell Ponte is an editor of Skeptic magazine. His new book, "The Cooling," which Prentice-Hall will publish in May, concerns the earth's changing climate and those who would modify it. Until 1969, he was an environmental and bizarre weapons specialist for a Washington, D. C., think tank.

As the document now stands, enforcement provisions are in fact rather meager. Leaders of nations who believe their environment is under attack may present evidence to the U.N. Security Council. However, the council would be put in a severe bind should such a case come before it, because any evidence intended to show "weather warfare" would be highly debatable.

Climatology is an infant science, full of unknowns. Our planet's climate is already in a period of severe instability (whether from human or natural causes is uncertain). As a result, many countries will suffer terrible weather, drought and crop failures, and many will try weather and climate modification as remedies.

In 1975, the National Academy of Sciences even raised the possibility that a new Ice Age may be upon us within a century- -a threat that certainly could prompt the United States and the Soviet Union to try global climate modification, not as an instrument of war but as a new form of "cold war." So what is clearly needed, in addition to this treaty, is some form of international agreement on inspection, assessment and reparation guarantees for countries injured by environmental modification. Another weakness of the proposed treaty is that it prohibits only those environmental modification techniques by the military that have "widespread, long-lasting or severe effects harmful to human welfare." Would this have kept the United States from modifying weather in Vietnam? Perhaps not, for, as one Pentagon analyst said, "People in Southeast Asia are used to heavy rains." But how prolonged would rains have to be in a monsoonbelt nation to be called "long-lasting and severe?"

Indeed, what is a "hostile" act, as blamed by the treaty? The Russians are now busy reversing rivers that flow into the Arctic Ocean and creating inland seas. Experts say this action will alter world climate, but the treaty as written excludes "peaceful' environment modification from coverage.

Some lawmakers fear the treaty would even encourage potentially dangerous military research into environmental modification by helping it gain legitimacy and funds. Pell-along with Representatives Gilbert Gude (R-Md.) and Donald M. Fraser (D-Minn.)—would eliminate this risk by putting all U.S. government research into weather and climate modification, including that of the military and the Central Intelligence Agency, under control of a civilian authority answerable to Congress.

Next month, the Geneva disarmament conference will resume discussions on the treaty. It is expected to consider adding a prohibition on research into weather warfare-which would meet Pell's chief objection. Without such a restriction, the proposed treaty would have only limited value.

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