In Review: This Time, We Mean It

Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control, James Rodger Fleming, New York: Columbia University Press, 2010, 344 pages.

How to Cool the Planet: Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix Earth's Climate, Jeff Goodell, New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010, 272 pages.

In the movie adaptation of N. Richard Nash's The Rainmaker, Burt Lancaster plays a flamboyant confidence man who promises to bring rain to drought- stricken Texas. How? By using sodium chloride to "barometricize the tropo- pause" and "magnetize occlusions in the sky." Are today's climate engineers the modern equivalent of steam-era rain- makers, mixing dubious science with questionable motives to sell a desperately needed quick fix? Or is their mission a timely and necessary exploration of what may soon be our only remaining option for keeping the planet habitable? …