OWNING THE WEATHER Synopsis
The weather might be the most important thing to humankind. It affects our moods, what clothes we wear, what foods we eat and how we live. Despite centuries of scientific victories that have enabled us to exert some control and “air condition” the elements out of our lives, we may never escape the weather.
The desire to modify the weather has been around forever; but with the threat of catastrophic climate change, water wars, and intensifying hurricanes, a new breed of weather control has emerged.
Mixing character-driven verité with the scope of an essay film, OWNING THE WEATHER tells the story of weather modification in the United States, from Charles Hatfield’s infamous rainmaking days to modern plans to engineer the climate.
There are more than fifty active weather modification programs in the United States alone. Through the eyes of key individuals on the front lines of a crucial but largely unknown debate, the film introduces the cloud seeders struggling for mainstream recognition, the “legitimate” scientists who doubt them, and the activists who decry any attempts to mess with Mother Nature.
Will the scientific renegades in the weather modification community ever shed the label of “snake-oil salesman”? Will they succeed in securing government funding for the first time in decades? What does it mean to our society and our consciousness if there are no more acts of God?
Traversing vast ethical, political, and social currents, the film asks the question, “will we have to own the weather to save the planet?”
The film premiered in 2009 at the prestigious Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, and continues to screen at festivals across the United States and Europe. Most recently it received the great honor of being selected by the Copenhagen Documentary Film Festival (CPH:DOX) to screen at this year's UN Climate Change Conference (COP15) in Denmark in December. The summit includes the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP 15) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the 5th Meeting of the Parties (COP/MOP 5) to the Kyoto Protocol. An international framework for climate change mitigation beyond 2012 is to be negotiated there.
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OWNING THE WEATHER Director’s Statement By Robert Greene
In December 2005 I read Ando Arike’s “Owning the Weather: The Ugly Politics of the Pathetic Fallacy” in Harper’s Magazine. It was a smart, considered essay that brought together many disparate stories to illuminate the hubris and folly of Man’s long desire to control the weather. I immediately knew this story would be my first feature film.
I contacted the writer, met him at a Brooklyn teashop, and began researching the history, facts about, and ethical/political/moral questions raised by this thing called “weather modification.”
We shopped the idea around and the film got some interest at a well-established documentary production company. They told us, however, that we really needed to find one character that wanted to do some major weather modification experiment and follow his journey. This was, of course, documentary conventional wisdom. One- character stories sell. I was convinced, however, that the film could be so much bigger. I saw the story as the kind many of my cinematic heroes (Frederick Wiseman, Adam Curtis, Werner Herzog, etc.) might want to tell. And I was more than a little worried that we would have to make a guy who wanted to screw with the weather a de facto hero.
So when our character turned out to be a complete con artist and the film collapsed, I was actually a little relieved. The production company voided my contract and we were back to square one with an article and an idea. I felt like I had to tell the story - not just a sliver of it, but the whole, big, messy thing. This was not just a story about making it rain or stopping a hurricane. It was about our changing place in nature and how our long desire to control the elements have led us to a place where, because of climate change, we may have to control the weather to survive.
I brought the project to 4th Row Films and they were supportive of my vision for the film, so we cobbled together the money and began shooting. Some two years and twenty states later, after having a child and getting married (a new family that joined me on almost every trip), we had several hundreds of hours of material that seemed as vast, chaotic and exciting as the weather itself.
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OWNING THE WEATHER Cast (in alphabetical order)
Roger Angel Ando Arike Colonel Donald Berchoff Richard “Heatwave” Berler Wallace Broecker Ken Caldeira Mike Davis Kerry Emanuel Storm Field James Fleming Alvia Gaskill James Gleick Joseph Golden Larry Hjermstad Steve Hunter Garrett Keizer Dennis Kucinich Eugene Linden Richard Lindzen Mark Mathis Chris Mooney Pat Mooney Mike MacCracken Bill McKibben Daniel Quinn Stephen Schneider Daniel Schrag Tommy Shearrer Tom Wigley
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OWNING THE WEATHER Selected Cast Biographies (in alphabetical order)
Roger Angel is an expert in optics and astronomy, working as a professor at the University of Arizona. He is currently working under a grant from NASA to build 16 trillion “mirrors” in space to halt the effects of global warming.
Ando Arike wrote the January 2006 Harper’s article “Owning the Weather: The Ugly Politics of the Pathetic Fallacy. ” He is currently working on an article for Harper’s about the use of non-lethal weapons.
Colonel Donald Berchoff is a senior member of the Air Force Weather Agency and a weather history enthusiast.
Ken Caldeira is a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution at Stanford University. A leading proponent of geoengineering, his recent op-ed piece in The New York Times brought the subject to a new audience.
Mike Davis is a world-renowned historian, environmentalist and Marxist. He has written several well-known books, including Ecology of Fear, City of Quartz and Dead Cities and Other Tales.
Kerry Emanuel was named one of Time’s One Hundred Most Influential People in 2006. He is a professor of meteorology at MIT, where he studies the potential effect of global warming on hurricanes.
Storm Field is the son of meteorologist Frank Field. He worked as a meteorologist in New York City for 25 years.
James Fleming is a professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. His research in the fields of weather modification and geoengineering was featured in the article “The Climate Engineers” in The Wilson Quarterly in the Spring of 2007. He is currently writing a book about the history of weather modification and climate control.
Alvia Gaskill is an independent lobbyist for geoengineering working out of North Carolina. He also administrates the geoengineering Google discussion group.
James Gleick has written many books, including Chaos, an in-depth look into the world of Dr. Edward Lorenz, author of the Chaos Theory and theorist of the Butterfly Effect. His books have been Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalists.
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Joseph Golden considers himself the George Custer of weather modification because he was head of the last federally-funded weather modification program. He is now retired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association.
Larry Hjermstad, is president of Western Weather Consultants in Durango, Colorado. He has worked in weather modification for the past 40 years. His nickname is “The Snow God.”
Steven Hunter is an independent weather modification consultant and a Buddhist. He currently practices his profession in Turkey.
Garret Keizer is a former Episcopal priest and English teacher, and author of books including Help and The Enigma of Anger. His article “Climate, Class, and Claptrap” was featured in the June 2007 issue of Harper’s.
Eugene Linden is an author who has written about environmental topics for nearly thirty years. His most recent book, Winds of Change: Climate, Weather, and the Destruction of Civilizations, discusses the effect of weather events on the rise and fall of civilizations.
Richard Lindzen is a professor of meteorology at MIT. He famously opposes the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in his controversial view that global warming is not caused by human action.
Mark Mathis is an accomplished meteorologist, and currently host of the popular morning show Fox News Rising in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Chris Mooney, bestselling author of The Republican War on Science, released the book Storm World in 2007, which discussed the effect of global warming on hurricanes. His blog, http://scienceblogs.com/intersection, is one of the most popular science journalism sites on the internet.
Pat Mooney is the executive director of the ETC Group, an environmental lobbyist group out of Ottawa, Ontario. In 2007 he wrote the article “Gambling with Gaia,” which discussed the ramifications of geoengineering solutions from an eco-political point-of- view.
Mike MacCracken is a pioneer in the field of climate engineering. He worked with Dr. Edward Teller at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories and later as a science advisor under the Clinton administration.
Bill McKibben is an activist and author of many books, including “The End of Nature.” He is currently traveling the country with a grassroots campaign to raise awareness about global warming.
4th Row Films, 27 W. 20th Street, Ste. 1006, New York, NY 10011 T: 212-974-0082 / F: 212-627-3090
Daniel Quinn wrote the book Ishmael, winner of the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship Award. In all of his books he writes about the environmental, social, and political effects of Humankind on the planet.
Stephen Schneider is a climatologist at Stanford University as well as a leading advocate for the reduction of greenhouse gases to combat global warming.
Daniel Schrag is a professor at Harvard University. In November 2007 he convened a summit at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences to discuss further research on climate engineering.
Tommy Shearrer served as the Weather Modification Association’s president in 2006- 2007. A fifth-generation son of Pleasanton, Texas, and successful rancher, he serves as the head of the Southwest Texas Weather Modification Association, where he oversees the cloud seeding program.
Tom Wigley is a senior scientist in the Climate and Global Dynamics Division at University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. He is a principal proponent of the “artificial volcano” climate engineering scheme.
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OWNING THE WEATHER Crew
Robert Greene Producer/Director/Cinematographer/Editor Douglas Tirola Producer Susan Bedusa Co-producer Carissa Potenza Co-producer Greta Wink Co-producer Miguel Camnitzer Associate Producer Deanna Davis Assistant Producer Ando Arike Writer (article) Eric Liebman Composer (original music) Emily Crenshaw Camera Operator/Production Assistant Eric Daniel Metzgar Camera Operator Mark Sudduth Camera Operator Sean Price Williams Camera Operator Anthony Foglia Assistant Editor Charles Poekel Production Assistant
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OWNING THE WEATHER Crew Bios
Robert Greene Producer/Director
Robert has directed, edited and shot award-winning films that have been shown around the world. An Omar Broadway Film, which Robert produced, edited, and shot, was accepted into the World Documentary Competition category at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival. It was subsequently picked up by HBO, where it will premiere in 2010. All In – The Poker Movie, also produced, edited, and shot by Robert, premiered at CineVegas 2009 and took home the jury prize for best documentary. His latest feature-length documentary project, Kati with an I, is an intimate portrait of a girl’s emotional transformation over the three days leading up to her high school graduation.
Before concentrating on long-form documentaries, Robert had five different short films and documentaries shown at festivals, including the New York and Chicago Underground Film Festivals and the Portland Documentary and Experimental Film Festival. His short, Sports: A 12 Part History, was screened at over ten festivals worldwide.
The documentary he edited, La Lucha Se Hace, was featured at the 2002 New York Expo. Also in 2002, Robert was given his first one-person show of short films at the Millennium in New York. Until 2006 his new work was featured every six months at the Millennium. Robert also edited the award-winning theatrical documentary Anytown, USA.
Robert is currently Post-Production Supervisor and Documentary Producer at 4th Row Films. He has edited, shot, and directed over 500 marketing and branding films for several Fortune 500 companies. Robert has also edited dozens of film and television promos for 4th Row Films development, including promos for the hit MTV show The X- Effect and the documentary Making the Boys.
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OWNING THE WEATHER Crew Bios (continued)
Douglas Tirola Producer
As President of 4th Row Films, Doug Tirola has produced three other documentaries, in addition to Owning the Weather. He co-directed An Omar Broadway Film (Tribeca Film Festival 2008), which will premiere on HBO in 2010. He produced Making The Boys (Tribeca Film Festival 2009), and he directed All In – The Poker Movie (CineVegas 2009 – Jury Prize for Best Documentary).
Doug created and serves as Executive Producer of the television series The X Effect. The series is currently in its third year on MTV. His screenplay, Victor in December, which he will also direct, was optioned by Bob Balaban and Wild Bear Films (Girl With The Pearl Earring). Victor in December won a Writer’s Guild Award for best-unproduced screenplay and is scheduled to start shooting in Fall of 2009. Doug has worked as a screenwriter for Paramount, Universal, Fox, Warner Brothers, Sony and New Line.
Doug has created a division of 4th Row Films, which utilizes independent filmmakers to produce marketing and branding films. He has directed and produced over 1000 of these films over the past five years for companies such as American Express, Chrysler, Proctor and Gamble, Colgate, Smirnoff, Hershey, Guinness, Mercedes-Benz, and Coca-Cola.
Previously, Doug worked on the production of over twenty-five studio feature films. Some of these movies include A League of Their Own, Searching for Bobby Fischer, Money Train and Mighty Aphrodite. He was also a founding partner of Ira Deutchman’s Emerging Pictures where he served as the Head of Production and Development. He was Executive Producer of films that premiered at both the Sundance and Tribeca Film Festivals. Doug made his directorial debut as a writer and filmmaker with the critically acclaimed film A Reason To Believe, which was released nationally by Lionsgate in 1996 and was released on DVD in the Spring of 2005.
Doug is a graduate of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and he has a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry and Fiction from Columbia University in New York City. He is represented by the William Morris Agency.
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OWNING THE WEATHER Crew Bios (continued)
Susan Bedusa Co-Producer
Susan began her film career with positions at Amy Robinson Productions, Bob Balaban’s Chicagofilms and Michael Corrente's Revere Pictures. She then moved into development at Studionext, and has since served as Director of Development at Emerging Pictures, working under Fine Line founder, Ira Deutchman.
Most recently, Susan served as Producer on the feature length documentary, An Omar Broadway Film, about an inmate who smuggled a video camera into his prison cell. The film premiered at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival and was recently acquired by HBO Documentary Films. It will be released in early 2010.
Susan is currently Head of Development for 4th Row Films where she writes and develops concepts for feature films, documentaries, scripted and non-scripted television both internally and with outside writers and producers. She also works with various film festivals and conferences to find and develop new documentary and narrative projects for the company, such as the Tribeca Film Festival’s All Access program, IFP Market’s No Borders program, and the Silverdocs Film Festival.
She is an Associate Producer on the feature documentary, Anytown, USA, and Co- Producer on the feature doc Owning the Weather. She is also serving as a Producer on two other documentaries: All In, which explores American’s current obsession with Poker, and Making the Boys, about the seminal gay play and movie, The Boys in the Band.
Susan will also serve as Co-Producer of the narrative feature Victor in December, which will begin production later this year. In television, Susan is a Producer on the hit MTV series, The X Effect, which is currently entering its third season. She has also set up development deals with MTV and Fuse Networks for two other reality based shows.
Susan has produced several viral videos and marketing films for major brands and Fortune 500 companies including Verizon, Citibank, Proctor & Gamble, Payless, Pepsi, and Shire Pharmaceuticals. Some of her most recent branded entertainment projects include a series of webisodes she produced for Top Flite, featuring ESPN personality, Kenny Mayne, and another web series for Schick Razors with X Games athletes Bob Burnquist and Ryan Nyquist. Susan produced the viral video Save the Mistletoe for Smirnoff Ice, which featured eight celebrities recording a spoof on We Are the World. She also worked on a web series for Secret Deodorant with Grammy winner Rihanna and Nicole Scherzinger of the Pussycat Dolls.
4th Row Films, 27 W. 20th Street, Ste. 1006, New York, NY 10011 T: 212-974-0082 / F: 212-627-3090
OWNING THE WEATHER Crew Bios (continued)
Carissa Potenza Co-producer
Until recently, Carissa worked with Oscar-nominated, Sundance-featured filmmakers Rory Kennedy and Liz Garbus at Moxie Firecracker Films. Since 1997, Carissa has worked on film and television productions for media outlets including MTV, Showtime, HBO, A&E, Lifetime, IFC and others. She served as the 2006 Director of Programming for the New York AIDS Film Festival, and was most recently the Director of Production on an AIDS documentary featuring supermodel Maggie Rizer. Carissa serves as Producer for Owning the Weather in affiliation with 4th Row Films.
4th Row Films, 27 W. 20th Street, Ste. 1006, New York, NY 10011 T: 212-974-0082 / F: 212-627-3090
OWNING THE WEATHER Articles
Arike, Ando. “Owning the Weather: the ugly politics of the pathetic fallacy.” Harper’s Magazine January 2006: 67-73. (Excerpt)
Caldeira, Ken. “How to Cool the Globe.” New York Times 24 Oct. 2007.
Mooney, Pat. “Gambling with Gaia.” Etc. Group 1 Feb. 2007. http://www.etcgroup.org/en/materials/publications.html?pub_id=608 (Excerpt)
4th Row Films, 27 W. 20th Street, Ste. 1006, New York, NY 10011 T: 212-974-0082 / F: 212-627-3090
4th Row Films, 27 W. 20th Street, Ste. 1006, New York, NY 10011 T: 212-974-0082 / F: 212-627-3090
4th Row Films, 27 W. 20th Street, Ste. 1006, New York, NY 10011 T: 212-974-0082 / F: 212-627-3090
Op-Ed October 24, 2007 How to Cool the Globe By Ken Caldeira
DESPITE growing interest in clean energy technology, it looks as if we are not going to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide anytime soon. The amount in the atmosphere today exceeds the most pessimistic forecasts made just a few years ago, and it is increasing faster than anybody had foreseen.
Even if we could stop adding to greenhouse gases tomorrow, the earth would continue warming for decades — and remain hot for centuries. We would still face the threat of water from melting glaciers lapping at our doorsteps.
What can be done? One idea is to counteract warming by tossing small particles into the stratosphere (above where jets fly). This strategy may sound far-fetched, but it has the potential to cool the earth within months.
Mount Pinatubo, a volcano in the Philippines that erupted in 1991, showed how it works. The eruption resulted in sulfate particles in the stratosphere that reflected the sun’s rays back to space, and as a consequence the earth briefly cooled.
If we could pour a five-gallon bucket’s worth of sulfate particles per second into the stratosphere, it might be enough to keep the earth from warming for 50 years. Tossing twice as much up there could protect us into the next century.
A 1992 report from the National Academy of Sciences suggests that naval artillery, rockets and aircraft exhaust could all be used to send the particles up. The least expensive option might be to use a fire hose suspended from a series of balloons. Scientists have yet to analyze the engineering involved, but the hurdles appear surmountable.
Seeding the stratosphere might not work perfectly. But it would be cheap and easy enough and is worth investigating.
This is not to say that we should give up trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Ninety- nine percent of the $3 billion federal Climate Change Technology Program should still go toward developing climate-friendly energy systems. But 1 percent of that money could be put toward working out geoengineered climate fixes like sulfate particles in the atmosphere, and developing the understanding we need to ensure that they wouldn’t just make matters worse.
Think of it as an insurance policy, a backup plan for climate change.
Which is the more environmentally sensitive thing to do: let the Greenland ice sheet collapse and polar bears become extinct, or throw a little sulfate in the stratosphere? The second option is at least worth looking into.
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Gambling with Gaia (Excerpt)
The Etc Group February 2007 By Pat Mooney
In 1975, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Newsweek magazine joined forces to warn of “the Cooling World” – the same year that British scientists confirmed a hole over the ozone layer above Antarctica and, coincidentally, the year that the Soviet Union and the United States submitted identical draft treaties to the UN General Assembly prohibiting climate modification as a military weapon.
Thirty years later, everybody – including the US president – was talking about Global Warming; scientists warned that the temperature rise on the Arctic ice cap and on Siberian permafrost could “tip” Planet Earth into an environmental tailspin; and, the US Congress agreed to study a bill that would establish a national weather modification research programme.
In 2006 George W. Bush proposed that a technological silver bullet will help us (or, the US_ out of the current eco-quagmire. That silver bullet is most commonly known as geoengineering – the intentional and directed manipulation of the earth and its ecosystems. Geoengineering includes a wide range of schemes: blasting particles of sulfur into the stratosphere to shield us from the sun’s rays; dumping iron particles in the oceans to nurture CO2-absorbing plankton and blasting clouds with chemicals to nudge them into producing rain. University of Calgary scientist, David Keith, refers to geoengineering as “an expedient solution that uses additional technology to counteract unwanted effects without eliminating their root cause.”
There are, of course, human-made threats to the environment. We are, by no means, finished with the fallout from our first chemical adventure, for example. Despite the rekindled public concern that arose with the sudden failure of Sweden’s Forsmark nuclear power plant in July, 2006, nuclear power is making a comeback and at least some in the environmental movement are likely to accept nuclear energy as the only “politically-realistic” alternative to fossil fuels.
The causes and implications of climate change are much more complex and there are still many politicians and pundits seeking an upside. In the years since the 1974 discovery of the ozone hole, voters in OECD countries, at least, have been “dumbed-down” and conditioned by corporations and politicians to believe that an effective response to climate change can be achieved painlessly. Today, industry and governments will not just confuse the issue, but point to a technological fix which, they hope, will safeguard the status quo of the wealthy.
So, if governments aren’t prepared to ask their citizens to change their lifestyles, is geoengineering a real option? The concept is rapidly gaining ground.
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