Fixing the Sky by James Rodger Fleming

“literary specialty” and points out to his discriminating readers that it ought to be “not ignorant, poor-quality amateur weather” but the “ablest weather that can be had.”
    Of course, talk of the weather dominates the work, just as, in the 1890s, talk of Robert Dyrenforth’s experiments in Texas dominated discussions of weather control (chapter 2). In the concluding pages of The American Claimant , Twain gives an account of the eccentric Colonel Mulberry Sellers, the epitome of American free enterprise, who seeks to control the world’s climates—and sell them—by manipulating sunspots. The colonel has just drafted a long letter explaining his scheme:
    In brief, then, I have conceived the stupendous idea of reorganizing the climates of the earth according to the desire of the populations interested. That is to say, I will furnish climates to order, for cash or negotiable paper, taking the old climates in part payment, of course, at a fair discount, where they are in condition to be repaired at small cost and let out for hire to poor and remote communities not able to afford a good climate and not caring for an expensive one for mere display. (271)
    The colonel portrays himself as nothing more esoteric than a regulator and (shades of William Ruddiman) holds that climate was manipulated in prehistoric times by Paleolithic peoples—for profit!
    My studies have convinced me that the regulation of climates and the breeding of new varieties at will from the old stock is a feasible thing. Indeed I am convinced that it has been done before; done in prehistoric times by now forgotten and unrecorded civilizations. Everywhere I find hoary evidences of artificial manipulation of climates in bygone times. Take the glacial period. Was that produced by accident? Not at all; it was done for money. I have a thousand proofs of it, and will some day reveal them. (271–272)
    Colonel Sellers hopes to patent a “complete and perfect” method for controlling the “stupendous energies” behind sunspots. Wielding this power, Sellers plans to reorganize the climates “for beneficent purposes.... At present they merely make trouble and do harm in the evoking of cyclones and other kinds of electric storms; but once under humane and intelligent control this will cease and they will become a boon to man” (272). His plans for commercialization of this technique include licensing it “to the minor countries at a reasonable figure”
and providing the great empires with special rates for ordinary affairs and “fancy brands for coronations, battles and other great and particular occasions” (272). He expects to make billions of dollars with this enterprise, which requires no expensive plant, and he hopes to be operational within a few days or weeks at the longest. His first goal is improving the climate of Siberia and clinching a contract with the Russian czar, which he confidently projects will save both his honor and his credit immediately. Reminiscent of the purchase of the North Pole by the Baltimore Gun Club, the daffy colonel confides in his friend and former colleague Marse Washington Hawkins, “a stoutish, discouragedlooking man”:
    I would like you to provide a proper outfit and start north as soon as I telegraph you, be it night or be it day. I wish you to take up all the country stretching away from the North Pole on all sides for many degrees south, and buy Greenland and Iceland at the best figure you can get now while they are cheap. It is my intention to move one of the tropics up there and transfer the frigid zone to the equator. I will have the entire Arctic Circle in the market as a summer resort next year, and will use the surplusage of the old climate, over and above what can be utilized on the equator, to reduce the temperature of opposition resorts. (272–273)
    Sellers promises to communicate with Hawkins not by earthbound means such